Farewell Aaron Swartz (1986-2013)
Computer activist Aaron H. Swartz committed suicide in New York City yesterday, Jan. 11.
The accomplished Swartz co-authored the now widely-used RSS 1.0 specification at age 14, was one of the three co-owners of the popular social news site Reddit, and completed a fellowship at Harvard’s Ethics Center Lab on Institutional Corruption. In 2010, he founded DemandProgress.org, a “campaign against the Internet censorship bills SOPA/PIPA.”
He deserves a eulogy more eloquent than what I am capable of writing. Here's Cory Doctorow's, one of his long time friends.
It's a sad world in which you are being arrested and grand jury'd for downloading scientific journals and papers with the intent to share them.
Implications of an infinite versus a finite universe
Hi gang,
for the last several months, I've intermittently been wondering about a curious fact I learned.
You see, I was under the impression that the universe (as opposed to just the currently observable universe or our Hubble volume) must be finite in its spa[t|c]ial dimensions. I figured that starting with a finite area of space, expanding with a finite (even if accelerating) expansion rate, could only yield a finitely sized volume of space (from any reference frame), a fraction of which constitutes our little Hubble bubble.
Turns out - honi soit qui mal y pense - my layman's understanding was wrong: "This [WMAP data] suggests that the Universe is infinite in extent (...)"
Now, most (non-computer-scientist) people I've bothered with that answered along the lines of "well, it's really big alright? (geez)".
However, going from any finite amount of matter/energy to an actual infinite amount (even when looking at just e.g. baryonic matter from the infinite amount of galaxies) still seems like a game-changer for all sorts of contemplations:
For example, any event with any non-zero probability of happening, no matter how large the negative exponent, would be assured of actually happening an infinite amount of times somewhere in the our very own universe (follows straightforwardly from induction over the law of large numbers).
Such as a planet turning into a giant petunia for a moment, before turning back.
The universe being infinite doesn't make that event any more likely in our observable universe, of course, but would the knowledge that given our laws of physics, there is an infinite amount of Hubble spaces governed by any sorts of "weird" occurrences - e.g. ruled by your evil twin brother - trouble you? Do we need to qualify "there probably is no Christian-type/FSM god" with "... in our Hubble volume. Elsewhere, yes."?
The difference, if you allow me a final rephrase, would be in going from a MWI-style "there may be another version - if the MWI interpretation is correct - that I cannot causally interact with" to a "in our own universe, just separated by space, there is an infinite amount of actual planets turning into actual petuniae (albeit all of which I also cannot interact with)".
Musk, Mars and x-risk
Elon Musk, the billionaire founder and CEO of the private spaceflight company SpaceX, wants to help establish a Mars colony of up to 80,000 people by ferrying explorers to the Red Planet for perhaps $500,000 a trip.
(...) we've put all our eggs in one basket. If we were on many worlds and were to mess up down here, there's a way for the human species to continue. I don't for a moment propose that the Earth is a disposable planet, and we have to put enormous efforts into making sure we don't muss up down here. But there is a chance.
[LINK] TEDx "When creative machines overtake man"
In a few decades, such [creative] machines will have more computational power than human brains.This will have consequences. My kids were born around 2000. The insurance mathematicians say they are expected to see the year 2100, because they are girls.A substantial fraction of their lives will be spent in a world where the smartest things are not humans, but the artificial brains of an emerging robot civilization, which presumably will spread throughout the solar system and beyond (space is hostile to humans but nice to robots).This will change everything much more than, say, global warming, etc. But hardly any politician is aware of this development happening before our eyes. Like the water lilies which every day cover twice as much of the pond, but get noticed only a few days before the pond is full.My final advice: don't think of us, the humans, versus them, those future uber-robots. Instead view yourself, and humankind in general, as a stepping stone (not the last one) on the path of the universe towards more and more unfathomable complexity. Be content with that little role in the grand scheme of things.
[LINK] Different heuristics at different decision speeds
[LINK] Cryonics - without even trying
(Title is tongue-in-cheek, "preservation" would've been more appropriate but less catchy)
With [news like that](http://news.discovery.com/history/preserved-brain-bog-england-110406.html), how hard can it be when you actually do want to preserve a brain:
> A human skull dated to about 2,684 years ago with an "exceptionally preserved" human brain still inside of it was recently discovered in a waterlogged U.K. pit, according to a new Journal of Archaeological Science study.
> The brain is the oldest known intact human brain from Europe and Asia, according to the authors, who also believe it's one of the best-preserved ancient brains in the world. (...) Scientists believe that submersion in liquid, anoxic environments helps to preserve human brain tissue.
Unfortunately for the poor guy / brain, we killed his survival prospects. He did go with the cheap option of just saving the head. Speculating, if he got found another few centuries from now, he might've been a patient, not "archeological remains".
On a more serious note, I'd like the perspective of someone signed up for cryonics on this:
With people signed up for cryonics nowadays - I hear it even comes with a necklace! - I wonder what role the signalling aspect (to others, more importantly to oneself, feeling safer from death) plays versus the actual permanent-death-evading.
Having been present for (mouse) brain slice experiments done immediately after extraction, being confronted with the rapidly progressing tissue decay, the most important aspect that could easily be optimised - apart from research into other methods of preservation - was the time from the extraction to the experiments. Each minute made a tremendous difference. Not a surprise: as the aphorism in neurology (stroke therapy) goes, "time is brain".
What leads me to somewhat doubt the seriousness of the actual belief in brain preservation, versus the belief in belief that's based on minimising existential angst, is that the obvious idea of "when death is approaching with an ETA of less than X, commit suicide with cryonics on immediate standby" is not an integral part of the discussion. X may be weeks, or even years, based on how serious you take cryonics.
The above incidentally contains a way of betting to indicate the strength you assign to the actual prospects of cryonics, versus the role it plays for you psychologically. Isn't betting on your beliefs encouraged in this community? (NB: the "suicide" is just included to avoid legal ramifications.)
Regardless of future technological advances, orders of magnitude less brain damage will certainly pose less of a problem than the delay caused even by a couple of hours. A couple of hours = your brain tissue is already a scorched battlefield! Both necrosis and apoptosis get started within minutes.
Measuring your actual belief in the success of cryonics (for someone signed up for cryonics), waiting for death by natural causes doesn't indicate a lot of confidence when even a few weeks of life seem to be measured more highly than a tremendous increase in the actual prospects of cryonics working.
Or do you have above mentioned plans in place for when your life expectancy is less than X months/years (for whatever reason)?
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