2012
Botnet = Skynet?
So this morning i get to work and open my email to find yet another message from my deceased friend… or so the bot would like me to believe. Last summer my friend passed away and his facebook page was left online as a memorial to him. Yet in a sad and strangely foreboding way, his profile was hacked and this bot has been sending spam to everyone on his friend list. This time the bot scanned his profile and used the name of a friend or relative in the text of the message, in an ironic attempt to be more convincing…
Subject: Hi
“Abigail mentioned you might be interested in this BINSSERVICESSITE .INFO”
The first time this happened i was pretty disgusted and i made a big stink about it. This time i happened to be listening to a podcast about bots when it happened, and it struck me in a more profound way…
Today it dawned on me that an artificial intelligence has assimilated my friend like some kind of techno-doppelganger and is using his image/identity to fulfill it’s own agenda. If Skynet (in the terminator-sense) was really coming, why wouldn’t it use the face/identity of our friends/family like the aliens from Contact? Or could this be more like the biblical end-of-times in which the dead appear to rise from the grave as we get ever-closer to the next cosmic singularity-event?
I think if my friend were still here, he would be amused and fascinated at the ramifications… if not greatly annoyed.
That podcast:
Daniel Suarez (aka author Leinad Zeraus)
Daemon: Bot-mediated Reality
http://download.fora.tv/rss/Long_Now_Podcasts/podcast-2008-08-08-suarez.mp3
Friday, August 08, 2008 4:00 PM
A really interesting theory about the precession of the equinoxes being a result of our solar system being part of a binary star system.
When Man and Machine Merge
An excerpt from the Ray Kurzweil article in Rolling Stone magazine:
entire article: http://www.seventhswami.com/misc/KURZWEIL_IN_ROLLING_STONE.pdf
For his contributions to artificial intelligence, Kurzweil has been enshrined in the Inventors Hall of Fame and has received White House honors from three presidents – including the highest prize in his field, the National Medal of Technology. But nothing he has done in the past has shaken the scientific community as profoundly as his latest prediction. In our lifetime, Kurzweil believes, machines will not only surpass humans in intelligence – they will irrevocably alter what it means to be human.
Kurzweil had already been forecasting technology for years. It’s an essential part of any inventor’s trade, because he has to know what technology will be on the market by the time his product is released. To calculate what’s ahead, Kurzweil extrapolates from historical data. By charting microprocessor clock speeds since 1975, for example, he found they were doubling every three years. “It’s like skeet-shooting,” he says. “Things are moving very quickly.”
Kurzweil proved himself an astonishingly good shot – so good, in fact, that he began to make sweeping predictions about politics and society. During the 1980s, he correctly predicted the fall of the Soviet Union due to decentralized technologies, the rise of the Internet and the ubiquity of wireless networks. He announced that a computer would be a world chess champion by 1998 – a reality that occurred in May 1992 when Deep Blue defeated Gary Kasparov. “There’s something inexorable about these progressions,” Kurzweil says. “We really can predict – not exactly what’s going to happen, but the power of these technologies.” Then one day, as he was plotting the time between innovations from the wheel to the World Wide Web, Kurzweil made a discovery: Technological change is accelerating at a far more rapid pace than we understand. At the current rate, he wrote, “We wont experience 1oo years of progress in the 21st century – it will be more like 20,000 years of progress.” The rapidly decreasing cost of technology, he predicted, coupled with the exponentially increasing power of computers, will lead inevitably to a single moment: The Singularity.
The takeoff starts with computers embedding themselves – from GPS systems to iPhones – into the fabric of our lives. Then, 10 years from now, computing power will finally catch up with our brains. For $1,ooo, you’ll be able to store as much memory on a chip as you can in your head. By 2O3O, artificial intelligence will make computerized voices on telephone help lines as realistic sounding as any human’s (think HAL from 2O01). Virtual realities – projected directly onto your retinas – will become indistinguishable from your own. Kurzweil compares this leap to when humans learned how to fly. “Once we figured out the secret to flight – the subtle scientific principles – we created the world of aviation,” he says. “Once we can build and create intelligence that doesn’t have the limitations of our brain, there’s nothing it can’t do.”
