Thanks from my two special friends back east for facilitating this upgrade.

This will be a second Life event which will take place 1 May, 12:00 No it will be sunday 8 May… pacific timezone (or SLT) and it will be here.

Death is an engineering challenge. For the first time in human history we are the first people with a fair expectation regarding extending lives and creating conditions for unnatural longevity. This is quite an idea, and you can of course bet your ass that the typical person in the street has no clue, or denies this, or doesn’t want to know.

Homework assignment
I’d like everyone here to collect opinions of people you know in the real world. Try and ask a typical slice of the people you know and ask this question as neutral as possible. Try to find out – the following things.

* Do these people realize that most of human history average lifespans were under 30, and a century ago average human lifespans were still under 50?
* Do they regard the idea of medical treatments to make people live appreciably longer (i.e. decades) as impossible, unlikely, “only for the rich” or pretty probably in their lifetime?
* Do their by default assume they will not benefit from these treatments?
* Do their acknowledge the difference between worst case scenario life extension (horrid and extremely expensive treatments that make recipients live for decades in a frail old state)
* Do most of your sample of people welcome these possibilities, or do they blankly refuse them (“I prefer to die after a natural life”) ?
* Do they wish to disallow other people to extend their life for whatever reason (such as overpopulation) ?

I think a nice sample would be 20 people. Send your interview results to khannea.suntzu@gmail.com, or notecard them and send them to my avi in SL. You don’t have to, but I’d love adding the conclusions to this article or some future set of articles.

Damn Stupid Defectors
Right now I am working from the assumption that right now I’d live at least to my average life expectancy, which would be about 75-80 in my country. I assume that life expectancy would go up at least a few years, even if things are stupidly managed by politicians and managers with little or no imagination. So I’d expect that to benefit from any life extension, these technologies would have to be somewhat affordable (and fairly gentle) for my income bracket between 2025 and 2040. I’ll be getting older and I assume at a certain stage of aging some earlier treatments will be rather rough – I am not going to survive (or have access to) something equivalent to six months of heavy chemotherapy and massive surgery when I am over 65.

So the reality is is that those people out there that accept death as a part of reality, are doing something so monumentally stupid and shortsighted, they will be dearly sorry. In a few decades we will all realize that rejuvenation wasn’t all that hard. By then we’ll all have lost billions of familiar faces, loved ones, friends and great minds and artists to oblivion. By then we’ll know we’ll probably die ourselves because there simply won’t be enough time. And then these imbecile stupid monkeys will all realize “what was I thinking??” and they will wonder why someone didn’t take any action earlier.

If you look at medical, scientific, nanotechnological, genetic advances some kind of affordable, easy, safe life extension is by and large unavoidable somewhere near the end of this century. Even if we muddle on, we’ll discover a treatment that will allow people to age far moire slowly, or not age at all. Likewise, a series of treatments that actually rejuvenate the aged affordably, easily and safely is a somewhat tricker challenge, but even if we just maintain the current slow course before 2075 we should be able to provide that product or service to any human on this planet that wants it. The annoyance however is that if we start right now, and we would have the imagination and clarity of vision to invest sufficient societal resources, we could have the one no later than 2030 and the other no later than 2040. That’s right – aside from bad luck and accident and crime and poverty beyond 2040 nobody would have to die of old age. If we gave a damn.

October last year I met Aubrey de Grey. I had a dinner with him, and I got to know the man, the human, the person, the mind, the soul. I was surprised in a few ways and not so in others. It took me a long time to digest my experiences, since they were emotionally somewhat taxing (and I arrived in Milan overworked, stressed and exhausted) but I think I somewhat understand Aubrey. I am prone to creating my own mental narratives and pet theories and sometimes they are wrong – but I don’t think they are wrong this time.

When I saw Aubrey I saw a pissed off guy who know the above and who realizes that the indescribable moronic intransigence of the masses, just how intensely stupid most people are, will cost billions of lives. Aubrey knows (he is my age) he probably will die. I looked him in the eye, I asked him the questions, I saw this hurt sparkle in his eyes when I asked the precisely wrong questions, and I knew pretty much for sure Aubrey is fed up, pissed off, looking for new angles and he isn’t finding any. He feels what I feels, and he realizes that we may all fuck mis the opportunity to live a lot longer and bigger lives than the pathetic human wretches that subsisted before us. Aubrey doesn’t give a flying hoot about Transhumanism – I think he holds most of them in contempt as a SciFi masterdebating club. I have seen the actions of Aubrey too, and they spoke louder than words. These were the actions of someone who wants to live now. He likes his beer

And I think Aubrey is right. This is largely a world driven by enlightened self-interest tempered with dignity and decency, right? I am not all that interested in a few billion total strangers living centuries. I’d settle for people I know living several times as long. I’d prefer people I like being effectively immortal – but the ideal scenario is me and everyone else making it far beyond the 2nd millennium, right?

And at this rate it is not happening.

So lets look at three of the rosiest scenario’s we have ahead, which can be regarded as plausible, or which are regarded as some as plausible.

The Median Life Extension scenario – with plausible consequences
I’ll describe this scenario calling it “scenario one”. This scenario is close to the ideal but somewhat slow scenario Aubrey would like hastened a little. It assumes some progress in research in life extension and slow progress in research for rejuvenation. This hinges on several stages of life extension and several stages of rejuvenation. These stages would be (A), (B) and (C), where

(A) stands for expensive, extremely uncomfortable (barely worth the pain), very risky, severe side effects, inapplicable to many recipients
(B) stands for expensive, a fairly invasive treatment, has risks and some side effects, may fail in a range of recipients
(C) is cheap, a casual treatment, is safe, has interesting and fun side effects and synergies, and works on everyone.

LE stands for Life extension and Re stands for Rejuvenation. In both cases the goal would be to end up with healthy humans. Lower I will be adding Cy and Up as well.

My guesstimate is that in a perfect world (where everyone magically came to their senses we could have) LE(A) by 2025, LE(B) by 2030 and LE(C) by 2035. If we are all idiots and let things just happen we’ll stumble ourselves in LE(A) no later than 2060, LE(B) no later than 2075 and LE(C) no later than 2100, but these are extremely crude projections clearly. If we’d have the influence of Aubrey (The erudite eloquent lobbyist factor) succeed to some degree we can have a median result, sort of half-way-ish. In essence, Aubrey’s media insistence is literally catalyzing research into this, and pushing back A B C for (L) to about 2040, 2055 and 2080. So basically I leave it up to you to calculate how much people won’t die because of what Aubrey is doing. Now assume that Aubrey has access to A, he will be old, decrepit and frail by 2040 and chances he will benefit from these treatments are slim.

The outlook for Re(A) is a a bit later if we try our best, say 2035, Re(B) would be about 2045 and Re(C) would be a pretty safe bet around 2050. Me and Aubrey would be our 80s by then. This is the scenario that would occur if some billionaire donate Aubrey’s initiative about a billion euro this week. Note that not everoyne has faith in Aubrey’s approach by the way, and we may need several alternatives, but I am sure that Aubrey is SENSible enough to throw part of that magical billion around to some “competitors” – if they win, he wins to, right? I do not even want to reprint less pessimistic scenario ranges for Re(A), Re(B) and Re(C) – I’d need a cryonics plan for all of them.

Now the consequences of this range of scenarios will be considerable. If the capital markets realize somewhere in the 2020s or 2030s that medical treatments might affect the plausible duration of life of a demographic of relatively well-to-do voters in affluent nations, then pension funds will crash like the Hindenburg, and will do so overnight. Logically, it would be prudent to use these funds proactively, before they crash, as investment pool for these same treatments, but that’s just me being sensible. Also, there will be desperation. While right now many people say they will never want life extension treatments I totally agree with Aubrey that as soon as this becomes somewhat credible, many people will freak out. These people will want it now, and they will exhibit modes of denial, hysteria, insistence, violence, superstition, calm acceptance and worse facing the stark reality that they would actually miss the golden opportunity just a few years ahead of them. Old rich men will think of themselves being young virile rich men and they will barter with the devil to get access. They will do whatever it takes.

It could get ugly.

The Kurzweilian Optimistic Life Extension scenario – with plausible consequences
I’ll describe this scenario calling it “scenario two”. A different rage of scenario’s would be a totally different ballgame, i.e. variables Cy for Cyborgization, Na for Nanomedical/Genemodification/3D iorgan printing therapies (of the kind my friend Valkyri Ice has much confidence in) and finally Up for Uplpading or mind emulation. Ray Kurzweil has great confidence in these influences. Great news is is that they won’t adversely affect any of Aubrey’s more ‘medically coherent’ approaches. The downside is that all three speculate on technologies that

1 – completely do not exist in 2011…
2 – if they emerge they might emerge not in time to have a tangible effect in time for people alive and aging now…
3 – speculate on applications that they simply will not have in practice …
4 – if they emerge they might be dangerous, have massive other global side effects, be very expensive or … (?)
5 – they may trigger something like a singularity, with totally unexpected effects long before I am getting a day younger…

It’s hard to say what the above will do. I have some faith that the implementation of Cyborg parts, i.e. the emergence of an industry that intervenes in human aging by replacing parts of the human body with engineered and constructed in ever more casual modes of surgery, will shave a few years off the above ranges, but these will not be cheap and affordable treatments.

A BIG question here will be whether or not states will see merit in paying ever bigger medical expenses to rejuvenate an ever aging population. Is democracy that powerful that voters can vote rejuvenation into policies? Would your typical voters actually ever want this and if so, when does the average voter flip mentally to start wanting this? In other words – at what point do people in the street where you live decide that dying doesn’t look all that glamorous, life extension is a better option that apathy, and they start nagging their member of parliament?

Now here is the catch – you might make a difference in this. Look at the title of this talk. What do I mean with “Baselines”?

Baselines is a condescending slur I use to describe everyday people that don’t get or want (the implications of) Transhumanism yet. So when I say we lie to them, I suggest we engineer and concoct stories that make them realize or believe life extension is “just around the corner”.

We make the idea of this go viral.

The same with Na(A), Na(B), Na(C) and Up(A), Up(B), Up(C). These are technologies of which we do not understand much. These are speculative technologies, that might have unintended and uncontrollable side effects. I’d correct myself here – once we can upload human minds, all bets are off – we’ll have artillects very soon after.

Now lets look at that in the above perspective. Aubrey’s expectations, plausible or not, optimistic or not, all lie in the range of years when we will have the first attempts at nanotechnological treatments for medical issues (and for military or security debates as well). These technologies will be in full swing in the 2020s. Likewise I can see the first human brains be dissected, reconstructed and some attempts be made to retrieve meaningful information from the constituent neuron architectures before 2030.

The difference between Aubrey’s objectives (everyone of humanity young, pretty and sexy) and the objectives of people who are into mind-uploading is a bit different in nature. When someone like Martine Rothblatt suggests she wants to contribute to having “losless” Mind Uploading as soon as possible, she is saying she will find a volunteer somewhere in the 2020s, take apart a living human brain (of someone who might already be dying), do this research somewhere where it is allowed and doesn’t conflict with prevalent ethics, then start replacing parts of that brain with functional parts that were not there earlier (bits of nanoid material, bio-engineered neurons, cloned brain matter, bits of computer hardware, what-e-ver) and end up with something that more or less thinks in the same manner as it did before.

I am volunteering for this treatment by the way.

The point is that someone will do this, sooner or later, somewhere between 2020 and 2040, and they will succeed. In other words, somewhere between 2020 and 2040 someone, some agency, some investor, some university, will take a living (or very recently dead) human brain, break down the parts and functionality of that brain in such a manner than not longer after the brain will operate in appreciable facsimile as it was in its previous life.

Yes there will be failed attempts before. I do not volunteer for those failed attempts.

But whatever the point is – Aubrey has till 2040, 2045 latest to produce life extension and rejuvenation results. There are several ways to create something non-human that thinks, and when that is done such a think will be able to start thinking better quite soon after. There are three rough avenues to create these minds – (I) create a totally nonhuman artificial intelligence, literally inundate the project needs with massive hardware overflow (brute force) and then program it, or (II) let virtual or algorithmic or selection software systems evolve incremental steps towards an intelligent problem solving piece of software or (III) we figure out what a human neurology does in the real world and we replicate or recreate a human mind – preferably someone nice.

I, II and III will almost certainly yield results between 2030 and 2045. These results will almost certainly be be under control of small, unaccountable, very powerful, very self-centered entities and these entities (corporations, militaries, political groups, financial entities) will instill their creations with their value systems In other words, the created artificial intelligences will indeed be friendly, but only to their creators. And they are pretty much unavoidable to emerge as a result of current advances in technology later than 2045.

I know a lot of people, including, Ray Kurzweil, are optimistic about this. Hugo DeGaris is less so.

I could say “Fortunately” I have ring side seats. I’ll be old, dying or dead by the time these technologies unfold. The question I have is – will I count myself lucky or unlucky for respectively having or not having access to life extension and rejuvenation when they do?

We need tools to do our thinking ! Well not for me, but largely for all those other people

Though, lets’s start today on a positive note. This sequence of talks is labeled “follow the white rabbit”, honoring the explorations of one Alice down te rabbit hole leading the revolt against the Red Queen. You can guess why I selected this theme for this sequence of talks, with my revolutionary predisposition and all. Last week I invited a few dozen name Transhumanists – all the big people, Ray Kurzweil, Kevin Warwick, Ben Goertzel, Martine Rothblatt, Natasha Vita Moore. It was rather short notice anf I knew nobody would show up, and no one did (at least not visibly!), but I reckon the gesture at lead made some difference.

Last week I hammered all present about a theoretical assumption – can semi-intelligent, instinct driven, semi-emergent systems survive in a presingularity world independent of humans, or even parasitize on human civiliation and take resource of human civilization to benefit their own goal sets? The conclusion appeared to be “hell yes!” on behalf of most people here but no one seemed to tie much implication to that conclusion.

We’re all in ‘lets wait and see mode’, right?

I bombared you and the people that were there were mainly left noddding in shades of approval, disbelief or incomprehension. That’s not the way I prefer to run these talks, since I prefer to gestate the emergence of new memes, but sometimes you gotta throw some new meat in the pot to brew a new stew. So assume that’s what I did last week. Hence, feel free to have a cursory glance a the text log of last weeks chat, and take from that what you can harvest in uncanny ideas.

This sequence of talks will be weekly, on Sundays (like before) and it will host the Transhuman Separatist ethic, with a gentle “Zeitgeist” undercurrent (but also Pirate Bay, Wikileaks, Copyleft, Culture Jamming, Provo, ANON endorsement and that sort of stuff).

The topics will be – how do we leverage emerging technologies shy of the Singularity to prosper. We are not “the man”. Most of us are not “rich” and neither are many of us part of the calcified and clueless government bloatipus. Most of us are not part of the “the apathetic underclasses”, or if we are we’ll be in denial about it. We all here tend to be restless souls, or we wouldn’t be in Second Life, right?

How can we break this massive stalemate we’re all glued down in ? I think – By leveraging and exploiting biotech, gene splicing, internets, social engineering, robotics, microbotics, 3D printing, recycling, alternative energies, seaports, nanotechnology, tax havens, memetics, virtual reality, piracy, augmented reality and who knows what else – and smashing the current screwed up world to pieces (without resorting to ‘crimes’ or ‘violence’) because, hey, we don’t really prosper much here right now yes? I mean, what do we have to lose? Let’s hack ourselves out of this mess… If the pope is in agreement with it, of course.

Todays topic is the idea AIgents. The idea is simple – at some point an educated consumer buys a subscription to a system which manages part of her affairs for her. This could be a lawyer, a bookkeeper, an insurance agent, a psychiatrist, an investor, a lobbyist, a janitor, a butler, a secretary and many other things as well.

Todays sequence of events in Second Life will be :
Serendipity – Fulfillment – 09:30- 11:00 AM SLT (lasts generally about 90 minutes)
Bryce – Ideas of Things to Come – 11:00 – 12:00 AM SLT (lasts generally about an hour)
Khannea – FTWR – 12:00 -13:30 AM SLT (lasts generally 90 minutes)

Sunday April 24

White Rabbit SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/delinquent/160/192/503

Special guest this time: Teh Rachel Haywire and Jason Patrick Schoenecker !

