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DigitalComponents's blog
Is It Live or Memor-Matrix?
Submitted by DigitalComponents on Thu, 08/16/2007 - 9:45pm.Findings
Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch
By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: August 14, 2007
Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else’s hobby. I hadn’t imagined that the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the heavens and earth could be an advanced version of a guy who spends his weekends building model railroads or overseeing video-game worlds like the Sims.
But now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation.
This simulation would be similar to the one in “The Matrix,” in which most humans don’t realize that their lives and their world are just illusions created in their brains while their bodies are suspended in vats of liquid. But in Dr. Bostrom’s notion of reality, you wouldn’t even have a body made of flesh. Your brain would exist only as a network of computer circuits.
You couldn’t, as in “The Matrix,” unplug your brain and escape from your vat to see the physical world. You couldn’t see through the illusion except by using the sort of logic employed by Dr. Bostrom, the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford.
Dr. Bostrom assumes that technological advances could produce a computer with more processing power than all the brains in the world, and that advanced humans, or “posthumans,” could run “ancestor simulations” of their evolutionary history by creating virtual worlds inhabited by virtual people with fully developed virtual nervous systems.
Some computer experts have projected, based on trends in processing power, that we will have such a computer by the middle of this century, but it doesn’t matter for Dr. Bostrom’s argument whether it takes 50 years or 5 million years. If civilization survived long enough to reach that stage, and if the posthumans were to run lots of simulations for research purposes or entertainment, then the number of virtual ancestors they created would be vastly greater than the number of real ancestors.
There would be no way for any of these ancestors to know for sure whether they were virtual or real, because the sights and feelings they’d experience would be indistinguishable. But since there would be so many more virtual ancestors, any individual could figure that the odds made it nearly certain that he or she was living in a virtual world.
The math and the logic are inexorable once you assume that lots of simulations are being run. But there are a couple of alternative hypotheses, as Dr. Bostrom points out. One is that civilization never attains the technology to run simulations (perhaps because it self-destructs before reaching that stage). The other hypothesis is that posthumans decide not to run the simulations.
“This kind of posthuman might have other ways of having fun, like stimulating their pleasure centers directly,” Dr. Bostrom says. “Maybe they wouldn’t need to do simulations for scientific reasons because they’d have better methodologies for understanding their past. It’s quite possible they would have moral prohibitions against simulating people, although the fact that something is immoral doesn’t mean it won’t happen.”
Dr. Bostrom doesn’t pretend to know which of these hypotheses is more likely, but he thinks none of them can be ruled out. “My gut feeling, and it’s nothing more than that,” he says, “is that there’s a 20 percent chance we’re living in a computer simulation.”
My gut feeling is that the odds are better than 20 percent, maybe better than even. I think it’s highly likely that civilization could endure to produce those supercomputers. And if owners of the computers were anything like the millions of people immersed in virtual worlds like Second Life, SimCity and World of Warcraft, they’d be running simulations just to get a chance to control history — or maybe give themselves virtual roles as Cleopatra or Napoleon.
It’s unsettling to think of the world being run by a futuristic computer geek, although we might at last dispose of that of classic theological question: How could God allow so much evil in the world? For the same reason there are plagues and earthquakes and battles in games like World of Warcraft. Peace is boring, Dude.
A more practical question is how to behave in a computer simulation. Your first impulse might be to say nothing matters anymore because nothing’s real. But just because your neural circuits are made of silicon (or whatever posthumans would use in their computers) instead of carbon doesn’t mean your feelings are any less real.
David J. Chalmers, a philosopher at the Australian National University, says Dr. Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis isn’t a cause for skepticism, but simply a different metaphysical explanation of our world. Whatever you’re touching now — a sheet of paper, a keyboard, a coffee mug — is real to you even if it’s created on a computer circuit rather than fashioned out of wood, plastic or clay.
You still have the desire to live as long as you can in this virtual world — and in any simulated afterlife that the designer of this world might bestow on you. Maybe that means following traditional moral principles, if you think the posthuman designer shares those morals and would reward you for being a good person.
Or maybe, as suggested by Robin Hanson, an economist at George Mason University, you should try to be as interesting as possible, on the theory that the designer is more likely to keep you around for the next simulation. (For more on survival strategies in a computer simulation, go to www.nytimes.com/tierneylab.)
