Entries Tagged 'ideas' ↓

Last night I had a wistful musing about starting a political party in New Zealand, due to my constant annoyance of my perception of everyone in parliament treading the line and being too paralysed/cynical/stupid to really change anything. Tatjna made the insightful comment that this is naturally what happens when people enter politics, entering with high ideals and wanting to change the world, but gradually having to compromise while working at small changes to the original goal ends up diluting that former grand goal.

When I was 19 I wanted to start a political party. Yeah, at the time, I mostly I thought it’d be a hoot. I wasn’t at all political (except for the general bafflement at politician’s idiocy at times), and I wasn’t one of those students that joined the clubs of other political parties. I did once run for student president at Canterbury University, except that was also a joke campaign: “1 of 5 New Zealanders have a mental illness, and I’m representing them”, “I will fight off pirates with my l33t ninja skillz”… a whole 100 people voted for me! Which surprised me, given that I didn’t even know 100 people and not everyone who was my friend was comfortable voting for my madness.

However, I still have those thoughts about starting a party. And then I also thought, “Hey! I also know a lot of intelligent and sometimes outspoken people who’ve got personal campaigns of things they want changed”. So maybe I will, after all. What would be my stance be on various topics? Well, I’d have to think about it some more, but generally, I will have a number of wild, outlandish ideas so that on the off chance I did get in, and even if politics diluted my idealism, one of those wild ideas might filter through…

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Last night I had a wistful musing about starting a political party in New Zealand, due to my constant annoyance of my perception of everyone in parliament treading the line and being too paralysed/cynical/stupid to really change anything. Tatjna made the insightful comment that this is naturally what happens when people enter politics, entering with high ideals and wanting to change the world, but gradually having to compromise while working at small changes to the original goal ends up diluting that former grand goal. When I was 19 I wanted to start a political party. Yeah, at the time, I mostly I thought it'd be a hoot. I wasn't at all political (except for the general bafflement at politician's idiocy at times), and I wasn't one of those students that joined the clubs of other political parties. I did once run for student president at Canterbury University, except that was also a joke campaign: "1 of 5 New Zealanders have a mental illness, and I'm representing them", "I will fight off pirates with my l33t ninja skillz"... a whole 100 people voted for me! Which surprised me, given that I didn't even know 100 people and not everyone who was my friend was comfortable voting for my madness. However, I still have those thoughts about starting a party. And then I also thought, "Hey! I also know a lot of intelligent and sometimes outspoken people who've got personal campaigns of things they want changed". So maybe I will, after all. What would be my stance be on various topics? Well, I'd have to think about it some more, but generally, I will have a number of wild, outlandish ideas so that on the off chance I did get in, and even if politics diluted my idealism, one of those wild ideas might filter through... First, I'll be honest - I don't fucking care if this isn't the way of things now. Ask me about my life and I'll answer it with the truth. If the public can't handle that, then they need to grow up. I'll also swearand insult the public when they deserve it (as demonstrated above). But that'd okay, because nobody is actually "the public", so no one will get hurt. We're all unique, just like everyone else, and I'll get to vent my frustration, thus it's a win-win situation. I'll tell other politicians they're idiots when they act like idiots (I was going to link each word of this sentence to examples of idiocy, but then I realised I didn't want to waste my time on other people's idiocy). I'll frequently change my mind. I'm a human being, and I'm also open-minded. That means that my opinions and thoughts are not set in stone. If a reporter asks me why my stance has changed, I'll say "Because I'm human, not a list of policy decisions". Okay, so none of the above are actual campaign positions. So perhaps I should share some of those: - Universal living allowance: everybody has the right to shelter and food. I don't care if your parents earn too much money, I won't penalise you while going to university for having "rich" parents. I have friends that got through University on a student allowance - whereas I got a $55k student loan. Although I received some support from my parents, I didn't receive the amount some of my friends received. This isn't just meant to be in terms of University though, it's essentially a replacement for the dole. I also believe that people naturally want to work or do something, and although some people may take advantage of not having to work, the living allowance would be for subsistence only. - Larger investment in technology. Real technology too. Stop focussing on value-added agriculture, instead focus on a knowledge and future-tech economy. Lots of smart people want to come to New Zealand, but we don't have enough interesting jobs to bring them here (I'm not saying that there are no interesting jobs, but I sometimes get envious of the crazy projects my friends get to work on, despite working on AI myself). This wouldn't be much of a problem if people could look beyond a 5 year time frame (for things other than climate change, where I've seen some research papers make ridiculous 100 year projections - it was ridiculous enough when I projected 80 years into the future for a biometeorology paper I wrote). - Abolish antiquated copyright and IP law. Record companies won't be able to sue individuals for millions of dollars just for sharing mp3s online. Companies won't be able to patent genes that exist in nature (and we'll ignore the gene patents of other countries). - Drug reform - drug prohibition does more harm than good. It gives money to criminals (and removes a large taxable income), takes a large amount of policing effort that could be targeting crimes that actually have victims, makes successful and productive members of society criminals (purely from wanting to have the freedom to put what they want in their body), makes the act of taking drugs more dangerous due to them being unregulated (you've got no idea what you are taking because criminals control the quality). I'm well aware that I don't know all the factors in all these issues. But that's why I wrote the above about my opinion changing. I'm a human, not a list of policies.