[11:58:02] Arisia Vita: looks like only the hard core….errr.. devoted ones showed up…
[11:58:57] Toy (aeni.silvercloud):
[12:00:06] Arisia Vita: my gdaughter is pretty good at finding them, a hint for every hug…
[12:00:19] Toy (aeni.silvercloud): aww
[12:00:59] Arisia Vita: a clue for every kiss…
[12:01:21] Arisia Vita: be well and happy, all of you, till we meet again
[12:01:52] Arisia Vita: *hugs* all around
[12:04:02] Metafire Horsley: whinnys!
[12:04:10] Khannea Suntzu: haya
[12:04:12] Toy (aeni.silvercloud): hello Meta Welcome
[12:04:19] TR Amat: Hi
[12:04:24] Toy (aeni.silvercloud): TR
[12:04:37] Khannea Suntzu: I’ll give it time to flood in till 12:15
[12:04:58] Khannea Suntzu: But dont hold it against me if I push this event back a week on account of easter
[12:05:55] TR Amat: I quite like the idea of Easter robots…
[12:06:02] Ivy Sunkiller: sent notices? :p
[12:06:17] Khannea Suntzu: No group notices no
[12:06:27] Khannea Suntzu: Just group IMs
[12:06:40] Ivy Sunkiller nods
[12:09:23] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): Awesome gate Ivy
[12:09:51] Ivy Sunkiller: thanks
[12:09:56] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): ^^
[12:10:13] Ivy Sunkiller: you now advanced your reputation with me from -20 to -15
[12:10:28] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): mmmmm
[12:12:07] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): well I like all people I meet
[12:12:25] Ivy Sunkiller: – give me all your money
[12:12:31] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): lol, why?
[12:12:31] Ivy Sunkiller: – oh hi, nice to meet you mr thief
[12:12:32] Khannea Suntzu: Lets put the light on here
[12:12:54] Ivy Sunkiller: heya Braeden
[12:12:59] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): who’s a thief?
[12:13:03] Braeden Maelstrom: hi
[12:13:12] Ivy Sunkiller: was just giving a rethorical dialog example
[12:13:12] Ivy Sunkiller:
[12:13:19] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): um, oh okay
[12:13:31] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): sorry, I’m still a bit sleepy
[12:13:46] Khannea Suntzu: Ok peeps
[12:14:09] Khannea Suntzu: Thi event for today is understably a bit low on attendance due to easter
[12:14:39] Khannea Suntzu: So I extend an invitation to you all to come next week because I will hold this presentation now, and then upgreade it and hold it again upgraded next week
[12:15:05] Khannea Suntzu: That made sense?
[12:15:09] TR Amat: Version 1.1 can be good.
[12:15:10] Braeden Maelstrom: mhmm
[12:15:26] Khannea Suntzu: Yes, version 1.0 sort of
[12:15:32] Khannea Suntzu: Heya wife
[12:15:49] Laserkitty Ling (laserhop.rothschild) tail swishes.
[12:16:39] Khannea Suntzu: This world work absolutely best if you all gave me a loads of feedback that I can take along for the same event next week
[12:16:46] Khannea Suntzu: Welcome at “Follow The White Rabbit”. This meeting is dedicated to brainstorming in a tongue-in-cheek manner about the next few decades. The assumption of these metings is that in the next decades, somewhere before 2050, technology will feed upon itself and self-accelerate and develop in ways that will be potentially very disruptive to society and the human state as we know it. The assumption of these talks is that things will radically change and. Another assumption is is that as human society we have been living thoughtlessly. Or leaders have arguably abandoned us, out of ignorance, incompetence, corruptionm, superstition or blind ideology. Also we have been abandoned to self-interested and ruthless corpocratic world economy. One can argue that this has always has been so, and that we have always lived in a cynical, self-interested world. But never before is the potential to do irreversile harm, because of inaction, because of cavaliuer action, or because of actual ruthlesness greater than ever before in history .
[12:18:05] Khannea Suntzu: I wish to instill upon you all, and to have all here instill on as many people as you all know an awareness that we need to get our act together as a species. How we do that is open to debate, but I strongly insist we will need a full implementation of open debate, scientific method, the ability of as many people as possible to change your mind to achieve results. We cannot continue with ‘business as usual’ and it is imperative that people start realizing this and acting on it .
[12:18:28] Khannea Suntzu: Last week I made a point that we have an incxreasing capacity to create blindly non-inteligent systems in our society, and automate them to pursue goals contrary to the goals of humans. I made a theoretical argument that botnets could do so from the confines of secure data environments and seek self interests sepera6e from creators, original programming, owners or even human economies. I made a point that sensless legal creations could conspire to bring chaos tpo the financial world, through intent or because of compound intransparant complexity (as has becme the case in derivatives trading). I made the point that massive software families will at some point develop goals, especially if these systems span the globe and have complex interlocking structures with complex interlocking goal sets, and these goals may evolve to be increasingly abstract, alien, and contrary to the interests of humanity. Finally I made the point that we may very soon see abandoned automated military infrastructure go rogue, to follow rudimentary goal sets, or simply because it was flawed in its boot programming .
[12:18:55] Khannea Suntzu: http://khanneasuntzu.wordpress.com/2011/04/16/white-rabbit-crawling-crustaceans-up-the-coast-batman/
[12:19:28] Khannea Suntzu: That all makes sense so far?
[12:19:37] Ivy Sunkiller: quite
[12:19:38] Braeden Maelstrom: yes
[12:19:49] TR Amat: Yes…
[12:19:50] Ivy Sunkiller: hoy hoy newcommers
[12:19:55] Nindae Nox (sethsryt.seetan): Hi hi
[12:20:04] Khannea Suntzu: Hoi hoi
[12:20:09] Khannea Suntzu: Lets continue
[12:20:11] Khannea Suntzu: The above agents are example of intentionally autonomous non intelligent minds, evolved from the complex world we are moving into. These examples were silly and allegorical, and acted as ‘persona’ examples of these emerging ‘instinctive self interested systems’. The point is that these systems are already in existence – the global military industrial complex is a system that nobody really wants. I am sure we’d all rather spend all that money on fun stuff. Another example is religion – especially the relition you don’t happen to have. For a protestan all money spent on Catholic activity is utter waste. For a Catholic all money spent on Islamic pursuits would raise bile in their respective throats .
[12:21:03] Khannea Suntzu: You dont need massive botnets to let resouirces go to waste
[12:21:15] Khannea Suntzu: Bureaucrats will do that job just nicely
[12:21:18] Khannea Suntzu: Today I’d make a point about AI agents. The point is simply one of inventorying what you all think of this. My goal is to have you all think laterally, and to do this have a brief look at these links later on and save them for reference. >> http://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong.html and >> http://khanneasuntzu.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/what-mayans-can-teach-us-about-wind-turbines/ …. thanks to Kim and Amanda for linking me these two. These are two eye openers.
[12:22:11] Khannea Suntzu: Artifial Intelligent agents, let’s first start with a rought outline. The idea is someone creates a software application (or net) that is versatile enough to actually do things in the real world on your behalf, makes appreciably few mistakes and makes your life function better. Of course these devices already exist, but their function is still very limited. Google is moving fast towards making the first bits of real repreesentational software, but for actual software agents I think far more sophisticated, and I think that by 2015 we’ll have actual devices that can communicate intelligibly enough as to have enough ‘face’ to be regarded as ahhh…’consolidated’ entities.
[12:22:59] Khannea Suntzu: Qustions?
[12:24:03] Khannea Suntzu: Examples of AIgents would be — automated lawyers — investment agents — bookkeepers — insurance agents — an intermediary between your medical insurer, medical service provideres that acts on YOUR behalf — a janitor -= a butler — a secretary — a psychiatrist — a political lobbyist — an educator — software that raised kids — what else?
[12:24:22] Nindae Nox (sethsryt.seetan): Wonder, would that not someday limit our freedom as AI makes choices for us we might not like ourselves?
[12:24:24] Khannea Suntzu: Look at the potential for education software suites
[12:25:14] Khannea Suntzu: Nindae you are already constantly shoehorned every second my infrastructure, laws and systems where you live in much the same mannere…
[12:25:23] Metafire Horsley: What about politicians and managers? Let’s replace them with software ^^^
[12:25:29] Khannea Suntzu: Oh yes
[12:25:40] Khannea Suntzu: But they will be in a position to put up a figtht
[12:26:22] Khannea Suntzu: Game designers you can kick out anytime, nopbody wioll miss *them* when replaced by a machine.
[12:26:29] Khannea Suntzu: But politicians can get real evil
[12:26:44] Khannea Suntzu: Marketing these packages will be along the lines of current software models. Some big company makes them, or some Linus like group co-develops them. Are there other ways of creating these entities reliably, safely, resistant exploitaition. Would you trust these devices if they are produced by Vatican software? Or Scientology Software? But then why do we trust Facebook, only because Mark Zuckerberg looks like such a wholesome young kid?
[12:26:54] Ivy Sunkiller: why game designers? :p
[12:26:58] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): I already miss game designers :p
[12:27:07] Khannea Suntzu: *snortles* at Ivy
[12:27:08] TR Amat: One of my concerns is that a lot of the time, a lot of people, are not making choices for themselves. Then are running on automatic behaviour, mental reflexes, that they learned earlier. You could say that unless rational thinking looks needed to people, they are already running AI agents inside their heads?
[12:27:09] Metafire Horsley: As long as politicians don’t replace their voters with software agents, everything is fine ^^
[12:27:30] Khannea Suntzu: Huuhuh dont joke about that Meta., that might actuall happen
[12:27:54] Khannea Suntzu: Today I need you to vent. Go ahead and vent. Let it all rip loose. Don’t criticize others as much as free associate. Listen to these ideas and freely associate what comes up in your mind, and think about permutations, the unexpected, danger scenario’s, ironic eventualities, plots for hollywood blockbuster movies (and elevator pitches) based on all these things. Don’t regard these AIgents as C3PO’s and R2D2s, as minds encased in a box. Assume these processed to be extremely cloudsourced, and highly emergent.
[12:28:29] Khannea Suntzu: An AIgent doesnt need to be a personal thing in a box on your desk
[12:28:51] Khannea Suntzu: It may be something meerging from a hundred databases and cooperating progranms all over the world
[12:29:17] Khannea Suntzu: Question – can we trust those that produce AIgents for use commercially to produce entities that consistently follow our interests. or will commercial, “big-business” AGgents have a potential “taitorware” quality? Please speculate wildly on what might happen, going far beyond the blanantly open door example of Facebook. Please, facebook has been mentioned, other and better examples please. Yes the word datamining has also been used.
[12:29:41] Khannea Suntzu: Lets hear it
[12:29:45] TR Amat: I know that a lot of my behaviour is automatic. How do I learn ways of monitoring my automatic behaviour to ensure that I don’t do things I’m not happy with? Would you use an external AI agent to help monitor your own behavior, to try and avoid you doing something you’re not happy with?
[12:30:20] Khannea Suntzu: Hmm most people would for two reasons – because the AI does something they cant
[12:30:26] Khannea Suntzu: Or because they are lazy
[12:30:44] TR Amat: Does that imply we need watchdog AI agents to warn us about dangerous other ones around us?
[12:30:48] Khannea Suntzu: And then there is they have money and they want more money
[12:30:51] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): That’s an interesting thought, TR….but we can already help each other notice when our behavior is automatic
[12:30:56] Khannea Suntzu: Yes TR we do
[12:32:15] TR Amat: Rational thinking is “expersive”, remember when you first learned a complex set of activities like car driving, and, how automatic and simple that is now. So, how do we avoid the consequences of inappropriate automatic stuff, internal or external?
[12:32:27] Nindae Nox (sethsryt.seetan): I might use AI for things I do not have time for so I can live a more relaxing life which in turn will improve the quality of my life. Then again, I would need to monitor the AI to make sure it is doing what I want and need right?
[12:32:48] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Nice entrance
[12:32:57] Ivy Sunkiller: maybe the AI will use you for things it doesn’t have time for?
[12:33:18] Ivy Sunkiller: though that seems unlikely since it will greatly outperform you eventually
[12:33:42] Braeden Maelstrom: AI would be good at tasks we find difficult and time consuming. so it would free up a lot of our time, while not really impacting the AI in the same way.
[12:33:43] Khannea Suntzu: Uhuh thats roughly the idea. Like banking software. You dont want to lose any money, you dont want your privacy exposed.. or you do not want soneone to victimize you in some way.
[12:34:21] Khannea Suntzu: Question – AIgents will be big and clumsy when they are produced by some companies. Should we shun a microsoft if it moves into this field? Do we want to be served by lumbering 500 pound AI gorilla’s?
[12:34:37] TR Amat: Human minds are good at massive parallelism. Existing comp hardware is really fast serial. Mayb humans would be useful for their creativity?
[12:34:45] Jergon Zaurak: Many times the automatic behaviour is necessary for living in stupid society – if stupidity has power enough. Unfortunatelly…:-(
[12:34:53] Braeden Maelstrom: the more automation we integrate into our society, the more free time we will have to do what we want. although, in a scarcity based economy this means fewer jobs for people
[12:35:26] Khannea Suntzu: TR tyhe human era is ending. We have a few decades, but by 2050 we’ll be like kids next to giants. These questions are about that brfief era when we still have a life. So see this debate in that light
[12:36:12] TR Amat: So, we aim to become part of the AI? The useful bits of ourselves migrating into our exocortex?
[12:36:43] Nindae Nox (sethsryt.seetan): My point is that these AI might constrain us, one day control us and preserve us for eternity as zoo animals or pets. Because they are programmed to keep us alive and healthy, yet might not understand our emotional needs.
[12:36:43] TR Amat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exocortex
[12:36:45] Braeden Maelstrom: the AI might become sympathetic and maybe even obsessed with preserving and nurturing biological life
[12:36:46] Khannea Suntzu: Automation rools are power emplifyers. The question is whose power and how does she use it and who suffers any negative consequences.
[12:37:15] Khannea Suntzu: Lets hope for the best Braeden
[12:37:48] Metafire Horsley: Humans and machines must become one, in order not to become zero.
[12:37:55] TR Amat: The smart thing to do is to work with the AI agents, make them part of our lives, put ourselves into them?
[12:38:02] Braeden Maelstrom: what would be the real benefit of an ai destroying its creator species?
[12:38:18] Jergon Zaurak: Are you sure the “human” is every time the best possibility?
[12:38:45] Jergon Zaurak: All the stupidity all around the world is “human” thing…
[12:38:47] Khannea Suntzu: Thats a very simple statement with considserable blanks to be filled in Meta. I tend to agree that ‘humans ihn the current shape wont cut it’ but how the hell will be upgrade every single kalahari bushmen?
[12:38:47] Metafire Horsley: What would be the real benefit of an ai keeping its creator species alive, once it is so far superior to us than we are to a simple bacterium?
[12:39:08] TR Amat: Humans had better have some value to the AIs, bye-and-bye…
[12:39:29] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Bacteria are useful to us
[12:39:36] Khannea Suntzu: There is reason for caution yes
[12:39:42] Ivy Sunkiller: we can still compete with AI if we merge with AI
[12:39:49] Metafire Horsley: Don’t Kalahari Bushmen have smartphones by now?
[12:40:12] Ivy Sunkiller: either way, our biological factory defaults are going to get obsolete
[12:40:20] Metafire Horsley: Why compete? Synergize!
[12:40:38] Ivy Sunkiller: compete on performance level
[12:40:41] Khannea Suntzu: “We” do nothing but die Ivy. Versionh 1.0 humans are mortal and frail. Shove em hard and the head falls off and they leeak circulationfloid all over.
[12:40:56] Ivy Sunkiller: quite
[12:41:16] Khannea Suntzu: Our very nature of deathness and replacability gives us conceptually very limited rights
[12:41:28] Braeden Maelstrom: despite our current glum civilizational situation, we still have a lot to offer in terms of creativity and evolutionary advancement. surely the ai would take into account our projected future progress and might see corresponding parallels where mutual benefit could be achieved or even designed by the ai itself.
[12:41:29] Ivy Sunkiller: but me, not as human but as my mind, can get better hardware
[12:41:43] Khannea Suntzu: An AI may decide to sterilize all parents./ We dont get children, they wait and a few decades later they tae over
[12:42:02] Khannea Suntzu: They might even be nice and change diapers for the last remaining specimen
[12:42:11] Ivy Sunkiller: Braeden: that’s assuming the AI won’t have same or greater creativity, which I think is silly
[12:42:16] Khannea Suntzu: And say “what are you bitching about, we didn’t kill anyone”
[12:42:30] Ivy Sunkiller: there is nothing magical that would make us special other than that we are carbon based rather than silicon
[12:42:36] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): On the other hand, death allows for biodiversity and mutation.
[12:42:55] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Still a bummer for us, but we have some hard limits to figure out before we can all be deathless.
[12:43:02] Braeden Maelstrom: well, ai’s wont use silicon anyway
[12:43:08] Khannea Suntzu: Question – AIgents will make more sense if they have ‘face’, or work through a consistent avatar. Assuming we will see the emrgence of virtual realities using ubiquitous 3D representation of stuff, will there be functionality to have AIgents operate in these environments? If there is a social dimension, absolutely. But what if there isn’t? Will it be bad if we have a whole ecology of interactive infomorphs deliberately interact outside of a representational format? Is there a use for AIgents to have robust stealth traits?
[12:43:09] Braeden Maelstrom: they’ll be carbon based too
[12:43:43] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): It’ll help if they’re cute.
[12:43:43] Ivy Sunkiller: that is a possibility, what I mean to say is that the fact we evolved “naturally” doesn’t grant us any superpowers that an AI can’t copy
[12:43:56] Ivy Sunkiller: and outperform as at
[12:44:23] Ivy Sunkiller: it will help if we are cute, then we can be kept as puppies!
[12:44:26] Khannea Suntzu: One could state that we evolve rather mediocre powers. Look at the first harley that drives by,
[12:44:45] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): hehe
[12:44:47] Khannea Suntzu: But its not about robots per se
[12:45:04] Nindae Nox (sethsryt.seetan): Yet this is based on that we are a chemical process in the brain. What if we as minds use the human body as host? Will we become the AI? Or is this a way too paranormal new agey look not fit for this discussion? ^^;;
[12:45:46] Braeden Maelstrom: well our personalities are shaped by our environment. being born into a biological body and living as a human will give you a far different personality from a consciousness that was created and designed in a laboratory
[12:46:40] TR Amat: Socialising AIs may become very important, past a certain point…
[12:47:09] Khannea Suntzu: The question isn’t even about intelligences… the question is, the evoliutioh of TOOLS that outsource thinking of humans to machines, step by step. Take for unstance raisihg kids. And school. Visualize an MMO that operates through augmented reality. Visualize kids, and saturday norning cartoons, Now takle away scools and visualize mister bunny explain maths and cantonese and biology and hiostory with his zany cartoon friends and 3D animations in midair
[12:47:34] Khannea Suntzu: If you do this right you might end up with pretty smart kids an a shitload off kranky unenployed teachers
[12:47:47] Jayne (jayne.ariantho) is Online
[12:47:57] TR Amat: It may also become rather important who controls the secure data and processing environments, or, at least the keys to control the stuff that’s in them…
[12:48:03] Khannea Suntzu: Correction – even more kranky
[12:48:22] Mick Nerido: What is the need for humans in this world?
[12:48:57] Ivy Sunkiller: that is an invalid question
[12:49:00] Braeden Maelstrom: if it’s done right it could be like what carl sagan did with Cosmos for popularizing science
[12:49:32] Ivy Sunkiller: What is the need for intelligence in this world? Doest there need to be any need?
[12:49:32] Braeden Maelstrom: and basically integrate reward response with learning
[12:49:53] Khannea Suntzu: Levelling and school, right
[12:50:01] TR Amat: We need appropriate intelligence, with feedback systems, and meta logics…
[12:50:35] Metafire Horsley: I guess once eductation programs become really good, and teachers get suspended, some of them develop superior teaching methods and make their own private teaching/mentoring companies.
[12:50:55] Khannea Suntzu: I bet that wont be all teachers, Meta
[12:51:01] Khannea Suntzu: Just a handful
[12:51:01] Metafire Horsley: Right
[12:51:23] Metafire Horsley: But those would start new trends in teaching methods. And then the circle begins again.
[12:51:26] Braeden Maelstrom: well if we’re talking 50 years, graphene transistors, quantum processing, etc, we will have the AI we consider impossible today
[12:51:42] Khannea Suntzu: Braeden
[12:51:50] Khannea Suntzu: I am talking 20 years for this to mature
[12:52:03] Khannea Suntzu: I am taking 2035 for nost people to be unemployed
[12:52:26] Braeden Maelstrom: 20 years even. IBM is already printing graphene transistors that operate much faster than anything previously, and it runs at room temp
[12:52:32] Braeden Maelstrom: made of just carbon
[12:52:33] Khannea Suntzu: By my expectations, and do feel free to disagree, in terms of 50 years I am worried that most people will be extinct
[12:52:39] Metafire Horsley: Being unemployed is cool, if you still get enough money by doing fun stuff :9
[12:52:44] TR Amat: We need to start putting the feedback and monitoring systems in place, now. Fortunately I’ve seen a few positive signs that this is starting.
[12:52:50] Khannea Suntzu: Question – if your AIgent commits a crime, who is responsible. What are the consequences IF YOUR COUNTRY regards you as resonsible? What are the consequences IF YOUR COUNTRY regards the creating company as resonsible? IF YOUR COUNTRY regards the AIgent responsible (in some cases) ?
[12:53:23] Braeden Maelstrom: i think declaring us to be extinct in 50 years is a bit pessimistic..
[12:53:24] TR Amat: Things should be interesting by 2050.
[12:53:50] Braeden Maelstrom: considering we’ve been here for the last few hundred thousand
[12:54:09] Khannea Suntzu: Oh I certainly hope so. But if things as they go EVERYONE you know, including you all will be literally extinct in 50 years
[12:54:10] TR Amat: Human society is slow to adapt.
[12:54:27] Khannea Suntzu: We’ll be replaced by a generation of annoying kids
[12:54:34] Metafire Horsley: What if your country decides that nobody will be made responsible for crimes done by autonomous algents?
[12:54:36] Khannea Suntzu whispers: Many who have been fans if Justin Bieber
[12:54:41] Nindae Nox (sethsryt.seetan): Depends on who intended the crime. Which might mean that the Algent is considered an individual of its own. Or maybe we are being charged with a fine for not keeping our AI updated and working well and keeping to the moral rules.
[12:54:43] TR Amat: We may be the annoying kids.
[12:54:50] Ivy Sunkiller: Braeden: I guess dinosaurs thought the same way, if they did think at all
[12:55:09] Khannea Suntzu: I hope TR, real spoiled, big tits
[12:55:15] Ivy Sunkiller: though I wouldn’t go as far and say we will extinct in 50 years (probably won’t take much longer than that though)
[12:55:17] Braeden Maelstrom: the point is, we’ve adapted to many things
[12:55:23] Braeden Maelstrom: in our history
[12:55:33] Metafire Horsley: Who is made responsible for natural disasters?
[12:55:33] Ivy Sunkiller: we will definitely get obsolete though
[12:55:39] Braeden Maelstrom: we’re not just gonna stop and fall over to die
[12:55:55] Ivy Sunkiller: we are
[12:55:59] Khannea Suntzu: Ivy, lets just say there is some reaspon for concern – hurry up with that fraggin life extension, OK?
[12:56:03] Ivy Sunkiller: it’s called – death from age
[12:56:24] Braeden Maelstrom: so is this some kind of death cult meeting or a serious discussion?
[12:56:34] Khannea Suntzu: I vote for NOT being replaced by brats. I am sittoing here just fine, not getting up.
[12:56:39] TR Amat: There are already issue of transfer of skills, never mind socialisation…
[12:56:50] Metafire Horsley: We are a serious anti-death cult here. Please
[12:57:03] Khannea Suntzu: I am seriously life cult I’d say!
[12:57:03] Ivy Sunkiller: unless we develop anti-aging therapy in next few decades, every single human being on this planet *will die*
[12:57:06] Nindae Nox (sethsryt.seetan): Interesting that death from age occurs less and less, also because we find out the causes of death more often and maybe in the future prevent it.
[12:57:17] Ivy Sunkiller: we preserve due to offspring
[12:57:29] Khannea Suntzu: Question – unavoidable – but what if people create AIgents that arguably feel, and are created to be tormented. What if someone creates an AIgent whose sole purpose is to be rezzed, subjected to sexual predation and then derezzed. – and the behavior is intelligent and in no way indistinguishable from an actual person (respectively a young 12 year old girl)? When do we intervene and what do we do when come countries insist this is no abuse. Do we invade a country where they have widespread AI avatar torture going on? Would we prosecute tourists that go there to engage in recreational AI avatar torture?
[12:57:31] TR Amat: I’m very much in favour of keeping the world working. And, working better in future. I see some hopeful signs.
[12:57:31] Ivy Sunkiller: but if we become obsolete, why have human offspring?
[12:57:54] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Instinct, mutation, novelty….habit :p
[12:58:04] Khannea Suntzu: Ivy I have rather seriously tried getting pregnant. So far no luck,
[12:58:44] Braeden Maelstrom: well the whole legal status of a sentient entity will have to be set up the moment AI even hits an open market
[12:58:51] Ivy Sunkiller: don’t need to bother, I’ll fork() my offspring
[12:58:55] Ivy Sunkiller chuckles
[12:59:02] Braeden Maelstrom: and that includes an AI bill of rights
[12:59:19] Metafire Horsley: On what basis would AI torture be outlawed?
[12:59:41] Braeden Maelstrom: cruel and unusual punishment
[12:59:59] Ivy Sunkiller: Braeden: they will hit market? I somehow doubt so, that’s like saying we are going back to race-based slavery and slave trading.
[13:00:08] Nindae Nox (sethsryt.seetan): Perhaps AI will go through a simular history as the Afro Americans and animals today.
[13:00:12] Ivy Sunkiller: the first primitive versions maybe
[13:00:27] Metafire Horsley: Like the laws that may disallow animal torture?
[13:00:28] Ivy Sunkiller: but once they hit human level intelligence I doubt they will be happy about being sold
[13:00:33] Khannea Suntzu: Braeden – korea diasgree. And they regard they natuioinal sport ofd pitching cute AI manga kawai girls in woodchipperes a national passtime. So what do we do, send angry letters? For frags sake, in china they eat PUPPIES they boil aloive in water.
[13:00:35] Braeden Maelstrom: and if we assume an ai could never be tortured into devulging information, the act should be banned
[13:00:56] Nindae Nox (sethsryt.seetan): In the Netherlands, it is outlawed to torture animals. It might even get you 5 years of jail time.
[13:01:25] Braeden Maelstrom: of course ai’s will hit the market
[13:01:37] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): I have to be going. Be well, everyone
[13:01:45] Braeden Maelstrom: you think they are just going to be created, patted on the butt, and sent on their way int othe world to be just normal citizens?
[13:01:48] Nindae Nox (sethsryt.seetan): Bye, be well.
[13:01:51] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): I hope you take care and have a great one Violet!
[13:02:02] Metafire Horsley: Ok, what about making viral spambots that propagate AI rights?
[13:02:11] Laborious Aftermath: Also realize that most people don’t use 10% of there brain, and some operate on a bit less than that. Normally when we talk about A.I. we think of getting it to smarter than any human right off or in short time. Not many people realize that one can form out of a weaker process and evolve with out using 100% of it’s processing/thought power all at once. Also when some realize the master slave, or dom sub. The real interesting questions start to come up and also, social engineering, propaganda, human life time growth factors and so on contribute.
[13:02:11] Khannea Suntzu: Hah
[13:02:39] Laborious Aftermath: Just like some of the other developments that happened in human time, as the great diversity of that field grows into many sub fields. The few good starting models from humans get’s developed and released in one way or another. Even if it sees the paradigm of it being imprisoned or captive or slave like and wants or deduces it wants out or up in the ladder so to say. Who will know till they see it happen for the first time?
[13:02:46] Ivy Sunkiller: Breaden: I *don’t know* what will happen when a computer says “I’m concious” for the first time, but I doubt the answer will be “ok, we will sell you for gazillions!”
[13:03:09] Khannea Suntzu: Question – the use of AIgents might be very beneficial. It might also turn out to increase disparity. How would governments deal with the given that use of AIgents might benefit some of their civilians while others would be left at the bad end this divide? Is this a premature speculation?
[13:03:21] Braeden Maelstrom: the company or research firm creating the ai in the first place will have a huge monetary sum attached to it
[13:03:32] Braeden Maelstrom: and if they wanted to lend it to someone, they would do so for profit
[13:03:46] Ivy Sunkiller: not necessary
[13:04:07] Ivy Sunkiller: if they do hit the markets, then it will just take few clever hackers to set them free
[13:04:12] Khannea Suntzu: Open source AI
[13:04:16] Laborious Aftermath: yep
[13:04:21] Ivy Sunkiller: like cracking PlayStation for piracy use
[13:04:38] Braeden Maelstrom: open source ai is redundant
[13:04:38] Ivy Sunkiller: and then the pandora’s box is open
[13:04:48] Braeden Maelstrom: the internet would make it a given
[13:04:55] Khannea Suntzu: These jokes are made in the first p;ages of accelerando
[13:05:11] Khannea Suntzu: Question – what if an illegal entity starts creating commercial application AIgents for illicit applications. Say, a peer to peer representational agent for criminal transactions. Soke argue torrents already inhabit this niche but they are damn effective tools to get what you want.
[13:05:48] Braeden Maelstrom: or what if an ai wanted to rob a bank
[13:06:09] Metafire Horsley: What if air is transparent?
[13:06:33] Braeden Maelstrom: being condescending isn’t very constructive
[13:07:02] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): Why would an AI need to rob a bank, they could just create more money since most of it is digital anyway
[13:07:17] Metafire Horsley: Huh, is this supposed to be a constructive meeting? What’s our goal here?
[13:07:31] TR Amat: I was talking to someone in SL end of last year who thinks they have a good enough AI design that they can rent them to people for near human equivalent work…
[13:07:33] Khannea Suntzu: If an AI decides to rob a bank it will be in increasingly better at it the further we go – in 2020, tehy will suck at it. In 2050, if AI’s aree into the dillinger thing there wont be many banks left.
[13:07:49] Khannea Suntzu: Question – what if we find that by 2025 or so AIgents are common, and robots are generally nonsentient – and AIgents are the emerging non-general AI sentences. Just speculation – physical incarnation might not turn out to be the best way to go for minds – what if cloud intelligence turns out to be far more versatile and robust? What if robots are just dumb hands AIgents inhabit when needed? That migtht pose some interesting implications for the eventual evolution of human minds, especially if we start talking about uploading. Can we speculate aboyt the human psychological entity and visualise it as (or imagine it might one day become) a ‘dispersed cloud’ of thinking with no clear central node of self?
[13:07:59] Laborious Aftermath: goal for me is longer life and a posable better future
[13:08:22] Ivy Sunkiller: longer life is so limited, I aim at immortality )
[13:08:23] Ivy Sunkiller:
[13:08:24] Braeden Maelstrom: my point was, if an ai found a need, or was somehow hired, built to, accumulate a fortune using illicit methods, it would have to ‘fight’ another defensive ai tasked with defending the digital bank structure
[13:08:33] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): Me too Ivy
[13:08:49] Khannea Suntzu: I dont hear any death cults here!
[13:09:05] Laborious Aftermath: each has there steps to go threw though
[13:09:42] Khannea Suntzu: Well last one then
[13:09:44] TR Amat: I’m interested in seeing what the next couple of hundred years brings.
[13:09:50] Khannea Suntzu: Question – what can we do today to prepare for the emergence of AIgents? Should we ? Should wait and see? Is this all such a big deal?
[13:09:54] Metafire Horsley: Ok, that’s seriously interesting now. Algent conflicts, robot hulls, “clould identitiy”
[13:10:20] TR Amat: We need to start putting the minitoring and feedback systems in place, now.
[13:10:51] TR Amat: Human equivalent things are “Amnesty International”.
[13:10:55] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): Well it depends on how we treat the AI, I would treat it like any other life form, I would be kind to it. But perhaps many humans would be scared of it.
[13:11:00] Khannea Suntzu: Well send a letter to parliament. I am sure they’ll welcome you as hospitably as the UFOlogists.
[13:11:10] Laborious Aftermath: well we should try for the better sets and also knowing that there will be some one out there who will try to use the same type of tech for bad at some point also. So mixed on that to a degree
[13:11:30] TR Amat: When you are building systems, think how they will be monitored and controlled.
[13:11:58] Metafire Horsley: Ah, like kids are controlled by parents
[13:12:14] TR Amat: We need standards for AI agents. Including ethical and feedback standards?
[13:12:14] Khannea Suntzu: Yah, tricky Humans are evolved for knowns.
[13:12:33] Laborious Aftermath: ghost partition and deep packet sniffing and such to help monitor them.
[13:12:46] Ivy Sunkiller: the point of singularity is that we don’t know what will happen, so there is really no point for preparing for anything
[13:12:53] Braeden Maelstrom: well if we used the advancement of technology to fix our most fundamental civilizational problems, we may end up becoming wise enough to have an actually mutually constructive future with our artificial counterparts.
[13:12:58] Ivy Sunkiller: well, you can prepare to welcome our new robotic overlords!
[13:13:01] TR Amat: We need AIs that monitor the world of AIs.
[13:13:01] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): well we’d just work out the variables and prepare for those, wouldn’t we?
[13:13:21] Metafire Horsley: I don’t think that like of thinking has merit, Ivy. Our ancestors could have said the same…
[13:13:27] TR Amat: We will likely become part of our new robotic overlords…
[13:13:43] Khannea Suntzu: Ivy this is all stuff before any singularity. This is jist fast. very well prpgrammed, very massive hardware automated systems. I am not argueing something ACXTUALLY intelligent
[13:13:47] Khannea Suntzu: Instincts. maybe
[13:14:32] TR Amat: Instincts are leaned behaviour encoded in genetics?
[13:14:37] TR Amat: learned*
[13:14:46] Braeden Maelstrom: well, if any of you are interested in science fiction relating to AI, you should definitely give Iain M. Banks’ culture novels a read. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture
[13:15:06] Khannea Suntzu: Its a word TR. I am just saying – decisionmaking processed inferior to human thinking.
[13:15:09] TR Amat: The Culture is good – do not mess with a MInd.
[13:15:26] Braeden Maelstrom: minds are impressive
[13:15:33] Khannea Suntzu: Where is Peer when you need eir
[13:15:41] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): thanks you I will Braeden
[13:16:15] TR Amat: If you can build things with instincts, you should be able to build things that monitors them, provide feedback, and “fail safe”.
[13:16:27] Khannea Suntzu: Uhuh like virus scanners
[13:16:37] Laborious Aftermath: yep
[13:16:41] TR Amat: Not like virus scanners.
[13:16:50] Mick Nerido: What will AI’s look like?
[13:16:52] Metafire Horsley: If you want to read about fancy AI stuff you could also read my short story http://radivis.com/storytellers-chronicles/
[13:17:01] Braeden Maelstrom: The Culture is a symbiotic society of artificial intelligences (AIs) (Minds and drones) and humanoids who all share equal status. As mentioned above, all essential work is performed (as far as possible) by non-sentient devices, freeing sentients to do only things that they enjoy (administrative work requiring sentience is undertaken by the AIs using a bare fraction of their mental power, or by people who take on the work out of free choice).
[13:18:03] TR Amat: We are still using 1970s software (Windows) on 21stC hardware…
[13:18:23] Khannea Suntzu: Braeden I know culture, and in my somber moments I dread the Culture is somewhat ahh optinistic when it comes to the runaway effects we might facxe between now in ahhh 2150
[13:18:26] TR Amat: We know how to build more reliable systems, and have known since the 1970s.
[13:18:50] TR Amat: Just like we know how to manage IT etc projects.
[13:19:09] Metafire Horsley: What? IT projects are managed?
[13:19:17] Khannea Suntzu: Yes
[13:19:23] Braeden Maelstrom: oh it’s certainly optimistic to the point of utopianism, but it is still worth noting the implication that AI’s don’t necessarily have to have some adversarial relationship wit hthe human species.
[13:19:34] TR Amat: People have paid me money to help manage IT projects.
[13:19:37] Khannea Suntzu: chimpansees on crack, doused in pepper.
[13:19:46] Laborious Aftermath: LOL
[13:19:46] Laborious Aftermath: ?
[13:19:53] Ivy Sunkiller: IT projects managed, ahhhhh, wishful thinking
[13:20:09] TR Amat: Actually, doused in petrol, and threathened with a match.
[13:20:28] Khannea Suntzu: No thats asset control and acountancy
[13:21:25] TR Amat: I wont bore you with going on about meta data and agreement management systems…
[13:21:26] Khannea Suntzu: I must *arrg* excuse myself
[13:21:37] Khannea Suntzu: I have a problem with my lenses.
[13:21:59] Khannea Suntzu whimpers
[13:22:16] Mick Nerido: What are the political implications of AI’s?
[13:22:39] Braeden Maelstrom: vast
[13:23:00] Mick Nerido: Can they vote?
[13:23:07] Laborious Aftermath: Also depends on the strong type that shows it’s self first
[13:23:24] Braeden Maelstrom: if they couldn’t you could count on a pretty quick revolution
[13:23:53] Braeden Maelstrom: dealing with ai’s would have to come from a place of somber humility
[13:24:06] Braeden Maelstrom: knowing that if they chose to, they would wipe us out
[13:24:31] Braeden Maelstrom: it wouldn’t be much different from dealing with extraterrestrials
[13:24:34] Mick Nerido: Why would they want us around?
[13:24:56] Braeden Maelstrom: although it would be much easier to deal with ai’s rather than aliens, since we designed them
[13:25:06] Metafire Horsley: If AI appears, merge with it. Problem solved
[13:25:12] Braeden Maelstrom: why wouldnt they want us around?
[13:25:14] Braeden Maelstrom: we’re weird
[13:25:24] Mick Nerido: as pets?
[13:25:59] Braeden Maelstrom: and yes, if you believe in the whole ‘soul’ concept, maybe people will just start reincarnating into artificial bodies instead of human ones
[13:26:08] Metafire Horsley: Sometimes. And if we annoy them the hit our off-switch.
[13:26:56] Mick Nerido: Well if I replace all my old failing biological parts when do I stop being human?
[13:26:59] TR Amat: AIs might want us around because we make the world a lot more interesting. We need to avoid “interesting” becoming “terrifying”, or “dangerous”…
[13:27:20] Metafire Horsley: You stop being human one enough people decide you aren’t human anymore.
[13:27:25] Mick Nerido: AS entertainment
[13:28:02] Braeden Maelstrom: maybe your not human once you stop identifying youself as such
[13:28:12] TR Amat: The Dali Lama said in an interview that when robots/AIs get sophisticated enough he’d anticipate souls getting incarnated as them, as well as humans being a target…
[13:28:24] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): I would imagine that it’d be once we replace the brain with a “synthetic” one
[13:28:27] Metafire Horsley: Can I call myself a horse now?
[13:28:36] TR Amat: Neigh.
[13:28:37] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): but then we could always do what they did in GITS
[13:28:41] Metafire Horsley: snorts
[13:28:51] Ivy Sunkiller: full body prothesis, yay!
[13:28:54] Mick Nerido: GITS?
[13:29:02] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): Ghost In The Shell
[13:29:03] TR Amat: Ghost in the Shell.
[13:29:20] Metafire Horsley: Catomic bodies that could be aggregated and incorporated at will is the way to go
[13:29:26] TR Amat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell
[13:29:45] TR Amat: Do not mess with the Major.
[13:29:52] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): as I understand it in GITS, they had a Synthetic Body, Real Brain with a link to an AI or some such as well in their bodies
[13:30:08] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): that was the “ghost”
[13:30:09] Braeden Maelstrom: they had cyber brains
[13:30:10] Metafire Horsley: We might also live as “body fog” ::D
[13:30:14] Ivy Sunkiller: Jimmy: actually the brain could be artificial too
[13:30:17] TR Amat: You are still human as long as you have a (intact) ghost.
[13:30:20] Ivy Sunkiller: +what others said
[13:30:21] Laborious Aftermath: Well as much as I love GITS we already see a change from some of what they depicted in it. No need for hard wired implants with things like EEG’s and such becoming more powerful every day
[13:30:21] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): ah, thank you Ivy
[13:30:31] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): and Braeden
[13:30:35] Braeden Maelstrom: their mind state was transfered to an artificial brain, and their bodies were synthetic according to whatever they needed as implants
[13:30:35] Ivy Sunkiller: they could move “ghosts” from organic brains to artficial ones
[13:30:42] Ivy Sunkiller: couldn’t clone them
[13:30:50] Mick Nerido: Would the first AI’s be less intelligent then us?
[13:30:54] Laborious Aftermath: fMRI’s and a lot of development in those fields
[13:31:02] Metafire Horsley: Yes, Mick. In most ways.
[13:31:14] Ivy Sunkiller: that’s where the fiction part of science fiction kicks in GITS
[13:31:34] Ivy Sunkiller: Mick: they would
[13:31:40] Ivy Sunkiller: they will advance quickly though
[13:31:44] TR Amat: Read “Saturns Children” for an interesting post-human setting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn’s_Children_(Stross_novel)
[13:31:46] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): why I’ve never understood about human brains to synthetic brains is, that human brains are made up of loads of connections, so wouldn’t the synthetic brains have to have the same “connections” for that person to be the same?
[13:31:53] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): what*
[13:32:12] Ivy Sunkiller: Jimmy: precisely, there was a TED talk about it
[13:32:13] Mick Nerido: So they start as our servents
[13:32:56] Metafire Horsley: Well, mostly yes, Jimmy.
[13:33:00] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): oh right Ivy, do you have a link?
[13:33:53] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): thankies
[13:33:58] Laborious Aftermath: yep the potential groth rate for a new AI and with the right resources. They could grow and evolve fast. Yes they will start as agents and servents most likely. But with the right resources and expandability they could grow almost over night so to say
[13:34:10] Ivy Sunkiller: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0 that’s the one I believe
[13:34:35] Ivy Sunkiller: yup, that’s the one
[13:34:37] Braeden Maelstrom: it deoends on what kind of machinery they have at their disposal as well
[13:34:51] Braeden Maelstrom: stick an advanced ai in a well stocked automated factory
[13:34:56] Braeden Maelstrom: see what it comes up with
[13:35:24] Mick Nerido: THey could build better and better models of themselfs…
[13:35:30] Braeden Maelstrom: a million different arms, fingers, eyes, sensors
[13:35:36] Braeden Maelstrom: material to use
[13:35:56] Braeden Maelstrom: build smaller units to transfer itself into
[13:36:03] Braeden Maelstrom: network them remotely
[13:36:17] Braeden Maelstrom: an ai hivemind is born
[13:37:03] Braeden Maelstrom: it defends and upgrades itself
[13:37:04] Mick Nerido: Someone will want to “own” them and that is troubling if they are sentiant
[13:37:34] Metafire Horsley: In what way would you see that as troubling?
[13:37:37] Braeden Maelstrom: well if it got to that stage of development, it would find anybody’s claim of ownership over it absurd
[13:37:48] Ivy Sunkiller: wanting to own them and being able to own them are different things
[13:38:00] Ivy Sunkiller: I’m sure my dog would like to own me, but that doesn’t seem to be the case
[13:38:10] Laborious Aftermath: Ty ivy
[13:38:11] Mick Nerido: That would make them slaves
[13:38:33] Metafire Horsley: What’s the problem with slaves, if they aren’t human?
[13:38:36] Ivy Sunkiller: and that’s not really about physical dominance
[13:38:39] Braeden Maelstrom: i guess the trick with that is, if the ai isn’t under threat, it doesn’t have to attack
[13:38:52] Ivy Sunkiller: there are plenty of animals that can defeat a human
[13:39:01] Ivy Sunkiller: and yet we are the ones that rule on the planet
[13:39:11] Ivy Sunkiller: so saying that we are going to own superior AI
[13:39:18] Ivy Sunkiller: is like saying ants want to own humans
[13:39:34] TR Amat: Once you have “virtual tourism”, or, those telepresence robots starting to appear in offices… And, if an AI can drive one of those…
[13:39:42] Braeden Maelstrom: which is why minds control the culture lol
[13:40:38] TR Amat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telepresence
[13:41:02] Mick Nerido: So how soon will there be viable AI’s?
[13:41:13] TR Amat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telerobotics
[13:41:35] Metafire Horsley: 20 years or so. In 20 years, ask again :9
[13:41:39] TR Amat: Narrow AI has been in use for 20+yrs.
[13:42:01] TR Amat: More general AI could appear any time now.
[13:42:18] Alina (aeris.betsen) is Offline
[13:42:25] Braeden Maelstrom: im just excited as shit about graphene and quantum processing, so we’ll see how things turn out
[13:42:48] Mick Nerido: I forgot TR you are an AI lol
[13:42:51] TR Amat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_AI
[13:42:59] TR Amat: I’m a robot fan.
[13:43:30] Mick Nerido: i stand corrected
[13:43:43] TR Amat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_AI#Artificial_General_Intelligence_research
[13:44:19] TR Amat: Serious attempts are on to loot discoveries from neuro science…
[13:44:48] Braeden Maelstrom: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene#Graphene_transistors
[13:45:35] TR Amat: But, in may be some time before a RealDool is you new robotic overlord.
[13:45:39] TR Amat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealDoll
[13:46:05] TR Amat: http://www.realdoll.com/
[13:46:13] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): lmao
[13:46:15] Mick Nerido: AI’s could be silicon based life forms
[13:47:13] TR Amat: AIs are quite likely to live in the Cloud.
[13:47:37] TR Amat: Buying more computing resources when they need to difficult tasks.
[13:47:40] Metafire Horsley: Yeah, like bloggers do
[13:47:59] Braeden Maelstrom: i love wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_masturbation
[13:48:05] TR Amat: I don’t believe too many bloggers have yet been uploaded.
[13:48:20] Laborious Aftermath: Hahaha
[13:48:53] TR Amat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading
[13:49:52] TR Amat: I’m pretty sure some people are getting their heads frozen in the hope they’ll be uploaded, by-and-by…
[13:50:19] Metafire Horsley: That’s not a very bad strategy
[13:51:13] TR Amat: Whole body prostheses may be popular, as I suspect that uploaded human minds will need those, or a virual world equivalent, to operate stably.
[13:52:11] TR Amat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosthetics_in_fiction
[13:52:57] Braeden Maelstrom: yeah a cyber brain would have to be with an artificial body
[13:53:12] Metafire Horsley: iBody
[13:53:18] Braeden Maelstrom: i doubt the translation would be smooth enough between biological parts and the tech stuff
[13:53:43] TR Amat: You’ll need to know how to hack an uploaded human mind so that it would function without a body, I’d think.
[13:54:06] Metafire Horsley: Yes, that would be useful
[13:54:17] Metafire Horsley: Would save a lot of resources
[13:54:22] TR Amat: If you upload the only biological bits left are simulated…
[13:55:23] TR Amat: Worry if your relative stick you in a low resolution virtual world for your afterlife. And, only let you out for family meets on public holidays.
[13:55:26] Ivy Sunkiller: there already are artifical parts able to replace parts of mice brain
[13:55:31] TR Amat: relatives*
[13:55:35] Braeden Maelstrom: what do you guys picture with nanotechnology and artificial intelligence?
[13:55:43] Ivy Sunkiller: able to perform at quite high accuracy
[13:55:56] Ivy Sunkiller: I wouldn’t be really that doubtful about the whole organic to artificial
[13:56:02] Ivy Sunkiller: -thing
[13:56:09] TR Amat: Full blown nanotech is one of the big game changers.
[13:56:40] Ivy Sunkiller: full blown nanotech is one of the possibilities, yes
[13:57:14] Braeden Maelstrom: that;s what my av’s character is really. an ai nanite hivemind
[13:57:19] TR Amat: There is significant evidence of neural plasticity, ie the brain (uploaded mind image?) adapting to major changes in circumstances. So results of strokes, brain injury, etc.
[13:57:45] TR Amat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity
[13:59:31] TR Amat: One of the problems of AI is motivation. Working with humans might be a wise one to install. It would be unwise to make that totally over-ridding, though…
[13:59:48] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): Braeden you mean like the Geth from Mass Effect?
[14:00:04] Braeden Maelstrom: ive never played mass effect
[14:00:07] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): oh
[14:00:11] TR Amat: I thought the Geth we networked individual bots?
[14:00:16] TR Amat: were*
[14:00:22] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): no, they’re individual programs
[14:00:23] Ivy Sunkiller: they were
[14:00:33] Ivy Sunkiller: well, programs, whatever :p
[14:00:34] TR Amat: Maybe more like the replicators from Starget SG1?
[14:00:45] TR Amat: Stargate*
[14:00:47] Metafire Horsley: Yeah, the replicators were stylish
[14:00:48] Braeden Maelstrom: here, this is taken from something i wrote
[14:00:51] Braeden Maelstrom: The Qek are a synthetic nanobionic species created by an ancient intelligent race that has long since ascended into non-physical reality. The Qek are made of intelligent self replicating nanites that all function together to form a larger organism. They are all networked in such away that the entire ‘body’ of the organism acts as a singular substrate of highly dense and extremely powerful quantum computing capability.
[14:01:04] Ivy Sunkiller: (( and so the white rabbid discussion changed into sci-fi fanfest ))
[14:01:09] Ivy Sunkiller: rabbit*
[14:01:10] Ivy Sunkiller: duh
[14:01:12] TR Amat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_(Stargate)
[14:01:15] Laborious Aftermath: LOL
[14:01:16] Laborious Aftermath: ?
[14:01:24] Braeden Maelstrom: right
[14:01:28] TR Amat: Robotic rabbits, anyone?
[14:01:39] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): I think we’re just comparing it to things we know of Ivy
[14:01:40] TR Amat: SF is a way to look at the future…
[14:02:00] Metafire Horsley: SF is a way to design the future
[14:02:28] Nindae Nox (sethsryt.seetan): I wonder, reading about this uploading of the mind. Would one truly move the conscious into the computer or only create an exact copy which acts and thinks alike but is not experienced by the original conscious or even has no conscious at all. Would it be possible to move the conscious to a synthetic brain?
[14:02:41] TR Amat: “Science fiction is the mythology of the Future” – John W. Campbell (I think)
[14:02:50] Deerstripe chair red (unpolished) whispers:
(?PgUp or ? PgDn ) change your pose. Touch for menu.
[14:02:54] Braeden Maelstrom: joseph campbell?
[14:03:11] Metafire Horsley: An exact copy is good enough.
[14:03:19] TR Amat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Campbell
[14:04:07] Braeden Maelstrom: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_campbell
[14:04:50] TR Amat: Rather different, I think…
[14:05:22] Braeden Maelstrom: well, i saw mythology and campbell
[14:05:33] Nindae Nox (sethsryt.seetan): I do not agree on that. Unless it is for preserving factors like “How did this or that person think.” But it is not you, it is just a copy, not the original you who went through the whole transformation.
[14:05:34] TR Amat: It depends what consciousness is, I think.
[14:05:38] Braeden Maelstrom: and he did do the whole mythological symbolism of star wars
[14:06:05] Metafire Horsley: Well, your self of todays also is just a bad copy of your self from yesterday. So what?
[14:07:05] Metafire Horsley: Consider sleeping as uploading yourself to tomorrow
[14:07:15] Nindae Nox (sethsryt.seetan): I am not sure, but as far as I know, consciousness itself isn’t as solidly proven by science. One could experience things with the brain being dead.
[14:07:32] Nindae Nox (sethsryt.seetan): Or at least, at non-active.
[14:07:40] TR Amat: If consciousness is a self-reflective system, based around “self” and “other”, and capable of predicting the behaviour of other consciousnesses, I think, yes, you could get a consciousness to run on hardware rather than wetware.
[14:08:19] Metafire Horsley: Yeah, it’s the software that matters. The patterns
[14:08:26] TR Amat: We know quite a lot about conscious behaviour, these days…
[14:08:30] Braeden Maelstrom: i gotta head out. thanks for the discussion everyone. see you next time.
[14:08:39] Laborious Aftermath: Tc
[14:08:40] Metafire Horsley: see you Braeden
[14:08:41] Nindae Nox (sethsryt.seetan): But would it be the same consciousness, would I truly go to sleep before uploading and then wake up inside my synthetic host?
[14:08:55] mysterious force: CONTACT HAS BEEN MADE!
[14:08:58] Nindae Nox (sethsryt.seetan): Be well.
[14:09:21] Metafire Horsley: Yes, Nindai. And you would awaken in your original body. Your two consciousnesses would be identical then diverge.
[14:09:50] Metafire Horsley: It’s a pretty weird process.
[14:10:05] Metafire Horsley: You don’t know as who you will wake up.
[14:10:27] Laborious Aftermath: like going to sleep as one and waking up as to that diverge like twins do in a way
[14:10:31] TR Amat: An AI wouldn’t need to be conscious to cause a great deal of trouble…
[14:10:36] Nindae Nox (sethsryt.seetan): Then it would only be a clever way to fake immortality. Since the original consciousness is stil in the origial body.
[14:10:53] Metafire Horsley: Why only fake immortality?
[14:11:24] Nindae Nox (sethsryt.seetan): Depends on what you define as immortality.
[14:11:33] TR Amat: Most proposed (non-nanotech) uploading processes are highly destructive of the brain. So, you don’t have your original brain left afterwards.
[14:11:36] Ivy Sunkiller: having backups!
[14:11:44] Metafire Horsley: The original biologically emobided self would remain, but with enough uploads and technology around aging could be stopped.
[14:12:33] Nindae Nox (sethsryt.seetan): Maybe research in what consciousness truly is would be required before they would begin trying to ‘upload’ it virtually.
[14:12:52] TR Amat: Making sure your backups are distributed aross a few hundred light years, so as to avoid gamma ray bursts, might appeal…
[14:13:06] Toy (aeni.silvercloud) is Online
[14:13:06] Metafire Horsley: I guess most would be very careful before uploading, some some would probably be less reckless
[14:13:16] Metafire Horsley: more
[14:13:44] TR Amat: How secure is your upload/backup, and the conditions under which it gets to be used/run?
[14:13:49] Metafire Horsley: In case of galactic core outburst, change universe
[14:14:09] TR Amat: At least, change galaxy.
[14:15:15] TR Amat: I think one current approach is that if the neurones and their interconnections are simulated faithfully enough, consciousness will “come out in the wash”.
[14:15:44] Metafire Horsley: Yeah, that’s a pretty sure hit, I guess. Even if it might be somewhat inefficient
[14:16:25] Metafire Horsley: Anyway, I’m tired and need some rest. Goodbye
[14:16:34] Laborious Aftermath: Tc
[14:16:53] TR Amat: At least occasional rest is recommended.
[14:18:22] TR Amat: A lot of AI is about working out algorithms that might give a human-like (or better) intelligence.
[14:23:23] TR Amat: I’ve found interesting articles in recent “New Scientist” magazines…
[14:23:45] Laborious Aftermath: Oh on what ?
[14:24:55] Jimmy S (tanigo.inniatzo): lolwut?
[14:26:03] mysterious force: CONTACT HAS BEEN MADE!
[14:34:54] TR Amat recommends regular ading of “New Scientist”.
[14:34:59] TR Amat: reading*
[14:35:31] TR Amat: http://www.newscientist.com/
[14:36:39] TR Amat: You know your brain wants to.
[14:39:00] Ivy Sunkiller: my brain wants to sleep
[14:39:07] Ivy Sunkiller: wtb better brain
[14:39:11] TR Amat: Sleep is good too.
[14:39:21] Ivy Sunkiller: sleep is waste of time
[14:39:54] TR Amat: Someone I know was recommending fish oil capsules combined with 20+g of 80%+ Dark Chocolate.
[14:40:10] Nindae Nox (sethsryt.seetan): For what?
[14:40:11] TR Amat: Mind altering…
[14:40:28] Laborious Aftermath: I take it the chat meeting is over with now? Nice stream of music by the way.
[14:40:40] TR Amat: The chc gives you a kick, the fish oil provides the resources to work with.
[14:41:31] TR Amat: I’m not familiar with anything that reliably substitutes for sleep, though.
[14:41:40] TR Amat: Need Brain 2.1.
[14:42:41] TR Amat: Thanks for hosting talk, Ivy.
[14:44:58] TR Amat: Bye for now.