Of course, it’s tough to guess what the designer would be like. He or she might have a body made of flesh or plastic, but the designer might also be a virtual being living inside the computer of a still more advanced form of intelligence. There could be layer upon layer of simulations until you finally reached the architect of the first simulation — the Prime Designer, let’s call him or her (or it).
Then again, maybe the Prime Designer wouldn’t allow any of his or her creations to start simulating their own worlds. Once they got smart enough to do so, they’d presumably realize, by Dr. Bostrom’s logic, that they themselves were probably simulations. Would that ruin the fun for the Prime Designer?
If simulations stop once the simulated inhabitants understand what’s going on, then I really shouldn’t be spreading Dr. Bostrom’s ideas. But if you’re still around to read this, I guess the Prime Designer is reasonably tolerant, or maybe curious to see how we react once we start figuring out the situation.
It’s also possible that there would be logistical problems in creating layer upon layer of simulations. There might not be enough computing power to continue the simulation if billions of inhabitants of a virtual world started creating their own virtual worlds with billions of inhabitants apiece.
If that’s true, it’s bad news for the futurists who think we’ll have a computer this century with the power to simulate all the inhabitants on earth. We’d start our simulation, expecting to observe a new virtual world, but instead our own world might end — not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a message on the Prime Designer’s computer.
It might be something clunky like “Insufficient Memory to Continue Simulation.” But I like to think it would be simple and familiar: “Game Over.”
Posted by N
RFID, Minimum Income First Draft
Submitted by DigitalComponents on Thu, 08/16/2007 - 5:17pm.It's not just employee tracking that's at issue, but imminent job losses in the millions that will result from the widespread implementation of RFID Technology.
Right now, as the following article on Best Buy points out, it's still not 'Cost Effective" for Corporate America to implement.
Also, computer CPUs currently running at 5ghz are not fast enough yet to do the job, but by the years 2012 to 2016, thanks to Moore's Law, we'll see a leap in CPU processing power from 40ghz to about 150ghz, which will be literally overnight, and make this technology quite viable.
What do think is going to happen to millions of low wage American jobs once these two trends of RFID check-out technology and electronic customer service kiosks are implemented, and deployed, throughout not only Best Buy but Wal-Mart, Target, K-Mart, Macy’s Bloomingdales, etc, etc, and then all the fast food chains, then all Mom & Pop stores in America in the next 5 to 7 years?
What jobs are going to come along to replace them?
Best Buy *Eager* to Use RFID to Eliminate Checkout Lines The greatest obstacle to deployment, according to Best Buy CIO Bob Willett, is the current cost of tags and readers.
By Claire Swedberg
June 20, 2007—Technology costs are the greatest obstacle to the store of the future, according to Best Buy’s CIO, Bob Willett. In fact, he says, once the price of RFID tags and other hardware comes down to an affordable level, Best Buy plans to adopt an automated system designed to eliminate checkout lines.
Willett envisions a scenario, within the next few years, in which customers could locate an item in the store, pay for it with a credit card at a station located in the department in which they’re shopping and request the item be home-delivered or prepared for pick up at the store front—either way, without having to wait for a cashier’s assistance. This could be managed, he explains, through the placement of RFID tags on items and the installation of interrogators throughout the store—to quickly identify an item’s specific location—as well as at point-of-sale devices that would read credit cards or Best Buy preferred-customer cards containing embedded RFID tags.
To that end, Willett says he challenges vendors to create a system economical to retailers, including lower-cost readers and tags. Such a development, he predicts, could be accomplished within the next one or two years.
“The technology is out there to produce a checkout-less store now, but it is not yet cost-effective,” Willett says. However, he adds, Best Buy (if not other retailers) is seeking this low-cost solution as soon as possible, to improve customer service. In describing the current shopping experience at Best Buy, Willett says, “We create a wonderful environment for customers and then, like all other retailers, ask them to line up for checkout.” Such a scenario is not only inconvenient for Best Buy’s customers, he states, but also frustrating for its staff, who could put their time to better use.
*”Could you imagine how many people would be relieved from working on checkout to help other customers in the store with the products?” he asks. “Really, this is all about enhancing the customers’ experience.”
Right, here’s what’s going to happen to the “people would be relieved from working on checkout to help other customers in the store with the products.”
