RyanJ

i use it quite often actually. its good for quick 'back of the napkin' calculations if i'm responding to a post on the forum and i need a ballpark figure or soemthing to compare it to.

 

it also allows you to link to your working for it and let the other user see for themselves. it only gets better as time goes on. in short, i love it.

I find it useful for quick calculations or calculations that I really don't want to do myself. It has saved me a lot of time since I got used to it. Plus being able to "just ask" is helpful.

What do you guys think about Wolfram Alpha? Personally I think it's an interesting idea - ambitious but that's probably why I find it so interesting.

It has the potential to do a lot of things IF the goals set can be filled.

Scientists have finally uncovered the genetics that allow spiders to create their ultra-fine and strong silk that could one day replace current surgical adhesives.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427325.200-sticky-future-for-the-spider-suture.html

I'll be going into C# again soon - it's been a long time since I used it and I'm somewhat rusty. I plan on writing a cellular automata exploration program as a tutorial for myself.

What are these dangers?

I believe this thread is relating to the so called dangers brought up in this thread.

RyanJ,

 

We do seem to go in cycles. High prices cure high prices and such.

 

Though we might be headed toward a technological singularity of sorts, it could probably be viewed as a parabolic increase on a continuing stochastic chart. History has shown us that charts don't end. A local peak is reached, a correction follows, and then the dominant trend continues.

 

We will figure out, what works and what does not.

 

Regards, TAR

A singularity isn't seen as the end anyway - it's just an explosive technological evolution that goes at an exponential (or greater) level per time scale.

We don't take a hammer and bash in our own skulls, just because we like the way it feels. We don't stop eating food because we like the feeling in our stomachs of being hungry. We don't refrain from sex because it hurts to have sex (there are many reasons to be abstinent, but physical discomfort is not one of them).[/quote}

 

That's a totally different issue. Sometimes risks are required in order to survive and prosper. Those who are willing to climb a tree (and possibly being killed in the process) would be rewarded if they can get food while others who refuse to climb cannot. That is one possible source for such a reaction to adrenaline.

 

Shouldn't adrenaline be similar? Shouldn't it be one of discomfort? Sort of like how, if we're shot in the arm, we go to the hospital and get it taken out ASAP, just so the pain will subside. If we're hungry, we try and eat something, just so that the hunger will go away.

 

Shouldn't we get ourselves out of harms' way, just so that we don't have to feel the adrenaline anymore?

 

Adrenaline is meant to stop you getting out of danger, not to prevent you getting into danger or discomfort in the first place. That is why we perceive danger and try to avoid it - comparing adrenaline to not eating is like comparing two totally different things. It just doesn't work to compare then because they are from different causes.

 

It's my hypethesis that, if we can find the cause of adrenaline's pleasurable feeling, it would provide a hot lead towards signficantly reducing crime, for obvious reasons.

 

I doubt it will work because, as I have said above, it's meant to get us out of danger, not prevent us getting into it in the first place.

Why? Euphoria is one of the side effects of it. As to why, I guess it's because when you are in danger you could well be hurt. If you're hurt then that pain could get in the way of you escaping so it's best to replace it with euphoria.

By helping you endure potential pain it would give you a better chance of escaping - don't you agree?

You asked why it feels good - simply put it's because the body triggers it regardless of the situation. And as adrenaline isn't aware of the circumstances why would it feel different because we caused it than if we didn't?

Most people who commit acts of violence without motivation are merely seeking a thrill, aka an adrenaline rush.

 

But why does adrenaline feel good, when it's designed to get us out of danger, not make us want to put ourselves in danger?

Actually... most crimes are commuted because of greed, not for thrill. While is is true that, say, teens may get a thrill from shoplifting I have never read any research that suggests that is the primary motivation for most crimes.

Adrenaline doesn't know the difference. Our body makes it when we are scared, in danger and in several situations - it's goal is to help us better deal with dangerous or unexpected situations, regardless of whether the person caused the situation or not.

There are lots of views on the matter.

Some people think that we are genetically disposed to be that way - such that "survival of the strongest". I'm sure that could be true on some level but most of society discourages it and thus it is suppressed in most people, most of the time.

That brings us to another point, the extreme violence in some people could be an inherent flaw. Studies on murderess for example have found that some of them essentially have no conscience.

This is the type of topic that could be debated over for the next hundred years

Short answer: not much

Long answer: Not much except going agrarian.

Critical errors I will of course accept but I fail to see how that makes it similar to a nuclear weapon which was intended to be destructive.

I do agree with your thinking but I think that you need to understand that your examples don't quite go well with your specific reasoning. Nuclear weapons for one were created to destroy and if an AI were designed to do that then most arguments we've presented are worthless.