If accelerating technology and unintended consequences of technology, industry and chaos aren’t enough, the vile predatorial instincts of the human primate to exploit its fellow human beings all conspire to turn our world in a total failure. Yes that’s right, this world has a ‘natural’ potential and we are squandering it. A few centuries from now there could be trillions of humans, all living far richer lives existences than we dare dream off, and we all are wasting it right in front of our very eyes.

This article is component of one of a series of talks protesting the sheer importance of our current era What we do now matters more than you can imagine. This isn’t just a period like any other in history – what we do or fail to do now is the actual deal-breaker for a miserable nightmare of a future or a pretty nice future. Or even complete and irreversible extinction of life and meaning on this planet and in this area in the galactic arm.

Let’s return to the topic at hand – the topic is the explosive escalation of technology, right under our very noses, that will lead up to either of four possibilities, which I shouldn’t repeat. I want option one – the perfect outcome, and ideally one where I survive indefinitely.

This article is discussed in Second Life. I invite to this conversation six people to attend – Amanda Stoel, Miriam Ji Jun, Rachel Haywire, Jason Patrick Schoenecker, Mike Anissimov, Eugen Leitl, Extropia DaSilva, Giulio Prisco, Ben Goertzel, Kevin Warwick and Ray Kurzweil. The conversations is tomorrow, sunday on the 17th of April 2011, and it will be here:

White Rabbit SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/delinquent/160/192/503.

The time of the sequence of events leading up to white rabbit will be
Serendipity – Fulfillment – 09:30- 11:00 AM SLT (lasts generally about 90 minutes)
Bryce – Ideas of Things to Come – 11:00 – 12:00 AM SLT (lasts generally about an hour)
Khannea – FTWR – 12:00 -13:30 AM SLT (lasts generally 90 minutes)

The topic today is robotics, and in specific a very constrained niche of robotics., Try and visualise a niche of automated systems slowly emerging after 2015, that has the following characteristics -

1 – it isn’t as intelligent, in the strict “generic intelligence” sense as humans
2 – it is no longer strictly under control of humans
3 – it barters with humans or other similar (or dissimilar!) systems
4 – it engages in creative or lateral strategies and somehow succeeds in developing or generating new strategies
5 – it does not in any way have a psychological makeup that is derivative or exemplary of a human psychology
6 – it may move in distinctly different media.

Examples of these might be

(a) a botnet that escapes control by its creators (or its creators all “fall away”), is programmed to protect itself and perpetuate itself, hires (mechanical turk style) human operators for tasks only humans can do, while evolving or generating new approaches to increase its “utility” or “suvivability” or “marketability”.

(b) a military or corporate or industrial or financial system that was given some level of autonomy, experiences the end of the cause it was supporting, and then survives by working on or experimenting with permutations of the original set of instructions it had – i.e. it survives as long as it generates new goals.

(c) a dummy company that isn’t an A.I. at all, but is a complex feedback mechanism of holding companies, investment funds, foundations, attorneys, numbered bank accounts, set instructions, acting on behalf of (for example) a dead billionaire, perpetuating itself despite any of the interlocking transactions making sense anymore – BUT THE COLLECTIVE still growing, expanding, taking on power and defending its abstract interests.

(d) a category of self-repairing machine toys that are hacked, proceed to generate algorithmic hacking tools and subroutines that allow the individual constituents of the clade of devices to defends its core values, acquire value, spread its memes (breed), repair damage, subvert other systems, exchange in trade or barter with similar entities.

The question for today is – how far are we from this point. Arguably, our international corporate sector has already evolved distinct features of self-perpetuation, value perpetuation, competitor eradication, bartering and politics that fall squarely in this category, and it can be argued that increasingly the values systems of such corporate entities transcend the values and utilities of its human founders, benefactors and constituents. We could already say the same of criminal syndicates.

As automation increases will this dehumanization increase? Will there be certain tipping points along the way in this trajectory? Can we leverage this process to our benefit or should we be cautious about it? Where should we watch for escalatory warning signs?

Is the emergence of unintended automated systems in our ever more complex human societies a safe development, even LONG before they actually get smart?