That’s a lot of jobs that will evaporate overnight.
And Corporate boards will pocket the difference.
We already see this when a major corporation lays off thousands of its workers and their share price seemingly inexplicably rises.
It becomes less inexplicable when you realize for the corporations that human workers are simply a negative cost center, and if you can eliminate them, then profits rise.
Marshall Brain does a much better job of explaining this than I can here, here, and here.
He also proposes as a possible solution to this coming problem of mass unemployment, that realistically reigniting our manufacturing sector is not going solve, is to simply give each American citizen a no-strings stipend of $25K a year which is not as crazy as it sounds, when you stop to consider that Brazil has already signed into law a program of ‘Guaranteed Minimum Income‘ for its citizenry.
I’d not be so quick to dismiss Brazil, since after all, they’re a little ahead of the curve on other things, such as being an energy independent country, as of this year, because they had the foresight to plan ahead.
Right now, as the following article on Best Buy points out, it's still not 'Cost Effective" for Corporate America to implement.
Also, computer CPUs currently running at 5ghz are not fast enough yet to do the job, but by the years 2012 to 2016, thanks to Moore's Law, we'll see a leap in CPU processing power from 40ghz to about 150ghz, which will be literally overnight, and make this technology quite viable.
What do think is going to happen to millions of low wage American jobs once these two trends of RFID check-out technology and electronic customer service kiosks are implemented, and deployed, throughout not only Best Buy but Wal-Mart, Target, K-Mart, Macy’s Bloomingdales, etc, etc, and then all the fast food chains, then all Mom & Pop stores in America in the next 5 to 7 years?
What jobs are going to come along to replace them?
Best Buy *Eager* to Use RFID to Eliminate Checkout Lines The greatest obstacle to deployment, according to Best Buy CIO Bob Willett, is the current cost of tags and readers.
By Claire Swedberg
June 20, 2007—Technology costs are the greatest obstacle to the store of the future, according to Best Buy’s CIO, Bob Willett. In fact, he says, once the price of RFID tags and other hardware comes down to an affordable level, Best Buy plans to adopt an automated system designed to eliminate checkout lines.
Willett envisions a scenario, within the next few years, in which customers could locate an item in the store, pay for it with a credit card at a station located in the department in which they’re shopping and request the item be home-delivered or prepared for pick up at the store front—either way, without having to wait for a cashier’s assistance. This could be managed, he explains, through the placement of RFID tags on items and the installation of interrogators throughout the store—to quickly identify an item’s specific location—as well as at point-of-sale devices that would read credit cards or Best Buy preferred-customer cards containing embedded RFID tags.
To that end, Willett says he challenges vendors to create a system economical to retailers, including lower-cost readers and tags. Such a development, he predicts, could be accomplished within the next one or two years.
“The technology is out there to produce a checkout-less store now, but it is not yet cost-effective,” Willett says. However, he adds, Best Buy (if not other retailers) is seeking this low-cost solution as soon as possible, to improve customer service. In describing the current shopping experience at Best Buy, Willett says, “We create a wonderful environment for customers and then, like all other retailers, ask them to line up for checkout.” Such a scenario is not only inconvenient for Best Buy’s customers, he states, but also frustrating for its staff, who could put their time to better use.
*”Could you imagine how many people would be relieved from working on checkout to help other customers in the store with the products?” he asks. “Really, this is all about enhancing the customers’ experience.”
Right, here’s what’s going to happen to the “people would be relieved from working on checkout to help other customers in the store with the products.”
That’s a lot of jobs that will evaporate overnight.
And Corporate boards will pocket the difference.
We already see this when a major corporation lays off thousands of its workers and their share price seemingly inexplicably rises.
It becomes less inexplicable when you realize for the corporations that human workers are simply a negative cost center, and if you can eliminate them, then profits rise.
Marshall Brain does a much better job of explaining this than I can here, here, and here.
He also proposes as a possible solution to this coming problem of mass unemployment, that realistically reigniting our manufacturing sector is not going solve, is to simply give each American citizen a no-strings stipend of $25K a year which is not as crazy as it sounds, when you stop to consider that Brazil has already signed into law a program of ‘Guaranteed Minimum Income‘ for its citizenry.