If we talk about emergent qualities then underlying errors and flaws in the programming could be manifested in any number of complex and unpredictably ways but to believe that those would inevitably lead to a destructive AI is a little short sighted.

I also agree with you in that if it was a military project it would have far more potential danger than a regular lab project for obvious reasons.

1. You would probably need two magnets with differing poles to go that or maybe you could do with something like a generator where an electromagnetic field is created by passing current through coils of wire. As this generates it's own magnetic field it will cause the magnet inside to rotate.

2. With sufficient control over the magnetic field strength then you could.

3. Essentially only two factors affect magnetism, the strength of the magnetic field and the distance between the magnets.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427316.400-industrial-robot-hones-virtual-autopsies.html

A new approach to autopsies that isn't so invasive and destructive is being pioneered in a university in Switzerland. This new robot could help make future autopsies a lot simpler and less destructive.

Calculus is always helpful in most areas of science and it is used in physical chemistry as I recall. If you think you will need said topic in your studies (maybe asking a tutor if it's needed?) then go for it

Copying Text [math]\ne[/math] Reverse engineering

 

Completely different abilities being described, so it's important not to conflate the two.

Exactly my point.

REPLY: I am no optimist, though I do remain hopeful. I , along with so very many others have been involved in situations where things go terribly wrong. The news is full of such events. I`ll confine myself to a list of technological disasters to include some with malicious intent on the part of people because that is an ever present component of the way things are, now, and in the past. These forces are always at work and influence much of what goes on in this World : the New York trade towers attack and resulting disaster,Chernobyl Nuclear reactor disaster,Pearl Harbor Dec. 7,1941, Hiroshema, Nagasaki, Dresden Germany fire bombing WWII,interstate 35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis Minnesota,Hepatitis-C epidemic related to incredibly foolish blood gathering [ paying indigents $5.00 for a pint of blood ] and then pooling this blood prior to extracting different components. This was the way much of the blood was gathered and processed prior to 1996. This practice was overseen by ? . Many thousands of Viet Nam War veterans contracted this and other deadly diseases because of this incredibly reckless practice from blood transfusions. One out of four units [pints ? ] were contaminated with hepatitis-C . So if you needed even 4 units transfused you were very likely to become infected with Hep-C . The same was true for anyone such as car accident victums and such up until 1996.

I could go on and on. What reason does anyone have to think there is anyone OUT THERE keeping tabs on any of this research and development, even here in the US, and we are certainly not the only players in this game,far from it. Regards, ...Dr.Syntax

Those are completely different. The incidents you relate are not similar to this at all - none of those were created in the lab to suit a purpose that would come under a category such as an AI.

True the nuclear weapons and such were developed in labs but they were designed to be destructive - if an AI were designed to be destructiveness then it would be also and render most of the arguments in this thread worthless. We are discussing evolved nature and how it would affect the AI - not that it was created as a sort of virtual nuclear device.

That is still not free energy - not by any definition that I am aware of anyway.

If you mean in a microwave then it goes like this. Water molecules tend to absorb photons in the microwave range and so are "excited" by them. As heat is a measure of somethings "excitement" (more correctly how quickly the molecules are moving) the water gets hotter.

The glass gets warmer by conduction of the heat from the warmer liquid.

Things that normally look like they make free energy don't - for one it goes against the laws of thermodynamics and allows for self perpetuating machines. What type of "free energy" are you working on?

RyanJ - i dont think that will help as it doesnt have values (and if you put values in i think it screws up)

Maybe not the exact one I listed there but there are other options for different equation sets there too. One of those should have what you want.

Try putting the information here. That should help you understand it

Not really, an artificial intelligence need not in any way be related to our neural system, nor is there any guarantee that we would even understand how the AI works. On the other hand, a proper AI should be able to figure out how to make us smarter. But, we could also skip that step and work on making ourselves smarter directly. We would take longer at that than an AI would at making itself smarter because our generation time is so slow and due to ethical considerations, but in this case we don't need to create an intelligence only improve it.

As I have said before it would be very, very difficult to copy something that we don't understand. It can be reasonably assumed that we would have to have a decent understanding before we would have much success in copying it.

Being the eternal optimist that I am, I don't believe it'll ever come to that - if anything we are far more likely to wipe ourselves out than have some rogue AI do it.

With the understanding of how to build an AI it's possible we would learn to expand our own intelligence and make ourselves smarter, if we can do that then that would certainly be worth it.

So, if almost everyone recognizes the potential for an AI to get out of control (in an evil robot overlord type way)...then why do people still want to go through with it?

Ah the good old question of why. There are 2 reasons really, firstly to see if it's possible or not and secondly because the benefits would outweigh the risks.