25.2.10

Is your life just one big RPG?




Triumph of the Cyborg Composer - Säveltäjä Emily Howell on tietokoneohjelma. Kun koneet tekevät musiikin, ihmiset voivat keskittyä oleelliseen eli näyttämään hyvältä lavalla.
At one Santa Cruz concert, the program notes neglected to mention that Emily Howell wasn’t a human being, and a chemistry professor and music aficionado in the audience described the performance of a Howell composition as one of the most moving experiences of his musical life. Six months later, when the same professor attended a lecture of Cope’s on Emily Howell and heard the same concert played from a recording, Cope remembers him saying, “You know, that’s pretty music, but I could tell absolutely, immediately that it was computer-composed. There’s no heart or soul or depth to the piece.”

That sentiment — present in many recent articles, blog posts and comments about Emily Howell — frustrates Cope. “Most of what I’ve heard [and read] is the same old crap,” he complains. “It’s all about machines versus humans, and ‘aren’t you taking away the last little thing we have left that we can call unique to human beings — creativity?’ I just find this so laborious and uncreative.”
--
Already, at least one prominent pop group — he’s signed a confidentiality agreement, so he can’t say which one — asked him to use software to help them write new songs. He also points to services like Pandora, which uses algorithms to suggest new music to listeners.

23.2.10

Muistilinkkejä

Singularity FAQ - Vastauksia kysymyksiin.

Piraattikirjallisuuden luvut 1-7 - Piraattikirjan luonnosversio.

Artificial Flight and Other Myths (a reasoned examination of A.F. by top birds) - Dresden Codak.

The Future of Money - Rahaa kuin roskapostia.

The night I met Einstein - Jos et pidä musiikista, opettele kuuntelemaan.

Aivodoping - Anders Sandberg City-lehdessä.

14.2.10

Lisää vain todellisuus




A survey of anti-cryonics writing - Yhtään kunnollista teknistä artikkelia kryoniikkaa vastaan ei näytä löytyvän. Saman huomasi Ralph Merkle jo 16 vuotta sitten. Kenties kyse on siitä, että ne jotka viitsivät tutkia kryoniikkaa syvällisemmin päätyvät lopulta kryoniikan kannattajiksi.
I mailed Michael Shermer, Steve Jones, Quackwatch, and Professor David Pegg. I told them (quite truthfully) that I had recently started talking to some people who were cryonics advocates, that they seemed persuasive but I wasn't an expert and didn't want to fall for a scam, and asked if there was anything they'd recommend I'd read on the subject to see the other side.

The only one of these to reply was Michael Shermer. He recommended I read David Brin, Steve Harris and Gregory Benford. This is a pretty surprising reply. The latter two are cryonics advocates, and while Brin talks about a lot of possible problems, he agrees with cryonics advocates that it is technically feasable.

Ben Goldacre: The placebo effect - Plaseboefekti hyötykäyttöön ilman valehtelua potilaille.

DNA 2.0: A new operating system for life is created

31.1.10

Vääriä ihmisiä väärässä ympäristössä

Teema: Bioniikka - kone ihmisessä - National Geographic 1/2010 ihmisen varaosista.

Ephemerisle - Kokeellinen vesifestivaali Seasteading Institutelta.



Drug could turn soldiers into super-survivors - Verenhukan haittoja kuriin valproaatilla.

SoundBite - Kuulokoje hampaaseen.

27.1.10

Videot Aubrey de Greyn puheesta

Aubrey de Grey Helsinki 2010 - Videotiedostot de Greyn puheesta viime lauantaina. Ladatkaa, jakakaa, leikatkaa, konvertoikaa ja siirtäkää kätevämpiin videopalveluihin. Edit: YouTubessa


Mars-mönkijä on juuttunut hiekkaan, mutta ei anna periksi vaan jatkaa tutkimuksia.

In the Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are the New Bits


The 10:23 Event - Homeopatia on huijausta, joten 'lääkettä' voi niellä pullollisen kerralla.
Sceptics and consumer rights activists will publicly swallow an entire bottle of homeopathic 'pillules' to demonstrate that these 'remedies', prepared according to a long-discredited 18th century ritual, are nothing but sugar pills.