I’d not be so quick to dismiss Brazil, since after all, they’re a little ahead of the curve on other things, such as being an energy independent country, as of this year, because they had the foresight to plan ahead.
Moore's Law On 1 January 2100 (First Draft)
Submitted by DigitalComponents on Thu, 08/16/2007 - 5:00pm.(Full Transcript Below)
Quote:
"IRWIN: It started with Pong. We moved 20 years later up to the SIMs. We‘re amazed with that. Imagine what 100 years of computer technology from now will produce. Probably virtual reality games with beings in it that have minds and consciousness just like ours and who think they are in the real world. They will vastly outnumber the number of people in the real world."
I decided to take that question at face value and ask the hypothetical question of if Moore's Law continues at a CPU doubling rate of every 2.3 years, and keeps going after it hits the current physical limits it will reach in the year 2020 where will computers be on January 1st, 2100?
As of June of this year the fastest CPU is running at 5 ghz and January 2100 is 92.5 years away so:
5 ghz * (2^(92.5/2.3))
Which equals 1.2 trillion ghz of CPU power.
Next question, how much will it cost per ghz?
Assuming this computer will cost $1k:
$1,000.00 / 1.2 trillion = $0.000000078 cents per ghz
Which means for a penny, one cent, ($0.01), on January 1, 2100 you'll be able to buy 12,800,000 ghz of CPU power for a penny.
Seen this way, Mr. Irwin's comments begin to not look just probable, but very, very possible.
That is, unless, of course, we blow ourselves all to smithereens in the meantime.
In that case, all bets are off.
~Nyc Alberts
---------------------------------------
OLBERMANN: You have hard all the complaints. Life is just a sick and twisted game. That guy over there is wired wrong. Or, as even Shakespeare wrote, as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for sport. Number one story in the COUNTDOWN tonight, we‘ve got what might be bad news for you. There is a 20 percent chance we‘re living inside a computer simulation.
Yes, you, me, Lindsay Lohan, everybody. The classic answer from Descartes to the question of existence, I think therefore I am, perhaps more correctly stated as, a guy clicks a mouse, therefore I am. The theory by Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University and fleshed out by the “New York Times‘” science writer John Tierney yesterday, that technological advances will some day produce for us a computer so powerful that it could simulate a complex world with billions of creatures of some sort in it.
Yes, it is sort of like “The Matrix,” except that the virtual people would have no physical counterpart, just virtual beings in a giant virtual world. Advanced civilizations of real people, the argument goes, would create these simulations to better understand their own evolution or just for S and giggles. Like a super advanced version of the SIMS.
Ultimately, says Bostrom, there would be far more virtual people in computer simulations than there are real people in a real world. Therefore, there is a decent chance that some entity somewhere has already invented those super computers, that they have already perfected one of those mammoth simulated world games and that we are in it.
Professor Bostrom of Oxford puts the chances at about 20 percent. You could argue it is more like 50-50. After all, if such computer simulation could some day exist, it is equally possible that it already does exist and that we all are already in it. Which would at least explain that metallic taste you get sometimes in your mouth.
I am joined here by William Irwin, professor of philosophy at Kings College in Pennsylvania, editor of “More Matrix and Philosophy, Revolutions and Reloaded Decoded.” Thanks for coming in.
WILLIAM IRWIN, KINGS COLLEGE: Thanks for having me, Keith.
OLBERMANN: So we‘re part of a computer program? You would this would have gotten larger play on the news.
IRWIN: It‘s possible. The idea is that if you were in a really high-tech, sophisticated virtual reality program, you would not know it, as portrayed in “The Matrix.” It‘s an old idea, as you mentioned, going all the way back to Rene Descartes.
The new twist on it that Bostrom puts in an essay that‘s reprinted in my book is that there are three possibilities really. That technologically mature societies go extinct before they reach the stage of being able to produce these kinds of things, in which case nuclear holocaust, that sort of thing. Or, second option, that they simply wouldn‘t do this or would find it boring or ethically troublesome.
OLBERMANN: Like that has ever stopped science before.
IRWIN: Unlikely. I would put that as a low probability. The third one is that they would get to this point in this technology and then, perhaps, they would make these worlds. If there were a billion people in such a world, each of whom is running a virtual world with people in it, say a billion people, it becomes a billion to one shot that you are one of the people in the real world.