A friend of mine, JMM knew that I’ve been funded in the past by SIAI to work on OpenCog, so he asked the following question:

“The Singularity Institutes “main purpose” is meant to be to investigate whether a recursively improving intelligence can maintain “friendliness” towards human kind. “

Okay, but my standpoint is: Why does the recursively improving intelligence need to be non-human? It seems counter-intuitive to me to devolve this power to something outside of ourselves – and also a bit like we’re just trying vainly to become a kind of God, creating another type of being.

I think the main reason there is a focus on AI rather than improvement of human intelligence is because it’s so damn hard to do experiments on people’s brains. It’s ethically difficult to justify various experiments, and it only gets harder as things become more regulated (and rightfully so for the most case). I think they’ll definitely be continuing research into this stuff though. For myself, occasionally taking Modafinil enhances my productivity significantly (so long as I maintain focus on what I’m meant to be doing, it’s easy to get enthralled with something that interests me, but isn’t related to my work).

But there’s no exclusion of human intelligence amplification from the singularity concept. If we create smarter humans, then this begets even smarter humans. Again we can’t really predict what those enhanced “humans” would do, because they are a significant step smarter than us.

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A friend of mine, JMM knew that I've been funded in the past by SIAI to work on OpenCog, so he asked the following question: "The Singularity Institutes "main purpose" is meant to be to investigate whether a recursively improving intelligence can maintain "friendliness" towards human kind. " Okay, but my standpoint is: Why does the recursively improving intelligence need to be non-human? It seems counter-intuitive to me to devolve this power to something outside of ourselves - and also a bit like we're just trying vainly to become a kind of God, creating another type of being. I think the main reason there is a focus on AI rather than improvement of human intelligence is because it's so damn hard to do experiments on people's brains. It's ethically difficult to justify various experiments, and it only gets harder as things become more regulated (and rightfully so for the most case). I think they'll definitely be continuing research into this stuff though. For myself, occasionally taking Modafinil enhances my productivity significantly (so long as I maintain focus on what I'm meant to be doing, it's easy to get enthralled with something that interests me, but isn't related to my work). But there's no exclusion of human intelligence amplification from the singularity concept. If we create smarter humans, then this begets even smarter humans. Again we can't really predict what those enhanced "humans" would do, because they are a significant step smarter than us. Human intelligence amplification has a whole raft of other ethical issues associated with it though too. When it becomes more mainstream/available it's going to be a major political and social issue. What happens when not everyone can afford (or wants) to enhance themselves? Will we develop two classes? One of naturals and another of post-humans? Will employers require certain professions to use performance enhancement (say for example, for brain surgeons performing long surgeries)? It's also going to raise the question about the ownership of our bodies. There are laws against taking recreational drugs, but for some, LSD helps with certain types of thought and could be seen as a form of an intelligence manipulator (or an amplifier of certain facets of intelligence). At the moment at least, governments and enforcement agencies seem completely uninterested in actively stopping this, due to the prevalence of various performance enhancement drugs throughout academia and other cognitively demanding professions. Obviously it's not necessary, but for some the edge or boost it gives them is sufficient to outweigh the risks of off-prescription drug use. That was my main beef with Kurzweil: He assumed that the intelligence beyond the horizon would be non-human. This, of course, begs the deeper philosophical question: what *is* "human?" But I'm sure you've mulled that one over plenty. Indeed, it would be interesting to hear what you have to say on the subject. It simply strikes me that, the human ego being what it is, we would naturally be trying to improve our own intelligence and not worrying too much about creating AI as a standalone entity. Am I wrong? Is the human ego instead more interested in giving birth to a new species? There is one other reason there is a focus on AI. Which is related to human ego. Once humans have an advantage over others, such as a significant step up in intelligence, then there's a good chance some will use that power over others in a negative way. It's the old adage, "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" - and it's my opinion, that this could lead to the same power/intelligence imbalance between an intelligence-amplified human and humans, as that between humans and dogs. Or more succinctly, humans have plenty of evolutionary baggage that we don't necessarily want to amplify! Yeah I've thought about that a little as well. What I wonder (and this really is just pure speculation) is whether hyper-intelligent humans would have more faculty for reason and logic; and, if so, if they would see the benefits in spreading the gift and/or using their gifts in more compassionate or benevolent ways...? Because, surely, that's evolution as well. Again, it would seem somehow counter-intuitive to improve intelligence without, for example, attempting to improve our capacity for processing emotions -- our 'emotional intelligence', as it were. I tend to think that many of the world's problems today come down to a focus on what is scientifically possible rather than what is philosophically 'good' or 'true'. Basic agreement, improving intelligence is really just a catch all for all sort of cognition improvements. Depending on where we focussed neuron regeneration, we could expect to see improvements in different aspects of cognition. Science and technology will inevitably advance, and while we can regulate technology to some extent, we can't stop it. Telling people they can't work on AI would merely push it underground, and one of the reason I work on OpenCog is because it's an open-source framework. It can be inspected by other experts for flaws to ensure there isn't some hidden time-bomb sitting in the code, and allows an international approach which might otherwise be over-regulated within a university-specific project (this ignores the actual issue of friendly vs. unfriendly AI, since the latter doesn't have to be intentionally designed - I may write more about that one day, but SIAI and it's fellows have already written plenty on that). To bring it back to AI, what place is there for emotions in an artifically constructed intelligence? Is there a capacity for compassion or fear, if they serve a function for processing input and generating responses? I am guessing that cognitive scientists have thought about this one... That's a BIG topic, so all I'll say is that my opinion is that emotions are just a particular mind state. Sure this mind state is influenced by hormones and neurotransmitters, but so is the rest of the brain's functioning. My opinion is that emotions are just extremely strong aspects of a human's mental world. If we gave an AI an extremely strong desire/goal to make humans happy, and the AI design had some kind of reward based system (such that the AI was trying to maximise these) and achieving these rewards caused other effects in the AI's mind, such a propensity to use positive phrases to describe the world, then is there any reason to believe that the AI isn't happy itself? Disclaimer: I'm no longer in the employ of the SIAI, so my thoughts are not endorsed by them at all.