16.1.10

Muistilinkkejä

Aubrey de Grey esitelmöi ikääntymisen pysäyttämisestä lauantaina 23.1. Lääkäriliiton talon auditoriossa Helsingissä.

Self-control is contagious, study finds - Kannattaa hengailla robottien seurassa.

Derailing for Dummies - Kuinka suistaa keskustelu syrjinnästä raiteiltaan.

The Final Prejudice - David Deutsch Star Trekistä ja pienten ihmisten kuuntelemisesta.

Roxxxy - Ei kovin seksikäs seksirobotti.

‘Strongest Man,’ 104, dies after he's hit by car - Onnettomuus vei nuorekkaan satavuotiaan.

Why It's So Tricky for Atheists to Debate with Believers

7.1.10

Pidempiä juttuja odotellessa

Useampikin henkilö on toivonut, että kirjoittaisin lisää pitkiä juttuja suomeksi pelkkien linkkien ja englanninkielisten lainausten sijaan. Ymmärrän hyvin, sillä minulla on odottamassa lista aiheista, joista haluaisin kirjoittaa hieman enemmän tai joihin haluaisin palata uudelleen, mutta aiheet eivät tunnu tällä hetkellä niin pakottavan tärkeiltä ja innostavilta, että siirtäisin ne ajankäytössä kärkipäähän. Runsaampia aikoja odotellessa joudutte siis tyytymään linkkeihin ja lyhyisiin kommentteihin - siihen raakamateriaaliin, josta pidemmät kirjoitukset kenties aikanaan syntyvät.

Jos odotellessa käy aika pitkäksi, suosittelen Less Wrongin sekvenssien lukemista.

6.1.10

Ne

Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up - Leuka rintaan ja kohti uusia epäonnistumisia.
This is why other people are so helpful: They shock us out of our cognitive box. “I saw this happen all the time,” Dunbar says. “A scientist would be trying to describe their approach, and they’d be getting a little defensive, and then they’d get this quizzical look on their face. It was like they’d finally understood what was important.
Hacklabs Finland - Yhteisötyöpajat.
TakeOnIt - Vertaile asiantuntijoiden mielipiteitä.

Build An Optimal Scientist, Then Retire - Jürgen Schmidhuberin haastattelu.
It's a bit like asking an ant of 10 million years ago: If humans were created tomorrow, what sort of implications do you think that would have for all the ant colonies?

Scientists create world's first molecular transistor
Scientists 'photograph' nano-particle self-assembly


-- The third-person singular and plural are, respectively, se and ne, which according to the written language specifications refer to an inanimate object or an animal. Thus, at a time when English is moving towards gender-neutrality, Finnish is moving to species-neutrality.
- Gender-neutral pronoun#Uralic_languages


30.12.09

2010

2010 Singularity Research Challenge - Singularity Instituten keräyskampanja ensi vuodelle. Voit valita millaiseen toimintaan lahjoituksesi käytetään.
If you make a donation to the Singularity Institute, you can choose which grant proposal your donation should help to fill. Any time a grant proposal is fully funded, it goes into our “active projects” file: it becomes a project that we have money enough to fund, and that we are publicly committed to funding. (Some of the projects will go forward even without earmarked donations, with money from the general fund — but many won’t, and since our work is limited by how much money we have available to support skilled staff and Visiting Fellows, more money allows more total projects to go forward.)

Any remaining money allocated to partially funded grants on Feb 28 (at the close of the Challenge Campaign) will be returned to the general fund.

29.11.09

F F F F F F F


Race is on to use embryonic stem cells in humans

Intel Wants Brain Implants in Its Customers' Heads by 2020


Addicted To Being Good? The Psychopathology of Heroism - Extreme-altruistit. Aiemmin: Sankarit ja psykopaatit

The myth of the starship
Such an interstellar capability isn't going to look much like a "ship". It's going to look more like a DVD balanced on a microwave beam, or a can of beans hanging below a light sail energized by lasers powered by huge orbiting solar power stations. There won't be any biological agencies aboard: just AGIs or something equivalent ported out of a fleshbody's cranium. No hands, only nanotech assemblers. And after a voyage of decades or centuries it's going to have to stop — somehow braking at the other end — then spend more decades farming rocks, slush and sunlight to build ever-bigger physical structures until it can build the equipment with which to phone home.