OLBERMANN: So, but this is a basic theory—We have seen “Twilight Zones” like, this where you are in somebody else‘s dream. We are in a somebody else‘s little bead sweat near their brow. The entire universe is actually this big. All of these things. This is the first time that it really has matched up with technology that people at home can understand.
If there is a SIMs game, we could be in a super version of a SIMs game. That‘s what this is all about. Right?
IRWIN: It started with Pong. We moved 20 years later up to the SIMs. We‘re amazed with that. Imagine what 100 years of computer technology from now will produce. Probably virtual reality games with beings in it that have minds and consciousness just like ours and who think they are in the real world. They will vastly outnumber the number of people in the real world.
OLBERMANN: Is human existence a research experiment? Is a video game Is somebody winning? Is there a high score?
IRWIN: Who knows. But, in any case, we are not the players in it if this scenario holds true. We are simply being played. We are the pawns in chess, if you will. Who knows what the point to of game is? Someone‘s science experiment, someone‘s hobby, whatever the case might be.
OLBERMANN: One of my favorite jokes has always been there‘s evidence that there is a god, but there is just as much evidence that it clearly a part-time job. That would explain everything. Even if this is a research project somewhere, the guy goes home at night and it could be a million years in between visits. Right?
IRWIN: It makes a lot of sense when you think about it. The classic question in philosophy is how could this world be the product of an all knowing, all loving, all powerful god? It takes a lot of faith to believe that. However, if this world is simply a virtual simulation, maybe it is run by a fourth grader who has forgot about it or a part-time creator.
It begins to explain what? Deadly hurricanes, cancer, the Lindsay Lohan scenario and the on going popularity of “American Idol.”
OLBERMANN: Just to screw with the characters to make them react to a bad situation.
IRWIN: It‘s a glitch in the matrix. That explains the popularity there.
OLBERMANN: What happens if we are simulations and we all read this piece in your book or the version that was released yesterday and we all figure it out and go, yes, this actually rings true to my experience. And everyone holds up a big sign like this that says hey pal, we figured out this is a computer simulation, what happens then?
IRWIN: I would caution against that. Because when my parents found out that I did not believe in Santa Claus anymore, the gifts stopped coming quite as quickly and quite as well. If we let the maker of this game know that we are on to him, the game might be over. I suggest we go along with things, even though there‘s a 50-50 chance that this is such a game. Let‘s play along.
OLBERMANN: What would you do if the SIMs that you were playing with suddenly all held up signs, you would run out of the room screaming. In ten seconds, does this actual change, from the philosophical point of view, the meaning of life? Even if it is a creation in a machine, it doesn‘t matter, does it?
IRWIN: I don‘t think so, no. We still would want to live our lives the way we‘ve always thought they should be lived, with great variety among viewpoints there, of course.
OLBERMANN: We just have to worry about viruses and being downloaded too many times.
IRWIN: And conveniences.
OLBERMANN: Professor William Irwin of philosophy and also the editor of the book “The Matrix and Philosophy,” great thanks for your time.
Boy, are the intelligent design folks going to freak out over this. That is COUNTDOWN for this the 1,568th day since the declaration of mission accomplished in Iraq. I‘m Keith Olbermann. Good night and good luck.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
END
Protestors Topple Statue of Cheney In Jackson Hole, Wyoming
Submitted by DigitalComponents on Tue, 08/14/2007 - 3:14pm.Wow it worked.
Holy Shades of Saddam Hussein And The Fall Of Baghdad!!!
Hat Tip to Suzy who posted the above clip on YouTube, Diane @ her blog Silenced Majority, who brought this to my attention & Cross posted from Wonkette: Holy Shades of Saddam Hussein And The Fall Of Baghdad!!! Here's a video of Big Dicky Cheney's Statue being toppled by his neighbors, who are screaming for his impeachment, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming this past weekend. Notice that the money shot is not the statue coming down, but the local Sheriff rolling up on the crowd, honking his horn in approval, and driving off. Maybe he saw this AEI video over the weekend too. When they're not greeting you as a liberator or with flowers in your own hometown, you might be in, as George Busch Senior might put it, deeper doo doo than you're telling yourself you are, Dick.
~Nyc Alberts
http://apenwarmedinhell.blogspot.com/