For a while I’ve wondered how to efficiently and unobtrusively power cybernetic implants. To me, the idea of having to replace batteries and recharge things that are part of my body is antithetical to the whole idea of implants. Implants should blend with organics and utilise the natural power sources within the body.

So, how much wattage does the human body produce naturally? Well, this is what the Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) indicates, or more accurately, it indicates the average amount of energy expended on day-to-day activities… if you had a particularly active day then this would jump up higher.

There’s a BMR calculator here and according to it, my BMR is 1906 kcal/day. This works out to about 92 Watts… not much more than a light-bulb*!

In order to tap into this energy source, we need to adopt one of the energy currencies of the body. Some ideas might be glucose, ATP, or the electron transport chain (although the latter two are generally intracellular processes, so I’m guessing it’d be harder and potentially more dangerous to try these). Further, there should probably be some regulation of utilising the body’s energy, so that if these energy substrates drop too low in concentration then the implants should either switch off and warn their user that blood glucose levels are low.

As a result of this, it’ll give you an excuse to eat more delicious food to power your implants. Or, if you’re trying to lose weight, you could run the main processor overnight to encode your previous day’s memories to xvid – or regularly present the vocabularies of 5 foreign languages to your brain as you dream – hablo castiano un pocho )

But then, a negative consequence of having more implants is exactly this – your body will have to work harder to sustain them. Depending on the strength you place on metabolic rate affecting longevity, more implants could then start reversing the gradual increase in lifespan we’ve been seeing during the last couple of centuries. Of course, they’ll be plenty of others trying to come up with engineered ways to halt or reverse this metabolic aging.

Anyhow, I hope the cyberneticists are taking this all into account, because it first gives designers an idea of the wattage they have to play with and also because I’d really prefer to avoid having to plug myself in at night!

* 1906 * 4.18 kJ/kcal * 1 day / 8.64e4 sec = 92.2 Watts. And upon conducting research about this, NASA and HP labs have made the comment in the past that the human body produces about the same amount of energy as a 100 Watt light-bulb needs.

For a while I've wondered how to efficiently and unobtrusively power cybernetic implants. To me, the idea of having to replace batteries and recharge things that are part of my body is antithetical to the whole idea of implants. Implants should blend with organics and utilise the natural power sources within the body. So, how much wattage does the human body produce naturally? Well, this is what the Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) indicates, or more accurately, it indicates the average amount of energy expended on day-to-day activities... if you had a particularly active day then this would jump up higher. There's a BMR calculator here and according to it, my BMR is 1906 kcal/day. This works out to about 92 Watts... not much more than a light-bulb*! In order to tap into this energy source, we need to adopt one of the energy currencies of the body. Some ideas might be glucose, ATP, or the electron transport chain (although the latter two are generally intracellular processes, so I'm guessing it'd be harder and potentially more dangerous to try these). Further, there should probably be some regulation of utilising the body's energy, so that if these energy substrates drop too low in concentration then the implants should either switch off and warn their user that blood glucose levels are low. As a result of this, it'll give you an excuse to eat more delicious food to power your implants. Or, if you're trying to lose weight, you could run the main processor overnight to encode your previous day's memories to xvid - or regularly present the vocabularies of 5 foreign languages to your brain as you dream - hablo castiano un pocho ;-) ) But then, a negative consequence of having more implants is exactly this - your body will have to work harder to sustain them. Depending on the strength you place on metabolic rate affecting longevity, more implants could then start reversing the gradual increase in lifespan we've been seeing during the last couple of centuries. Of course, they'll be plenty of others trying to come up with engineered ways to halt or reverse this metabolic aging. Anyhow, I hope the cyberneticists are taking this all into account, because it first gives designers an idea of the wattage they have to play with and also because I'd really prefer to avoid having to plug myself in at night! * 1906 * 4.18 kJ/kcal * 1 day / 8.64e4 sec = 92.2 Watts. And upon conducting research about this, NASA and HP labs have made the comment in the past that the human body produces about the same amount of energy as a 100 Watt light-bulb needs.