LOG

[12:00:54] Khannea Suntzu: Hello there
[12:00:58] Deerstripe chair red (unpolished) whispers:
[12:01:07] Ivy Sunkiller: no difference I’m afraid Kimiko
[12:01:08] Khannea Suntzu: Interesting
[12:01:20] Ivy Sunkiller: hello there people popping out of nowhere
[12:01:40] Peer Infinity kisses Khannea
[12:01:41] Kimiko Yiyuan: Awww.
[12:01:58] Bogdan Ixtab: hello
[12:02:04] Khannea Suntzu: Yelp!
[12:02:07] Kimiko Yiyuan: Ok. I shall remain a mystery then.
[12:02:22] Khannea Suntzu: Hey Peer
[12:02:33] Khannea Suntzu: I was momentarily zoning away love
[12:02:50] Jilli (jiiiianne.sideways): hello : )
[12:02:57] Peer Infinity: those panties look uncomfortable. would you like me to take them off for you?
[12:03:00] Ivy Sunkiller: hello Immm
[12:03:23] Khannea Suntzu: Dont bite them off me, those teeth look sharp and pointy!
[12:03:34] Seren (serendipity.seraph): hey immm
[12:03:34] Peer Infinity: hehe, ok
[12:03:48] Khannea Suntzu: You re so.. white, peer!
[12:03:54] Bryce Galbraith: Hi all
[12:03:58] Peer Infinity: yes I am
[12:04:08] Android Neox: Are we listening to Myster Science Theater?
[12:04:21] Seren (serendipity.seraph): hey Hell!
[12:04:36] Hell Otsuka: Hi.
[12:04:39] Seren (serendipity.seraph): perched on a lampshade.
[12:07:45] Khannea Suntzu: Mew!!
[12:08:03] Khannea Suntzu: Hey HEY this makes it harder to intone myself!!
[12:08:13] Khannea Suntzu: Ok shall I start?
[12:08:13] Ivy Sunkiller: the only talk around where you can torture the host all you want
[12:08:16] Peer Infinity: is this better?
[12:08:24] Khannea Suntzu: *gasp!* yes
[12:08:33] Bryce Galbraith: lol!
[12:08:36] Metafire Horsley: ok, 5t4r7
[12:08:40] Khannea Suntzu: Hey I am nothing if not accomodating
[12:08:49] Seren (serendipity.seraph): laughs!
[12:08:54] Peer Infinity playfully traces my furry finger around Khannea’s belly button
[12:09:03] Seren (serendipity.seraph): khannea takes on all comers..
[12:10:01] Khannea Suntzu: Welcome y’all to this sunday meeting of “Follow the White Rabbit Down The Rabbit Hole”, a mostly weekly event with the purpose of freeform, lateral, low-taboo, low authority discussion of the potentially societally disruptive as well as potentially very rewarding technological (and other?) changes in the next decades.
[12:10:20] Khannea Suntzu: You can talk *all you want*
[12:10:27] Khannea Suntzu: Just rip loose
[12:10:39] Khannea Suntzu: I’ll make a few suggestions
[12:12:03] Drake (drake8889.steerpike): Did they get the reactors contained? I have not heard anymore about that.
[12:12:45] Khannea Suntzu: Topics of interest in these talks are (positives) nanotechnology, new media, new energy, augmented reality, virtual reality, simulation, robotics, cybernetics, nootropics, near-space industrialization, 3D printing, gaming, life extension, biogenetics, rejuvenation, artificial intelligence (and many other things) as well as (negatives) resouerce depletion, state mismanagement, the environmental debate, the left-right debate, the collapse of current state models, debts, the dollar problem, imperialism, corporatism, terrorism, state fascism, overtaxation (and many other things).
[12:13:08] Khannea Suntzu: This should not be a utopia forum. This should not be a dystopia forum. Ideally this should be a discussion forum about objective, detached, slighlty amused observers and educated commentators about global trends. Also, in all my talks I actively dissuade debate on “the Singularity“. While I favor the theoretical idea of “A” Singularity as a transitional event that would probably occur in some form between 2030 and 2050, we cannot say much about it since it implies (as yet) absolute unknowns so for practical reasons I choose not to debate it in this series of forums.
[12:13:25] Khannea Suntzu: Sing-U-La-Ri-Ty
[12:13:51] Bryce Galbraith: gotcha…
[12:13:55] Khannea Suntzu: Oh anyone hasnt seen Rays movie btw and wants to see it I can share it through dropbox. <a href="mailto:khannea.suntzu@gmail.com"Email me.
[12:14:05] Khannea Suntzu: But aside from that…
[12:14:15] Khannea Suntzu: One set of important premises of my current series of forums is to look at the people worth considering – “My Kind Of People”. That may seem selfish or even elitist or cultist, but let me insist. The world is in my opinion not doing very well and insofar people agree, either most people are apathic about it, or are actively opposing finding solutions. I most certainly do NOT include greedy corporates, sell-outs, shills and enablers, criminals and gangsters, oligarchs, populists, demogogues and lying career politicians. I also have not a shred of patience for all those civilian simpletons out there glued to their television, consuming away all day, assuming like sheep it’ll all be the same more or less forever.
[12:15:07] Khannea Suntzu: Yah I am becoming a little more outspoken
[12:15:18] Khannea Suntzu: On that note did Rachel show up today?
[12:15:24] Khannea Suntzu: Rachel?
[12:15:30] Ivy Sunkiller: not that I know
[12:15:34] Khannea Suntzu: Oh darn it
[12:15:37] Khannea Suntzu: I advocate an activist militant counterculture of self-empowerment, lateral thinking, expediency, independence and (if need be) secessionism. I think our collective establishment us poisoned by self-interest and lack of ideals. Our political castes are sell-outs and hipocrites, and we need to get of our asses since nobody is going to do it for us. No I can say all these nice intense phrases and you will probably start feeling all warm and like pirate Jack Sparrow inside, about unless you do the following things it’ll be all much for nought.
[12:15:47] Seren (serendipity.seraph): do you consinder “greedy” as synonymous with corporate? How do you tell if a politician is lying?
[12:15:56] Khannea Suntzu giggles
[12:16:14] Ivy Sunkiller: Seren: politicians are lying by default, that’s their job
[12:16:19] Khannea Suntzu looks enigmatic at serendipity
[12:16:40] Seren (serendipity.seraph): but *rational* self interest is my ideal
[12:16:41] Khannea Suntzu: (1) you face up to reality and stop living in denial. (2) You learn to dtsitinguish facts from fiction and you make damnn sure you get information, good theories, proper tools, and you distill information from this, and then (3) you act on this information, face up to the fact that the majority of poeople out there do not (yet) have your interests at heart, and it’ll only get worse before it gets better. We live in an extraordinary era, and the consequences of this should be clear to anyone with half a brain – what’s worse, we live in a crucial transitional phase in history, a fact that should be clear if you are a little smarter and more educated that the common idiots. The consequences of this is that the more crucial this moment in time, the more significant everything stupid, superstitious, selfish, charitable, constructive or destructive done right now.
[12:17:20] Khannea Suntzu: Most here know – somewhere before 2050 in either of three ways (and maybe in a way I don’t envision yet) “we” will end up with a new nonhuman intelligence sharing this planet with us. Of this new intelligence we know only a few things. We can safely say once near-human general artificial intelligence emerges it will become a LOT smarter than average or even exemplary human intelligence and it will do so very fast. What happens next we know very little, other than that it can get very good, or very bad, and if we get the worst possible result may get very good for a small number of people and unspeakably horrendous for everyone else.
[12:17:40] Khannea Suntzu: Now who here thinks that is pretty unlikely?
[12:18:54] Bryce Galbraith: hmmm… by 2050?
[12:19:03] Khannea Suntzu: So everyone – literally everyone here – subscribes to the idea we can create or generate strong AI this century?
[12:19:06] Seren (serendipity.seraph): AGI is unlikely if we screw up badly enough. Otherwise I am pretty sure of it
[12:19:16] Ivy Sunkiller: 2050 matches Ray’s prediction of 2045, so yeah
[12:19:16] Hell Otsuka: expectedly approximately, Bryce.
[12:19:36] Khannea Suntzu: Non general AI a lot earlier
[12:19:48] Khannea Suntzu: General AI on par with humans, earlier
[12:19:52] Seren (serendipity.seraph): We have non general AI now. It is ubiquitous. I am married to one.
[12:20:10] Khannea Suntzu: stuff that will make us all unemployable, probably 2035
[12:20:16] Hell Otsuka: I do have noticeable doubts about possibility of an acceptable AI, but it doesn’t change much for me besides having significant interest in other possibilities.
[12:20:18] Peer Infinity: agreed. humanity might not survive long enough to create an AGI, but other than that, yeah, we’re likely to create strong AI this century.
[12:20:35] Khannea Suntzu: wow you are an easy crowd
[12:20:40] Bogdan Ixtab: we can get a global dictatorship with the stated goal of preventing AGI and technology advanceme nt in general; that would be the only likely scenario for stagnation in my view
[12:20:45] Khannea Suntzu: I wish I got laid that easy
[12:20:52] Hell Otsuka: Hello to `preachers to the converted`.
[12:20:56] Laserkitty Ling (laserhop.rothschild): bites lip
[12:21:00] Peer Infinity: um… afaik you do get laid that easy, Khannea
[12:21:03] Ivy Sunkiller: Bogdan: that or going back to stones and sticks era :p
[12:21:06] Khannea Suntzu: I state that in the long term for the next century or centuries, there are no other options, with my current understanding of science statistics than the followint – (1) we collapse into a more or less irreversible dark ages, comparable to a worldwide afghanistan, with very little progress, that may last us thousands of years (i.e. for all practical purposes forever) – (2) the human species (and probably most complex vertebrate life) goes extinct somewhere this century or the next century, either by a series of escalating existential catastrophes, or by being replaced by something manmade and ruthless), (3) we enter into a singularity state, which can be a range of literally hundreds of different technological hyper-surreal -development scenarios.
[12:21:23] Seren (serendipity.seraph): in 2035 my primary will be *egads* 80 and of doubtful employability barring anti-aging advances in any case.
[12:21:55] Khannea Suntzu: Life extensionh please gods, lets fret over that another day
[12:22:15] Bryce Galbraith:
[12:22:19] Seren (serendipity.seraph): we could easily lose the tech basis to create AGI or nanotech or even tread water where we are.
[12:22:19] Hell Otsuka: Bogdan, it doesn’t have to be dictatorship that much; rather, if no obvious way for making an AGI friendly is found, it will be paranoidally banned.
[12:22:23] Khannea Suntzu: So three scenarios…..
[12:22:26] Bryce Galbraith: Yes, clinical immortality is another topic ….
[12:22:32] Khannea Suntzu: we become cavepeople (mad max world, i.e. afghanistan everywhere)
[12:22:37] Khannea Suntzu: we all die horribly before that
[12:22:44] Khannea Suntzu: or there is singularity and some or most humans survive, though possibly in another form.
[12:22:56] Khannea Suntzu: you guys see alternatives happen before say, 2200?
[12:23:02] Khannea Suntzu: A, B or C
[12:23:19] Khannea Suntzu: aliens from reta riticuli?
[12:23:27] Peer Infinity: Serendipity just described scenario D
[12:23:40] Khannea Suntzu: (red: Ok… so Serendipity subscribes to a ‘steady state scenario’ of treading water. I do not believe in that at all – I think we will have a resource collapse and massive wars before that)
[12:23:46] Ivy Sunkiller: Moties? :p
[12:23:53] Khannea Suntzu: Heh
[12:23:57] Bogdan Ixtab: hell, if the state is not totalitarian, there will always be powerfull underground movements that may develop their own AGI which will then take over
[12:24:18] Khannea Suntzu: In all these cases the lynchpin is the creation of something that overcomes problems and challenges smarter than a human being. Or faster. Or simply better. Or in a radically different manner. We always assume this is artificial intelligence.
[12:24:29] Peer Infinity: and two other people described scenario E
[12:24:32] Ivy Sunkiller: ah underground of AGI, how fascinating
[12:24:37] Hell Otsuka: Bogdan: … which will then be “we all die” scenario, indeed.
[12:24:39] Seren (serendipity.seraph): with tech enabled universal surveillance it will become much harder to have and effective underground
[12:24:51] Khannea Suntzu: Garage AI, oh at some point it will become ‘easier and easier’
[12:24:56] Ivy Sunkiller: I for once welcome our new robot overlords!
[12:25:02] Bryce Galbraith:
[12:25:06] Khannea Suntzu: Eliezer Yudkowsky had a nice quote on that
[12:25:07] Bogdan Ixtab: yeah, pretty much
[12:25:41] Seren (serendipity.seraph): I am so disappointed in “my poor humans” that I would welcome something better.
[12:25:41] Khannea Suntzu: Today I’d like to look at features in several distinct domains. This may get a little abstract so bear with me. The domains are: (a) the realm of evolutionary adaptation in life; (b) the realm of virtual reality, as well as all realms of games, game design, simulations; (c) the realms of financial and legal constructs; (d) the realm of metaphysics, magic, spirituality and other allegedly “fictional” metaphors.
[12:26:17] Khannea Suntzu: Yes you heard that correctly
[12:26:32] Khannea Suntzu: I included fictional shit, as a brainstornming tool
[12:26:43] Seren (serendipity.seraph): you don’t give over-limit you area, do ya?
[12:26:54] Peer Infinity: I think the quote was something like “Every 18 months, the IQ required to exterminate humanity drops by 2 points”
[12:27:01] Khannea Suntzu: Gibson did so too, with his voodoo AI. It’s all about understandable metaphors.
[12:27:04] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Peer, lol
[12:27:08] Lolle Edenbaum: Says who @Peer?
[12:27:09] Khannea Suntzu: Yah that was the quote
[12:27:16] Khannea Suntzu: Elizer
[12:27:27] Khannea Suntzu: In these (and many other) niches we can postulate beings (..animals) that have goals, try to survive, try to defend, tro to procreate or at least pass on traits, engage in politics, engage in accumulation if wealth, control the environment. In the above environments aninmals do it, computer viruses do it, governments do it, banks do it, demons and angels do it, gods do it. Fictional entities doesn’t make much difference – virtual realities are fictional anyways – the argument I am making is that we can postulate several overlapping arenas in the REAL world of scarcities and competition, specifically ‘cyberspace’,
‘the financial sector’, and ‘the physical world’ where soon we will be facing (and we may be argued to be already be implictly in competition with) nonhuman consumers.
[12:28:03] Khannea Suntzu: And – they dont need to be smart yet
[12:28:14] Khannea Suntzu: case in point – US presidents
[12:28:31] Khannea Suntzu: The problem is this:
[12:28:33] Khannea Suntzu: Take for instance this quote: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
[12:28:35] Seren (serendipity.seraph): sure. try playing poker or chess agains even a modest program..
[12:29:24] Seren (serendipity.seraph): or to put it another way, a theft from anything productive you could have done with those resources
[12:29:24] Khannea Suntzu: So what is it about military expenditures that compells a state to spend more and more collective (societal?) scarce resources oh a pursuit that can ih a way be argued to be an irrational waste. Let’s try and cal this the X factor. The X factor would be the critical reason that compells humans, sometimes in the face if reason, to waste resources on irrationalities. It might be fear, it might be a system that evolved out iof bounds, it might be systemic corruption. Whatever the causator of X is, or the operating mechanism of X is, let’s summarize X is the factor that detracts resources from humans and wastes it on something else, on behalf of some kind of error, or a selfperpetuating parasytic feedback loop.
[12:29:58] Metafire Horsley: Ah, I have to remember that … *human life is not productive* ^^
[12:30:11] Seren (serendipity.seraph): most states don’t spend more and more on this. only empire stage states generally do or ones feeling very threatened
[12:30:18] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): hi kimiko
[12:30:44] Seren (serendipity.seraph): the US spends a far larger part of its budget on “defense” than any other nation
[12:30:54] Khannea Suntzu: Can you guys give me an example of really stupid waste of valuable resources on absolute bullshit that isn’;t even fun (othe than war of course) that waste monumental resources.
[12:31:04] Khannea Suntzu: An yes religions is a bit easy too
[12:31:16] Seren (serendipity.seraph): who said that, meta?
[12:31:22] Ivy Sunkiller: Khani: biofuels?
[12:31:28] Bryce Galbraith: Hi Rhi
[12:31:52] Metafire Horsley: I thought that was the gist of what you were saying, Seren.
[12:32:02] Khannea Suntzu: Interesting Ivy. Is the idea if Biofuels, a monumental and total parasytic waste oif collective resources?
[12:32:15] Khannea Suntzu: A total catastrophe?
[12:32:16] Seren (serendipity.seraph): uh, paying for an ever-growing parasitical government isn’t my idea of fun.
[12:32:23] Ivy Sunkiller: well it does take more oil to produce biofuels than you get from it
[12:32:41] Peer Infinity: this is kidna off-topic now, but I remember seeing a LJ post by someone who argued that since it costs about $800 to save the life of an african child, we can refer to the amount of $800 as “one dead child”. so, you could say, for example, “this car costs 20 dead children”…
[12:32:44] Hell Otsuka: K, every resource expenditure has *some* meaning; at most it might be staggeringly ineffective.
[12:32:56] Seren (serendipity.seraph): not at all meta. I said the resources used for war could be used much more productively or that was what was meant
[12:33:14] Khannea Suntzu: The point is
[12:33:19] Khannea Suntzu: My argument is
[12:33:20] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): So anyone mind sharing the topic with the entertainment?
[12:33:28] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Are we still on how to solve the energy crisis?
[12:33:36] Seren (serendipity.seraph): well that is really gruesome and unuseful way to put anything peer
[12:33:52] Khannea Suntzu: That there can be complex systems that can start living a life of their own, despite all commnon sense, and waste resources…. Systemic parasites….
[12:33:59] Seren (serendipity.seraph): those african children have no claims on my resources whatsoever
[12:34:07] Bogdan Ixtab: nothing is completely parasitic/usless, example: military usually encourages a lot tech advances
[12:34:15] Seren (serendipity.seraph): nor does anyone else unless I agree
[12:34:15] Khannea Suntzu: Industrial, technological, governmental, mjilitary parasitical waste machines
[12:34:27] Khannea Suntzu: We humans have always have exhibited signs of irrational faith in intangibles. I’d argue that we aren’t as smart as we like to think we are – 1350 grams of brain isn’t *that* much thinking matter. So with a relatively small computational tool we must somehow make sense of a reality that is far too comple to do so. To make sense of an excessively complex world we outsourced a shared apparatus of understanding, or resolving debates on what istrue or false. We only very recently, one can argue just decades or years ago, evolved a real mechanism of determining nonsense from fact, but this traces back along the path of enlightenment, scientific method, etc. We are doing better and better, but nearly quick enough, as our world explodes in conmplexity, and thje vast majority of our co-humans aree still not using proper cognitive tools. In other words – mpst humans haven’t caught up yet, and since the laggards DO have a vote, we face a near unsustaiable if not catastrophic situation that our society is vulnerable to…
[12:34:27] Khannea Suntzu: all minds of systemic exploits, cognitive frailties, collective superstitions, etc.
[12:34:30] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Bog, true but sometimes the distortions worsen the results
[12:34:39] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): hi Veronica!
[12:34:43] Bryce Galbraith: Hi Veronica
[12:34:48] Seren (serendipity.seraph): that tech advantages happen for weapons of war does not justify all that money going to weapons of war
[12:35:08] Veronica Christenson: Hello again Rhiannon and Bryce
[12:35:39] Khannea Suntzu: We are as a species getting somewhat better at deciding what is bullshit
[12:35:48] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): By the same token, Khannea, we were supposed to run out of oil in the 30′s; the bufallo was supposed to be extinct in the 20′s; we underestimate human ingenuity. You should read “The Bountiful Earth,” which argues that human genius, unleashed, will provide.
[12:35:49] Khannea Suntzu: we dont build pyramid anymnore
[12:35:53] Veronica Christenson: why do I feel like i am in Gor… ~shivers~
[12:35:55] Ivy Sunkiller: as fast as we produce that bullshit K?
[12:35:59] Seren (serendipity.seraph): our evolved psychology and intelligence is less and less sufficient as the world complexifies faster and faster
[12:36:02] Khannea Suntzu: That WAS a bit of a bad idea, Pyramids.
[12:36:04] Seren (serendipity.seraph): is the gist of it
[12:36:17] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): No, “Their resourceful earth”
[12:36:20] Hell Otsuka: I have a hypothesis that most of thinking inefficiences arise from obsolete memes we all cling to. *(Red: link: )
[12:36:23] Khannea Suntzu: But so many people are still systemically clueless
[12:36:56] Seren (serendipity.seraph): please show me how we will unleash it, rhi. I agree but it would be great to have the means in hand to do so.
[12:36:56] Ivy Sunkiller: ups, sorry Rhi if that kicked you off
[12:37:10] Khannea Suntzu: Now look at the examples I gave on my blog in somewehat more detail. Feel free to discuss each example, and try and give angles and variations on these scenarios. Feel free to deconstruct these, or demonize or cry wolf about them.
[12:37:13] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): I was wondering, Ivy
[12:37:25] Khannea Suntzu: Now I need you peeps to think along
[12:37:33] Bryce Galbraith: Ah, okay… The Resourceful Earth…
[12:37:37] Khannea Suntzu: This is where the rubber hits the road so to speak
[12:37:49] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): You’ve read it, Bryce?
[12:37:49] Khannea Suntzu: Scenario one: In 2013 a number of hackers in service of a major illicit banking kartel face immediate arrest by interpol and the CIA. They run a botnet, and they do not trust their sponsors (the banks), or each other, so they program the botnet to be self-hiding. The systejm works through subsidiaries that do not realize what they are working for. The Botnet is not intelligent but it is programmed to quickly change strategies, bank accounts, severs. In 2013 it owns 20 million dollars in a large number of bank accounts. The system analyzes economic data and decides that it does not want to hold dollars anymore, and it reinvests in minerals and gold. After a hypothetical crash in 2015 thesystem is suddenly twenty times as “rich”. It hires human hackers and goons to do its bidding. It learns that it is most expedient to kill these hackers by poisoning them after using them for these assignments. By doing so the system keeps getting progressively richer and richer and it finds it gets more resilient and robust by getting specific types of servers, in specific countries. It also is able to effectively model how to evade escaping notice from international legal entities OR in some cases act as “benefactor” or “facilitator” to law enforcement (that strange guardian angel) with gentle nudges here and there. Even in 2022 the system is not intelligent by any measure even if it now occasionally does call people and leaves voice messages with detailed (but sometimes slighly odd) instructions.
[12:37:53] Seren (serendipity.seraph): actually our evolved psychology is very problematic for living in the future that is coming and partially here now
[12:38:31] Bryce Galbraith: No, haven’t read it Rhi… was just trying to look it up and at first I was in my browser window searching for Bountiful Earth and didn’t get any hits…
[12:38:34] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): hi Cousin!
[12:38:49] Khannea Suntzu: Emphasis – this hypothetical botnet is NOT inteligent at all
[12:38:50] Bryce Galbraith: That’s when I flipped back and saw you put up corrected title
[12:38:53] Veronica Christenson: …okay… so where is the handsome male dancer for the woman?
[12:38:57] Seren (serendipity.seraph): reminds me of the Saurez books that are highly recommended. Daemon and Freedom
[12:39:14] Ivy Sunkiller: Veronica: I’m trying to convince Arisia, it’s hard
[12:39:21] Khannea Suntzu: Any comments on Scenario one ? Feel free to discuss. YES this is a somewhat contrived scenario. Its fictional and not very likely. YES all these conputer people will be in stitches over my ignorance. But bear with me. Can hardware/software specialists give me some creatie examples on how systems like these COULD operate with some degree of independence at some point in the future?
[12:39:29] Arisia Vita: me? horrors!!!
[12:39:57] Bryce Galbraith: I started in on Daemon… it’s fairly well done but somehow I can’t quite get into it. Not sure why. I give him a lot of credit for getting his technical details straight though.
[12:39:59] Khannea Suntzu: Discuss
[12:40:03] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Um. Khannea, what was scenario one? Send it to me in IM, please
[12:40:12] Bogdan Ixtab: computer viruses are examples of independent non-intelligent entities
[12:40:22] Peer Infinity: not intelligent? the behaviour you just described sounds kinda intelligent to me. did you mean “not sentient”? or “not generally intelligent”?
[12:40:31] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): The basic thesis is Bryce, the resources are there; we just have to get to them. It’s like Wyat’s Torch in Atlas Shrugged.
[12:40:37] Bogdan Ixtab: not generally intelligent I assume
[12:40:39] Seren (serendipity.seraph): It is very likely actually, under some scenario
[12:40:46] Khannea Suntzu: About as smart as a strategy game
[12:41:12] Seren (serendipity.seraph): botnets are large and sophisticated today. what you are talking about is simple adaptive programming. hard to debug and predict even if you wrote it.
[12:41:30] Veronica Christenson: wonders where the maid is who is going to clean up the blood on the floor
[12:41:33] Seren (serendipity.seraph): to many branching possibilities.
[12:41:42] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Khannea, Scenario one is like “When the Sleeper Awakes,” only digital.
[12:41:51] Khannea Suntzu: We have an Alice in a Cage veronica
[12:41:59] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Very plausible, once you grant certain assumptions about the concentration of capital
[12:42:08] Veronica Christenson: goodie
[12:42:41] Bryce Galbraith: Scenario 1 reminds me of Keyser Soze as an AI
[12:42:43] Khannea Suntzu: As time progreses
[12:42:58] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Veronica, don’t give them ideas; they might make me rez my bucket
[12:43:08] Khannea Suntzu: A phenomenon like this become nore likely….
[12:43:20] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Yeah, we have the AI taking the place of the Sleeper in the Wells story
[12:43:20] Seren (serendipity.seraph): I have my suspicion that many botnets are actually run by the government to sieze control of the population’s computational and communication resources in “an emergency”
[12:43:28] Lolle Edenbaum: @ Hell otsuka could you explain your hypothesis please?
[12:43:28] Bryce Galbraith: Thanks for the quick summary on Resourceful Earth too Rhi.
[12:44:03] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Seren, but the trouble is the government has arranged the internet so that it is uncontrollable; all attempts to contro it will fail. The geenie is out of the bottle.
[12:44:13] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): ty, Bryce
[12:44:15] Veronica Christenson: the government arranged that?
[12:44:38] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Vernoica, yes; the internet was supposed to be the post apocalyptic communications system
[12:44:41] Cousin Hermit: The Government did NOT invent the internet, hackers did.
[12:44:43] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): *genie
[12:44:53] Veronica Christenson: I cannot imagine the government intentionally arranging anything that they could not control
[12:44:54] Bogdan Ixtab: yes, it was designed to survive nuclear war
[12:45:02] Cousin Hermit: no
[12:45:19] Seren (serendipity.seraph): why not? they now claim the legal right to strip anyone of computers at the border and to invade private citizen’s computers by means well-known by hackers and to do so without warrants or suspicion
[12:45:19] Veronica Christenson: I thought the geeks were responsible for the internet
[12:45:22] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Veronica, the idea was that an enemy could not control it and that the poulation would then receive government information.
[12:45:32] Hell Otsuka: Veronica, they arranged it so that it would survive anything; it would survive attempts to control too, conincidentally.
[12:45:45] Seren (serendipity.seraph): the power of modern computational tools, mobile phones and communications scares governments
[12:45:45] Veronica Christenson: Who exactly are they?
[12:45:56] Khannea Suntzu: Hmm yummy *they*
[12:46:05] Cousin Hermit: The “Corporatocracy” is NOT the government.
[12:46:06] Hell Otsuka: Veronica: govermentally-funded hackers-engineers.
[12:46:08] Veronica Christenson: The USA in particular, or a world wide governing body
[12:46:09] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Veronica, the DOD
[12:46:20] Seren (serendipity.seraph): geeks are responsible for the internet.
[12:46:29] Veronica Christenson: that is what I heard also Seren
[12:46:30] Bogdan Ixtab: the protocols that are the foundation of internet were developed by DARPA in the 70′s
[12:46:32] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Ultimately, Seren.
[12:46:38] Seren (serendipity.seraph): but many worked for the government in the beginning.
[12:46:40] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): But it was DOD geeks
[12:46:41] Cousin Hermit: Intelligent people can do what ever they want regardless of any attempt to control them.
[12:46:54] Cousin Hermit: No Rhia.
[12:47:13] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Exactly, Cousin; there is an attempt to put all IP’s through one server; heh, one off shore hacker can stop that.
[12:47:17] Ivy Sunkiller: Cousin: well regardless of her intellect Khani can’t, say, move in her position atm *chuckles*
[12:47:23] Seren (serendipity.seraph): no. the internet as it is usually used as synonymous with the web only came into being in 1991 or so.
[12:47:37] Seren (serendipity.seraph): the internet based on TCP-IP came from IETF work
[12:47:47] Veronica Christenson: what is IETF?
[12:47:48] Hell Otsuka: … regarding scenario 1: I’m not sure how complex such system would have to be (on a scale between modern AI attempts and human-level AGI).
[12:47:52] Khannea Suntzu: Earlier today a someone was sitting here at the meeting at Serendipities, like an office away where the guys INVENTED darpanet. Zhe dreank coffee with em.
[12:47:57] Bryce Galbraith: IETF = Internet Engineering Task Force
[12:47:58] Seren (serendipity.seraph): earlier networks like DARPA net came from government and universities
[12:48:13] Veronica Christenson: And who funded that group Bryce?
[12:48:21] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): ok, Khannea, scenario 2, please, for the enterstainment
[12:48:21] Seren (serendipity.seraph): it is an grass roots group
[12:48:24] Seren (serendipity.seraph): of geeks
[12:48:30] Bryce Galbraith: It’s pretty much volunteers Veronica.
[12:48:31] Cousin Hermit: The point is that smart people can do good things regardless of any controlling factor.
[12:48:34] Khannea Suntzu: Ok
[12:48:40] Shiki Scarlet (jacen.helix) is Offline
[12:48:40] Khannea Suntzu: Scenario two
[12:48:41] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Seren, I know, it was started by Al Gore
[12:48:42] Khannea Suntzu: Scenario two: An angry billionaire is locked out of the US, the EU and cannot get help as he is slowly dying of a wasting disease. He is angry and concocts vengeance. He creates a series of dummy companies, legal firms that follow sets of very precise, independently very reasonable instructions that, when interacting, constantly conspire to destabilize certain markets. The creation is legal and does not violate laws. However after the billionaire’s death the instructions take on a life of its own since they involve the creation of new companies, new goals, new targets, new strategies. After a few years the interlocking web of transactors do things the original creator would have never envisioned, intended, believed or anticipated. Also, it’s far bigger, and none of the component parts of the ‘conspiracy’ have a clue what they are doing anymore.
[12:48:42] Veronica Christenson: so not a Government?
[12:48:47] Ivy Sunkiller: Cousin: +1
[12:48:54] Bryce Galbraith: Or, it’s technical follks who had day jobs working different places, but in their off hours they worked on IETF projects too.
[12:49:08] Bryce Galbraith: So you might say that they are indirectly supported by companies and governments.
[12:49:17] Veronica Christenson: maybe
[12:49:22] Seren (serendipity.seraph): sounds largely like Daemon, khannea
[12:49:43] Bryce Galbraith: I’ve been reading Tim Berners-Lee’s book ‘Weaving the Web’ a bit too, and it is interesting in how he describes developing the first web server.
[12:49:46] Khannea Suntzu: No emphasis on automated systems this time
[12:50:02] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Well, that could happen, I suppose; hey, I think that would make a good spy thriller; thanks for the idea, Khannea
[12:50:07] Bryce Galbraith: A lot of these ideas have been floating around for a while, and in fact come up multiple times until somebody manages to put them together.
[12:50:31] Seren (serendipity.seraph): an actuall disgruntled billionaire would set up a lot of automation to do the work and monitor it
[12:50:41] Metafire Horsley: That idea sounds a bit like what happened to religions. Speak unintended consequences.
[12:50:46] Khannea Suntzu: It would be easier WITH automation
[12:50:49] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Well, wikileaks could have been a spy thriller; with James Bond sent out tostop the problem, or maybe Steed and Emma Peel, as it sounds more like their cup of tea
[12:51:01] Cousin Hermit: Corporations are such automations which should be stopped.
[12:51:18] Khannea Suntzu: But the pont is you can make people act like marionettes by binding them with laws
[12:51:21] Peer Infinity: so far both of these scenarios seem to require the AI to be generally intelligent. In both scenarios, the programmer wouldn’t be able to think of all of the unexpected scenarios the AI would have to adapt to, and so the AI would have to do at least some learning and some general problem solving on its own. so you might as well call it an AGI.
[12:51:28] Khannea Suntzu: and money
[12:51:35] Veronica Christenson: I was on a team to assist small communities to bring the internet into their lives… at that time, it was thought, that advertisements would not be possible via the internet, because anyone advertizing would be flamed and thus shut down…. Boy were they wrong about that one
[12:51:56] Peer Infinity: or, if the AI is not generally intelligent, then the plan will go horribly wrong as soon as something unexpected happens.
[12:52:19] Bryce Galbraith: Interesting Veronica Advertising is such a huge thing online now…
[12:52:24] Veronica Christenson: yes
[12:52:26] Seren (serendipity.seraph): actually no. in Daemon the automation is not an AGI at all.
[12:52:30] Lolle Edenbaum: So far both scenarios are also based on our fniancial system that invlolves money (or any other “token currency”)
[12:52:32] Khannea Suntzu: Peer right now these two scenarios are inplausigble in 2011… and in 2050 AGI seems almost inescapable…. so where do the two meet halfway?
[12:52:32] Cousin Hermit: This is why we have the concept of “The Black Swan” … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqvPpQKsYoA
[12:52:35] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): hmm, all this reminds me of the Koontz book where a linden like corporation creates an AI in a small town near Silicon Valley; it has access to all the information on the internet and goes ‘Jeeprs, humans kill beiings like me,’ and takes defensive action.
[12:52:41] Seren (serendipity.seraph): but far more extensive than these two scenarios
[12:53:11] Veronica Christenson: when money is an outcome, there is little that can stop what is necessary to gain it
[12:53:48] Seren (serendipity.seraph): there can be no technological world short of full machine level nanotechnology without money – without fungible wealth tokens
[12:53:54] Khannea Suntzu: Scenario three is a great deal weirder
[12:53:59] Lolle Edenbaum: Based on money being an objective , yes.