But the even trippier stuff happens in the 2030s, when nanobots – microscopic machines built from molecular components – start to infiltrate your everyday life. “Nanobots in our physical bodies will destroy pathogens, remove debris, repair DNA and reverse aging,” Kurzweii predicts. “We will be able to redesign all the systems in our bodies and brains to be far more capable and durable.” By scanning the contents of your brain, nanobots will be able to transfer everything you know, everything you have ever experienced, into a robot or a virtual reality
program. If something happens to your physical body, no problem. Your mind will live on – forever.But as computer intelligence surpasses that of humans, machines will also make smarter and smarter versions of themselves – without any help from us. After 2045, Kurzweil predicts, nanobots will replicate and spread throughout the tiniest recesses of matter, transforming the host – say, a tree or a stone – into a computational device. He calls this intelligence-infested matter “computronium, which is matter and energy organized at optimum level for computation. Using nanotechnology, we’re going to turn a rock into a computer.” As the nanobots spread computer intelligence beyond our planet, the universe itself will awaken as if a giant switch is finally being turned on. “The universe is not conscious – yet,” Kurzweil has written. “But it will be.”
Present Moment OS
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/02/03/phantom-operating-system-to-kill-windows-and-linux/
I think insinuating that this OS would somehow “kill” Windows and Linux (but for some reason not OSX) is pretty ridiculous… but there is something else in this article that really fascinates me.
For the longest time I’ve been saying how computers have been modeling reality… Binary is analogous to the light-dark duality in nature… video games have become physics engines… electrons become akin to pixels… and all the while we are creating the next world in our own image… but now the idea behind this OS takes things to a new level.
Instead of having files saved on your computer in the traditional sense, it continually saves “states” of the entire system as a whole… Now your computer becomes a continually changing present moment, with all your “files” becoming objects with persistent states.
I know… it’s out there… mark my words though… computers and the internet (or the upcoming “grid” or whatever they’re going to call it.) will be at the heart of the 2012 event. I can feel it in my bones.
On that note, I read that this “grid” will make data transfer so fast, that it will change our concept of ownership completely. Instead of things being stored on your personal equipment… it will all be “out there” in the cloud of cloud-computing… instantly accessible and no longer necessary to “keep” in the traditional sense. This too, is just like quantum reality. The cloud we experience is “consensus reality” and our concept of ownership is illusory… after we die and our hardware exits the cloud, all of our artifacts still remain accessible to others.
It sounds both bleak and romantic, but what if 2012 arrives in a cataclysmic fashion and humans find out that, in order to survive, we must enter the virtual reality we have created? And what if several million years later we find ourselves cooperating to build hadron colliders, to break open tiny elements of our reality to find clues to a grand design behind it all? What if the current LHC actually finds evidence of this picture-in-a-picture scenario having already happened a time or two before?
In this framework, i find it almost LIKELY that 2012 could be synonymous with this “global transformation of consciousness” that so many of my new-agey friends pray for. Frankly, my hopes are just as lofty. Even if it’s just the global sense of ownership that changes, that will still be a MAJOR evolution of one of the most fundamental concepts behind class-separation.
Dolly Zoom and Time Dialation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y48R6-iIYHs
http://www.mediacollege.com/video/shots/dolly-zoom.html
So i’ve noticed this technique used in many many movies… i figured it had a name but i didn’t think to look it up until today… You dolly the camera away from the subject while zooming in at the same time. The object of focus (usually a person who you want to portray experiencing something of impact) stays centered and around the same size while the background appears to stretch behind them. It’s usually accompanied by a sweeping sound effect or creepy violin strings…
I thought of it this morning on the way in to work because i was thinking of the concept of time dialation and 2012. Is time speeding up? And if so, why don’t we notice it? It seems like old people are always talking about how life goes by so quickly but high school felt like fucking forever. Maybe think of it like the dolly zoom effect… Time is dollying away from us while our brains are zooming in to balance it all out in our minds. And just like the creepy background-stretching effect is evidence of this motion, so is the feeling of the days slipping through our fingers… even though the clock seems to tick away at the same measured rate.
When i was a kid it used to feel like my meals were SO far apart… far enough, at least, for me to get hungry in the in-between time. These days, the clock hits 9:30pm and i feel like i JUST had lunch.
Makes you wonder….
Anyone else have a weird day yesterday?
i’m serious. Starting Sunday night, shit has been off the hook.
Sunday night i’m walking down the stairs in the middle of the night and i smell a sulfer kind of aroma… which caused me to pause mid-step or something and i slipped down like 3 stairs or something. “god damn ghosts tryin’ ta kill me!” i muttered.
But the next day, (yesterday) things continued to suck. I felt upset most of the day after i got jammed up by somebody, then on the drive home i nearly ran into a mercedes who braked hard in front of me. Only 2 blocks from the apartment, my heart was still racing when i pulled up to find emily sitting in her car with the door open and a frown on her face. Turns out SHE got in an accident on the way home too… in the same way. Then while i’m re-attaching her bumper, my phone rings. it’s my mom calling to tell me that SHE got in an accident too!
“Fuck” i thought. “Darkness descends and shit.”