Time is the one precious commodity. You can’t change what you do with it, you can’t rewind the steady increase of entropy. Even though it may decrease locally, across the whole universe it’s alway on the rise (at least as far as physicists have collectively determined… I’m sure that there are eccentric exception that think otherwise).

In relation to that, our attention is also precious. So what, and more specifically, who, do we pay attention to?

In Accelerando, by Charles Stross, the author introduces the concept of reputation markets, where someone’s reputation can be bartered a bit like a final currency.

I kind of like the idea. You could immediately get a sense of whether you should trust someone or not, and whether you want to hire them for a particular job. On a more day-to-day level, hooking in things like car registration numbers means that people could provide feedback on the driving on others… “sure you might be a nice person to work with generally, but behind the wheel you’re a nutter who also refuses to indicate out of round-abouts” (that might be my pet peeve along with tail-gaters and people that don’t know how to merge).

Of course, this is flawed first by the privacy implications and also by the fact the people are more likely to feel the need to report negative experiences than positive.

Time is the one precious commodity. You can't change what you do with it, you can't rewind the steady increase of entropy. Even though it may decrease locally, across the whole universe it's alway on the rise (at least as far as physicists have collectively determined... I'm sure that there are eccentric exception that think otherwise). In relation to that, our attention is also precious. So what, and more specifically, who, do we pay attention to? In Accelerando, by Charles Stross, the author introduces the concept of reputation markets, where someone's reputation can be bartered a bit like a final currency. I kind of like the idea. You could immediately get a sense of whether you should trust someone or not, and whether you want to hire them for a particular job. On a more day-to-day level, hooking in things like car registration numbers means that people could provide feedback on the driving on others... "sure you might be a nice person to work with generally, but behind the wheel you're a nutter who also refuses to indicate out of round-abouts" (that might be my pet peeve along with tail-gaters and people that don't know how to merge). Of course, this is flawed first by the privacy implications and also by the fact the people are more likely to feel the need to report negative experiences than positive.

Recently I’ve been reading a combination of Undulating ungulate‘s book draft which discusses science, mysticism, and reality.

I’ve also been reading up some about quantum physics, and the idea of the evolution of physical properties of the universe. I’d like to read more about the ideas and work of John Wheeler and David Finkelstein (both being suggested researchers to investigate when I asked Ben Goertzel about a starting point on evolving physical laws).

This, combined with working on stuff for OpenCog, has led to several immensely surreal moments. Mostly while lying in bed about to drift of to sleep, when all reality and time collapses into a single point. Well perhaps not all reality, but at least my life and memories. Possibly this is a cognitive effect of memories being more easily retrievable in the state just before sleep? At any rate, given that: I think free will is just an immensely useful illusion of consciousness, and that physics tells us that the fabric of reality is space-time instead of two perpendicular concepts. It’s not infeasible to believe that seeing the future is possible. In fact, that’s exactly what intelligence does. We make predictions about the future. The question is, can we make predictions on things that, based on our limited of knowledge about the universe, are essentially random or make predictions that are more probabilistically accurate than our past experience allows?

I’ve also bought Outside the gates of science by Damien Broderick, which should be an interesting read. The book addresses some of the paranormal effects in experiments that have been deemed statistically significant but as of yet cannot be rationally explained (actually I bought this last year, I just have lots of reading queued up).

Recently I've been reading a combination of Undulating ungulate's book draft which discusses science, mysticism, and reality. I've also been reading up some about quantum physics, and the idea of the evolution of physical properties of the universe. I'd like to read more about the ideas and work of John Wheeler and David Finkelstein (both being suggested researchers to investigate when I asked Ben Goertzel about a starting point on evolving physical laws). This, combined with working on stuff for OpenCog, has led to several immensely surreal moments. Mostly while lying in bed about to drift of to sleep, when all reality and time collapses into a single point. Well perhaps not all reality, but at least my life and memories. Possibly this is a cognitive effect of memories being more easily retrievable in the state just before sleep? At any rate, given that: I think free will is just an immensely useful illusion of consciousness, and that physics tells us that the fabric of reality is space-time instead of two perpendicular concepts. It's not infeasible to believe that seeing the future is possible. In fact, that's exactly what intelligence does. We make predictions about the future. The question is, can we make predictions on things that, based on our limited of knowledge about the universe, are essentially random or make predictions that are more probabilistically accurate than our past experience allows? I've also bought Outside the gates of science by Damien Broderick, which should be an interesting read. The book addresses some of the paranormal effects in experiments that have been deemed statistically significant but as of yet cannot be rationally explained (actually I bought this last year, I just have lots of reading queued up).