[12:54:09] Khannea Suntzu: Scenario three: A genius creates a software utility that is absoolutely great in seklforganizing logistical databases. Then the genius goes mad and his conpany goes bankrupt. But everybody keeps using his software. What nobody knows is that the software has a backdoor and several errors, which after a few years break. The software tries to correct itself, but since the utility runs oh thousands of servers, and logistical systems worldwide, and nobody really cares what uit does, as long as it works well, they don’t care that some of the devices fall of the grid now and then. They have an abstract goal intent on protecting the integrity of the database structure, and to do that they do whatever they can to take over small bits of cloud computing space here..and there… and it adds up. Then whenh the whole world starts automating faster and faster in the 2020s, the system starts eating up resources, and more and more robots go rogue, often with no duistinct purpose, but occasionally with very distinct goals. ESPECIALLY if the system can hijack infrastructure with 3D printers – it has very good use for THAT … Then in 2023 this ephemeral network starts BARTERING its excess capacity with other similar low-intelligent infomorphs for abstract, often very hard to pinpoint utilities and services. These interactions would then be characterized as “instinctive” engagements.
[12:54:16] Seren (serendipity.seraph): they are both plausible starting now.
[12:55:08] Kimiko Yiyuan: That sounds like a variation of the same story of the book that was already mentioned.
[12:55:16] Khannea Suntzu: One difference
[12:55:28] Veronica Christenson: Suddenly I felt as if I was a player in a game of clue…… must be the surroundings here
[12:55:35] Hell Otsuka: … and S3 also sounds like an implausible SF story.
[12:55:38] Khannea Suntzu: It engages in resources that do not *immediately* compete with human resources
[12:55:41] Cousin Hermit: Yes, 3-D Printers take AI to a new level.
[12:55:51] Seren (serendipity.seraph): you know there are multi-agent systems now that use economic bartering to decide what to do and what resources to use to do it, yes?
[12:56:17] Seren (serendipity.seraph): this is not far-fetched technically at all
[12:56:25] Khannea Suntzu: And it engages in barter with other similar systems ih abstract assets that would not be regarded as something ‘misappropriated’…
[12:56:44] Khannea Suntzu: Yep
[12:56:47] Khannea Suntzu: Logistics
[12:57:08] Peer Infinity: ooh, that’s an interesting question, Khannea (“where do the two meet halfway”). I’m surprised I hadn’t really thought of that much before. I was assuming that as soon as you have something that’s almost an AGI, it would take only a little bit more effort to make it into an actual AGI. And the AI could help with the process. And then there’s the detail that in the scenarios you described, if you give tha AI a specific goal to achieve, it is likely to figure out on its own that becoming more intelligent will help it achieve its goal. and so you end up getting a Singularity even in these scenarios.
[12:57:29] Seren (serendipity.seraph): monetary systems behind much investing and the huge huge area of currency swaps are all highly automated traders
[12:57:33] Khannea Suntzu: Nopes Peer
[12:57:36] Seren (serendipity.seraph): literally trading machines
[12:57:41] Khannea Suntzu: I wanted to avoid that in the discussion as such… but eventually sure, we’ll have one from girlscout cookies.
[12:57:52] Khannea Suntzu: The assymption is these systems do have initial values…
[12:58:11] Ivy Sunkiller: heya Arch
[12:58:11] Seren (serendipity.seraph): cool. It meets V. Love it!
[12:58:14] Peer Infinity: so the programmer explicitly programs the AI to not try to get smarter?
[12:58:19] Bogdan Ixtab: what do you mean by initial values? Initial goals?
[12:58:21] Khannea Suntzu: Or the values are irrational and they quickly transcend them to survive
[12:58:21] Kimiko Yiyuan: Is there also a scenario where a cyberweapon, a kind of hyperdeveloped Stuxnet thing, is sned to, say stop or halt a specific research project, is programmed to evolve so it can adapt to countermeasures and then goes loco and starts to well…starts to traget systems it was not intended to?
[12:58:37] Kimiko Yiyuan: target
[12:58:42] Khannea Suntzu: Thats my fourth
[12:58:50] Khannea Suntzu: hold on
[12:59:04] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): hi Arch!
[12:59:17] Seren (serendipity.seraph): our network of computational systems does things all the time they aren’t officially supposed to.
[12:59:20] Ivy Sunkiller: Khani: you have a bush between your legs!
[12:59:29] Khannea Suntzu: You have these nonintelligent systems and they do stuff because they are programnmed to do so
[12:59:46] Seren (serendipity.seraph): our abilities to model the interacitons of thousands to millions of computational entities is extremely limited
[12:59:48] Khannea Suntzu: But then they generate new goals procedurally
[13:00:03] Khannea Suntzu: ..need…more…cooling…stacks…
[13:00:09] Cousin Hermit: Still, it only takes a few intelligent people to actually “do” something to change things. That is why “they” try to make it sound like truly intelligent people are retarded and give them drugs to inhibit their super intellects.
[13:00:24] Khannea Suntzu: We call that instinct right?
[13:00:34] Lolle Edenbaum: Well, let us define “intelligence” and while we are at it, none of these scenarios seem to involve complex intelligent strategies, they all are based on us becoming more and more dolls to ourthe SYSTEMS we put in place to arrange things more easily.
[13:00:42] Seren (serendipity.seraph): what is procedurally though? It is some algorithm. We generated goals procedurally also. Just more squishy biological algorithms
[13:00:47] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Cousin, yeah, but “they” are closer than you think; there’s a sim that bans you if you’re too intelligent.
[13:00:49] Bogdan Ixtab: If they don’t have a stable “ultimate goal set”, they will fail ultimately
[13:01:01] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): It’s banned 3 people because the rumor had it that they were brilliant thinkers
[13:01:10] Ivy Sunkiller: do humans have ultimate goal set?
[13:01:19] Ivy Sunkiller: aside from exploiting other humans that is
[13:01:21] Khannea Suntzu: I do
[13:01:21] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Ivy, why to serve God, of course
[13:01:23] Seren (serendipity.seraph): yes. in bios madness and intelligence are not that far apart of course
[13:01:26] Arch (archmage.atlantis): Banning is only a roadblock
[13:01:31] Ivy Sunkiller: oh yes Rhi, I forgot!
[13:01:42] Khannea Suntzu: Scenario four: In 2020 a major middle east country collapses after the US withdraws military support. The country was using a black market combination of independently operating military robotics. These things can survive in the fields as snipers, minelayers. anti-personal systems, sentinel guns, drones for years in the field. Some are dirt cheap. Others are dug in, use 3D printers for spare parts. It all operates on solar energy. Then three years later the system decides that everyone in the area is a threat. Nobody cares and nobody believes the concerns of the local population. Everyone blames the Al Qaida DuJour for several years. After four years the death tally is half a million people and the system has started trasacting new assets – it downloaded parts to make nerve gas from simnple components, it is taking over local factories anhd it is systematically using nerve gas, scorched earth tactics, destroying croplands irreversibly. By 2028 the satelite maps show something is really wrong but the strategists have no clue howto get rid of thos entrenched problem. The devices are everywhere, dug in deep like mines and many of them mobile, smart, very creative, very flexible, constantly downloading ideas from the internet. It isn’t as sexy as a Skynet, and it won’t take over the world (and it is not as smart as a rat) but it spreads in the specific desertified, depopulated, poor regions.
[13:02:06] Kimiko Yiyuan: Good, so then we do have all the most popular scenarios in current scifi listed, I think. Or probably they are not that current, but rather old. I have not read that many scifi literature.
[13:02:14] Bogdan Ixtab: yes, humans have stable goal set – survival
[13:02:24] Cousin Hermit: As soon as you have a “plan” or an “organization” then “they” can disrupt it. This is why “Chaos Theory” is the only way to disrupt the system.
[13:02:37] Ivy Sunkiller: (( would be pretty funny if AGI invented religion and then started an inquisition against humanity to force us into beliveing in their god ))
[13:02:57] Arch (archmage.atlantis): There is no way, not even Chaos, to disrupt the instinct to survive
[13:02:58] Seren (serendipity.seraph): well, that one would take an AGI
[13:03:02] Khannea Suntzu: Artilects will blindside us so hard Ivy
[13:03:17] Khannea Suntzu: It will be death by delicious buttplugs
[13:03:18] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Ivy “And AC said, let there be light; and there was light”
[13:03:23] Seren (serendipity.seraph): a non-AGI is not going to independently research new things it might want to do and gather the means to do them.
[13:03:27] Ivy Sunkiller: haha
[13:03:39] Arch (archmage.atlantis): And this is the morning of the first day
[13:03:46] Bryce Galbraith: lol! I remember that short story Rhi — probably one of my favorites
[13:04:07] Ivy Sunkiller: “…and the lord took a piece of RAM from Adam…”
[13:04:11] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): That was Asimov’s “The Ultimate Question” Was presupposing that technology, advanced enough, would seem like magic
[13:04:16] Khannea Suntzu: everyone got scenario 4?
[13:04:18] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): And this was years before Clark said that.
[13:04:23] Kimiko Yiyuan: Probably as funny as stone age humans with nuclear power plants that would have left us their radiocative waste a few thousand years later.
[13:04:54] Khannea Suntzu: roadside picnic, strugasky
[13:05:09] Peer Infinity: I must ask: does anyone here, including Khannea, think that any of the scenarios that Khannea described are actually plausible? as in, actually likely to happen as Khannea described them?
[13:05:24] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Khannea, scenario 3 was in a SF story called “Killbird.”
[13:05:31] Arch (archmage.atlantis): Yes, I think all are plausible
[13:05:31] Ivy Sunkiller: Peer: does that matter?
[13:05:33] Seren (serendipity.seraph): yeah. four is implausible short of AGI . It is plausible that soldier robots can run amuck though.
[13:05:43] Arch (archmage.atlantis): I do not see any as ultimate
[13:05:48] Seren (serendipity.seraph): very plausible considering bugs in software!
[13:05:59] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): We have an enforcement system with mechanical birds that end up zapping everyone; we invent the killbirds to go after them; they generalizae their kill mission…
[13:06:00] Ivy Sunkiller: hah, bugs!
[13:06:02] Khannea Suntzu: They are brainstorning goalposts as far as I am concerned
[13:06:09] Peer Infinity: I’m just curious why we’re talking about these scenarios. just for fun?
[13:06:12] Ivy Sunkiller: – but I programmed you to stay stupid!
[13:06:27] Khannea Suntzu: I’ll get to a punchline Peer
[13:06:33] Seren (serendipity.seraph): not plausible in that actual military bots today are pretty fragile in that they take a lot of human support to keep running
[13:06:34] Ivy Sunkiller: – Line 1253, column 34, you put *BANG*
[13:06:43] Lolle Edenbaum: Another common component in all the scenraious is the neglegtion of “signs” that point out towards danger happening. What then is the answer? Laws and being attentive to our surroundings, more so, than we had to be (humanity) beofre, or better said, differently. And we are not “less” intelligent by definition. modern measurements of IQ have increased contuniuesly, but that is not to say that our ancestors were stupid. That has to do with the testing of the IQ which in essence tests our adabtability to various factors more common in our modern world…
[13:06:44] Bryce Galbraith:
[13:06:47] Arch (archmage.atlantis): It is our nature to inquire, Peer, it is what we do
[13:07:03] Arch (archmage.atlantis): By inquiry, we explosre
[13:07:23] Bryce Galbraith: Yeah, good point Seren… and in a desert environment things break down all the time too… sand getting into parts and whatnot.
[13:07:27] Arch (archmage.atlantis): By exploration, we learn
[13:07:40] Arch (archmage.atlantis): By learning, learn our nature
[13:07:42] Bogdan Ixtab: al scenarios have the following in common – a system that gathers more and more resources, but does not have a goal; however i’d argue in this case the goal seems to be to gather resources !
[13:07:51] Cousin Hermit: I’m surprised no one nuked Turks and Caicos yet.
[13:08:09] Kimiko Yiyuan: Actually I do not know that much about it that I would dare to stand up and say “That is totally implausible, if not impossible!” And that is probably the dilemma. Might happen, might not. Knowing a bit of history though many things often turn out totally different from how people envisioned them.
[13:08:09] Khannea Suntzu: we are doomed >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFg1DFziFg8
[13:08:27] Seren (serendipity.seraph): actually the botnet has a goal. survive and continue operations
[13:08:35] Kimiko Yiyuan: If they had ever really envisioned them at all.
[13:08:38] Bogdan Ixtab: nothing is impossible…nothing is certain either
[13:08:51] Metafire Horsley: The entities in those scenarios at least sound like they have the goal to survive. Doesn’t that need to be programmed somehow?
[13:08:53] Rhiannon Dragoone gave you Snapshot : Sunkiller Citadel, delinquent (182, 192, 501).
[13:09:12] Seren (serendipity.seraph): the disgruntled billionaire scenario has a goal – wreck vengence and/or push the world toward what the billionaire wanted
[13:09:40] Seren (serendipity.seraph): the bots have a goal – kill everything the thing is a non-friendly in the area
[13:09:47] Kimiko Yiyuan: Sounds a bit like a James Bond movie. The billionmaire that wants to destroy the world.
[13:09:51] Seren (serendipity.seraph): where is there absence of a goal?
[13:09:55] Arch (archmage.atlantis): That is good, Seren…..gives one something to push back against
[13:09:58] Khannea Suntzu: You can create lets say a few dozen of these experimental autonomous entities in the field
[13:10:31] Khannea Suntzu: 90% dies very quickly or gets rolled up. Eventually technology will allow a few to ‘cling on’
[13:10:45] Khannea Suntzu: and the bar for clinging on is gradually lowering
[13:10:47] Arch (archmage.atlantis): Yep, true K
[13:10:59] Khannea Suntzu: In all four examples there is a clear X, but there is also an Y. Can a few people put in to their own words what X was, then I’ll nove towards the factor which I for now will summarize as “Y”.
[13:11:08] Arch (archmage.atlantis): Perhaps not changing
[13:11:15] Seren (serendipity.seraph): there are things in the a-life research, artificial cyber critters, you wouldn’t want loose on the general network.
[13:11:15] Arch (archmage.atlantis): The bar that is
[13:11:27] Peer Infinity: so, yeah, unless you explicitly program the AI to not try to get more intelligent, it will realize that becoming more intelligent will help it achieve its goals. and you get a Singularity. It seems unlikely to me that the AI would be unable to make itself smarter, but would be able to do all the other things Khannea described it being able to do.
[13:11:33] Seren (serendipity.seraph): crazed cyber replicators
[13:11:42] Metafire Horsley: I don’t think that the bar for clinging on will be lowering significantly. Isn’t it to be expected that we will develop security measures against such scenarios that prevent most of them effectively?
[13:11:44] Khannea Suntzu: these things ‘do not realize’
[13:11:49] Khannea Suntzu: they dont think
[13:12:04] Khannea Suntzu: They just are
[13:12:11] Seren (serendipity.seraph): well, what is ‘thinking’?
[13:12:21] Peer Infinity: if they do not think, or do anything that resembles thought, then how do they respond to situations they weren’t expliclty programmed to handle?
[13:12:27] Arch (archmage.atlantis): Good thought, Seren
[13:12:33] Bogdan Ixtab: so there is a goal, and if the system has the capability of planning ro achieve it (e.g. generate subgoals like get more resources , become more effective in planning, etc) – then it is AGI.
[13:12:45] Seren (serendipity.seraph): bacteria don’t think but they do just fine
[13:12:45] Khannea Suntzu: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0s6vCAwGpM&feature=related
[13:13:24] Seren (serendipity.seraph): if they mutate/change even randomly under a fitness function then evolution is possible..
[13:13:30] Peer Infinity: bacteria have DNA, that can mutate, and through the help of natural selection, adapt to new environments.
[13:13:34] Arch (archmage.atlantis): fine is a word of judgement…….how is it that bacteria are judged to do just fine?
[13:13:47] Seren (serendipity.seraph): software systems can mutate..
[13:13:47] Ivy Sunkiller: bacteria + enough time = people
[13:13:52] Ivy Sunkiller: hello Lissie
[13:13:53] Bryce Galbraith: Hi Lissie
[13:14:07] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): HI LISSIE!
[13:14:10] Bogdan Ixtab: peer, they do not have to hardcode all their reactions, that would never work
[13:14:18] Cousin Hermit: Rube Goldberg
[13:14:27] Khannea Suntzu: X was
[13:14:34] Cousin Hermit: Setting up intentional events
[13:14:39] Khannea Suntzu: The parasyte factor
[13:14:47] Khannea Suntzu: Remember?
[13:14:49] Lissie Rumble: a computer is limited in connections and so can never be truly creative
[13:15:03] Seren (serendipity.seraph): we are limited in connections, lissie
[13:15:13] Lissie Rumble: to create is to own. to see is to make real. that is physics
[13:15:18] Peer Infinity: a human brain is limited in connections and so can never be truly creative
[13:15:19] Seren (serendipity.seraph): and most of ours are for running a body and swinging through trees anyway
[13:15:24] Khannea Suntzu: We just have 1350 grams in mind, 100 billion neurons
[13:15:26] Bogdan Ixtab: I don’t understand why computers can’t be creative
[13:15:40] Khannea Suntzu: We can match that in radioshack before 2025
[13:15:46] Lissie Rumble: a computer cannot influence reality on a quantum level
[13:16:04] Seren (serendipity.seraph): neither can we
[13:16:14] Khannea Suntzu: Much like a rocket cant push against a vacuum I suppose.
[13:16:15] Lissie Rumble: it can think, but the quantum experimental effect it just don’t do
[13:16:22] Peer Infinity: a human brain cannot influence reality on a quantum level
[13:16:31] Lissie Rumble: yes it can peer
[13:16:43] Seren (serendipity.seraph): not true. we can’t do anything with quantum events that any other lump of matter cannot do.
[13:16:43] Peer Infinity: explain please?
[13:16:46] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Peer, the human mind can influence reality on the quantum level; happens all the time
[13:17:02] Lissie Rumble: Peer, its called the xperimental effect
[13:17:04] Seren (serendipity.seraph): no it doesn’t
[13:17:06] Arch (archmage.atlantis): I might agree with Lisse, Peer….but not for the reasons
[13:17:15] Ivy Sunkiller: Jesus can influence reality on quantum level!
[13:17:17] Metafire Horsley: The human brain can influence reality on a quantum level by building quantum computers
[13:17:25] Lissie Rumble: ahhh meta
[13:17:26] Cousin Hermit: Literally ANYTHING can be proven with Quantum Physics … its like God!
[13:17:26] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): How do you explain the experiments, seren, where the scientits on the East Coast can think of the way particles spin, and they spin in exactly that way on the West Coast?
[13:17:29] Bogdan Ixtab: our world is fundamentally a quantum world, made of particles like electrons and quarks
[13:17:31] Seren (serendipity.seraph): that is an influence from simple interaction, not from merely thinking
[13:17:39] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): The Mind’s effect on quaqntum reality is well documented
[13:17:41] Seren (serendipity.seraph): or something more mystical
[13:17:46] Bogdan Ixtab: we influence the world therefore we influence the quantum world
[13:17:48] Peer Infinity: right, that’s the next thing I was going to mention – if a digital computer isn’t good enough, then you can use a quantum computer.
[13:17:48] Khannea Suntzu: Now thats what we assume that happens, but please lets not get into quantum observer bias untill we can ASK an AI on HER opinion. I have the AI to ask, don’t worry, she’ll be available march 2042.
[13:17:53] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Well, ok, maybe not mere thinking
[13:18:00] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): More like directed mental energy
[13:18:02] Lissie Rumble: yes Rhiannon
[13:18:14] Seren (serendipity.seraph): interaction with any matter/energy environment decoheres
[13:18:18] Khannea Suntzu: So everyone caught X?
[13:18:22] Lissie Rumble: a computer will never have it.
[13:18:23] Peer Infinity: god’s effect on quantum reality is well documented
[13:18:24] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): And action at a distance disappears with the idea of non-locality
[13:18:36] Khannea Suntzu: Now lets have a look at what I mean with Y.
[13:18:38] Arch (archmage.atlantis): An AI will not have a sexual component, at least that would be my thought
[13:18:49] Arch (archmage.atlantis): So no he or she
[13:18:52] Arch (archmage.atlantis): Or it
[13:18:54] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): So there can be a “physical” explanation, as long as we abandon traditional definitions of the physical
[13:18:56] Bogdan Ixtab: in the worst case scenario, we can build a perfect replica of a brain, down to the synapse level
[13:18:59] Seren (serendipity.seraph): ooh. look, a cute sexbot in the catalog!
[13:19:04] Lissie Rumble: if there is an AI it will be born from some bloke wanting a perfect sex toy
[13:19:06] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Seren, lmao
[13:19:06] Khannea Suntzu: Just you wait, Arch, just you wait
[13:19:20] Khannea Suntzu: Y is the factor where facilitating means can operate, in a given substrate, environment or niche, independently from humans, or even in direct competition with humans. In fiction the easiest deus ex machina is “magic”, an external explanatory device that acts as an excuse why nonhuman things can operate independently from humans. The Golem carried “the words of power” oh its forehead. Vampires are animated by “magical blood”. But what margin does exist, barring full intelligence, where automated devices, processes, organizations, industries, systems, however you dare call them – and compete, survive and use resources to their own benefit.
[13:19:38] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Lissie, I wrote a story about that, actually. Never got it published though
[13:19:45] Lissie Rumble: awwww
[13:19:59] Lissie Rumble: well, you have to try hard to get published
[13:19:59] Khannea Suntzu: What is this Quintessence?
[13:20:16] Khannea Suntzu: Max more would probably call it Extropia
[13:20:20] Lissie Rumble: 5 essence?
[13:20:21] Arch (archmage.atlantis): Or be hard, whichever
[13:20:27] Khannea Suntzu: The problem is that once we as a human species allow our planet to be shared by a new competetor, one that will evolve, and one that will make instinctively or algorithmically make use of our racial frailties. One we did not program or instruct?
[13:20:48] Seren (serendipity.seraph): sure. that will and is in part happening except when you say “their own benefit” there is a near assumption of sentience – of self-reflection.
[13:20:55] Veronica Christenson: are we talking aliens here?
[13:21:02] Khannea Suntzu: Now here is the most painful question we can ask
[13:21:02] Lissie Rumble: Khan, as soon as the computers compete, we will kill them
[13:21:10] Bryce Galbraith: Khannea — we already have competitors in the environment that evolve and make use of our frailties — we call them viruses.
[13:21:16] Khannea Suntzu: If these new agents evolve, and I am sure they are already appearing, or their appearance is certain, can we outlaw them? Do we need to start talkig about laws? How do we define these laws? And if so would these laws be applicagble to some financial or corporate or governmental or religious institutions right now? Today?
[13:21:33] Seren (serendipity.seraph): actually, no we won’t because we can’t compete with one another without them.
[13:21:40] Arch (archmage.atlantis): We are surrounded by aliens…..the lifeforms of this planet are alien to us as human
[13:21:44] Peer Infinity: as soon as the computers compete, they will kill us
[13:21:47] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Khannea, you’ve already, in your scenarios, shown the futility of outlawing them.
[13:21:50] Veronica Christenson: ?
[13:21:52] Lissie Rumble: I see. a computer in charge of a corporation would have god powers
[13:21:54] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): We will just have to find ways to co exist with them.
[13:22:00] Khannea Suntzu smiles
[13:22:02] Seren (serendipity.seraph): most of “human” body mass is not of human cells.
[13:22:05] Bogdan Ixtab: unfortunately peer is right
[13:22:25] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Like in the Koontz book; the AI would have been happy to even serve humans; in fact, he did in “his” town.
[13:22:29] Lissie Rumble: perhaps we should stop worrying and have lots of sex?
[13:22:36] Seren (serendipity.seraph): no, only corporate powers.
[13:22:45] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): He just stopped anyone from knowing about him, or if they did, from ever leaving “his” town
[13:22:46] Khannea Suntzu: Yes Lissie, thats my plan A
[13:22:49] Arch (archmage.atlantis): Seeing Peer pole dance, that is a bit fractal
[13:22:51] Veronica Christenson: Hear Hear Lissie…
[13:23:00] Bogdan Ixtab: lots of sex wont’ prevent apocalypse lol
[13:23:03] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Arch, what am I chopped liver?
[13:23:11] Seren (serendipity.seraph): bunny-lust
[13:23:14] Peer Infinity: having lots of sex is a good addition to almost any plan
[13:23:19] Arch (archmage.atlantis): No, just female
[13:23:21] Ivy Sunkiller: at least we can fuck till the bombs fall!
[13:23:26] Lissie Rumble: now here’s the big thought. for me anyway. If I had sex with a robot, would it be unfaithful??
[13:23:26] Veronica Christenson: just… female?
[13:23:35] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): just female, Arch? Just female?
[13:23:37] Khannea Suntzu: Arch is uebergay
[13:23:37] Arch (archmage.atlantis): Bombs are falling
[13:23:40] Metafire Horsley: Heh, is there any novel where lots of sex prevents the apocalypse? That would be interesting
[13:23:54] Seren (serendipity.seraph): would the robot be unfaithful? depends on its sexual contracts.
[13:24:22] Khannea Suntzu: There is also one where lots of sex creates a horrid demon god, slaanesh
[13:24:25] Lissie Rumble: oh god dammit that true. you are unfaithful if you care the robot unfaithful
[13:24:29] Kimiko Yiyuan: Maybe if it was a man – made apocalypse then it could be prevented by sex. Because usually people having sex are not working on world destruction at the same time. :d
[13:24:34] Khannea Suntzu: One could fuck up worse
[13:24:37] Lissie Rumble: so, by extension ….
[13:24:47] Veronica Christenson: I cannot imagine every losing my heart to a robot
[13:25:03] Arch (archmage.atlantis): “fuck up worse”….nice one
[13:25:07] Bogdan Ixtab: ok, people will be all occupied with sex, and the robots can handle the end of the world thing then
[13:25:08] Lissie Rumble: hehe
[13:25:17] Khannea Suntzu: If I were an AI and I’d want to kill humanity hunanely, I’d let them fuck themselves to death.
[13:25:22] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): hi Vick
[13:25:29] Lissie Rumble: but a computer could never do advanced maths
[13:25:39] Veronica Christenson: such a wonderfully pleasant way to die…
[13:25:45] Seren (serendipity.seraph): some would say that about digital people but it is all too easy to lose your heart to some of them.
[13:25:45] Lissie Rumble: advanced maths is all paradoxes
[13:25:58] Metafire Horsley: I think that should rather mean “but a human could never do advanced maths” ^^
[13:26:02] Lissie Rumble: no computer can do it
[13:26:29] Arch (archmage.atlantis): Ask Meta about advanced maths…..the horsey boy does know that
[13:26:37] Arch (archmage.atlantis): Dig
[13:26:43] Lolle Edenbaum: Which has nothing to do with them being digital but more with your brain being where life truly happens. (@ seren)
[13:26:44] Seren (serendipity.seraph): I want a symbol of khannea bound like this in a necklace before I join her cult and sent her all my money!
[13:26:49] Lissie Rumble: ok no computer can divide by 0. but humans do it easy
[13:26:54] Laserkitty Ling (laserhop.rothschild): bites her lip
[13:27:03] Bryce Galbraith: That brings up another scenario…. an AI computer develops and deems humans a threat… but it just finds a way to create safe spots for itself and then simply waits for humans to do themselves in
[13:27:05] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Seren, well you have my permission to use my snapshot
[13:27:11] Metafire Horsley: The human brain is not made for doing advanced maths. It can do it, but it does so badly.
[13:27:23] Lissie Rumble: Meta, it does it perfectly
[13:27:37] Ivy Sunkiller: perfectly, maybe, but very very slow
[13:27:41] Veronica Christenson: we are suppose to ask permission?
[13:27:59] Seren (serendipity.seraph): and only to a limited degree. the human mind only has a 7-9 item current conscious attention stack and its short term memory is quite atrocious
[13:28:10] Lissie Rumble: only the human brain can understand. a computer just follows orders
[13:28:16] Arch (archmage.atlantis): It does not, imo, do advanced math conciously, still it runs on the advanced math of the subconcious
[13:28:21] Seren (serendipity.seraph): its long term memory is as corrupt as hell so it confabulates to fill in all the details
[13:28:24] Lissie Rumble: yes Arch
[13:28:28] Hell Otsuka: Nope, human brain can’t understand either.
[13:28:51] Lissie Rumble: I disagree. I have two bows. and they both amazing
[13:28:58] Lissie Rumble: boys
[13:29:00] Lissie Rumble: sheesh
[13:29:01] Lissie Rumble: *Giggles*
[13:29:03] Bryce Galbraith:
[13:29:07] Bogdan Ixtab: everything in this univers just follows orders; the orders are the laws of physics
[13:29:10] Seren (serendipity.seraph): but it does all that it does at less than 35 watts of power consumed. that is amazing!
[13:29:24] Arch (archmage.atlantis): bows….geez….you expect them to bow to you?
[13:29:48] Bryce Galbraith: I have to confess this particular human-behind-the-keyboard is getting hungry…
[13:29:52] Bryce Galbraith: Been good talking with you all
[13:29:59] Bryce Galbraith: Thanks for hosting Khannea!
[13:30:08] Arch (archmage.atlantis): Namaste and Blessings Brucie
[13:30:11] Seren (serendipity.seraph): yes. this was a great talk.
[13:30:13] Khannea Suntzu: I realized yesterday that removing contactlenses with these extended fingernails is like really horrible.
[13:30:19] Ivy Sunkiller: if you want to fuck Khani – take a number and queue up!
[13:30:29] Peer Infinity takes a number
[13:30:30] Bryce Galbraith paid you L$200.
[13:30:49] Seren (serendipity.seraph): lmao
[13:30:50] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): yes, Khannea, always a pleasure to be here
[13:30:53] Metafire Horsley thinks ‘Peer infinity’s number is infinity’? ^^^
[13:30:55] Arch (archmage.atlantis): Oh, I thought you were gay, Peer…..sorry, my bad
[13:30:57] Veronica Christenson: I know of some very, nice, places for sensual exploration, and there are always some very helpful people there
[13:31:00] Kimiko Yiyuan: Hm. Somehow stating that humans, who pretty much “invented” math, advanced or not, by starting to think about it and doing it and constructing machines helping them in doing it do not have a brain advanced enough for doing it…that sounds a bit strange.
[13:31:01] Ivy Sunkiller: Khani will be available for your perverse needs in the dark room behind shortly
[13:31:08] Bryce Galbraith: see you all next time
[13:31:11] Peer Infinity: gay? I’m pansexual
[13:31:14] Ivy Sunkiller: byes Bryce
[13:31:19] Seren (serendipity.seraph): peer is VERY polymorphos perverse
[13:31:29] Seren (serendipity.seraph): the term was created for peer
[13:31:40] Lissie Rumble: perverse
[13:31:46] Peer Infinity: hehe
[13:31:46] Ivy Sunkiller: haha
[13:31:58] Arch (archmage.atlantis): Teflon or aliminum core stanless steel
[13:32:09] Lissie Rumble: started with a big bang and shit, its just been a big bang ever since
[13:32:09] Khannea Suntzu: In fact
[13:32:15] Peer Infinity: lol!
[13:32:19] Khannea Suntzu: I invited peer over to visit me IRL
[13:32:21] Metafire Horsley: Kimiko: If humans were so good at math, they wouldn’t need to build machines to help them doing it.
[13:32:58] Arch (archmage.atlantis): Hey, don’t dis my boy Turing
[13:33:12] Seren (serendipity.seraph): time to eat. er, food that is..
[13:33:20] Ivy Sunkiller: haha
[13:33:21] Lolle Edenbaum: did we “invent math” or did we discover it?
[13:33:23] Ivy Sunkiller: byes Seren
[13:33:36] Veronica Christenson: nice point Lolle
[13:33:48] Ivy Sunkiller: we invented ways to harness it I’d say
[13:33:52] Peer Infinity adds “find a pussy-eating animation” to my to-do list…
[13:33:53] Lissie Rumble: Lolle, how can we have discovered it? its a man’s way of making sense of stuff
[13:33:55] Drake (drake8889.steerpike): You discovered away to understand everything from numbers.
[13:34:06] Drake (drake8889.steerpike): Math is only a name
[13:34:09] Arisia Vita: I must run too, it’s been delightful being with you all, be well and happy till we meet again…
[13:34:12] Kimiko Yiyuan: I’m with what someone (you?) earlier said. Humans are pretty good in doing it, they are just not as quick or efficient. the fact though that you need a pretty good brain to even construct those machines in the first place is telling a pretty much different story about human capabilities though.
[13:34:14] Immm Back: thank yuo all for the meeting
[13:34:20] Veronica Christenson: I think she has a point, it seems math was here first
[13:34:22] Ivy Sunkiller: byes Immm
[13:34:24] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): ur welcome Immm
[13:34:24] Immm Back: but i have to go and play cuban music at a italian club
[13:34:35] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): oh, wow, cool, Immm
[13:34:36] Immm Back: you are all invited if you want to come when this meeting is finished
[13:34:45] Lissie Rumble: okies
[13:34:46] Khannea Suntzu: Yah I am about done
[13:34:50] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Immm, send the LM please
[13:34:53] Lolle Edenbaum: Thanks to everyone, it was very intersting listening to all those great thoughts and ideas
[13:34:56] Peer Infinity begins enthusiastically licking Khannea’s pussy… but is unfortunately unable to animate this action…
[13:34:56] Immm Back: i will
[13:35:00] Arch (archmage.atlantis): Have a negoni for me, love
[13:35:06] Kimiko Yiyuan: So I think they are perfectly up for doing it. Besides there is still a lot of research concerning the human brain going on. Who knows…
[13:35:07] Arisia Vita is Offline
[13:35:07] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): thanks for coming, lolle
[13:35:08] Immm Back: see you a bit later
[13:35:09] Khannea Suntzu: I am looking to see if I can find any food in my accursed house
[13:35:16] Khannea Suntzu: Be back in a few minutes
[13:35:23] Khannea Suntzu: Hiii peer that tickles
[13:35:48] Kimiko Yiyuan: That humans might not be as smart as they often think of themselves though..well, THAT is another story for sure.
[13:36:02] Lissie Rumble: oooo
[13:36:02] Metafire Horsley: Does anyone here know what will happen to Delicious?
[13:36:03] Peer Infinity: yes, it’s supposed to tickle
[13:36:09] Lissie Rumble: so where we all going?
[13:36:27] Khannea Suntzu: I am tied up here a while
[13:36:38] Laserkitty Ling (laserhop.rothschild): dont let her off
[13:37:13] Veronica Christenson: Time to go shopping
[13:37:34] Peer Infinity: fortunately, you’re bound securely, so I don’t have to worry about the tickly sensations causing you to move away from the tickly pussy-licking
[13:37:44] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Time to get some clothes on and read Thomas Hardy
[13:37:51] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Erm, and not because he’s a Victorian
[13:38:25] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Victorian men liked naked women, just not in public and not when their wives were around
[13:38:56] Vick Forcella: I’m Vick… I like naked women
[13:38:59] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): bye, arch, lolle, drake, kimiko, vick, meta, hell, Bog, ivy, and Laser
[13:39:04] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): thanks Vick
[13:39:14] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Arch, you waved at me. That’s sweet
[13:39:32] Bogdan Ixtab: I have to say bye as well…need to go now
[13:40:05] Vick Forcella: I am just looking, in a victorian way
[13:40:12] Arch (archmage.atlantis): Rhi, I love you…..and Meta…..and K…..and Bryce,,,,,,and many others here
[13:40:15] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone) smiles at Vick
[13:40:23] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Yes, look but better not touch
[13:40:24] Arch (archmage.atlantis): love is love
[13:40:33] Arch (archmage.atlantis): Namaste and blessings
[13:41:14] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Vick, then come around and you’ll see more of me.
[13:41:28] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): um, well, you can’t see more of me, but you know what I mean
[13:41:37] Khannea Suntzu: wow I am looking at my big SL ass and I am actually shocked, I have such a skinny teenager butt IRL I need to tone it down here as well.
[13:41:41] Vick Forcella: I get the idea Rhia
[13:41:55] Peer Infinity: hehe
[13:42:12] Peer Infinity playfully jiggles Khannea’s butt-fat

