On 1 Aug, 03:41, Einar wrote:
Ian Parker wrote:
On 31 Jul, 13:37, Einar wrote:

It?s quite possible to
imagine, say for every 10 species that happen in the Galaxy at least 9
linger indefinitelly at a preindustrial state of development.

Maybe, but I really doubt it. Once you have cultural evolution
outstripping genetic evolution, I think things are going to proceed
rapidly and inevitably pretty much as they have for us. Memes evolve
just like genes, only much faster. The scientific method is a powerful
one because it works (it produces useful results), which is why it has
caught on pretty much universally here (right-wing nut jobs aside), and
it would do the same in any alien culture too. That will ultimately
lead to labor-saving devices, more intensive energy use, etc.

The idea of an "industrial revolution" is again an oversimplification of
history. In reality, it was much more continuous like that, a long
stream of ideas and inventions feeding upon one another, each step
enabling the next steps. It's been an exponential curve, pretty much
any way you measure it, which produces the illusion of little progress
when you're living through it, but extremely rapid progress when you
look back (or forward) on it.

I think it was very important the idea that christianity invented that
of the separation of the realms, i.e. that there were activities that
were nonreligious. The ancient world lacked this distinction, hence
religious activities and ideas permeated all types of activity. In the
hierarchy of gods there was a god for every realm of activity. This
appears to be the single largest difference between christianity and
islam, in islam all activities belong to god. While the church may
have been selfishly reserving religious activities for itself solelly,
in order to maximize its own power, this created more opportunities
for thought, speculation about things, free of religious thinking.

This is why I think it´s no coincidence that scientific thought was
gradually able to develope within the christian countries. However,
that does not yet necessarilly give an explanation for the industrial
revolution.

The ancient Greegs knew about steampower, yet did not develope it.
Same about the Chinese, not enough is known about wether that was the
case in India. The Roman civilization inherited all the knowledge og
the Greegs, and was much richer to boot. But while it appears that
development of industry would have been possible, it didn´t happen.

There has been a great deal of discussion about why the industrial
revolution took place. I think that theoretical knowledge had more
effect than people suppose.

James Watt was at Glasgow university and he had to get a Newcoman
engine working. He found that the engine was very inefficient. What
happenned was that when water was poured onto the cylinders the water
boiled at a lower lemperature because of the change in pressure. He
went to see Joseph Black at Edinbourgh who told him about this. Watt
then designed an egnine with valves where the steam pressure, and
hence water temperature was kept up. So knowledge of thermodynamics
may have been more inportant than is generally realized.

Christian civilization did indeed have this spirit of enquiry and
managed to acquire considerable theoretical knowledge. I think you are
probably right there.

Britain was successfuul because she had a mercantile economy. Other
countries went in much more for state control, particularly overseas.

People have been exploring it why this happened in Britain in the end.
What was so special about Britain that impetus eventually developed to
create a practical steam engine?

In the ancient cases of models of steam powered experiments, there was
clearly allways lacking reliable and efficient means of transforming
the energy in the steam into logomotive power. It was the invention of
the moving piston which was the big break. That took decates to be
developed.

In Britain uses were found for the extremelly inefficient early tipes
of piston arrangement, i.e. to pump water from coalmines. By that time
Britain no longer had enough forests to fuel those engines, so only in
the very immediate viscinity of coal mines were they at all practical.
Over time the engines were improved, and around the beginning of the
19th. century the steam engine became practical for other
applications.

Britain also was by that time a world power, able to import and export
to allmost everywhere. So circumstances appear in many respects to
have been very advantagous in Britain, more so than anywhere ellse and
also more so than at any time before. Sounds bit chancy to me.

- Ian Parker

Preciselly why industrial revolution happened may never be fully
answered. However, I read your other posts and noticed you are hoaping
mind can be copied. Personally I find it unlikelly ever to be
possible. Mind you, sure they are learning a real lot, but a large
aspect of the problem, even though a way might be found to record
thoughts being made as they are made, is that real lot of the
information stored in the brain is not thought about with regularity.
There are lots of memories, things you don´t often think about, and in
addition things that are there that you think you have forgotten but
which can be triggerd into remembrance by a chance event. All of these
things, memories that you are avare of having, and those you are not
avare of having, are part of what make you who you are, part of what
has made you who you are. Therefore, in order for a record to be the
very same personality it will have to contain it all, ellse it will
not be the same.

Agreed, but it might surprise you to hear me say it! I think what we
need is some clarification of what I am saying and not saying.

Kurzweil is talking about a complete silicon brain and life in a
complete simulation. This will become possible in the fullness of time
although it is not an objective I have talked about very much. It is a
far furure objective. Kurzweil is one of these people who you would
like to do a PhD with. He is chalenging, but you would not want to
live at his pace for ever.

No I think we can divide AI into the following categories.

1) Complete Kurzweil simulation.
2) Complete motor simulation.
3) Turing, including high order debating skill.
4) Interstellar AI requirements.

I have discussed "1". I agree with you completely.

I do not know why "2" is even discussed. Well failed astronauts don't
want to face the truth. If you have a dynamical system and the laws of
Physics it is predicatable. If we know the effects of motor
stimulation we can make an optimal path, quite simply in the majority
of cases.

"3" Turing. This is interesting. I feel before we go any further we
ought to know a little bit about how chatterboxes work. Eliza was
brought forward as a psycotherapist. All she did was remember the
inputs thast the user had made and select the most appropirate
response from a database.

Remember Eliza has no reasoning ability of her own, neither does any
chatterbox. If I am debating with you there are a limited number of
appropiate responses to the subject. If I have a large database I can
cover those responses. So in fact Turing = Bueno espagnol. For both we
need essentially the same thing, an accurate vector describing
context.

If you have been reading my previous postings you will see that I have
given AI a role in combating terrorism and also in "hearts and minds".
We need to find people who have joined, or are about to join jihadic
groups and engage them in dialogue. This, as I have said, will require
a large database, not a high order of reasoning ability.

Similarly we can form Erdos type graphs. Again if we have a database,
that database is capable of finding all the relationships it can
understand.

In the Middle East the greatest problem is getting high quality
information though uncensored. This is why I advocate the conformal
array. I have now thought of a design which is attractive in that it
cal be scaled up and a large number of conformal arrays added. I have
also thought of a low emission - could not be seen by detector vans
version which would be based on doing superhet on a shielded chip, and
setting a high frequency by means of a set of lower frequencies. The
setting of a frequency would be based on prime number theory. I will
tell you my thoughts later.

What is required for an interstellar trip. First of all it is in the
far future, or possibly not that far in geological terms. A probe wil
need to operate autonomously. If our large telescope tells us there is
a possibility of intelligent life it will need to have language
learing ability. The Hittite language was decoded with one phrase. :-

"Now you can eat bread and drink water".

There is a method of doing this.


- Ian Parker