When we interact with people, our mind models them. Thus, as a consequence we also end up modelling other people’s beliefs, which in turn can potentially affect our beliefs. I don’t believe that the contextual belief systems of humans (self vs. other) is absolutely isolated – if you are surrounded by contrary beliefs long enough, they could slowly seep into your unconsciousness. Which leads me to wonder if this might have some relation to Stockholm Syndrome? With perhaps stress priming the mind to accept new beliefs more fluidly than usual, in order to allow humans to adapt and survive, even in unpleasant scenarios. Peer pressure and conformity bias might be otherways in which other people’s beliefs can unintentionally alter our own. Of particular interest are the experiments where all but one of the participants in a group are told to lie about observing a phenomenon and the the other, whom are making a decision purely on what they see, tend to agree with the rest of the group. Even when they are later asked about their decision, and told that the other participants were told to lie, generally the one will still swear they saw the phenomenon anyway (see the Solomon Asch study of social conformity).

There are lots of self-help articles and books that tell you to surround yourself with inspiring and positive people and avoid people who are stuck in a life of negative thought, or otherwise are poisonous to people’s happiness. And from the above, it makes sense that negativity is actually contagious. Let alone whether we have empathic tendencies, and mirror their feelings, just mirroring their viewpoint of the world would transfer those beliefs. I certainly don’t want to argue we should all become heartless isolationists, because compassion for other people is always important. But in the end, you are responsible for your own happiness over others (although not at the cost of others, through causing unnecessary harm) and to that end, I think it’s important to sometimes check whether the negativity of others is morphing your beliefs and outlook on the world.

This spread of belief occurs for small chunks of knowledge, and through modelling others at a personal level, but also occurs for larger concepts and ideas. Memes are particularly adapted to play to parts of the human condition so that they get actively spread by us. Things like quizzes that tell us how we fit in the world or appeal to our narcissism and ego, telling us we are unique in some way and that help to define our identity, are particularly virulent. Not that there’s anything wrong with them, as I’ve wasted plenty of time finding out I used to have a “pool boy” dating personality, that at some stage I was 45% pure, and that I am simultaneously a dozen historical figures. They also promote participation – which would arguably work better to promote the spread of the meme over a purely academic piece of knowledge or trivia. Tests that are also related in the attention sphere of Pop culture, the contents of which are themselves memes, piggy-back on the success of other ideas and memes.

When we interact with people, our mind models them. Thus, as a consequence we also end up modelling other people's beliefs, which in turn can potentially affect our beliefs. I don't believe that the contextual belief systems of humans (self vs. other) is absolutely isolated - if you are surrounded by contrary beliefs long enough, they could slowly seep into your unconsciousness. Which leads me to wonder if this might have some relation to Stockholm Syndrome? With perhaps stress priming the mind to accept new beliefs more fluidly than usual, in order to allow humans to adapt and survive, even in unpleasant scenarios. Peer pressure and conformity bias might be otherways in which other people's beliefs can unintentionally alter our own. Of particular interest are the experiments where all but one of the participants in a group are told to lie about observing a phenomenon and the the other, whom are making a decision purely on what they see, tend to agree with the rest of the group. Even when they are later asked about their decision, and told that the other participants were told to lie, generally the one will still swear they saw the phenomenon anyway (see the Solomon Asch study of social conformity). There are lots of self-help articles and books that tell you to surround yourself with inspiring and positive people and avoid people who are stuck in a life of negative thought, or otherwise are poisonous to people's happiness. And from the above, it makes sense that negativity is actually contagious. Let alone whether we have empathic tendencies, and mirror their feelings, just mirroring their viewpoint of the world would transfer those beliefs. I certainly don't want to argue we should all become heartless isolationists, because compassion for other people is always important. But in the end, you are responsible for your own happiness over others (although not at the cost of others, through causing unnecessary harm) and to that end, I think it's important to sometimes check whether the negativity of others is morphing your beliefs and outlook on the world. This spread of belief occurs for small chunks of knowledge, and through modelling others at a personal level, but also occurs for larger concepts and ideas. Memes are particularly adapted to play to parts of the human condition so that they get actively spread by us. Things like quizzes that tell us how we fit in the world or appeal to our narcissism and ego, telling us we are unique in some way and that help to define our identity, are particularly virulent. Not that there's anything wrong with them, as I've wasted plenty of time finding out I used to have a "pool boy" dating personality, that at some stage I was 45% pure, and that I am simultaneously a dozen historical figures. They also promote participation - which would arguably work better to promote the spread of the meme over a purely academic piece of knowledge or trivia. Tests that are also related in the attention sphere of Pop culture, the contents of which are themselves memes, piggy-back on the success of other ideas and memes.

