Saturday, July 25, 2009

10 Reasons
Michael Anissimov :: August 2004


10 Reasons to Live as Long as Possible

1. Because the universe has plenty of room.
2. Because eighty or ninety years isn't enough to try much out.
3. Because death is so final.
4. Because you'll get to see what happens next week.
5. Because a few thousand friends isn't enough.
6. Because you can then join the project to turn Earth into a Heaven.
7. Because boredom can't prevail against a flow of new, interesting places, ideas, and people.
8. Because aging and death are primitive and inherently unpleasant.
9. Because your loved ones and children don't deserve to see you perish.
10. Because if you don't enjoy it, you can end it at any time.


10 Reasons to Enhance Human Intelligence

1. Because stupidity stops being funny fast.
2. Because sitting in a classroom can be torture.
3. Because if we don't, somebody else will.
4. Because it's part of our species growing up.
5. Because people are suffering due to their own ignorance.
6. Because people are suffering due to ignorance of the wealthy.
7. Because dumb people don't know what they're missing.
8. Because it's the best way to improve our society.
9. Because our brains were meant to evolve.
10. Because it's already within our grasp.


10 Reasons to Develop Molecular Nanotechnology

1. Because killing sentient animals is an cruel way to transform grass into meat.
2. Because fossil fuels are a pain in the ass.
3. Because humans can't fly without strapping ourselves into a rigid hunk of metal.
4. Because our houses and cities are too boring.
5. Because conventional manufacturing destroys the environment.
6. Because people shouldn't have to perform manual labor if it can be automated.
7. Because if biology can do it, so should we.
8. Because everyone deserves food, shelter, and clean water.
9. Because it's about time we cleaned up the mess we humans have made.
10. Because nanotech will be developed anyway, so we might as well be aware.


10 Reasons to Develop Artificial Intelligence

1. Because human cultures aren't exotic enough.
2. Because intelligence should be fluid, not rigid.
3. Because we need someone to help us organize the data we're drowning in.
4. Because aliens aren't showing up, so we should make our own.
5. Because the universe should be infused with intelligence.
6. Because we need new perspectives and thinkers.
7. Because it would be interesting to engineer new emotions.
8. Because sci-fi stereotypes need to be shattered.
9. Because evolution designed made us self-deceiving, and we need help to escape the trap.
10. Because AI is coming whether we like it or not, and it's better to be prepared.


10 Reasons to Learn About Science and Technology

1. Because it has the potential to save billions of lives, and prevent our potential extinction.
2. Because so many popular beliefs are empirically unsound.
3. Because it's the only way to significantly move our entire civilization forward.
4. Because science just means "stuff we know" and technology just means "stuff we can do".
5. Because it's the foundation and context of all other human affairs.
6. Because it makes the main difference between cavemen and modern man.
7. Because ignorance is nothing to be proud of.
8. Because it's challenging and useful.
9. Because progress in science and technology is accelerating.
10. Because our future depends on it.

http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/index.htm

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Thursday, July 16, 2009

a shitty fucking poem

no, I didn't think you'd understand
because I know that I can't

and we are only human

like a puzzle with missing pieces

I sit and stare at the unfinished picture

I know what I'm supposed to see
and what's supposed to be there,

but all that's left is an unfinished puzzle

so I just sit and stare.

until it's time to put it away
and face another day

work for a living

why can't I just live?

there are houses to be built

forests to be killed

survival of the fittest.

but for what?

the missing piece

so what's the point?

Of conveying my frustration

sometimes I just sit and cry

and I don't even know why

how pathetic is that?

Why can't I just sit and laugh

No, I didn't think I'd understand.

Friday, July 10, 2009

loneliness


stumbled on this image today.
I can relate to the woman in many ways, although I don't know if I truly am happy alone.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Sunday, July 5, 2009

space and water

So they say that life as we know it requires water. I wonder how the original life came to be. While swimming yesterday, I was enjoying the near weightless feeling when I started thinking about why life started in water.

I wonder, maybe life began before this planet existed and was a space based life-form and perhaps the water on our planet was a suitable transition from the gravity in outer space

Saturday, July 4, 2009

The Sims 3 and piracy solution

I'm not going to lie, I don't buy a lot of games and certainly don't like paying for "DLC" or micro transactions. The Sims 3, while built on a very nice engine doesn't come with a lot of the items that the original 2 games came with. These are now purchased online, item by item.

An idea I think would be really interesting is if they started issuing a free version of their game with all the features but, you're obligated to upload custom content which then becomes property of EA. This idea came to me when playing Spore, where the creature creator was a free download, and the creatures were uploaded to EA's servers and were actually used to populate other planet's when you bought and played the game.

