Futapy

HW 11

per http://informationcomputingandthefuture.blogspot.com/p/hw-11.html

0) Either way. I'm easy. I'm not ready yet but I will be in a week.

1) Yes, we are arguably intelligent life and we are definitely in the universe. I assume however, you meant outside of this blue ball. Of that I am not sure. Why not: We've been looking in the radio spectrum for decades. The lack of evidence is not evidence for the lack of intelligent life in the universe, but one would think that if life were as prevalent as is often speculated, we would have found it. There is no simple explanation, but the simplest is that we simply got cosmically lucky to have had just the right conditions develop that lead to intelligent life on Earth at this particular time and space. It could also be that some other intelligent life has also won the cosmic lottery but there would be no way to detect its blip of intelligence (and we are, on a cosmic timeframe, just a blip) given the universal constraints on the speed at which information can travel through space. We simply haven't been paying attention for the last few billion years when a detectable intelligence event could have occurred, and likely won't be for the next few billion either. So no, even if it existed/exists/will exist, I think at this point it is unlikely that we will find it.

It could also be that we are the end stage of the universe; just as whatever came before the Big Bang figured out how to unravel that universe and replace it with this one, we (or our successor AIs) may figure out how to unravel the vacuum and replace our laws of physics with new ones (with devastating but instantaneous impacts on ourselves)

2) Me, with a coupon for a free, single-task robot, implies the existence of other people also with coupons, since coupons are a mass-market construct. Nobody ever prints just one, otherwise they would have simply given me the robot. So given that other people with coupons exist, I would first form a collective to figure out the best way to use our single-task robots for some greater endeavor. If we band together we could have our robots do all the tasks on a dairy farm, a notoriously labor intensive enterprise, and then all enjoy a life of leisurely and jovial infighting over whose robot was doing the best job and was the most valuable, etc. But for the sake of completeness, let's say there is really only one coupon, and I have it. In that case I think it would be a the largest task that I find burdensome and oppressive, and for me that is driving to work and back. In fact, I have already purchased a robot to drive for me, the Comma One, and attached it to my partner's car as a test. Sadly it wasn't good enough to make my life any easier, but that was a few years ago and they have improved since then. Without a doubt, I would choose a driving robot. But what I need to do is change houses or change jobs to eliminate this problem, and then you can give the robot to someone else.

3) I am conflicted. reasons: a) my 101-year-old great-grandmother-in-law said "work won't hurt ye". Not only was she right, work is a reason to continue to exist. Work brings value, and value drives us. Many people find retirement unbearably boring. I don't think I'd have a problem keeping busy in retirement (as long as my health holds up), but certainly some of what I wish to do would be called "work". Now if you could free us from the obligation to work, I'm 100% in. Right now, even with what is widely regarded as a good job, and even if I had savings enough to retire on right now, I can't be self-directed because I need to keep my family's health insurance intact. We are all slaves to something. Moreover, a more equitable distribution of the wealth is obviously desirable in our society (and other neoliberal societies). Most of us don't farm today; we already are living in the robotic future but because our society hasn't adapted, we haven't figured out how to spread that wealth around to an adequate degree, nor how to value our members who choose or are forced by circumstance to not work. I don't know how to fix this except to try to value everyone and support institutions that enable people to live fulfilled lives even if they can't work for whatever reason, and not resent them for it. As J. K. Galbraith noted: "If some do not work, so be it. The rich are also known on occasion to prefer leisure."

4)

5) I DID IT. I have 13 rudimentary slides under 6 headings:

There is definitely more information than I can cover in 20 minutes (I timed myself at 25 on the first pass), so refining and cutting is next week's activity, along with being more certain about what is on the slides. But my actual project paper is still in terrible disarray. It is 3262 words but most of those are source links and quotes or a little prose on why I found them interesting. I can polish them up based on the presentation but it's still such a wide sea of information; the actual project has obviously been me researching and trying to understand something I knew next to nothing about, and reading article after article trying to gain just enough understanding to know what the GPT-3 paper is really saying, and following links to follow-on papers that are mind-blowing. I'm no longer worried about having something to turn in, and given a couple more weeks of thought, maybe it will become cohesive.

6) Predictions pages 158-179, essays about and predictions by Lynn Margulis and Don Norman. Lynn Margulis is a controversial and somewhat misunderstood figure in the life sciences due to her perceived expansion of Darwinsim to include the Gaia hypothesis, that the Earth can be considered a single self-regulating living system that has kept a relatively stable life support system for millions of years. Her key scientific idea is Serial Endosymbiosis Theory, put simply, that higher order life is descended from the permanent merger of different strains of bacterial and other cells descended from our bacterial ancestors. I enjoyed her dig at chemists: "Chemists often can't tell the difference between a live organism and a dead one." A former student of hers quipped "Gaia is just symbiosis as seen from space", which she agrees with - "organisms are always producing gases to the atmosphere or removing gases from the atmosphere". She predicts, or rather anticipates, "in the next 20 years we will see the definite explanation of the first cell to have a nucleus". [ narrator: I checked Wikipedia 21 years later which says "Four major hypotheses have been proposed to explain the existence of the nucleus, although none have yet earned widespread support" ] She also predicts the end of the notion that an organism can be fully characterized by DNA alone, and the growing acceptance of bacterial cells as the atom of evolution.

Agree: she might be right on all of these things, but there is still some debate. Her predictions are really that her theories will be affirmed. I think I've stated before that I find overconfidence distasteful (in the Dennett review) but otherwise generally agree with her views.

Don Norman had a long career in the Psychology and Cognitive Science department of UCSD. For a second career he joined Apple and then HP. His book written with Steve Draper, "User-Centered System Design" was a first in the field of human/computer interaction, and his book "The Psychology of Everyday Things" was a bestseller (I'm sensing this is a theme with this book). Perhaps his book "The Invisible Computer" was responsible for his reputation as someone who was better at pointing out problems than designing solutions, so he wrote "The Psychology of Everyday Things" to give to the design community "a psychological explanation of why some designs are usable and some are not." He an Jakob Nielson from Sun Microsystems launched a new effort in 1998 to give design advice to business. [ narrator: they are still at it - https://www.nngroup.com/about/history/ ] His prediction for the next 100 years is that artificial sensory systems and computing devices will be embedded in humans to enhance senses, memory, physical strength and language skills. He also predicts that sex, gender differences, emotions and intellectual curiosity are likely to remain unchanged. He envisions a device that would all us to remember anything, but cautions that this may not be desirable. He speculates that we could have a generation of brain-zappers using medical devices designed to stimulate pleasure centers of the brain. [ narrator: we already do; video games just deliver the zap through interaction with the dopamine system ] He predicts that we will NOT crack the internal coding of thoughts that will make direct computer/brain communication possible.

Agree - many thoughts on design and usability. Obviously Apple did too at some point; the iphone was a runaway success. But with that success came a solution to many of the problems he envisions being solved by implanted electronics. If we want to translate a language or additional encyclopedic information, we just ask our phone.

Agreements/disagreements with reviewers: Nothing new this week. I'm seeing this book as a reflection of its time, and times are changing.

1: Yes, I've spoken to a therapist about this. I'm OK, just stressed. "Situational depression" they call it. I don’t want to die now but I can’t bear the thought of immortality. Thanks for reading the footnote.