Here’s an adapted extract from part of my original thesis. I removed this in the end, since it wasn’t directly relevant to the spread of invasive species and the thesis was already too long. This text does however link several different fields that are interested in the spread of something, and I find connections across scientific fields interesting because these days they are rife with fertile research directions.

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The seminal works of R. H. Fisher (1937) described the propagation and diffusion of advantageous alleles in a population, and a lot of current theory on spread and dispersal has it’s root in population genetics.

Recent work on the spread of humans, with heredity between individuals, have indicated that certain mutations are either maintained with low frequencies at their origin or are propagated along wave fronts. If these mutations are tracked then it is possible to establish their origin (Ibrahim, 2004).

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Here's an adapted extract from part of my original thesis. I removed this in the end, since it wasn't directly relevant to the spread of invasive species and the thesis was already too long. This text does however link several different fields that are interested in the spread of something, and I find connections across scientific fields interesting because these days they are rife with fertile research directions. -- The seminal works of R. H. Fisher (1937) described the propagation and diffusion of advantageous alleles in a population, and a lot of current theory on spread and dispersal has it's root in population genetics. Recent work on the spread of humans, with heredity between individuals, have indicated that certain mutations are either maintained with low frequencies at their origin or are propagated along wave fronts. If these mutations are tracked then it is possible to establish their origin (Ibrahim, 2004). In the discipline of sociology Hägerstrand (1952) was the first to develop a predictive math model showing how phenomena diffuse in space and time, specifically innovation diffusion, or the speed at which the adoption of new technologies spreads. In mathematics and physics, diffusion specifically concerns change in the density of something due to an random movement of a large number of things. Brownian motion is a frequently assumed category of random particle or individual movement, and results in a Gaussian/Normal distribution for the entire population if individuals or particles are all released from a central point. Diffusion is often equated with dispersal (Pielou 1969, 1977, 1979) particularly in the humanities, such as in economics (e.g. Brown 1981) but also in sciences such as human epidemiology (Cliff 1981). However this is not always true, and in other fields can indicate an intentional or directed movement. Diffusion is often described by the power law: msd(t) ≈ 6Dtα where D is the diffusion coefficient and t is the elapsed time. Typically, in a diffusive process, the mean squared displacement (msd) of a particle is a linear function of time (α = 1). The term anomalous diffusion is used to describe a diffusive process with a non-linear dependence on time. Additionally, if &alpha > 1, the phenomenon is called super-diffusion. In cellular biology, super-diffusion can be the result of active cellular transport processes (Caspi 2002). If &alpha < 1, dispersing particles undergo sub-diffusion. Sub-diffusion has been proposed as a measure of macromolecular crowding in the cytoplasm (Weiss 2004). The spread of cancer occurs as cancerous cells replicate in an uncontrolled manner, resulting in a growing tumour. Metastasis, where cancerous cells break off from the primary tumour and establish elsewhere in the body, is akin to long-distance dispersal of invasive species, accelerating the rate of spread and often becoming the reason for cancer mortality (MacDonald 2002). One subject in which spread models have become particularly advanced is in the prediction of wild fire behaviour. The models take into account wind direction, underlying vegetation, and also include long distance dispersal events which are so influential in invasive species spread. In wild fire spread, these long distance dispersal events are referred to as "spotting" (Xu 1994). Another aspect of human health that involves spread is epidemiology - the study of heath and illness of populations. For example, SARS or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome spreads by common local transmission but also air passenger travel provided incidental large distance transmission (Bell 2003) again akin long-distance dispersal. Another example related to the impact of increasing travel and trade, shows that the increase in human travel had resulted in population size substituting distance as the most important factor for the spread of cholera in North America (Cliff 1981). These varying subjects approach spread of objects or organisms in different ways, but as discussed seem to often demonstrate dispersal processes occurring at different scales, such as local growth coupled with diffusion and a stochastic long distance dispersal process. In other subjects, Hengeveld (1989) notes that the area encompassed by the dispersal kernel is analogous to the: neighbourhood area - in genetics when dealing with the transfer of genetic information in a population; contact area - in epidemiology, describing the chance of pathogen transfer and spread; information field - in human sociology when concerned with the spread of innovation and ideas. Hagerstand (1968) called this the "information probability field", Brown (1981) called it the "mean information field"; Is it possible to combine these in to a general synthesis of spread? I don't know, but I have attempted to make a generic iterative spread model that can share aspects of each between individual models. The only bias here however is that it's constrained to geographic spread, so trying to model the spread of a 3D process, although possible through 3D raster maps and voxels, is probably a lot more trouble than it's worth (when there are more specific modelling tools out there). References Fisher, R.A. (1937) The wave of advance of advantageous genes. Ann. Eugenics. Ibrahim, K. M. (2004) Simulations of human colonization history. Heredity 93:124-125 Hägerstrand, T. (1952) The propagation of innovation waves Lund, Sweden: Gleerup; Lund Studies in Geography. Pielou, E. C. (1969) An Introduction to Mathematical Ecology. Wiley, New York. Pielou, E. C. (1977) Mathematical Ecology. John WIley & Sons, New York, New York, USA. Pielou, E. C. (1979) Biogeography. John Wiley & Sons, New York. Cliff, A. D., P. Haggett, J. D. Ord & G. R. Versey. (1981) Spatial Diffusion Cambridge University Press, 1981 Brown, L. A. Innovation Diffusion Methuan, London. Caspi, A.; Granek, R. & Elbaum, M. (2002) Diffusion and directed motion in cellular transport. Physical Review E 66 Weiss, M.; Elsner, M.; Kartberg, F. & Nilsson, T. (2004) Anomalous Subdiffusion Is a Measure for Cytoplasmic Crowding in Living Cells. Biophysical Journal 87:3518-3524 MacDonald, I. C.; Groom, A. C. & Chambers, A. F. (2002) Cancer spread and micrometastasis development: quantitative approaches for in vivo models. BioEssays. 24:885-893 Xu, J. (1994) Simulating the spread of wildfires using a geographic information system and remote sensing. PhD thesis. Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Bell, D. M. (2003) Public health interventions and SARS spread. Emerging Infectious Diseases. Hengeveld, R. (1989) Dynamics of biological invasions. Chapman & Hall, London. Hägerstand, T. (1968) Innovation Diffusion as a Spatial Process University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