A game like the Sims would be great for this, especially if the process of scanning things like furniture and digitizing become much more simplified. I've seen some videos of people scanning things with simple, every day, video cameras.

Now of coarse, you would need to know how to tag properties to the item, make sure it doesn't clip and all of that, but tutorials and good software can make this real easy.

People are going to download these games anyways, if Maxis provides the engine and the tools, they could potentially build a portion of the game and let the global community add to it, and later turn around and sell these, at an affordable rate.

Now, of coarse a lot of people would want to take advantage of this, and I could see it not working out in a couple ways, one, where everyone downloads the free version provides free crap that no one buys. Second, where the system is set up in a way where everyone that does get the free product actually provide a quality service that pays off, but people still pirate the game anyway, getting the game without providing a service.

In my opinion, the second outcome is the better one, so it would be ideal to shoot for a good system, and in my opinion, this would go really good when tied with beta testing.

For example, the sims 4 is announced and there is a big media announcement about this idea, one that sends the message that if any hacker want's to get their game for free, EA is saying, "alright, that's fine, but you have to do a little bit of work for us."

Sort of like a restaurant owner saying, "Alright, you can have a free meal, but you gotta do the dishes."

The first that sign up take part in beta testing and once the "item/product creator" is done, they get access to it with a bunch of support to help add whatever they want to the game, also, taking part in the construction of the game with feedback, and so on. Basically, wherever EA can find a service, this can be brought to the freebee crowd. "Freebee", like a bunch of worker bee's, lol, I like that.

So, the free game wouldn't come until the system has verified that you've provided some sort of service.

Yea, hacker's might find ways around this, but I think when it comes to the intelligent computer crowd, they would respect this idea.

Respect goes a long way in this new digital era. There are plenty of examples of businesses that have thrived because customers support their business model.

10055: The new evolution

I stumbled on this article from "the daily galaxy" titled: Stephen Hawking: "Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution"

I remember reading (or rather, listening to an mp3 at work) about this idea in one of Stephen Hawking's books, I think it was "A brief history of time".

Basically, you can break down DNA in to bit's and bytes, and that when we developed writing, through the brain that evolution created, we found a way to pass down much much more then what our DNA ever could.

It all reminds me of this clip from waking life:



(the new evolution part is after the girl's talk on language, which is also very interesting and damn I wish I could meet a smart chick and hear her talk like that, gets me all excited if you know what I'm saying)

I posted this clip a long time ago, but I keep coming back to it. If you haven't seen this movie, here's the link, yea it's a torrent, but it's the fastest easiest way to transfer this valuable information (that I'm aware of), and it's good information. It's the kind of movie that makes you think, again and again. Get's the gears turning...

Please, if you agree and enjoy it as much as I do, send the creators of the original content some money and ask that he write some more.

Back to the article:
Meanwhile, Hawking observes, our human brains "with which we process this information have evolved only on the Darwinian time scale, of hundreds of thousands of years. This is beginning to cause problems. In the 18th century, there was said to be a man who had read every book written. But nowadays, if you read one book a day, it would take you about 15,000 years to read through the books in a national Library. By which time, many more books would have been written."

But we are now entering a new phase, of what Hawking calls "self designed evolution," in which we will be able to change and improve our DNA. "At first," he continues "these changes will be confined to the repair of genetic defects, like cystic fibrosis, and muscular dystrophy. These are controlled by single genes, and so are fairly easy to identify, and correct. Other qualities, such as intelligence, are probably controlled by a large number of genes. It will be much more difficult to find them, and work out the relations between them. Nevertheless, I am sure that during the next century, people will discover how to modify both intelligence, and instincts like aggression."


At around 3:30 in the clip above, the crazy professor states: "Before in the old evolutionary paradigm, one would die and the other would grow and dominate, but in the new paradigm they would exist as a mutually supportive, non-competitive grouping, independent from the external."

The part I want to focus on is non-competitive grouping.

Now, on the large scale, it would be very nice if we could get rid of war altogether, but competition and aggression are always put in a negative light. If it wasn't for competition, we wouldn't be advanced, we wouldn't be where we are today.

I've been playing a lot of video games lately and listening to these lectures on game theory and have been thinking about this for quite a bit.

When I play my games, and for me, my obsession has always been multiplayer, human vs. human type of games, I often ask, "why do I enjoy this so much?"

What is it inside our bodies that says, "let's butt heads, let's compete, let's see who's better."

This applies to every game we play, even "games" in business and relationships.

We're always fighting, our bodies will not let us drop competition and aggression. In my opinion, if it would have benefited us as a species, we would have evolved to be passive by now.

When we get to the stage of "self designed evolution", we're going to have to ask ourselves some very serious questions, like "what do we want?", and "what can we do that evolution hasn't already done?"