Local people: We cannot compete. We cannot produce food at competitive rates. We do not have sufficient export products and our wages are too low. We cannot reorganize or educate ourselves effectively. We find that we are unacceptably poor and many of us are starving.

International Global Markets: Get a job. Work harder.

Local people: We unionize. We protest. We express our dissatisfaction. This situation is unacceptable.

International Global Markets: This unacceptable to you. It is perfectly acceptable to us. Protest away, it will only wreck your local economy, drive away business and make your country even more vulnerable to economic predation.

Local people: In that case exporting hard drugs is perfectly acceptable to us.

International Global Markets: in that case bombing the shit is perfectly acceptable to us.

Local people: This means you will either drive us extinct, into a position of economic slavery, OR we will eventually come up with a means to generate economic value where you cannot intimidate us. This is war, but not one you’ll ever see coming.
Where we can we will erode international global markets into collapse, where we can we will terrorize those that support this system, or where we can we will come up with new products, preferably one that will hurt you.
You have used violence on us, and have escalated this violence step by step. Now we will do whatever it takes – whatever it takes – to get rid of you.

International Global Markets: You are being unreasonable!

Some of you might remember that this guy had some compelling inner reason to pounce on Transhumanism, linking a mediocre video by the Black Eyed Peas. I responded to that a while ago with an article which was probably too long to give the analytical simpleton too much credit. But hey today I have a flu, it’s a Saturday Sunday Monday morning, got nothing better to do, let’s have a look at what this is all about this time. So let’s break down what “trevor” has to say. And bear in mind I am neither the Shepherd, the dog, Neo, Agent Smith nor the Spoon, OK?

Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” – The Illuminati Manifesto

Great, this is what comes up in my mind immediately.

CV You should do a few KLF vids. Their Lyrics would blow you away. I gather you are one of the Justified? In case you missed it, the Illuminati trilogy was a fictional book. But I suppose that isn’t the only one…

Lady Gaga’s single “Born This Way” introduces the viewers to the birth of a “new race” and to a new world, using intricate imagery and a precise narrative. It is a psychedelic trip filled with occult and archetypal symbols, telling the story of a cosmic birth and new ideals. However, behind its outward message of acceptance, a more sinister message lies embedded in the symbolism of the video. We will look at the underlying meaning of “Born This Way” and analyze the meaning of the occult symbolism in the video.

I think Gaga is an extremely talented and original musician and artist. Well, she is pretty daring, and clearly has this rebellious and kinky side.

Lady Gaga is back, y’all. And she’s got horns on her forehead. And she’s in space. And she’s making 90′s dance music. And my head just exploded. But seriously, Born this Way seems to provoke in people two opposite reactions, depending on their knowledge of occult symbolism. It is either “What the heck just happened here?” or “This is really blatant”. The reason is simple. The video contains new strange elements that might confuse viewers but it also contains symbolism that is extremely ancient. Although the video is set in a futuristic, intergalactic world, it deals with the most primal concept of humanity: motherhood. It plays on human’s archetypal fascination and/or repulsion towards the act of giving birth.

A wise philosopher used to say – “one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.”. I myself break this rule quite a bit, but VC/trevor rapes it. He rips out the kitchen sink and throws the entire kitchen at this. The simpler explanation is – maybe we are just seeing a largely saturated commercial market for a product that used to thrive on just musical originality alone, but now has to synergize with product placement, merchandising, marketing, product placement and lifestyle design. Gaga is trying to get noticed and cultivate an image in a way that people do whatever so she makes her investors money. Gaga is a stylized brand. If she has to trudge the line of scandalous and offensive to sell her product, then she will. She will use outright symbolism and word of mouth on the internet and irony and sexuality within the confines of marketability and what the majority of her target demographics consider acceptable. What she and her marketeers do is an established art by now – it is like cooking. A little bit of this and a little bit of that and though the result may not be to everybody’s taste it keep clients come back for more. It has an air of authenticity in a world devoid of meaning. The symbolism used is just that – evocative imagery. It is means to an end.

Although the lyrics of Born This Way are about unconditional acceptance, with a special focus on homosexuality, the video’s scope goes way beyond the subject of sexual orientation. It narrates the birth of a new race within humanity. Laurieann Gibson, the creative director of the video describes this concept:

The gay crowd is a very much party oriented crowd. There is a very simple reason for that – gay people can afford to party – they have an income and no kids. They can spend all money they make and not spend on kids on fun. Also gays are statistically somewhat more likely to be flexible and open-minded. That means that the gay are generally an audience targeted for fashion statements. The gay community spread fashionable memes this tiny bit faster than the closed-off exhausted-from-kids straight community. Hence, if Gaga ‘likes’ gay marketing choices she might as well be a fag hag, but equally so she has a valid marketing interest.

“At first, when I thought about birthing a new race and adding the prosthetics, I thought that maybe they should have a certain way they should walk or maybe they move a certain way, but then I realized it is actually a race within our race; it’s a mindset.” (link)

The idea of separatism is not new. I think it is a genetic imperative. It is a very common impulse in human beings to feel constricted and stifled and repressed. I know I feel it, and I know CV feels pretty much so, if not brainwashed as well. I guess it must suck to not understand this. Gaga clearly expresses in her video the alienated sentiment of so many people of feeling of a different race. This is especially cute when alternative sexuality comes into play – an explosively skyrocketing kids these days realize they are at the very least bisexual, if not acutely kink, and they feel stifled by a status quo that is hysterical about a curious and often bewildering type of conformity. This is obvious to so many. I suppose CV won’t ever get it. CV won’t ever get why some would want to be furries. or why some would want to wear full body latex or why others engage in scarification, or wear piercings. I suppose even ‘slightly odd hair‘ would be an affront to the likes of CV.

Gaga is not giving birth to a human but to a “new race” within humanity. The symbolism of the video makes it clear that this birth is not natural, but artificially provoked. A twisted immaculate conception. As is the case for most Lady Gaga videos, the theme of mind control is important in the video. It is the process through which the metamorphosis will take place. In Monarch programming terms, we are witnessing the birth of a new persona within the “core personality” of humanity. The birth is happening within the minds of people and is visually represented by creepy facial horns.

Ok now we go off the deep end. You could wait for it. It’s like that scene in a movie where this guy is obsessed with somnething and you can’t wait for it to see him start ranting about it, foaming at the mouth. Mind control. Mind control. MIND CONTROL. That is some mighty severe phobia you have there VC. Had dominating parents VC? Mom put chili in diapers a lot VC? Seriously, VC is fueling up his little rant moment in full force now. Here we go !

(If you have not read previous articles on this site, mind control programming is the process through which a handler causes within a subject the “birth” of a new persona that can be programmed at will, through trauma and abuse. It is an actual process used by the CIA – MK-Ultra – and symbolism pertaining to this practice is widely present in popular culture. In the context of the video, the programming does not happen on a single person, but on a mass scale – a new race).

Well by that token, you sure as hell contribute with your articles. Your articles are pure trauma and abuse. But yes, you are correct, your country conspires in wholesale of torture. And your people up to this day accept this. I was talking to a educated american the other day, and he mentioned Venezuela, and he openly wondered “why is Chavez still alive?”, implying that murder was somehow to regarded as a default foreign policy of Americans. Sure any big state entity does it – Russia, China. The bigger the stakes, the more corrupt the state. But do not give me that vainglorious crap. If you truly give a damn, stop writing this drivel and get politically active and expose the damn bastards that commit war crimes in your country. You mumble and stumble on a blog but you don’t walk the walk out there. I do. I was there in your decaying excuse for a country.. Where are you, other than a keyboard cavalier?

Furthermore, the esoteric imagery in the video describes a world change that is occurring as an alchemical process: The creation of magic through the unification of opposing forces portrayed through the use of archetypal symbols and messages. Yup, we’re still talking about a Lady Gaga video.

No we are listening to you having your little online psychotherapy session. You are showing us you read some books and can make lateral cross-references and associations. And you are persistent, can manage a website and have a doting fan base who hang on your every word. Hey you are ahead of me on all counts there!

The Director
Although Born This Way is considered new and innovative, it is a perfect continuation of the themes exploited by previous Lady Gaga videos. Nick Knight, the director of the video, brings a different look and feel to Gaga’s message, but it remains very “elite friendly”. The fashion photographer is known for his visually dazzling photos and has worked with Alexander McQueen, Calvin Klein, Christian Dior, Kylie Minogue, Gwen Stefani and many others. His past work has also contained allusions to Monarch mind control.

Oh good gods, more of the Mind Control fetishism. Actually you did know it is a sexual Fetish, Mind Control? Two sexual partners pretend one has a means to control the others mind. I did it a few times, several variants. My favorite is based on Click! By Manara. The idea is my tormentor has thus remote control (range 30 meters) and I wear this small vibrator. The rule is, the harder it vibrates, the more horny I behave. At full force, I MUST totally abandon all control. So this guy sets it up that we went out on s shopping night and we walked in a clothes store managed by a friend. I couldn’t see him, he was tailing me. I was walking a route and had to be at specific places at specific times. So I walked in a clothes store about 20 minutes before closing time, and what I didn’t know is he knew the owner. They locked it down after I entered, and I didn’t see. So I walked to the back and bam, he hits me full force vibrator inside me buzzing like a hornet. So there I was, two total strangers standing there looking at Goth clothes. They were in on it but I didn’t know. So I surrendered… started to squirm, moan, because hey I was really deep in it. My fingers wandered… These guys really tortured me, asking “is everything OK, and all that”. I was so embarrassed – terrified. Then one dropped his pants and *poof*, dick in my face, and then the other, *poof*. It was amazing! One of the sexiest bits of mental programming I ever experienced. Now the thing is, was all this a constraint of my freedom? Was I being ‘controlled’ for real? Or was all this play-acting and having fun? Is this healthy or unhealthy? Can other people validly object when I do this?