I’ve going back through some draft posts which I never published. Here’s one from way back last year some time. I should note that I don’t really believe I have Asperger’s or anything like that. I also now believe that “breadth of ideas” is a natural consequence of the parallel nature of the brain. But, being the hoarder and preservationist of digital information that I am, I couldn’t just delete this… so here it is.

…

In the past I’ve read about aspects of Asperger’s syndrome and in the past have wondered if I’ve got some small inclination towards it. I function reasonably well now though, but this is only through years of practice and working on the things the are traditionally deficient in someone with the syndrome. On deeper reading of the wikipedia article, it’s more likely that they are simply surface similarities. I certainly learnt a lot from being in intimate relationships and am constantly trying to improve (and maintain) my social abilities, but the fact is that I taught myself to look people in the eye while holding a conversation, to exhibit confidence instead of trepidation and to use my empathy to feel what others feel (instead of shutting it out of my head due to it being overwhelming).
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I've going back through some draft posts which I never published. Here's one from way back last year some time. I should note that I don't really believe I have Asperger's or anything like that. I also now believe that "breadth of ideas" is a natural consequence of the parallel nature of the brain. But, being the hoarder and preservationist of digital information that I am, I couldn't just delete this... so here it is. ... In the past I've read about aspects of Asperger's syndrome and in the past have wondered if I've got some small inclination towards it. I function reasonably well now though, but this is only through years of practice and working on the things the are traditionally deficient in someone with the syndrome. On deeper reading of the wikipedia article, it's more likely that they are simply surface similarities. I certainly learnt a lot from being in intimate relationships and am constantly trying to improve (and maintain) my social abilities, but the fact is that I taught myself to look people in the eye while holding a conversation, to exhibit confidence instead of trepidation and to use my empathy to feel what others feel (instead of shutting it out of my head due to it being overwhelming). Certain characteristics I've noticed... and that others have commented on in the past, that match what I've heard people talking about Autism being similar to, is a high sensitivity to stimulus and being unusually observant. People have discussed the idea that Autism isn't an inability to interact or perceive the world, but that it's the mind shutting down interaction channels due to an Autistic persons perception of the world being extremely intense. More than the mind can handle. I find that in social situations of more than a couple of people draining after a while. I have difficulty in public speaking, not because I'm particular fearful of public speaking, but because I'm trying to process the entire crowds reaction. I get caught up in every subtle nuance of peoples motion and expression, and when you're trying to track 200 people's expressions, it's hard to keep your mind focussed on what your talking about. This inability to focus, or the high sensitivity to distraction, becomes a burden when trying to work on projects. Instead of a depth first search and actually getting to the end of chain of reasoning or the total completion of a concept, my mind will do a breadth first search. Scanning multiple possibilities, inundating me with numerous possibilities, and sticking me in a frozen position where I find it difficult to move forward (although perhaps it's just that spreading attention over 100 different ideas makes it look like no progress is being made!). In some sense, this might be why I'm in research and seem to be doing pretty well at it, I can see the different possibilities (my thesis had to be chopped back a fair amount because there was a lot of POTENTIAL ideas in it, that although interesting, were distractions from the actual real experimental work I did). In the past I've found the use of of stimulants such as caffeine to be beneficial in making my focus narrower. Such that the thinking is better for getting work done once an idea exists, rather than for creating novel thought. Another substance which is mostly for promoting wakefulness and combating narcolepsy is Modafinil, which also has the ability to cause me to be more motivated to make progress but doesn't make that focus quite as narrow. Ironically, I'm working on attention allocation in the open-source artificial intelligence system OpenCog, so perhaps we should have a caffeine mode in the attention allocation system (this is doable, in a narrowing of focus sense, since the attentional focus boundary is an adjustable level that indicates the cutoff for when items are in the attentional focus of the digital mind).

