the concept was great fantastic delirious to me even. the book itself showed how anglo-american logic can get totally lost in its own myriad paradigm defined logic maze and loose sight of the trees and the redefine the forest. All the maybe spinoffs were totally irrelevant as primary causes-field-events. Hardly anything [in the book not the conversation here] mentioned really intelligence artificial or otherwise. Nor was human senescence alluded to to create an avenue how AIs might progress. Sentience was truly thin on the ground. More about un-related conceptualizations that belonged to a degree to thought-experiments that really should have been appendixed. And most books in this field all repeat each other. We don't seem to be making -as a human race- much progress because I think we are doing this all wrong. Like the early aeronauts who flapped wings trying to fly like birds. Until the propeller was used and we had lift-off. Personally we will never have Ais because our brains are quantum processors with sentient mind-full-ness. The latter is specific to our race. This cannot be-as such duplicated. It is a generated field-wave-mind-set that defines us as we conceptualize. Of course AIs can mimic. They might even become DALEKS. Happy Easter as I dive into the Void.

the over complications, the suppositions in all areas, the assumptions of certain outcomes, the complex logic of spaghetti minded mental convulsions to make a point. It all misses the essence of AI in whatever form. I ran into this at uni doing philslophy-logic and couldn't be philosophical about the proposed propositions. I cheated to pass. It is the same - more erudite - here and the book in general. Creating more forests and hiding the trees. Still it's a learning curve.

since men are wired to mate diversely then obviously the recipient must feel the same not different. I mean it takes 2 to tango. I've met women who wanted to ** with me and once asked the proponent that I had a lover and she said: so what? Lesson over.

brain emulation: what a concept. makes interest re sci fi which I shall actually write into my third novel- how a brain feels as it thinks in it's vacancy. Because with no experience of anything it comes into being just-like-that. A baby has a loaded unconscious but will an emulated brain? empirically not. It is a test tube - tank creation. It will be a blank. The best it can think of if at all is a void-state [not zen]. For this globular entity to function it needs ideas to think with which must be implanted. And that is just the beginning. It may lead to totally absurd answers-results. Nature as per usual has the answer: a baby! OK so it takes at least a decade before it is mentally making progress but emulated brains might end up in controll if at all: watch City of Lost Children to see what could easily happen.

prosperity going even incrementally onwards as a for-ever process is impossible to maintain. This happened nearly 80 yrs ago with the big Crash [1929] when the perfect socity [USA] couldn't save itself from a mega disaster of major proportions. Yet across the Atlantic neither Italy nor Germany [after 33] suffered. So it is a matter of applying collective intelligence to this reward system. The 1950s achieved a dream run that stalled 20 yrs later and the oil shock was a symptom not a cause. Collective failure was the debilitating source of this slow down. During the 80s Australia had a progressive govt [Labor] which adjusted to the neo-conservatives whilst America and the UK caused nothing but grief. The point is that it is attitude that creates prosperity. Even ideology. We have to think and apply macro models applied in micro ways like universal health care which works in several countries. That too can be considered prosperity because in New Zealand you wont go broke going to a hospital. Owning a car is not prosperity but spin-masters want this criterion included for purely monetary advantage. Car ownership is a burden on one's pocket. Govt subsidized public transport is not. It too works. [used to be a bus driver in Sydney]. Increased prosperity is a false vision. Secure prosperity might be a better ideological attitude. America's unemployment % might be low but when the basic wage is so low you can't exist on it then there won't be much prosperity for the workers who in countries that have collective bargaining entrenched in the social contract such as Germany prosperity is assured. The anglo-american mercantile model of rapacious exploitive capitalism guarantees almost next to nothing whilst the European model though not perfect by even their standards guarantees its participants a better overall quality of life missing in pure monetary gauges that seem to miss the essential: the human equation which is not a mere adjunct to investors who have no conscience that their earnings might come from child labour in some unfortunate re-developing country. Secure prosperity should be the foundation of society.

we don't talk about red lights for a train having made a moral decision. i don't think even in AI it applies. if it does than i'd be worried about the humans who offload thinking-decision making to a machine mind. anyway that entity will never comprehend anything per se because it will never be sentient in the broadest sense. I can't see it being an issue. Dropping the atom bomb didn't worry anybody.

I wonder [read the book got the t-shirt & sticker] if it really is -generally- all so complex. I mean a lot of the imputations are anthropomorphic. Machines are dead brains that are switched on. There is nothing else. Unless mimickry which might con some people some of the time. 2001 the movie was still the closest to a machine thinking along certain logic lines. As for rebelling robots, independent machine inteliigences [unless hybrid brain interfaces] I cannot forsee anything in this book that is even relevant. Nice thought experiments though. I am finished. This is it.

In a way happiness is ingrained into specific personality types. My neighbour - next flat - is amazingly happy even after she locked herself out and I tried to break in for her. That happiness can only be duplicated with good drugs. Then there is attitude. I was in India [not as a 5 * tourist either] and found they were content [a bit less than happy] with their lives which compared to ours was a big obvious difference. Anyway it's a moot point as the Scandinavians won that round globally the last time because - social democracy works and it is not socialism which a lot of the braindead insist it is. so will all this collapse in a sci fin Asimov type future? No. As cars replaced horse-cabbies and the underground trains created true mass transit happiness per se was-is not affected-effected. Nor to airoplanes instead of ancient clippers to travel across the seas. Personally I can't wait for the future. I even dream about it. At times. People adjust as kids to their surroundings and take it from there. Anthropologists, social scientists, historians, journalists and writers and even real scientists have shown us that we can be happy whether living in the Stone Age [Australian aborigines] or high tech astronauts and everything in between.