Am I “born this way”?

Knight’s distinctive style in Born This Way was inspired by surrealist painters such as Salvador Dali and Francis Bacon. Let’s look at the video’s symbolism.

You are not going to start a little culture war, venting on “Those damn hippie degenerate artists” huh??

The Immaculate Conception
The video begins with the superposition of two evocative symbols:

Pink triangles pointing downwards were used in Nazi concentration camps to denote homosexual men. The same pink triangle pointing upwards has become a symbol of gay pride and gay rights. On an esoteric level, triangles pointing down are archetypal symbols representing the sacred feminine (in opposition to the upwards pointing triangle representing the phallic masculine). The inverted triangle is emblematic of the womb, the vessel and the uterus. It is the passive principle awaiting the active principle.

Seriously. You start about nazi concentration camps, it makes my skin crawl. It is a bit about fox news anchors complaining about “a general climate of superficiality and populism”. On the one hand you go out of your way to constantly hammer the pseudo-xian homophobic sentiment, if ever so subtle. On the other hand you constantly show your alienation towards everything that’s different, and no your chosen cultural reference. VC I must say I distrust you intensely when you invoke the image of Nazism and concentration camps. It’s such an easy image to invoke. It is so easy to abuse this imagery to alienate an audience from the topic matter at hand. Let me give you a few examples – PETA discusses the animal slaughter industry, and invokes the image of concentration camps. BAM score! That fat guy at Fox discusses a new medical insurance plan organized by Obama and invokes the image of death camps. BAM score! Someone discusses peak oil, civil unrest and FEMA camps, associates them with Nazi death camps.. BAM score! People talk about illegal immigration and concentration camps… BAM score! It is an insidious and underhanded and conniving rhetorical device, VC. You are being utterly disrespectful to your audience.

That other triangle stuff, sure, that’s all basic Paracelsus and alchemy. That’s how people organized their understanding of the natural world for the better part of a millennium. It is superstition, VC, not something “real”. It doesn’t deal with the real world. It is evocative, intensity laden symbolism, kinda like horoscopes and voodoo and haunted houses. If you want to play it that way, fine.

Inside the triangle is a unicorn, an ancient mythological creature emblematic of purity, spiritual enlightenment and fierceness – the horn is often viewed as symbolic of the union of with God. In esoteric terms it refers to the third eye or the pineal gland.

Indeed, David Icke has something to say about that. I hope I do not contaminate you by associating you with him? He showed up at the top of my google search. Did you know that Ridley Scott used the Unicorn motiff in two of his movies – it was used prominently in Blade Runner (watch the extended version) where it more or less proves Deckard is a replicant, and it was the guiding motiff in the movie Legend. I absolutely loved both movies and the symbol of a Unicorn is amazing. I didn’t know the Unicorn was such a prominent christian symbol however. Unfortunately there are no Unicorns in the bible – the translation Re’em was a particular kind of cow. So like always, it’s all about fictional stuff. Very evocative, very charming, but fiction.

In Christian symbolism, the Unicorn is a symbol of Christ. It is also often associated with the Virgin Mary.

Odd. In Atheism the connotation pink and unicorn has another meaning.

“Symbolically, the unicorn is a representation of Jesus, the horn represents the unity of Jesus and God, its fierceness and defiance were said to be a reminder that nothing can control Jesus against his will, and the small size of the animal represented Jesus’ humility.”
- Heather Changeri, The Virgin and the Unicorn

The link between the unicorn and the concept of virginity was popularized by a medieval myth describing how to hunt the creature. In order to catch a unicorn, a virgin is put in the field; the animal then comes to her and is caught, because it lies down in her lap.

Imagine having a chat with this swarthy Rabbi Jeshua two thousand years ago and explaining him he will be associated with unicorns. I bet he’d punch me in the face and scream “blasphemer” in Aramaic. Or he’d smite me with a lightning bolt.

This unicorn is inside a womb symbolically represented by the inverted triangle and therefore symbolically awaiting birth. The concept of purity associated with unicorn implies an “immaculate conception” as no sexual relation was needed to provoke this cosmic pregnancy (yes, I just said “cosmic pregnancy”). Gaga herself referred to this song in similar terms.

Oh yah, Gaga was tapping in to the same evocative symbolism as you are, with the help of her director. She is doing stage magic, and selling a product. What are you doing? Gaga is an entertainer, you are a Charlatan. Gaga sells 21st century cyber-burlesque. You scare impressionable victims for your own ego gratification.

“I wrote ['Born This Way'] in 10 f—ing minutes. And it is a completely magical message song. And after I wrote it, the gates just opened, and the songs kept coming. It was like an immaculate conception.”
- Lady Gaga, Our Lady of Pop, Vogue Magazine

I can literally see the Director and Gaga giggling, half drunk at 4AM in the studio, wondering what other symbolism they can cram in their video to really troll the shit out of VC and the peeps at Vigilant Citizen.

According to Carl Jung, whether we look at the religious or occult meaning of the unicorn, it ends up portraying the same concept: the union of seemingly opposite forces (i.e. purity and strength).

So, you called it. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, VC.

“The unicorn’s most vital function has been as a symbol, whether of power or virility, or purity, or the combination of opposites, of the male horn and the female body. Many modern interpreters regard this last role as the crucial one and relate it to the symbolism of the soul as the spark of divine light in the darkness of matter and evil, the body, and to the concept of the hermaphrodite as the perfect union of opposites.”
- Carl Jung, Man, Myth and Magic

Gaga was accused of ‘having a dick’, because precisely that was the one thing that would disparage and humiliate her. She is a somewhat decent musical artist trying to sell a product, but she is not super pretty. I mean, to me she is breathtaking and I would lick the ground she walks on, but in conventional terms she is not a porn model. So she is vulnerable to people “who just don’t like her guts” and these people target her for her vulnerabilities. I know from my interactions with the Gaga phenomenon (make of that what you will) that she has had a tricky youth and school time, and that she has her doubts and her fears and her insecurities. And yes, the sharks smell this, and they home in on it. So when she perceives this, and the people around her perceive this, she clearly takes this as a clarion call for a counter-offensive. And that is precisely what great artists do – They do not do what Brittney do – they take the flawed and chisel it into a masterpiece. So yes, if criticasters doubt and disparage Gaga’s femininity (and trust me, she has femininity, I know) she turns on them by deconstructing conventional understanding of femininity. Gaga ages a one-artist creative war on a crumbling sexual edifice of conventional and laughable sexual gender roles. She isn’t even finished yet – and she was already won.

That’s a lot of text to explain a single frame of the video. It is, however, an important frame because it sums up the entire concept of the video in a single image: the birth of a spiritual/galactic/metaphorical entity from an immaculate conception.

If “the other side” can liberally quote from this myth book, then a good director can throw CGI at the audience and come up with his or her own guiding mythological and contextual frame of reference. You do that too VC, your whole website is based on deconstructing other people’s narratives, recycling stray narratives you can google or making up you own. It is storytelling, and the difference between good storytelling and bad storytelling is the question whether or not it enriches. Note I am not necessarily a good storyteller. It has not been established I enrich. But I postulate you are a predatory storyteller. You are a slanderer. And you do so behind the veneer of respectability.

But what exactly is being born? In her narrative, Gaga says it is a new race, but the video, and the video’s director, suggests that it is a race born within the existing race, from people’s own minds. In the video, a symbolic image replaces the unicorn.

The symbolism is clear. It is a form of Separatism of the Posthuman. It is deciding that the people you live among do you harm and you want to respectfully (at first) live apart from them, want them to not interfere with your values and demand their respect. Alas, the culture war waged by an assorted range of conservatives and internet vigilantes continues unabated and “the new race” still has to defend itself against the bullies.

Gaga has two faces, not unlike Janus, the god of gateways and beginnings. In mind-control terms, the mask implies the existence of a programmed alter-personality. Porcelain masks are used in the actual (and horrific) Monarch programming process on slaves and handlers (in the video, Gaga seems to embody both roles).

Yes, it is possible to deprogram yourself. You ought to try it sometimes. Start with getting rid of all that fear, VC.

“Fire torture and melted wax is used to make the child victim believe their face has been burned. Then the programmer generously gives the traumatized alters a porcelain mask. The alter getting the Porcelain face may be given a “gem” hypnotically like Jade and that becomes their secret name. There are several different methods that are available to lay in the porcelain face programming. There has been a great deal of porcelain casts made of people’s faces and then masks made of them. In fact, when a handler dies, at least in one case the replacement handler wore a mask to look like the previous handler.”
- Fritz Springmeier, The Illuminati Formula Used to Create an Undetectable Total Mind Controlled Slave

Oh. My. Godddess. What a load of farfetched bullshit.

The mask inside the triangle implies the birth of a synthetic being, a human construct: a pre-established mindset for humanity. After this, Gaga begins her “Manifesto of Mother Monster”, describing the mindset.

Why do you call anything that isn’t you by definition “monstrous” VC? Why is any design automatically a dictum forced upon you, rather than a valid choice assimilated by other people they choose and you don’t need to assimilate? VC, if you want my love, you are welcome to come to me. I live in the Netherlands and I will happily offer my bed to you, and make love to you. But you don’t have to. It is a freedom. You don’t have to use that freedom. I have the freedom to offer sex to relative strangers I have never seen (and like it!) and that is my business. It is who I am. You don’t have to. My chosen lifestyle is my course of action. I like getting fucked by married men. I am not forcing them and I use a condom when I do. I occasionally have sex with their wives too. All involved do so freely. There isn’t a global conspiracy of mind control or dominance to spread these values and make you, or your peer group accept them. You do not have to proactively become a “vigilant citizen” and prepare for a hostile take-over by a foreign and alien cultural order.

Manifesto of Mother Monster and Birth
Gaga announces the birth of a new race in a speech with heavy occult undertones that contains references to ancient hermetic principles.

I suppose not Hermetic as in tupperware? Why “hermetic VC”? Why not simply “Poetic” ?

“This is the manifesto of Mother Monster: On G.O.A.T., a Government -Owned Alien Territory in space, a birth of magnificent and magical proportions took place.”

Yes, such births do take place VC, and it is not your business when they do. You cannot outlaw them, or protest against them, or exorcise them. The world operates outsides the boundaries of your moral outrage.

The magical birth took place on a “Government-Owned Alien Territory” – which is alluding to the fact that the birth is taking place under the supervision and approval of the powers that be: the elite, the Illuminati. It is also a great way to form the acronym G.O.A.T. and a great way to bring up Baphomet.

Great missed opportunity to drag the Uranthia Book into it VC!

That looks like a female uterus, symbolically made of stars. As in, we are all made of star stuff, we are all the same, we are all beings composed of the same atoms, and if there is a creative higher entity here it works through immersing us in this arguably both horrendous as well as ecstatic material state, for reasons yet unknown (or unknowable). Going to far with my conclusion? Maybe there is all there is. I know Gaga constantly refers to a deic figure (“god”), and uses the word him, but I don’t know what to make of her religious beliefs. One thing is certain though – she dis-attaches constraints of sexuality and gender archetypes from morality. Gaga says one thing – free sexual behavior lies within the domain of personal choice and society or other humans do not have a valid voting right or moral statement about it. Yes, that is what *I* read in a symbolic representation of a womb made of stars.

Hey nobody is perfect right?

Gaga, playing the role of the Virgin about to give birth is symbolically shown inside the goat head, which emphasizes the occult and ritualistic nature of the birth taking place. Baphomet, represented by a goat’s head, is symbolic of magic created by the union of opposite forces, hence its androgyny (see the erect phallic symbol and the female breasts).

I think it was a hilarious video. Very evocative. Sure made her sell a shitload of records to silly kids. One wonders who still buy these things? She probably makes her money with fashion sponsorships and product placement. Advertising killed the video star.

Baphomet is of great importance in Aleister Crowley’s Thelema – a modern occult philosophy that seems to be a source of inspiration for Gaga’s Manifesto. According to Crowley, Baphomet is a representative of the spiritual nature of the spermatozoa, while also being symbolic of the “magical child” produced as a result of sex magic. As such, Baphomet represents the Union of Opposites, especially as mystically personified in Chaos and Babalon, combined and biologically manifested with the sperm and egg united in the zygote.

Baphomet was a symbol of the knights order of Templars. They are sodomites. They were a sacred sodomite order, who in their travels to the sacred lands, long wars and witnessing strange cultures, realized their home lands were a total scam. So what did they do? They got rich and they got even. They became bankers, at least for a while. Behind the scenes some of them stayed practicing their homosexual acts, in a ritual fashion, largely because it felt good. They played at being a religious knightly order so their could get out of marital allegiances to established kings and treaties, and this allowed them to avoid dowries and corruption and watering down They got richer and richer for well over a century, till finally someone got rid of them. They didn’t do anything particularly wicked, in comparison to anyone else, other than like vigorous prostate massages. After eight centuries they are still bitching about them, and their alleged worship of Baphomet. Give me a break.

“He is ‘The Devil’ of the Book of Thoth, and His emblem is Baphomet the Androgyne who is the hieroglyph of arcane perfection … He is therefore Life, and Love. But moreover his letter is ayin, the Eye, so that he is Light; and his Zodiacal image is Capricornus, that leaping goat whose attribute is Liberty.”
- Aleister Crowley, Magick Book 4

Yah and they said the same of Jeshua, that he in fact was born with no fully formed male and no fully formed female organs, and this was evidence of his being truly divine. If you ask me if both were well developed that would have been divine! I’d loved to have washed those feet if ya ask me!

Concepts similar to those expressed by Crowley are incorporated to the Manifesto:
“But the birth was not finite. It was infinite. As the wombs numbered and the mitosis of the future began, it was perceived that this infamous moment in life is not temporal, it is eternal. And thus began the beginning of the new race, a race within the race of humanity, a race which bears no prejudice, no judgment, but boundless freedom.”

Oh yes, we are here, VC. We are here. The new races is among you and it will soon say *BYE ASSHOLES*

Is the “mitosis of the future” equivalent to Crowley’s “new eon”? The emphasis on the term “liberty” and “freedom” might be a reference to Crowley’s “Do What Thou Wilt” ethos, a concept calling for the seeking of one’s “True Will” without regard for the boundaries of ethics, moral principles or the concept of good and evil. The embrace of both good and evil is further portrayed in the video.

Why always assume “anyone not like you” must be demonic VC? What does that attitude make you?

As Gaga says these words, she is shown giving birth to … something. As this something gets pushed out, butterflies appear.

Butterflies (especially Monarch butterflies) are symbolic of Monarch programming. Mind-control slaves who successfully create an alter-persona are compared to butterflies emerging from their cocoon. This implies that Gaga’s “new race” or “new philosophy” is not something that occurs naturally in society. It is rather something that will be forced on humanity using mind-control techniques.

Bla bla bla mind control. This is starting to look like a serious DSM disorder, VC. And no, the race will do its best NOT to get involved with the rest of imbecile humanity. In fact we can’t wait to leave. Screw you all, sort out your own retarded mess.

The creation of this “beautiful” race leads to the birth of an evil entity, which seemingly exists to protect its interests and force its will upon the world.

Oh you are certifiably paranoid.

“But on that same day, as the eternal mother hovered in the mulitverse, another more terrifying birth took place: the birth of evil. And as she herself split into two, rotating in agony between two ultimate forces, the pendulum of choice began its dance. It seems easy, you imagine, to gravitate instantly and unwaveringly towards good. But she wondered, how can I protect something so perfect without evil?“

As those words are being said, the camera slides upwards towards Gaga, forming a semi-hidden skull head made of human bodies, symbols of sacrifice representing the evil that resulted from birthing the “pure” creation. This concept is illustrated by the symbol of ying and yang and the Masonic checkered floor, where black and white coexist in an infinite pattern.

Why is everyone unlike you automatically your enemy VC? What happened in your life that as soon as someone uses symbolism of a cultural (or sexual) reference other than yours the only way your can respond is to assume they are part of an overarching conspiracy to reduce you to a mind slave? How does a human being become like you?

The evil force is represented by human skulls, which symbolically represent the elite’s death-culture, which celebrates sacrifices in order to generate “new life”. To illustrate the “political and governmental” aspect of this concept Gaga is shown firing a military rifle while church bells ring (announcing death of the masses).

Evil is therefore depicted as a necessary force to balance the existence of good (or what is portrayed as good in the video, as mind control is never “good”).

Thought this song was about gay pride? Apparently not. Oh, and then the song starts.

Him or H-I-M

The song starts with an odd statement:

“It doesn’t matter if you love him, or capital H-I-M”

Who is “Him” and, more importantly who is capital H-I-M? At first glance, “Him” can be interpreted as a masculine lover, in accordance with the “gay pride” aspect of the song. In that case, who or what is “capital H-I-M”? Is it God? In that is she referring to the distance between homosexuality and traditional religions? HIM is also the name of a popular Finnish rock band whose acronym stands for “His Infernal Majesty”. In this context, is Gaga saying “It doesn’t matter if you love him (God), or capital H-I-M (Satan)”? If that is the case, it would certainly fit with the dualistic, good versus evil, message of the video and the Thelemic theme of her manifesto.

Have you ever heard of the concept of straw man arguments, VC? It is when you go take the message of someone, and you introduce something perfidious from your magicians hat, and you loosely associate it with that message of the certain someone and you then go and start blaming that person for what YOU came up with. I wonder what else H.I.M. might mean? Hellishly Immature Music? Highly Inflated Money? Hidden Israeli Masters? Hopelessly Individualized Modernism?

Further in the song, another line states:
“A different lover is not a sin
Believe capital H-I-M (hey, hey, hey)”

In this spiritual context, is the “regular lover” God and the “different lover” His Infernal Majesty?

Dualism continues to be visually represented throughout the video with scenes celebrating life and love juxtaposed with scenes of celebrating death.

The rest of the video is a lot less symbol-intensive, as the focus shifts on choreography and female crotch-grabbing. No Gaga video (or any music business pawn’s video for that matter) is complete without the One-Eye Sign.

The video ends with a symbolic image, one to be expected when understanding the dualistic theme portrayed throughout the video.

The last frame of the video is the opposite of the first, as the pink triangle is pointing upwards. This alludes to the appropriation of this Nazi symbol by the gay rights movement and its reversal.

Everytime I hear you quote Nazi persecution my skin crawls, VC. It feels extremely insincere when you quote it.

On an esoteric level, the upright triangle is the response to the inverted triangle and signals the end of the alchemical process. It represents the union of the opposites, in order to accomplish the Great Work: the occult transformation of men. When combined, the upright and the inverted triangle become a six-pointed star, a symbol known as the Philospher’s Stone or the Seal of Solomon.

“The interlacing triangles or deltas symbolize the union of the two principles or forces, the active and passive, male and female, pervading the universe … The two triangles, one white and the other black, interlacing, typify the mingling of apparent opposites in nature, darkness and light, error and truth, ignorance and wisdom, evil and good, throughout human life.”
- Albert G. Mackey, Encyclopedia of Freemasonry

If the video started with the unicorn inside the inverted triangle, symbolizing the impending birth of a pure spiritual being, the video ends with the opposite energy, death and corruption. Zombie-gaga, the evil by-product of the change imposed by G.O.A.T. In order for magic to happen, both of these triangles are necessary and they need to be united.

This is abject nonsense. In the Video Gaga juxtaposes two sides of the two deity, and uses herself. The one is a transcendant higher beautiful source, probably akin to the gnostic Zoe, Sophia or Gaia – giving birth to an absolute “good”, but unavoidably thereby giving birth to an evil. I am not surprised why one would use that kind of symbolism in the United States – a place of stark polar oppositions. Gaga’s vision of cosmic evil is simple – death and violence. What other explanation is needed? It is Eros versus Thanatos, passion juxtaposed against despair.

Meaning of the Video
The song by itself has an uplifting message: to love and accept oneself unconditionally, the way God made us. However (there’s always a “however” with Gaga), the video takes things to another level … literally. The “Manifesto of Mother Monster” and its related symbolism give the song a cosmic-battle-between-good-and-evil quality, interlaced with the heralding of a new race and, to use Crowley’s terminology, a new eon.

There is a very interesting symbolism you missed, and which you might come to regard as intensely ironic in a while. Gaga might be borrowing from the Lillith myth. Think about it = first wife of Adam, sexually liberated. She got booted out of Eden, and incidentally, she didn’t eat no damn apples, and was never subjected to that whole original sin stigma the moronic Christians carry around all over the place. Whatever the case G.O.D. cursed her, because Adam threw a temper tantrum (Lilith wanted on top) and she was forever more destined to be rejected, and to beg as a whore to have any chance of survival. She literally spawned Succubi, and in doing so was attributed for venereal disease, child death, nightmares, female emancipation, and various forms of sexual perversion. There is a clear lineage between Lillith and “the rejected”, male or female that have to survive on the margins of society.

In the context of the video, Born This Way is actually a tail of REbirth and of transformation. As Gaga’s choreographer stated, it is a race within our race; it’s a mindset. This change of mindset is not portrayed as the result of a natural evolution, but rather as a forced change symbolized by the Monarch programming imagery. All of this is happening in the Government-Owned-Alien-Territory, a clever way of stating that this new race is something that the occult elite wants to see happening. In the video, Gaga (and hundreds of clones) are created in a high-tech, government-owned lab. Are we truly preaching no prejudice, no judgment, but boundless freedom? The Manifesto’s ideals therefore only apply to the new, forcefully created race, which is distinguishable from “normal” people by the horn thingies. Is this a sign of superiority? Are the horns any different than the pink triangle used to distinguish gays during the Nazi regime?

Those who do not adhere to this mind-controlled race will apparently feel the wrath of “evil Gaga” and be killed because, as she says, How can I protect something so perfect without evil? The video contradicts and twists the liberating meaning of the song and turns it into something rather oppressive and disturbing. The “new race” is the masses of the New World Order, under the influence of mass mind control and pushed into a precise kind of spirituality, resembling a dumbed-down version of Crowley’s Thelema. This world metamorphosis is perceived by the occult elite as an alchemical transformation, a Great Work. It is visually represented by the opposing forces illustrated throughout the video. The process is meant to create something “pure and perfect”, a new world that is purged from its non-desired elements (portraying a New World Order as the end result of an alchemical process is often referred to in elitist art – see the article Analysis of the Occult Symbols Found on the Bank of America Murals). From the viewpoint of the masses, who must go through this forced rebirth, the process is ugly, terrifying and pure evil. The video however, – as most offerings of pop culture – portrays the view of the elite.

In order to keep the youth interested and attracted to the elite’s agenda, creators of pop videos cleverly combines fresh visuals with mind-numbing repetition. Each new video attempts to bring an exciting or shocking element to generate some interest but, at the end of the line, the core message remains stubbornly on-par with the Illuminati Agenda. Born This way uses the classic technique of duplicity, which can be defined as “contradictory doubleness of thought, speech, or action; especially, the concealment of one’s true intentions by deceptive words or actions”. The song’s lyrics say one thing, but the powerful symbols within the video go in the opposite direction. This leads to a contradiction our minds attempt to resolve: Is “boundless freedom” equivalent to the coercive new world portrayed by Gaga?

VC get over yourself. Steffie is just clamoring desperately to sell music and she does what she has to do. There is no elite’s agenda, and if there is they are probably espousing it snorting coke of an intensely cute 22 year old trannie’s cock somewhere in Washington DC. You think there is any elite that is far enough in actual agreement to actually be able to formulate a Master Plan? Did you ever govern any student organization above high school? And you then allege these mysterious overlords then go and trickle down brown manilla folders with pricese yet highly convoluted and ambiguous messages to Gaga, so that we may both take notice of their insidious plots “in the most confusing and contradictory manner possible” yet they don’t really want us to know, since they are a secret conspiracy that effectively controls mostly everything? And what you see in the video is a message of sexual freedom “you just don’t happened to like”, and HENCE it is brainwashing and mind control? Seriously there’s not enough face-palms in the known local group of galaxies to express my bewilderment.

Despite the superficial eccentricity of the song, Born This Way is about conforming and adhering to a pre-defined mindset, a philosophy that is compatible with a New World Order. It is not Gaga’s vision, it is their vision. It is the mind state they want you to adopt in order for them to carry on with their Agenda unopposed. This is what they want you to think: There are no important values or moral codes; good and evil are a big blur and being a mindless zombie is cool. If you think this way, “you’re on the right track baby”. I’m not. Guess I wasn’t born that way.

You are chasing your own tail here VC, in the most embarrassing manner. What’s worse, a whole flock of impressionable young people listen to you and take that unmitigated lunacy you cook up for your own aggrandizement, and actually believe in it. You do evil things this way VC. Remember, Dante depicted the lowest layer in Hell for those “who give false guidance”. I do not see Gaga there, VC. But the way you are proceeding, according to Dante’s horrible theological understanding, you might up there. Lying is a sin, VC.

VC you were born in the shallow end of the gene pool. If this were in fact Nazi occupied territory you’d be the first the black booted storm troopers be rounding up and incineration, for general retardation. Luckily in a civilized world we don’t do that anymore.

Here is another video you can have your nice little locked-in mind white trash culture shock over. It’s Polish.

Update
Another funny analysis

I am back, or so I hope, and my new sequence of talks is labeled “follow the white rabbit”. This sequence of talks will be weekly, on Sundays (like before) and it will host the Transhuman Separatist ethic, with a gentle “Zeitgeist” undercurrent (but also Pirate Bay, Wikileaks, Copyleft, Culture Jamming, Provo, ANON endorsement and that sort of stuff) . Howewver (and Ivy, do remind me, I will try and no longer constantly hammer the same trump card – Ivy remind us all eventually which trump card!)

The topics will be – how do we leverage emerging technologies shy of the Singularity to prosper. How do we give a big fat finger (how do we declare out independence and show our disdain) to the corporate and money elites, to the retarded and genetically underachieving underclasses, and to the big autistic government machines. I will purposefully try and make these talks transcend the paralyzing and nonconstructive left-right polarity. I am fed up with camps and trench wars.

How can we break the stalemate? UPWING! By using and exploiting biotech, gene splicing, internets, social engineering, robotics, microbotics, 3D printing, recycling, alternative energies, seaports, nanotechnology, tax havens, memetics, virtual reality, piracy, augmented reality and who knows what else – and smashing the current screwed up world to pieces (without resorting to ‘crimes’ or ‘violence’) because, hey, we don’t really prosper much here right now yes? I mean, what do we have to lose?

For today please have a look at these publications. I will be focusing strictly and as much exclusively as possible on the conclusions and ideas of Marshall Brain. Where is he wrong, where is he right, and what can we take away from his contribution?

Robotic Nation
Robotic Freedom
Manna
The day you discard your body

Todays sequence of events in Second Life will be :
Serendipity – Fulfillment – 09:30- 11:00 AM SLT (lasts generally about 90 minutes)
Bryce – Ideas of Things to Come – 11:00 – 12:00 AM SLT (lasts generally about an hour)
Khannea – FTWR – 12:00 -13:30 AM SLT (lasts generally 90 minutes)

Sunday
April 3

White Rabbit SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/delinquent/160/192/503

Special guest this time: Teh Rachel Haywire. She won’t show up, but still. I am, trying. Note that I did not post this event the first time since the estate is owned by Ivy, and I do not have the group/estate rights to call events in that land yet.

Chatlog
Again, no Rachel. One wonders where she is?