DNA, the code of life? Or only part?

Hofstadter asks whether the meaning is in the code or the interpreter?

Which came first? The chicken or the egg?

DNA isn’t exactly like that, because the existing form affects the expression of the code. Which in turn affects the expression and replication of said code. DNA should more be likened to an attractor in a complex system. Under this view, the concerns with genome research taking away our free will (whatever that concept means to you) are unfounded.

DNA, the code of life? Or only part? Hofstadter asks whether the meaning is in the code or the interpreter? Which came first? The chicken or the egg? DNA isn't exactly like that, because the existing form affects the expression of the code. Which in turn affects the expression and replication of said code. DNA should more be likened to an attractor in a complex system. Under this view, the concerns with genome research taking away our free will (whatever that concept means to you) are unfounded.

Prompted by reading a chapter on Zen in “Gödel, Escher, Bach”:

Zen seems to be a sort of holism to the extreme… dissolving the self to become one with the universe and achieve enlightenment.

In some ways I see the use for this viewpoint while meditating and as a relaxation technique. In particular the concept that all the universe and time in static and immutable, and time and space is mere illusion, has a remarkably calming influence (at least for me). In some ways this reminds me of something I did that was somewhat odd as a kid. I think I first thought this around 5… I found time strange, and my memory of it also strange, thus I decided to imprint a distinct memory of that moment. I was sitting at the dinner table and I focussed on the fork I had. I can remember this moment, whereas many other parts of my early childhood are but a blur. There are other moments too, such as when I was riding a bike home in a ridiculously strong wind at age 11… again I committed this to memory because I reasoned “this is incredibly hard work, I feel exhausted! But in but 30 minutes I’ll be at home and this will purely be a memory. In fact, it may as well not be happening since this is a small fraction of my total experience at any time and will continue to get smaller as I continue in my life.”

Did other people do this too? Or was I just a somewhat strange kid?

Zen philosophy is somewhat relaxing and find kōans play novel games with the logic in our heads. As a life philosophy however, I think it’s flawed since the separation of us from the rest of the universe is what makes us human. In fact, it’s what life is all about. The localised increase in pattern and extropy within a system. Maybe Zen boils down to being an acceptance of possible the heat death of the universe when everything becomes a homogeneous soup? Which, if time is but an illusion has already happened and is the culmination of the universe’s evolution!

Before I sign off, time for a kōan:

A monk asked Zhaozhou, “What is the meaning of the ancestral teacher’s coming from the west?” Zhaozhou said, “The cypress tree in front of the hall”.
case #47 of the Book of Serenity

Zen also seems to have mastered the art of surrealistic humour.

Prompted by reading a chapter on Zen in "Gödel, Escher, Bach": Zen seems to be a sort of holism to the extreme... dissolving the self to become one with the universe and achieve enlightenment. In some ways I see the use for this viewpoint while meditating and as a relaxation technique. In particular the concept that all the universe and time in static and immutable, and time and space is mere illusion, has a remarkably calming influence (at least for me). In some ways this reminds me of something I did that was somewhat odd as a kid. I think I first thought this around 5... I found time strange, and my memory of it also strange, thus I decided to imprint a distinct memory of that moment. I was sitting at the dinner table and I focussed on the fork I had. I can remember this moment, whereas many other parts of my early childhood are but a blur. There are other moments too, such as when I was riding a bike home in a ridiculously strong wind at age 11... again I committed this to memory because I reasoned "this is incredibly hard work, I feel exhausted! But in but 30 minutes I'll be at home and this will purely be a memory. In fact, it may as well not be happening since this is a small fraction of my total experience at any time and will continue to get smaller as I continue in my life." Did other people do this too? Or was I just a somewhat strange kid? Zen philosophy is somewhat relaxing and find kōans play novel games with the logic in our heads. As a life philosophy however, I think it's flawed since the separation of us from the rest of the universe is what makes us human. In fact, it's what life is all about. The localised increase in pattern and extropy within a system. Maybe Zen boils down to being an acceptance of possible the heat death of the universe when everything becomes a homogeneous soup? Which, if time is but an illusion has already happened and is the culmination of the universe's evolution! Before I sign off, time for a kōan: A monk asked Zhaozhou, "What is the meaning of the ancestral teacher's coming from the west?" Zhaozhou said, "The cypress tree in front of the hall". case #47 of the Book of Serenity Zen also seems to have mastered the art of surrealistic humour.