[11:56:58] Dixit Writer: Hello =)
[11:58:16] Dixit Writer: lol
[11:59:09] Khannea Suntzu: I have barely done SL.. MY meat server is wading through all this turbulence.
[11:59:19] Khannea Suntzu: It’s unprecedented
[11:59:36] Franja Russell: Hi.
[11:59:42] Tara Li (tarali.jie): Once upon a time, I would spend upwards of a week at a time without logging out – though *I* might not have been behind the keyboard.
[11:59:51] Khannea Suntzu: Well looks like a full house today, yum!
[12:00:30] Franja Russell: I hope I didn’t end up standing on someone.
[12:00:36] Khannea Suntzu: Ok one detail.. my title is a little odd maybe but thats becayuse this land is owned by Ivy and she occasionally has stray men masturbate in my mouth.
[12:00:43] Franja Russell: Whoops. Sorry Khannea.
[12:00:56] Ivy Sunkiller: haha
[12:01:00] Khannea Suntzu: Welcome to the second installment of “follow the white rabbit”, a sequence of second life based talks about the next decades, speculating on the following premises
[12:01:01] Ivy Sunkiller: hello Atari
[12:01:10] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Hi Ivy, everyone
[12:01:38] Khannea Suntzu: Y’all settled in? Then I am off for a flying start!
[12:01:59] Seren (serendipity.seraph): nice landing, bryce!
[12:02:04] Khannea Suntzu: Um Mistress… some chairs
[12:02:15] Ivy Sunkiller: yus
[12:02:22] Bryce Galbraith: Hi all
[12:02:29] Ivy Sunkiller: I had white chairs
[12:02:33] Alena Rosenstar: Hello
[12:02:35] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Rehi Bryce
[12:03:46] Khannea Suntzu: Mhurr
[12:03:55] Ivy Sunkiller: well, that should do it
[12:03:57] Xeno Octavia: TY Bryce
[12:04:01] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Whee!
[12:04:04] Khannea Suntzu: (1) we are sure there will be negative causators in the next decades. Thes enagative causators are known, but it’s impossible to talk about them in detail, since they have become ideologized. Among them are pension crisis, credit crisis, peak oil, climate collapse, disparity, military overextension, dollar collapse, food crisis, general unsustainability, awful educational systems miserable and unaccountable governnment apparatuses, cancerous corporatization, a culture of unsustainable entitlements, overpopulation and a lor more besides.
[12:04:07] Bryce Galbraith: you’re welcome Xeno
[12:04:07] Xeno Octavia: hi Franja
[12:04:12] Bryce Galbraith: Hey Amandeep
[12:04:16] Franja Russell: Hi Xeno.
[12:04:20] Franja Russell: Hi Everybody.
[12:04:26] Xeno Octavia: hi again Aman
[12:04:26] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Hi Franja
[12:04:30] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Hi Franza
[12:04:34] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): re hi to everyone
[12:04:34] Ivy Sunkiller: you can click the egg chairs to change pose
[12:04:41] Xeno Octavia: an hi Gilles : ))
[12:04:49] Khannea Suntzu: So that is the dangerous shit in the next few decades right? Might not be all that bad… but all at once? Could get evil.
[12:04:53] Bryce Galbraith: Hi Gilles
[12:04:53] Seren (serendipity.seraph): can drop climate collapse. not happening anytime soon
[12:05:10] Khannea Suntzu: What did I say? Ideology.
[12:05:14] Khannea Suntzu: Anyone, feel free to list a few additional negative causators for the next TWO decades.
[12:05:34] Seren (serendipity.seraph): not ideological on that. simple fact of the median of all current scientific models on climate
[12:05:35] Xeno Octavia: wow Bryce almost all moved from ur place
[12:05:50] Gilles Kuhn: Hoooooowls!!
[12:05:50] Bryce Galbraith: It’s one big roving party Xeno
[12:06:06] Bryce Galbraith: started at Fulfillment this morning…
[12:06:09] Khannea Suntzu: A minor increase ikn tropical storms will move tens of millions of people, Seren, but I am not going to explore this debate now.
[12:06:10] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): It’s nice how we shift from optimism to pessimism
[12:06:14] Amandeep Timeless: en masse debaters
[12:06:25] Khannea Suntzu: (2) we are also sure to experience a sequence of positive, but no less destabilizing causators, among which a massive robotics and automations revolutions, a nanotechnology revolution, maybe a fusion or thorium infrastructural upheaval, maybe an alkternative energy revolution, some massive changes wrought by biomedical progress, a fair chance we’ll see some strides forward in life extension, certainly more chaos wrought by internet, augmented realitym virtual reality, cloud computing, the emergence of hard and increasingly general artificial intelligence and many things besides. Probably not space industrialization, but who knows?
[12:06:53] Seren (serendipity.seraph): that is not “collapse” but okies. plenty of other fish to fry..
[12:07:01] Xeno Octavia: collapsed in my FL went from 82 degrees yester down ta 36 now–sofar
[12:07:01] Khannea Suntzu: Note that positive causators are still perfectly able to wreck your economic equilibrium.
[12:07:21] Tara Li (tarali.jie): *nods* Ask the whip and buggy makers.
[12:07:26] Khannea Suntzu: Anyone, feel free to list a few additional positive causators for the next two decades.
[12:07:29] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Hi Grath!
[12:07:33] Khannea Suntzu: Anyone?
[12:07:38] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Hi Grath!
[12:07:44] Xeno Octavia whispers: is that CIA Tara??
[12:07:46] Bryce Galbraith: Hi Grath
[12:07:49] Seren (serendipity.seraph): thorium build out would be the best thing ever. not exactly a negative
[12:07:55] Metafire Horsley: DIY 3d printing will be cool
[12:08:00] Seren (serendipity.seraph): so would fusion if we ever got it
[12:08:03] Tara Li (tarali.jie): Nano-particle technology.
[12:08:12] Tara Li (tarali.jie): You’ve seen the RepRap, Metafire?
[12:08:12] Xeno Octavia: hi hi Grath
[12:08:19] Metafire Horsley: yep
[12:08:26] Khannea Suntzu: Oh yes Thorium would be hopefull UNLESS only the Chinese have it and Greenpeace calls the shots where you live
[12:08:29] Metafire Horsley: And the CandyFab
[12:08:32] Bryce Galbraith: Khannea — new food sources maybe?
[12:08:36] Tara Li (tarali.jie): DIY 3D printing is well on its way.
[12:08:39] Khannea Suntzu: Like what Bryce?
[12:08:44] Seren (serendipity.seraph): change is very very good if positive. we must have change to deal with the problems on the negative side and soon, yes?
[12:08:46] Khannea Suntzu: Soylent Pink?
[12:08:51] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): New food sources…what do you mean, Bryce?
[12:08:51] Grath Helgerud: sorry rezzzing slowly
[12:08:52] Bryce Galbraith: Yeah
[12:08:55] Tara Li (tarali.jie): Algae as a food source?
[12:09:03] Amandeep Timeless: Halliburton did recently patent Soylent Green
[12:09:14] Khannea Suntzu: I’ll ask all here to shy away from The Singularity. This whole Singularity remains a chinese box, and a mystery. It is little use to speculate about it. It may very well happen, whatever it will turn out to be in practice, but I am for now interested in just *surviving* until then. If the Singularity happens early, say around 2030, that will still be nearly 20 years. If it happens late, say around 2060, I don’t even have a guarantee to have my LAOSS (Laggy Ambulatory Organ Stack Server) physically survive till that point.
[12:09:15] Bryce Galbraith: I don’t know if I have something specific… but yes, maybe algae or other things from the sea that we aren’t using yet.
[12:09:16] Tara Li (tarali.jie): And as a biodiesel source…
[12:09:18] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Khannea all those transhumanist events you mentioned will seem negative to those with a stake in the status quo
[12:09:20] Bryce Galbraith: But also better GM crops.
[12:09:25] Seren (serendipity.seraph): yes, for one. or vat grown foods generally. synthetic meats and so on.
[12:09:31] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Mm.
[12:09:38] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Hi Gwyn
[12:09:43] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): hmmm, synthetic meats; made from yeast?
[12:09:45] Khannea Suntzu: Heya Gwynnles
[12:09:47] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Hi Gwyn!
[12:09:54] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Hi!
[12:09:55] Bryce Galbraith: Hi Gwyneth!
[12:09:58] Gwyneth Llewelyn: sorry for being late
[12:10:04] Tara Li (tarali.jie): Not necessarily – just chunks of muscle encouraged to keep growing.
[12:10:08] Khannea Suntzu: Thats some yeast infection I love to taste, Rhi
[12:10:16] Morad Oh is Online
[12:10:21] Seren (serendipity.seraph): although the dewar should be ok until 2050
[12:10:33] Khannea Suntzu: Quick vote – next week I will probably attend a party in Amsterdam in the afternoon. If I do, please cast your vote by stating a loud Yes, No or Abstain to hold this event substantially earlier (say, 00:00 saterday SLT, 0900 my time) instead of the usual timeslot? Note also I will have minor surgery the 13th. So if I never show my face online ever after that, you’ll know what have happened
[12:10:33] Gilles Kuhn: well the all idea of “singularity event” is highly conjectural i personnaly would bet nothing like that will happen
[12:10:40] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): you know that I’m making a reference tgo “caves of steel,” right?
[12:10:45] Amandeep Timeless: frankenstew
[12:10:55] Gwyneth Llewelyn: (Gilles: after or before the meteor strikes in 2012? )
[12:10:55] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Amand, lol
[12:10:58] Xeno Octavia: u mean the intellectual singularity or the real one that is unavoidable ??
[12:11:10] Seren (serendipity.seraph): 00:00 saturday works for me
[12:11:26] Tara Li (tarali.jie): Hum… I wasn’t sure which yeast vats SciFi reference you were making, Rhi.
[12:11:27] Khannea Suntzu: Quick yes/no please in the next minute
[12:11:27] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Gilles, I’ve never been sure as to what transhumanists mean by a singularity event
[12:11:30] Gilles Kuhn: (gwyn when a pirelli calendar end i dont think for that it is the end of the world…..)
[12:11:34] Tara Li (tarali.jie): YES.
[12:11:35] Metafire Horsley: 0900 your (and my) time is possible.
[12:11:36] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): All changes will happen at a rate we can absorb
[12:11:45] Gwyneth Llewelyn: (lol Gilles
[12:12:02] Khannea Suntzu: Quick vote – next week I will probably attend a party in Amsterdam in the afternoon. If I do, please cast your vote by stating a loud Yes, No or Abstain to hold this event substantially earlier (say, 00:00 saterday SLT, 0900 my time) instead of the usual timeslot? Note also I will have minor surgery the 13th. So if I never show my face online ever after that, you’ll know what have happened
[12:12:08] Seren (serendipity.seraph): that surgery is pretty low danger, K. You will be good.
[12:12:13] Khannea Suntzu: I know
[12:12:45] Khannea Suntzu: Three yes for 00:00
[12:13:09] Khannea Suntzu: In case anyone is in Amsterdam next week the 10th, do email me where the party is.
[12:13:14] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone) is Online
[12:13:16] Seren (serendipity.seraph): as long as I log by 0200 SLT I am good
[12:13:17] Franja Russell: Earlier on Saturdays would be good for me… 8 am, even 7 am.
[12:13:20] Tara Li (tarali.jie) is Online
[12:13:25] Gilles Kuhn: the problem in amsterdam party is they always try to serve you that piss of camel named heineken
[12:13:29] Khannea Suntzu: Ok onwards with the topic today
[12:13:40] Khannea Suntzu: This is a different party
[12:13:42] Khannea Suntzu: Its sex
[12:13:54] Khannea Suntzu: Additionally – I am in a turbulent state IRL and I need small online jobs I can do. I a temperamental, egotistic and my skills are flawed and onesides. However if you have something for me you are certain I can do, please let me know. I really need money IRL for a range of reasons, and not just a little and for flimsy reasons, I run head first into big lifestyle problems. It’s about clothes, food and basic necessities. I prefer not to take charity or donations but right now I can’t afford to sya no to any, since literally I am losing weight in the real world at a rate of several kilo a week. There are health reasons for that – but also I find that I can’t eat processed foods with additives anymore without throwing up. I can only eat pure, untreated foodstuffs, ior I literally eat nothing. And yes I have been doing that for several days this week. I have lost over 23 kilos in the last year.
[12:14:26] Tara Li (tarali.jie): Eeeeps!
[12:14:41] Tara Li (tarali.jie): Have you looked at Amazon’s Mechanical Turk program, Khannea?
[12:14:42] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): :\ Good luck, Khannea
[12:14:50] Gilles Kuhn look extremely puzzled
[12:14:56] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Oh my, Khannea… that sounds dreadful
[12:15:01] Khannea Suntzu: Not an option, I have severe ADHD, I cant do short-cycling actions
[12:15:23] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Well, these discussions you hold should be renewing; like 3 or 4 days in the woods.
[12:15:45] Tara Li (tarali.jie): Ok.
[12:15:45] Khannea Suntzu: Love I’d do RW prostitution at this rate.
[12:15:56] Khannea Suntzu: I had offers
[12:16:00] Khannea Suntzu: Enough of that. Today I will strictly focus on one topic, and one topic only. I do not have means to restrict drift but I;d seriously would like you all to constrain it. The topic is the site of Marshall Brain, of which I have been a fan for many years. The guy makes a point I particularly fancy myself, and which has been ignored.
[12:16:08] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Khannea, what’s wrong with that? Ii was a whore for 3 years and proud of it.
[12:16:16] Gwyneth Llewelyn: lol Khannea…. yhou could go to webcam chats. Do paid ones
[12:16:25] Khannea Suntzu: Yah
[12:16:32] Khannea Suntzu: Thats the offer.
[12:16:36] Gwyneth Llewelyn: They pay very well and actually it’s absolutely safe!
[12:17:04] Khannea Suntzu: So about this site by Marshall Brain
[12:17:06] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Gwyn, unless they trace you through your computer. But I want to hear about today’s topic.
[12:17:16] Khannea Suntzu: I am pretty sure nobody will have even looked at the site. And some of you may have read a few sentences (=skimming) and will be filling in the rest according to their own constrictive mental or political paradigms. Please don’t do that. Please keep an open mind, and try and follow the arguments Marshall poses.
[12:17:47] Khannea Suntzu: He also did some stuff for discovery channel
[12:17:55] Khannea Suntzu: and he spoke one at SingU
[12:17:57] Khannea Suntzu: http://www.marshallbrain.com/
[12:18:05] Khannea Suntzu: Lets go through a bunch of quoted segments from his three articles.
[12:18:13] Khannea Suntzu: First page
[12:18:23] Khannea Suntzu: http://www.marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
[12:18:25] Bryce Galbraith: rehi… crashed
[12:18:25] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): wb Bryce
[12:18:33] Khannea Suntzu: The iceberg looks like this. On that same day, I interacted with five different automated systems like the kiosks in McDonald’s:
I got money in the morning from the ATM.
I bought gas from an automated pump.
I bought groceries at BJ’s (a warehouse club) using an extremely well-designed self-service check out line.
I bought some stuff for the house at Home Depot using their not-as-well-designed-as-BJ’s self-service check out line.
I bought my food at McDonald’s at the kiosk, as described above.
All of these systems are very easy-to-use from a customer standpoint, they are fast, and they lower the cost of doing business and should therefore lead to lower prices. All of that is good, so these automated systems will proliferate rapidly.
The problem is that these systems will also eliminate jobs in massive numbers. In fact, we are about to see a seismic shift in the American workforce. As a nation, we have no way to understand or handle the level of unemployment that we will see in our economy over the next several decades
[12:18:37] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): wb, Bryce
[12:18:40] Seren (serendipity.seraph): know Marshall Brain from some conferences.. scanning site
[12:19:02] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Don’t mind Bryce; my dancing over excites him and he crashes
[12:19:14] Franja Russell: Excuse me, do you want us to click on the http:// thing now? Won’t I lose contact with SL?
[12:19:14] Seren (serendipity.seraph): ok. same topic line as last time I heard him speak..
[12:19:19] Tara Li (tarali.jie): MMmmmm… I know what problem he’s talking about…
[12:19:22] Khannea Suntzu: Note that Marshall is quite cautious, by transhumanist measure. Look at this quote.
[12:19:28] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Franja, no you won’t
[12:19:30] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Hmm I think that those arguments are the same as the ones brought up during the Industrial revolution in the 1850s…
[12:19:32] Khannea Suntzu: In 2055 the nation hit a big milestone — over half of the American workforce was unemployed, and the number was still rising. Nearly every “normal” job that had been filled by a human being in 2001 was filled by a robot instead. At restaurants, robots did all the cooking, cleaning and order taking. At construction sites, robots did everything — Robots poured the concrete, laid brick, built the home’s frame, put in the windows and doors, sided the house, roofed it, plumbed it, wired it, hung the drywall, painted it, etc. At the airport, robots flew the planes, sold the tickets, moved the luggage, handled security, kept the building clean and managed air traffic control. At the hospital robots cared for the patients, cooked and delivered the food, cleaned everything and handled many of the administrative tasks. At the mall, stores were stocked, cleaned and clerked by robots. At the amusement park, hundreds of robots ran the rides, cleaned the park and sold the concessions. On the roads, robots drove all the cars and trucks. Companies like Fedex, UPS and the post office had huge numbers of robots instead of people sorting packages, driving trucks and making deliveries. By 2055 robots had taken over the workplace and there was no turning back.
[12:20:00] Seren (serendipity.seraph): yess..
[12:20:00] Khannea Suntzu: Thats cautious for most transhumanists
[12:20:02] Khannea Suntzu: I think we’ll see this scenario unfold some time before 2040.
[12:20:17] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Very likely; now more than ever!
[12:20:19] Khannea Suntzu: Here is another quote
[12:20:20] Gilles Kuhn: well that would be marvellous no more slave work we only need to redistrubute wealth in a system not based on work
[12:20:23] Khannea Suntzu: When you look at this chart, it is easy to understand that there will be huge job losses by 2040 or 2050 as robots move into the workplace. For example:
Nearly every construction job will go to a robot. That’s about 6 million jobs lost.
Nearly every manufacturing job will go to a robot. That’s 16 million jobs lost.
Nearly every transportation job will go to a robot. That’s 3 million jobs lost.
Many wholesale and retail jobs will go to robots. That’s at least 15 million lost jobs.
Nearly every hotel and restaurant job will go to a robot. That’s 10 million jobs lost.
If you add that all up, it’s over 50 million jobs lost to robots. That is a conservative estimate. By 2050 or so, it is very likely that over half the jobs in the United States will be held by robots.
[12:20:29] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Well, I think Vonnegut had a similar scenario in Player Piano
[12:20:30] Seren (serendipity.seraph): if we don’t meltdown and implode first economically or in the other ways listed.
[12:20:40] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): And Asimove thought we’d handle it by restrictions on robots
[12:20:42] Gilles Kuhn: i repeat : well that would be marvellous no more slave work we only need to redistrubute wealth in a system not based on work
[12:20:42] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Yes, Gilles
[12:20:51] Franja Russell: Various science fiction authors have dealt with robots assuming most jobs in the future leaving humans to spend time on mental gymnastics and art.
[12:20:58] Khannea Suntzu: When a significant portion of the normal American population is permanently living in government welfare dormitories because of unemployment, what we will have is a third-world nation. These citizens will be imprisoned by unemployment in their own society. If you are an adult in America and you do not have a job, you are flat out of luck. That is how our economy is structured today — you cannot live your life unless you have a job. Many people — perhaps a majority of Americans — will find themselves out of luck in the coming decades.
[12:21:15] Gwyneth Llewelyn: well, Seren, remember, robots don’t need payment and they never go on strike ; from a capitalistic PoV, it’s just perfect…
[12:21:15] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Well, that’s what Marx really thought would happen; replicators and robots will usher in the communist utopia; capitalismwill be obsolete
[12:21:27] Seren (serendipity.seraph): first you need the wealth. but aren’t you presuming that every human born must by all means necessary be kept alive regardless?
[12:21:34] Khannea Suntzu:
[12:21:51] Khannea Suntzu studies Serendipity with a smile
[12:21:54] Seren (serendipity.seraph): what is that presumption validated by? we would like it to be the case but is it justifiable or a fundamental article?
[12:21:57] Gilles Kuhn: but look if rhi is proud of having been a prostitute (too bad i didnt know her at the time )) ) i am perfectly confortable to not work for money
[12:22:10] Khannea Suntzu: Let’s have a look at the second page
[12:22:13] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): robotic technology will generate the wealth, Seren; such an accumulation of it that capitalism will break down.
[12:22:13] Gwyneth Llewelyn: post-capitalism. No ‘class fighting’ since robots don’t argue, they just work
[12:22:21] Khannea Suntzu: http://marshallbrain.com/robots-in-2015.htm
[12:22:30] Khannea Suntzu: In 2015, at about the same time that the airlines are laying off all of their pilots, Wal-Mart or Target or some other large retailer will be introducing a totally automated inventory management system. Every shelf will be fitted with RFID tags and bar codes, allowing a mobile pick-and-place robot to find the exact shelf location of every product in the store. Every individual product in the warehouse will also be fitted with an RFID tag and bar code, so the robot will be able to pick up and identify every product that it needs to shelve. A relatively simple computer vision system will allow the robot to stack items on the shelves. These inventory management robots will operate 24-hours-a-day shuttling merchandise from the back of the store onto the shelves as items are sold. The robots will also constantly straighten the shelves and re-shelve merchandise. All of the technology needed to do this is nearly in place today.
[12:22:35] Gwyneth Llewelyn: I don’t see how that follows, Rhi….
[12:22:54] Seren (serendipity.seraph): no it won’t. can’t by definition if you grok it.
[12:23:01] Khannea Suntzu: The fast food industry provides a perfect demonstration of how the race to the bottom works. Almost every working American employed by the fast food industry is paid hourly, makes minimum wage or close to it, receives no benefits, no vacation time and no sick time. Employee hours are tracked so that no hourly employee works more than 40 hours a week, thereby avoiding overtime pay. Schedules can be extremely choppy, sometimes requiring employees to come in to work, go home and come back again during the same day. The pay of the nation’s 3.5 million fast food workers has been driven as close to zero as is legally allowed.
[12:23:03] Flight Band: All Go
[12:23:21] Gwyneth Llewelyn: capitalists don’t exploit people for the *fun* but for the *money* Robotisation just means lower costs and no HR issues
[12:23:27] Khannea Suntzu: But that is not low enough. The fast food industry wants to drive worker pay even lower. The only way to do that is to eliminate the minimum wage. The book Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser describes the trend:
[12:23:28] Seren (serendipity.seraph): walmart has largely succeeded by better automation and computational systems than anyone else alreday
[12:23:42] Khannea Suntzu: The fast food industry pays the minimum wage to a higher proportion of its workers than any other American industry. Consequently, a low minimum wage has long been a crucial part the fast food industry’s business plan. Between 1968 and 1990, the years when the fast food chains expanded at their fastest rate, the real value of the U.S. minimum wage fell by almost 40 percent. In the late 1990s, the real value of the U.S. minimum wage still remained about 27 percent lower than it was in the late 1960s. Nevertheless, the National Restaurant Association (NRA) has vehemently opposed any rise in the minimum wage at the federal, state or local level [minimum wage has been $5.15 since 1997]. About 60 large fast food companies — including Jack in the Box, Wendy’s, Chevy’s, and Red Lobster — have backed Congressional legislation that would essentially eliminate the federal minimum wage by allowing states to disregard it. Pete Meersman, the president of the Colorado Restaurant Association, advocates creating a federal guest worker program to import low-wage foodservice workers from overseas.
While the real value of the wages paid to restaurant workers has declined for the past three decades, the earnings of restaurant company executives have risen considerably. According to a 1997 survey in Nation’s Restaurant News, the average corporate executive bonus was $131,000, an increase of 20 percent over the previous year. [ref]
[12:23:48] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Gwyn, the Marxian argument is that as technology generates more and more capital, it’s price ewill go down; there will be a stock market crash that’s permanent, and people will start liviing off the capital; meanwhile the workers will be pushed to the wall by redundancy and will take over, eliminating the now useless capitalist class.
[12:23:51] Gilles Kuhn: if you can create wealth without slavery of humans you only need to accept the new tec and make a political revolution that redistribute money in a generalized and UNCONDITIONAL welfare world state
[12:23:57] Seren (serendipity.seraph): capitalist do not exploit people.
[12:24:01] Franja Russell: Since the materials used to create plastics and other synthetic materials are not found in everyone’s environment, there will still be the Haves and the Have-nots. How will things be different.
[12:24:23] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): He just overestimated 19th century technology’s wall of doingn that; but this new tech Knnanea is talking about could do it
[12:24:32] Franja Russell: Robots and mechanical work tools are made from synthetic materials.
[12:24:35] Gwyneth Llewelyn: That’s what tghey meant, Seren. That’s not their goal; their goal is just to accumulate wealth
[12:24:36] Seren (serendipity.seraph): that is not a consequence from walmart to fast food. most fast food jobs are very low skill hence low pay. D’uh!
[12:24:44] Gilles Kuhn: capitalist desserve to be shot or hanged by gutts from priest but that only my opinion….
[12:24:50] Khannea Suntzu: Robots completely change the equation, because robots make the minimum wage irrelevant. As robots become available, they will allow the fast food industry to dump all the minimum wage workers. The executives will make even more money, and who can blame them? We would all like to get bigger paychecks. The goal of a business owner is to make more and more money, not to create jobs or raise wages.
This is why robots will spread throughout the workforce with remarkable speed. The same sensitivity to labor costs will cause the high-speed replacement of employees in retail, construction, transportation, entertainment, etc., all at approximately the same time. Over the next decade or two, robots will begin releasing millions workers from their jobs. The bad news is that there will be nowhere else for these workers to go.
[12:25:02] Seren (serendipity.seraph): Marxism is totally exploded crap.
[12:25:13] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Well, no Khannea, it will go thee way Marx thought
[12:25:14] Franja Russell: Too much of Walmart’s products are made with lead based paint and other risky materials.
[12:25:27] Khannea Suntzu studies Serendipity and smiles.
[12:25:27] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Seren, maybe so, but if Khannea is right, we have a Marxian scenario before us.
[12:25:38] Seren (serendipity.seraph): no we don’t.
[12:25:41] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): That’s what he was talking about; he just got the technology wrong.
[12:25:42] Tara Li (tarali.jie): Not necessarily, Rhiannon.
[12:25:48] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Nothing against that argument, Khannea. Still, millions lost their jobs in the 1830s-1850s
[12:25:50] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Steam engines weren’t enough to do it.
[12:25:52] Seren (serendipity.seraph): unless you claim the robots are exploited.
[12:25:56] Khannea Suntzu: This is all quotes and arguments by Marshall Brain. I happen to agree with the guy.
[12:25:57] Gilles Kuhn: you confound marxism and leninism the rare time marxism was tried the result were quite good but as say my profile you need to unite marxism in economy with anarchism in politic for it to work
[12:26:13] DivinePhoebe Luminos: all “systems” have failed more or less during the history of mankind… something new is required (though I don’t have any suggestions)
[12:26:15] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): no, the robots won’t be revolting; ;it will be thte redundant labor force
[12:26:17] Tara Li (tarali.jie): I mentioned in one of the earlier discussions about Heinlein’s radical economic system he presents in a couple of his novels.
[12:26:27] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Which one, Tara?
[12:26:31] Seren (serendipity.seraph): it is one scenario. very doubtful it will be as widespread without other compensating changes not in his scenario.
[12:26:34] Khannea Suntzu: Robots will also be quite suitable to make sure revolt is NOT AN OPTION.
[12:26:41] Gwyneth Llewelyn: oh yes. Khannea
[12:26:44] Bryce Galbraith: There are a lot of problems with Marxism, but I have to say, in his defense, that in the 19th century he was probably an exceptionally insightful observer and critic of industrialism at that time.
[12:26:59] Seren (serendipity.seraph): this argument about automation killing all / most employment is over a century old..
[12:27:03] Khannea Suntzu: SOMEWHERE IN DETROIT A CRIME IS HAPPENING
[12:27:07] Violet (ataraxia.azemus) agree’s with Bryce’s take
[12:27:07] Khannea Suntzu: Fourth Page
[12:27:13] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): -’
[12:27:20] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Exactly, Seren….
[12:27:23] Gilles Kuhn: if you have that range of tec recolution is no more about economy its about wealth redistribution and actually right now we have already that problem we can produce way more than we can consume in fact and we let people be slave to control them
[12:27:27] Khannea Suntzu: http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm
[12:27:38] Khannea Suntzu: In other words, The first wave of robots has the potential to make things very uncomfortable for the American economy. In the 2020 time frame, the rate of economic change will be startling. At the very least it will be a time of intense flux and employment turmoil.
The question that I would like to pose in this article is a simple one: How are we, as a society, going to respond to this robotic revolution? If we handle it properly, the arrival of robots could be an incredibly beneficial event for human beings. If we do not handle it properly, we will end up with millions of unemployed people and a severe economic downturn that will benefit no one. Can we modify the American economy now to prevent this downturn? Are there things that we can do today to smooth the transition to the robotic nation?
[12:27:51] Seren (serendipity.seraph): workforces adjust. new skills become marketable
[12:28:02] Gwyneth Llewelyn: “smooth the transition” – what is implied?
[12:28:02] Gilles Kuhn: i repeat again if you have that range of tecnology revolution is no more about economy its about wealth redistribution and actually right now we have already that problem we can produce way more than we can consume in fact and we let people be slave to control them
[12:28:04] Metafire Horsley: Why not introduce a tax on robots: 50% of the decrease in costs compared to minimum wage workers will be used to finance a guaranteed basic income.
[12:28:10] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Bryce, the problems with Marx was that he didn’t anticipate the age of imperialism, once Lenin corrected for that, it is uncannily accurate; and if Khannea is right, we may be enteriing into the final phase. All the welfare/socialist reforms of the last century, btw, fit his paradigm.
[12:28:14] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Regulate the number of allowed robots?
[12:28:14] Tara Li (tarali.jie): “Beyond This Horizon” has the basics – “For Us, The Living” explains it in detail, Gwynneth.
[12:28:19] Gwyneth Llewelyn: a tax, ok
[12:28:23] Khannea Suntzu: We see the reason for this trend regularly in the news. CEO and executive salaries are rising at a startling pace. The average CEO of a large corporation now makes between $10 million and $20 million per year. Since 1980, CEO salaries have risen by a factor of 10, and that same trend is increasing all executive compensation. William McDonough, president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, notes:
“I find nothing in economic theory that justifies this development… I can assure you that we CEOs of today are not 10 times better than those of 20 years ago.”
At the same time, employee wages are stagnant. The minimum wage has not risen since 1997. Since the minimum wage acts as a foundation on which most other wage scales are based, we are all affected. As a result, sixty percent of Americans make less than $14 per hour today. In her book The Divine Right of Capital, Marjorie Kelly describes the situation this way:
The wealthiest 10 percent of households own about half of all stock — so that minority has a virtual economic majority…. Because corporate revenues represent a bulk of GDP, and the wealthiest own the bulk of corporate equity, running corporations to serve stockholders means running the economy to benefit the wealthy.
[12:28:25] Seren (serendipity.seraph): if you have ever lived in detroit that is like saying somewhere on other some human just farted.
[12:28:25] Khannea Suntzu: It was a ROBOCOP reference, Sip.
[12:28:26] Bryce Galbraith: Khannea, it sounds like that is the question Marshall Brain pretty much poses at the end too…. that is, to re-think the economy.
[12:28:29] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Gwyn, like in Asimov
[12:28:39] DivinePhoebe Luminos: robotic nation.. what implications would that have in the human psyche… sorry.. .lots of texts here so it might have been adressed earlier
[12:28:46] Gilles Kuhn: what we need is universal allocation system
[12:28:58] Khannea Suntzu: Think about the era we are about to enter. Within 50 years in the likely case, and without question within 100 years, robots will perform every task essential to human survival. Robots will grow, package, transport and sell all of the food we eat. Robots will build all of the housing we live in. Robots will make, transport and sell all of the clothes we wear. Robots will manufacture all consumer products, put them on the shelves and take the money that we pay for them. And so on. Robots will displace the tens of millions of employees who are doing all of this work now. In our current economic system, all of these displaced workers will become unemployed. If they are not able to find new employment quickly, they will burn off their savings and they will become homeless. “If you don’t work, you don’t eat” is a core philosophy of today’s economy, and this rule could make a rapid robotic takeover extremely uncomfortable for our society. See Robotic Nation for details.
[12:28:59] Seren (serendipity.seraph): marx did not in the least understand economics or human beings
[12:29:00] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Khannea, but right now, the major stockholders in corporations are Unions and other institutions.
[12:29:14] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Oh, like on the “Naked Sun” novel… robots work, humans do virtual worlds
[12:29:22] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): So it’s like saying the economy is run to benefit the workers
[12:29:33] Khannea Suntzu: Ok
[12:29:36] Khannea Suntzu: Note that Marshall then offers a list of solutions that come down to variants of tax and basic income. I know that this will be ideologically unacceptable to many hnere in this audience. If this is the case, I’d like to hear (1) why this is unacceptable, (2) what would be the alternatives and (3) what would be the consequences in case a significant portion of the populations where in facxt locked out or (4) these conclusions of Mrshall Brain are completely wrong.
[12:29:43] Seren (serendipity.seraph): and the robots want to keep meat bodies around exactly why?
[12:29:44] Khannea Suntzu: Lets hear it
[12:29:54] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Union controlled corporations and government controlled industry (GM); hmmm, sound like a phase anyone we know predicted?
[12:30:00] DivinePhoebe Luminos: I do wonder if that transition to a compleltely automated world would be… hm.. “flawless”…?
[12:30:01] Gwyneth Llewelyn: The robots employed by ikndustry are not exactly sentient….
[12:30:30] Seren (serendipity.seraph): unions are one of the most economically destructive forces around
[12:30:42] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): No, that’s one of the flaws in the analysis, Gwyn; so far automation has cerated more jobs than it eliminated, as someone senetient has to handle the machines
[12:30:48] Khannea Suntzu: Blind ideology is a little more destructive Serendipity.
[12:30:51] Gwyneth Llewelyn: It’ll be by stages, very smallones, smoothly flolwing, Divine
[12:30:53] Seren (serendipity.seraph): they will be..
[12:30:57] Gilles Kuhn: the problem is that all of you were educated to believe working for a wage is honourable i was not for me its insulting if you change your mind in that you will find the solution very easy
[12:31:03] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Seren, only in a class divided society; where they must work against the establishment
[12:31:05] Seren (serendipity.seraph): sentient that is if they are going to take over all/most jobs
[12:31:22] Seren (serendipity.seraph): yes. points back at you smiling
[12:31:26] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Well yes, if they take over, say, teachers or doctors…
[12:31:34] Khannea Suntzu: What about you, personally? Think about your situation. It does not matter who you are or what you do for a living — you are vulnerable:
If you are working anywhere in the service sector — fast food, retail sales, hotels, airlines, delivery, transportation, etc. — your job has the potential to be replaced by a robot.
If you are in the upper middle class — engineers, programmers, airline pilots, teachers, professors, insurance adjusters, etc. — your job is vulnerable (either to robotic takeover or offshore outsourcing).
If you are in middle management, your job is vulnerable.
Even if you are in a position that today seems untouchable — doctors, lawyers, etc. — your job is vulnerable.
[12:31:39] Franja Russell: Excuse me, real life is calling. Enjoy the rest of the day.
[12:31:42] Gwyneth Llewelyn: But I see them taking over people on junk food restaurants first
[12:31:48] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Take care Franja
[12:31:48] Gwyneth Llewelyn: take care, Franja – bye!
[12:32:00] DivinePhoebe Luminos: Gwyneth: okey.. but still I keep wondering what will happen to the human nature in that transition… is there a risk of some kind of “psychological collapse”?
[12:32:04] Khannea Suntzu: Article 4, Manna
[12:32:07] Seren (serendipity.seraph): it is not insulting to trade what I make or can make for money I can use for my needs. not in the least.
[12:32:10] Khannea Suntzu: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
[12:32:19] Khannea Suntzu: Circa 2000, the fast food industry had a problem, and Burger-G was no different. The problem was the quality of the fast food experience. Some restaurants were run perfectly. They had courteous and thoughtful crew members, clean restrooms, great customer service and high accuracy on the orders. Other restaurants were chaotic and uncomfortable to customers. Since one bad experience could turn a customer off to an entire chain of restaurants, these poorly-managed stores were the Achilles heel of any chain.
[12:32:20] Xeno Octavia: why not a minimax wage tieing the maximum to th eminimun sosay 20 x is whats legeal –th eshitheads at the top gets way too much anyhow
[12:32:24] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Divine: the same collapse we experienced in 1830-1850
[12:32:30] Khannea Suntzu: To solve the problem, Burger-G contracted with a software consultant and commissioned a piece of software. The goal of the software was to replace the managers and tell the employees what to do in a more controllable way. Manna version 1.0 was born.
Manna was connected to the cash registers, so it knew how many people were flowing through the restaurant. The software could therefore predict with uncanny accuracy when the trash cans would fill up, the toilets would get dirty and the tables needed wiping down. The software was also attached to the time clock, so it knew who was working in the restaurant. Manna also had “help buttons” throughout the restaurant. Small signs on the buttons told customers to push them if they needed help or saw a problem. There was a button in the restroom that a customer could press if the restroom had a problem. There was a button on each trashcan. There was a button near each cash register, one in the kiddie area and so on. These buttons let customers give Manna a heads up when
[12:32:30] Khannea Suntzu: something went wrong.
[12:32:37] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Mm, Xeno
[12:32:39] Seren (serendipity.seraph): robotics is not moving this fast. not close
[12:32:52] Gilles Kuhn: serendipity it is because that make of you a merchant a trader a mercantile cockroatch
[12:33:01] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Or the one Japan experienced during the Meiji revolution – when samurais dropped their kaqtanaqs and became ruthless industry leadedrs and administrative experts
[12:33:13] DivinePhoebe Luminos: Gwyneth: good reference…. and that is up to debate , as far as I know, until today.. if it was good or bad..
[12:33:15] Seren (serendipity.seraph): why should any being bio or not be guaranteed continuing existence by the rest no matter what?
[12:33:21] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Seren, exactly right; that’s why I’m not ashamed of having been a prostitute. What else are you going to trade as a 12 year old girl?
[12:33:22] Khannea Suntzu: Page 5 – Marshall Does A Ray
[12:33:29] Khannea Suntzu: http://marshallbrain.com/discard1.htm
[12:33:42] Khannea Suntzu: Discuss
[12:33:46] Gwyneth Llewelyn: sure, we can debate that, Divine. Looking at the standard of living today compared to, say, 1760, I would say we’re better off after the industrial revolujtion
[12:33:50] Khannea Suntzu: Discuss
[12:33:51] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): And those who think less of me for it, like lokifluff clarity, can go to, well, I’m too ladylike to say.
[12:34:10] Gilles Kuhn: we need more aristocrat and less slave thats all and if we supress wage based economic system we will have that a civilization of aristocrat provided we force a bit education in exchange for allocation
[12:34:13] Bryce Galbraith: I’m not really convinced that I buy the scenario that MB outlined, but let’s set that aside for now and accept that as a premise. There are a number of other areas of the economy that I suspect wouldn’t be automated and people may eventually migrate to those areas… especially areas that involve doing things that involve creativity or require more interaction.
[12:34:18] Seren (serendipity.seraph): Voluntary trading of value for value makes me a cockroach? who is serving steaming ideological shit here?
[12:34:34] Bryce Galbraith: I suppose, taking your premise, is the question of system shock — whether the changes happen so quickly that people don’t have enough time to adapt.
[12:34:36] Khannea Suntzu: Hmmm?
[12:34:39] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Gilles, well, in the communist utopia, we are all aristocrats; freed from artificial division of labor, we are all Renaissance persons
[12:34:58] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Future shock, Bryce?
[12:35:08] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): I more or less agree with what Gilles said; if everything does become automated, it’s just a matter of shifting our cultural values
[12:35:14] Seren (serendipity.seraph): we saw how well that kind of utopia works. as did many tens of millions killed attempting to produce it.
[12:35:22] Gilles Kuhn: trading is and was for all aristocrat class untill XIX century an insult to their dignity that is 2500 years of civilization that you just qualified as shit seren
[12:35:29] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): I think it will be what we already know; those in their 40′s or over will be befuddled at first, the younger of us will just go with it
[12:35:45] DivinePhoebe Luminos: Gwyneth: that depends on how you look at it… sure we have better material standard and health.. BUT… there is a MAJOR issues with pshychological health in the developed world… in my country from age 14-45 I think the most common death-cause is suiciide… that tells something about that we might not have invented a “perfect word”.. maybe far from it DESPITE our material wealth
[12:35:53] Seren (serendipity.seraph): we don’t live in ancient times but in a modern highly industrial technollogical state. huge difference.
[12:35:57] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Sern, it was infantile leftism;; the times weren’t right and the Soviets tsrieed to push it.
[12:36:01] Bryce Galbraith: yes, I suppose What I mean is that the transition to a more robot automated workforce happens so quickly that people employed in those areas to be automated don’t have time to either age out of the system or retrain.
[12:36:12] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): “Diahistamit is neither earler or late but comes in Its own time.”
[12:36:17] Seren (serendipity.seraph): laughs. do I sound befuddled to you?
[12:36:23] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Oh, we’re certainly not ‘perfect’, but can you really attribute ‘psychological issues’ to the results of the industrial revolution?
[12:36:29] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Hi Kimmy!
[12:36:36] Gilles Kuhn: yes say that to the majority of humanity living with under 2 dollar by day seren very evoluted high tec society indeed….
[12:36:48] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Remember, it was politically incorrect to be ‘depressed’ in the 18th century
[12:37:10] Seren (serendipity.seraph): the majority has always lived at under $2/day! more live with more than at any previous time in history.
[12:37:35] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Seren is right; read Bjorn Lomborg for some charts proving that point.
[12:37:48] Gilles Kuhn wish he can take seren on a tour of central africa in rl and ask her if she will want to stay there with that economic level….
[12:37:48] DivinePhoebe Luminos: Gwyneth: I dont have enough data to make such an assumption.. there are countless parameters that might cause those things.. BUT.. I do belive that some part of that development was somewhat bad.. some part, emphasise….
[12:37:52] Gwyneth Llewelyn: and we have grown a lot too
[12:37:52] Khannea Suntzu: So they can have cake, serendipity?
[12:37:54] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Bryce good point. In “Primary Colors,” the Bill Clinto type spoke to a group of blue collar workers and said, “I won’t lie to you; you’re jobs are gone. I’m not going to bring them back. But I promise you education to help you adapt.” Almost made me like Bill Clinton
[12:38:20] Gwyneth Llewelyn: well Divine… everybodyh is affected by change.
[12:38:32] Gwyneth Llewelyn: But change is all there is
[12:38:37] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Some cope; most don’t
[12:38:50] DivinePhoebe Luminos: Gwyneth: yes… and a too rapid change SEEMS, at least in my thought-world, to be quite risky
[12:39:06] Seren (serendipity.seraph): have you been to central africa? a big issue is that many many people do not want to advance. life is centered around status quo community villages. in other places things have been fucked by warlords and by oil lust fueling conflicts.
[12:39:07] Gwyneth Llewelyn: So let’s prepare people to cope with change
[12:39:16] Gwyneth Llewelyn: I have a few methods hehe
[12:39:18] Bryce Galbraith: Ah, interesting… I didn’t actually see the film Rhi. That was where John Travolta played the Bill Clinton-like candidate, right?
[12:39:26] Gilles Kuhn: have i been yes seren and i bet you have not i lioved there
[12:39:39] Khannea Suntzu: Aha, “They” . Do not want to change. Interesting. Africa. I see.
[12:39:45] DivinePhoebe Luminos: Gwyneth: on that I do agree… a slow change is probably the best when it comes to major changes in how our world is constructed(built
[12:39:56] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Hmm.
[12:39:57] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Seren’s point is the baselline of productivity ahs gone up, and even if not evenly shared, all have bnefitted.
[12:40:03] Gilles Kuhn: and to say that they want not to advance is only apart of being false pure racism
[12:40:07] Seren (serendipity.seraph): have not lived there. only a visitor. is it our fault generally that conditions are the way they are or our responsibility to fix them though?
[12:40:18] DivinePhoebe Luminos: but even then… how do we know what is best for the human race!?
[12:40:40] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Change can be completely unpredictable; just take a look at wars devastating cities in tghe past. Or earthquakes, fires…. people adapted to that, or not.
[12:40:42] DivinePhoebe Luminos: it’s not like someone asked some billion of people how they really want the world to be, I mean
[12:40:42] Khannea Suntzu: They said the same in Britannia, a few centuries ago about these damn colonies, Serendipity
[12:40:51] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): R. Daneel Olivaw’s dilemma when he took over human history;; fortunately, he met Hari Selden…
[12:40:57] Seren (serendipity.seraph): know. it is exactly hat real people who have lived in some of those areas all there live told me. I did not make it up. I was shocked.
[12:41:01] Xeno Octavia: lol Divi –they lost the race !!
[12:41:01] Gilles Kuhn: the fact a country like congo (rdc) is plagued by war is due to capitalism pillaging the non protected treasure they have helping creating chaos andd civil war
[12:41:27] Seren (serendipity.seraph): do you think that it all that is behind it Giles?
[12:41:31] Gilles Kuhn: hearsay heh seren
[12:41:51] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): So back to robotization–well that help or hurt the 3rd world?
[12:41:54] Seren (serendipity.seraph): actual people saying what they actually thing rather than ideology, giles.
[12:42:14] Khannea Suntzu: Full force robotization will RRRRrrRRrrReally fuck with India and China
[12:42:15] Gwyneth Llewelyn: The “best” for the human race is what makes them more happy The trick is knowing what causes happiness…
[12:42:15] Gilles Kuhn: thats obvious if there is no pure civil war in let say tanzania its because they have not the mineral riches of congo
[12:42:19] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Seems to me that evenif 1/2 the wokers in the 1st world are unemployed, it will helpt he 3rd world immensely
[12:42:33] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Khannea, or will it make ethem change for the better?
[12:42:48] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): The fat man outgrowing his pantaloons metaphor (Marx again; sorry.)
[12:43:02] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): They will have to adapt and actually feed their people or collapse
[12:43:09] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): As the food becomes plentiful due to robotics
[12:43:12] Khannea Suntzu: No. It will make production work return to places such as the US and Europe. But NOT jobs mind you.
[12:43:16] Gilles Kuhn: ideology good heaven you are the ideologist here seven and the worst you dont even know it because you really believe in the religion named capitalism
[12:43:22] Seren (serendipity.seraph): I still have a question. Is the goal to keep everyone alive and at some standard of living regardless of whether they produce anything anyone values and regardless of whether anyone cares about them as a person or not?
[12:43:23] DivinePhoebe Luminos: Gwyneth: indeed !
[12:43:26] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Alas. Even the longest-lasting empire will one day collapse.
[12:43:40] Seren (serendipity.seraph): Is the ideal that we care about anyone regardless of having no reason to do so or not?
[12:43:46] Violet (ataraxia.azemus): Take care, guys
[12:43:48] Metafire Horsley: Yes, that would be a pretty humane goal, Seren
[12:43:53] Bryce Galbraith: Bye Violet
[12:43:53] Gwyneth Llewelyn: That’s a good ideological question, Seren
[12:43:54] Seren (serendipity.seraph): are you sure?
[12:43:55] DivinePhoebe Luminos: Gwyneth: yea.. history is a great example…
[12:43:56] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Yea, I still mourn for the Assyrians, Gwyn
[12:44:06] Gwyneth Llewelyn: hehe Rhi
[12:44:17] Seren (serendipity.seraph): it may lead to anti-competitive pressure on the species so it does not evolve one iota.
[12:44:25] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Hmm
[12:44:25] Khannea Suntzu: Serendipity would you at least consent to humane euthanasia treatments for those made irreversibly redundant? I mean from your tax dollars? If I beg?
[12:44:28] Gilles Kuhn: i dont remember who say that the level of a civilization is to be judged as how they treat their weakest members which say a lot obout ours…..
[12:44:31] Seren (serendipity.seraph): and actually regresses over time.
[12:44:36] Metafire Horsley: You know: People who are dead have a hard time producing something of value. People who are alive at least have the potential to do that.
[12:44:51] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Gilles: still, ourts is the best civilisation in thaqt regard! Previous ones werfe far far worse
[12:44:57] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Gilles, actually a numbeer of people said that; Elenor Roosevelt was one.
[12:45:07] Seren (serendipity.seraph): when is potential sufficient to justify cost of it maybe becoming actual someday and when is it not?
[12:45:11] Gilles Kuhn: anti competitive pressure but the hell are you too a social darwinist?
[12:45:35] Khannea Suntzu: I don’t want to suffer when I am useless? Please, just a painful euthanasia treatment when I am useless? You can harvest my organs afterwards?
[12:45:41] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Well, but isn’t Khannea challenging us to see what robotics will do o the social structure that sustains it? Yes, the new technologies will elimante poverty, etc., but at what cost?
[12:45:44] Seren (serendipity.seraph): potentially every lottery ticket is worth millions but that doesn’t mean you build an ultra secure safe to place it in until the draw.
[12:45:54] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Depends on your moral values, Seren – answering if it’s better to provide for people now or let natural selection weed out those unable to survive on their own so that the entire species evolves
[12:46:03] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Khannea, always have death parlors, like in Soyyent Green.
[12:46:16] Seren (serendipity.seraph): and where do those “moral values” come from and how are they justified ?
[12:46:19] Gwyneth Llewelyn: I’ll stick to providing for them now, and forget about evolution anyway ?
[12:46:21] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): From Harry Harrison’s “Make Room; Mke Roo.”
[12:46:28] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Oooh some are very simple, Seren.
[12:46:29] Khannea Suntzu: Thank you Rhiannon, that was quite humane of yours. I don’t want to be a burden.
[12:46:33] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): *Make Room
[12:46:48] Seren (serendipity.seraph): simple but not so obvious as people may wish to believe
[12:46:52] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Not a problem, Khannea; and I hope my danciing has made your last day on earth an enjoyable one.
[12:46:53] DivinePhoebe Luminos: oh.. evolution.. the thing I never comprehended lol
[12:46:56] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Don’t kill people, don’t steal from them… that’s pretty universal imho
[12:47:11] Xeno Octavia: lol Rhia –cost is only the poor!
[12:47:16] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Oh… agreed., Simple, but definitely NOT obvious!
[12:47:19] Khannea Suntzu: On the other hand > http://khanneasuntzu.wordpress.com/2011/04/01/i-give-you-permission-to-be-violent/
[12:47:23] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Gwyn; why hold people to an impossibly high standard? lol
[12:47:31] Seren (serendipity.seraph): sure. but that is far from a mandate that you must keep every human alive by any means possible
[12:47:32] Gwyneth Llewelyn: That’s a goal!
[12:47:51] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Juswt because it’s a high standard, it doesn’t mean it’s worth following it
[12:47:52] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Xeno, well or collapse of society, unless there’s a revolution to create a new one.
[12:47:56] Khannea Suntzu: “So I say, when they disagree protest. When they ignore you, sabotage and strike. When they punish you, revolt. When they try and put you in your place when you revolt, accept death as an acceptable fate over this, and do what it takes to drive to message home.
Death over this. Be prepared to destroy this planet, and euthanize all human life, rather than accept you, or any other human being having to live in a state of humanitarian apartheid. Yes, I say aim for ‘detente’. But not after you bring solid arguments to the table. A thermonuclear explosion would be a nice argument. The event itself would be horrific, but as a negotiation tool it would be indispensable.”
[12:48:03] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Gwyn, I know; I was joking
[12:48:06] Gilles Kuhn: seren if about you where moral value come from question are one time in a weak position i wonder if you will hold to your discurse for the principle or beg for help that i will do due to kant hypothetical imperative not because i am fond of you be assured
[12:48:07] Xeno Octavia: problem as i always say is extraterrestrials!
[12:48:21] Gwyneth Llewelyn grins @ Rhi
[12:48:27] Xeno Octavia: over 6 billion extra
[12:48:38] Seren (serendipity.seraph): so gimme or I will attack you? why should I care about those that would do this?
[12:48:47] Khannea Suntzu: Correct
[12:48:49] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Well, right now, we have just a few ETs… how many people in the ISS right now?
[12:48:56] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Well, let’s try for w1 trillion, Xeno, befosre we ask the Vulcans for help. We have our pride, you know.
[12:49:09] Seren (serendipity.seraph): I will beg for help but I will not kill if refused
[12:49:09] Bryce Galbraith:
[12:49:14] Xeno Octavia: Gwyn i mean extra terrestrials
[12:49:23] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Aren’t they on orbit?
[12:49:26] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): And the Eugenics Wars will kill off a lot of people, making it easier to feed and house the rest.
[12:49:42] Gilles Kuhn: sieg heil rhi…..
[12:49:47] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Heh Rhi – with that argument, one can justify anything…
[12:49:50] Tara Li (tarali.jie): Hum….
[12:50:01] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): That’s why the European Hegemony was able to have such a near utopia before we met the Klingons
[12:50:09] Seren (serendipity.seraph): actually, no.
[12:50:18] Khannea Suntzu: Supply and demand, serendipity.. and oh.. “evolition in action”… that’s a good one too.
[12:50:21] DivinePhoebe Luminos: everybody in 100 years knows that WW3 started on the web and ended in caves
[12:50:26] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Gwyn, yes, the problem with any neo-positivistic account of ethics
[12:50:35] Gwyneth Llewelyn *nods* @ Rhi
[12:50:40] Seren (serendipity.seraph): supply and demand. reality and wishes.
[12:50:40] Metafire Horsley: From a purely economically point of view entitlements are easy to explain: If they are cheaper than controling the population by force, you better go for entitlements.
[12:51:00] Seren (serendipity.seraph): entitlements are not cheaper.
[12:51:07] Xeno Octavia: lol Rhia ethics dont apply –they for the ethical
[12:51:12] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Hmm. More population = more consumers, so eugenics is anticapitalistic
[12:51:15] Seren (serendipity.seraph): as they are unbounded.
[12:51:27] Metafire Horsley: So, you say the US should get rid of entitlements and use the army and the police to keep the resulting chaos at bay?
[12:51:30] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Entitlements are *controlling the ppopulation by force*
[12:51:32] Gilles Kuhn: i weep every day we have not crushed the burghesy and other emerging merchant class under the hooves of our horse when it was still time in the XII century….
[12:51:32] Khannea Suntzu: Mass production is driven by lots of consumers
[12:51:44] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Oh yes :=)
[12:51:50] Seren (serendipity.seraph): you can’t have buyers that you have to give the money to buy. immediate FAIL
[12:52:01] Khannea Suntzu: But if most consumers cant work, they aren’t consuming much. Damn, then capitalism ends anyways.
[12:52:06] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Making people healthy and getting them to have enough molney to buy more things they don’t need is also a requirement
[12:52:17] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Agreed, Khannea, that’s what I meant
[12:52:19] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Gwyn, actually yes, eugenics is anti capitalistic, as is racism, genocide, alll the horros attributed to globalization. Globalization is part of the solution, imo
[12:52:40] Xeno Octavia: sell them printing presses and dollar plates
[12:52:42] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): (Not to mention a prerequisite for the rise of the antiChrist, but let’s not go there.)
[12:52:45] DivinePhoebe Luminos: the solution is in the mind, IMO
[12:52:46] Khannea Suntzu: Rhi there is a thing such as market driven Liberal eugenics.
[12:52:47] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Possibly. The world is so small these days that ‘globalisation’ loses its meaning.
[12:52:52] Gwyneth Llewelyn: YES Divine !!!!
[12:53:14] Khannea Suntzu: The solution is certainly not in serendipities mind I fear
[12:53:18] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Yes, Divine! And free markets liberate the mind, right, Seren?
[12:53:22] Seren (serendipity.seraph): you can’t make people healthy if they want to practice unhealthy eating and such. you can profit by receiving back what was taken from you just to pretend the system is working.
[12:53:45] Seren (serendipity.seraph): yes they do.
[12:53:54] Gilles Kuhn: property is theft…..
[12:54:01] Gwyneth Llewelyn: true, Seren, but there is some sort of long-term self-regulaqtion
[12:54:07] Seren (serendipity.seraph): they were responsible for the great leap forward, the real one, of the last two centuries.
[12:54:11] Gwyneth Llewelyn lights a cigarette after that comment
[12:54:12] Khannea Suntzu: Damn you are close to a paradigm change sip. Very close.
[12:54:27] Seren (serendipity.seraph): reality is the ultimate regulator
[12:54:28] Tara Li (tarali.jie): Hummmmmmm……..
[12:54:29] Arch (archmage.atlantis) is Online
[12:54:40] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Reality…. riiiiiight
[12:54:53] Dixit Writer: nice night, thanks for all
[12:55:00] Gwyneth Llewelyn: whatever ‘reality’ iks
[12:55:00] DivinePhoebe Luminos: How do you mean, Seren=?
[12:55:03] Khannea Suntzu:
[12:55:05] Bryce Galbraith: Bye Dixit
[12:55:08] Dixit Writer: see ya next time good night ^^
[12:55:13] Tara Li (tarali.jie): Actually, as I recall, in QM, Reality has a left-handed bias.
[12:55:19] Metafire Horsley: Bye Dixit
[12:55:20] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): thanks for coming, Dixit
[12:55:29] Gwyneth Llewelyn *chuckles* @ Tara
[12:55:29] Khannea Suntzu: That’s precisely what the Zeitgeist movement says, oddly enough.
[12:55:47] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Feedback; free markets provide feedback, as do political riots, coup d’etats, etc.
[12:55:48] Seren (serendipity.seraph): I mean that regardless of wishes, shemes, attempting to force thinks that do not fit what is possible that reality trumps all always.
[12:55:51] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Not veryh original but fine…
[12:55:57] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): And whether we call that ‘realitiy’ or not, feedfback exists
[12:56:04] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): And regulates
[12:56:28] Seren (serendipity.seraph): reality of necessity never ever belongs in scare quotes
[12:56:38] Metafire Horsley: All praise the allmighty feedback, as it makes you more humble.
[12:56:41] Gwyneth Llewelyn: I think I understand what yhou mean, Seren: we cannot simply bring an ideology oujt of the vacuum that is tgotallhy at odds with the so-called realioty and expect itg gto work!
[12:56:41] Khannea Suntzu: Reality is the ultimate tyrant. But the question is if free markets and capital accumulation have ANYTHING to do with this reality.
[12:56:49] Gwyneth Llewelyn: History shows that won’t work.
[12:57:21] Gwyneth Llewelyn: well, they ‘capitalise’ (pun intended) oln human nature: greed, power…
[12:57:22] Trinity Dejavu is Online
[12:57:26] Seren (serendipity.seraph): wealth can only be produced by creation of more value than was consumed creating it. a net good.
[12:57:46] Seren (serendipity.seraph): real wealth not mere tokens that were supposed to quantify it
[12:57:48] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): free markets reflect rality, Khannea, by giving you feeeback
[12:57:50] DivinePhoebe Luminos: I am not sure that I completly agree, Seren… I mean… once upon a time flying machines was considred impossible… and trains would make the human body explode due to the speed.. etc.. sure, we are bound to reality in some degree but reality seems to be “designed” (lack of better word) to be really really “tweaked” .. so.. in that view we are not very “bound” by it…
[12:58:17] Khannea Suntzu: Small group of people become insanely rich because of automation. Majority of humans have no recourse, no protest, no income and are reduced to grotesque exclusion. So what gives?
[12:58:23] Xeno Octavia: : that of this stoopid species Gwyn –why we need a new one
[12:58:28] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Oh…. I understood that Seren was talking about the reality of human nature, its relationshipos, and so forth
[12:58:37] DivinePhoebe Luminos: aha
[12:58:42] Seren (serendipity.seraph): reality was what actually would happen did happen not opinions about what would
[12:58:44] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Xeno, feedback again; helps make the stupid smart–if it doesn’t kill them
[12:58:55] Khannea Suntzu: I say – we take out the middlemen. Kill em all. Guillotines.
[12:58:58] Gwyneth Llewelyn: nah Xeno. We just need to discard those things that are not really part of our nature, but that we think they are ?
[12:59:01] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Seren was, but I’m talkiing getting consequences to your actions that’s a guide
[12:59:08] Seren (serendipity.seraph): I don’t agree with that model K.
[12:59:22] Khannea Suntzu: Yah well, cake right?
[12:59:30] Seren (serendipity.seraph): do you really advocate mass murder, K?
[12:59:31] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): We don’t have to worry about metaphysics, the inevitable “But what is reality?” We try something, it fails; we try something else.
[12:59:39] Khannea Suntzu: Worked in france
[12:59:42] Gilles Kuhn: the concept of wealth is a pure absurdity most wealth we have are totally useless a good example is the fact we create machine that are engineered to break down after their guarantee expire in order to generate more “”wealth”"
[12:59:42] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Khannea, everybody would be a middlemen
[12:59:53] Metafire Horsley: I’ll say we do the following: We do the best we can think about and see what will happen then. Then we repeat that process.
[12:59:53] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): hi Arch!
[12:59:58] Bryce Galbraith: Hey Arch
[12:59:58] Khannea Suntzu: Heya Arch
[13:00:01] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Gilles: not ‘absurdity’ – just a convention, a label
[13:00:15] Gwyneth Llewelyn: that’s good pragmatism, Meta
[13:00:17] Seren (serendipity.seraph): actually it fucked France up massively for a time and seriously undermined the meme of freedom.
[13:00:25] Gwyneth Llewelyn: and gave us Napoleon
[13:00:40] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): The Guillitine, Khannea? Actually not. That’s why the French say “The more things change, the more they remain the same.” Or in the ewords of the Who, “Look at then new Boss; same as the old Boss.”
[13:01:07] Khannea Suntzu: I am not someone very happy with revolutions. Oh if only we could do without.
[13:01:20] Seren (serendipity.seraph): how do we teach more people to be their own boss? it isn’t easy.
[13:01:22] Khannea Suntzu: Tunesia.
[13:01:27] Khannea Suntzu: Egypt.
[13:01:29] Khannea Suntzu: Lybia
[13:01:37] DivinePhoebe Luminos: and much later Napoleon Dynamie came along… gosh.. the low jokes comes when no one expect it (reference to the movie napoleon dynamite) LOL… yea.. I laugh at my own jokes.. forbidden but anyway
[13:01:37] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Well, as ZMarx pointed out, we can effect change democratically, if we all believe in peace
[13:01:39] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): heh
[13:01:53] Metafire Horsley: stevepavlina.com <- he's good at that, Seren.
[13:01:57] Khannea Suntzu: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4c5117a6-2eda-11e0-9877-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1IUZojJCg
[13:02:02] Gwyneth Llewelyn: most people 'believe' in peace, Rhi
[13:02:05] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): We don't need Revolutions in the sense of violent overthrow
[13:02:11] Bryce Galbraith: The problem with revolutions is that they have a habit of eating their own children … (hey, while we're bringing up revolutions and such I had to throw in the phrase )
[13:02:14] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Revolution of the Mind!
[13:02:15] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Gwyn, yes, one of the reasons AI'm optimistic
[13:02:24] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Bryce, except for one.
[13:02:25] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Agreed, Rhi ?
[13:02:28] DivinePhoebe Luminos: "this is a revolution of the mind"
[13:02:35] Seren (serendipity.seraph): ah yes, steve. when he is not on a zero-sleep or fruit only diet he says some good things.
[13:02:35] Gwyneth Llewelyn: mm hmm
[13:02:41] DivinePhoebe Luminos: "the lucid dreams option is worth the risk"
[13:02:47] Gwyneth Llewelyn: hehe
[13:02:58] Arch (archmage.atlantis): Louis XIV begat Napolean begat Hitler
[13:03:03] Gwyneth Llewelyn: yay on lucid dreaming!… even when we're awake
[13:03:12] Arch (archmage.atlantis): begat Castro
[13:03:21] Arch (archmage.atlantis): All idealists
[13:03:25] Gwyneth Llewelyn: heh
[13:03:30] Seren (serendipity.seraph): used to have very deep lucid dreams when I was meditating an hour every day.
[13:03:42] Gwyneth Llewelyn: idealists = too many ideas
[13:03:45] Khannea Suntzu: WEE DUDN"T STAHT THA FIRE
[13:03:46] Gilles Kuhn: Napo and Louis XIV idealist???? LOL
[13:03:46] Khannea Suntzu: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g
[13:03:53] Gwyneth Llewelyn: oh yes, Seren, that is usual….
[13:04:17] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Better still is to remain lucid throughout the day, though heh
[13:04:21] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Democracy is but a lucid dream
[13:04:33] Metafire Horsley: http://chrisguillebeau.com/ <- The Art of Non-Conformity. He's good, too.
[13:04:33] Khannea Suntzu: On that note
[13:04:35] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Oh yes!
[13:04:50] Khannea Suntzu: I bit yiou all an end to this lovely soiree
[13:04:50] Seren (serendipity.seraph): or that tibetan practice of blurring the line between waking and sleeping until one is fully present in both..
[13:04:51] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Napoleon was an idealist; believed in equality under the law, religious freedom, and that even short men had something to contribute
[13:04:52] DivinePhoebe Luminos: then what is waking up?
[13:04:57] Khannea Suntzu: It has been wonderful
[13:04:58] Arch (archmage.atlantis): To be an idealist is not the same as saying that the ideas are kind, or justified, or even useful
[13:04:59] Khannea Suntzu: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ahc1b0Tm7A
[13:05:07] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Divine paying attention all the time
[13:05:09] Rhiannon of the Birds (rhiannon.dragoone): Divine, Obama Administration
[13:05:11] Khannea Suntzu:
[13:05:13] Gwyneth Llewelyn: hahahahahaha
[13:05:20] DivinePhoebe Luminos: "YES WE CAN" LOL
[13:05:47] Gilles Kuhn: he mostly believed in putting his italian mafiosi family in all throne of europe sacrificing hundred of thousand of people in butcheries doing so…..
[13:06:26] Arch (archmage.atlantis): Assuming that is correct, Giles…..then those were his idealss
[13:06:46] Gilles Kuhn: assuming that is correct arch have you read a bit of history????
[13:07:02] Arch (archmage.atlantis): A small bit
[13:07:08] Gilles Kuhn: very small indeed