So i talked to one of her neighbors who was able to go pick her up… she’s fine… emily’s fine… i’m trippin… how are you? I’ve asked several people this morning and a good number of them experienced a deluge of shitty luck and weirdness yesterday as well. One friend even said “I fel like somebody put a hex on me sunday afternoon.”
So just curious if you’ve noticed any weirdness too. it doesn’t have to be BAD luck necessarily… just excessively DIFFERENT situations that you’re expecting to walk into. Synchronicity. In fact that first thing that set me off yesterday morning was actually part of an intense 3-way synchronicity too.
I wonder if more and more days like this will occur, the closer we get to 2012… if novelty increases as it’s supposed to, things are only going to get weirder. I for one am looking forward to it (and welcome our new ant-overlords… lol). Like Hunter Thompson said “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
Things that are important to me and things that are not
I used to be a real stickler about using title case text in my blog title line.
Now it doesn’t keep me up at night.
I used to try to promote green awareness.
Now i tire of promoting the “green bubble”
I used to really want my opinion heard too.
Now i gauge whether or not it’s worth the effort it takes to actually open my mouth and use my lungs.
I used to care to archive every single last thing that i thought i might want to see/use later.
Now the internet (and the forthcoming “grid”) are changing the way i think about “ownership” and challenging some of my most fundamental instincts.
Information overload. My ways of thinking are going to have to change if i am to survive this transition without running myself completely insane.
Time for a vin diesel break…
http://4q.cc/index.php?pid=top100&person=vin
Did you know if you reaarange the letters in “Vin Diesel” it spells “I End Lives”??? Holy crap i thought MY anagram-name was cool! I certainly can’t top that.
Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything
the dramatic continuation of my last blog… i had to post these seperately so people didn’t burn out on reading both articles in a row. This (in conjunction w/ previous blog) is one of the most exciting situations in physics that i’m aware of.
www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml
An impoverished surfer has drawn up a new theory of the universe, seen by some as the Holy Grail of physics, which has received rave reviews from scientists.
Garrett Lisi, 39, has a doctorate but no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii, where he has also been a hiking guide and bridge builder (when he slept in a jungle yurt).
In winter, he heads to the mountains near Lake Tahoe, Nevada, where he snowboards. “Being poor sucks,” Lisi says. “It’s hard to figure out the secrets of the universe when you’re trying to figure out where you and your girlfriend are going to sleep next month.”
Despite this unusual career path, his proposal is remarkable because, by the arcane standards of particle physics, it does not require highly complex mathematics.
Even better, it does not require more than one dimension of time and three of space, when some rival theories need ten or even more spatial dimensions and other bizarre concepts. And it may even be possible to test his theory, which predicts a host of new particles, perhaps even using the new Large Hadron Collider atom smasher that will go into action near Geneva next year.
Although the work of 39 year old Garrett Lisi still has a way to go to convince the establishment, let alone match the achievements of Albert Einstein, the two do have one thing in common: Einstein also began his great adventure in theoretical physics while outside the mainstream scientific establishment, working as a patent officer, though failed to achieve the Holy Grail, an overarching explanation to unite all the particles and forces of the cosmos.
Now Lisi, currently in Nevada, has come up with a proposal to do this. Lee Smolin at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, describes Lisi’s work as “fabulous”. “It is one of the most compelling unification models I’ve seen in many, many years,” he says.
“Although he cultivates a bit of a surfer-guy image its clear he has put enormous effort and time into working the complexities of this structure out over several years,” Prof Smolin tells The Telegraph.
“Some incredibly beautiful stuff falls out of Lisi’s theory,” adds David Ritz Finkelstein at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. “This must be more than coincidence and he really is touching on something profound.”
The new theory reported today in New Scientist has been laid out in an online paper entitled “An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything” by Lisi, who completed his doctorate in theoretical physics in 1999 at the University of California, San Diego.
He has high hopes that his new theory could provide what he says is a “radical new explanation” for the three decade old Standard Model, which weaves together three of the four fundamental forces of nature: the electromagnetic force; the strong force, which binds quarks together in atomic nuclei; and the weak force, which controls radioactive decay.
The reason for the excitement is that Lisi’s model also takes account of gravity, a force that has only successfully been included by a rival and highly fashionable idea called string theory, one that proposes particles are made up of minute strings, which is highly complex and elegant but has lacked predictions by which to do experiments to see if it works.
But some are taking a cooler view. Prof Marcus du Sautoy, of Oxford University and author of Finding Moonshine, told the Telegraph: “The proposal in this paper looks a long shot and there seem to be a lot things still to fill in.”
And a colleague Eric Weinstein in America added: “Lisi seems like a hell of a guy. I’d love to meet him. But my friend Lee Smolin is betting on a very very long shot.”
Lisi’s inspiration lies in the most elegant and intricate shape known to mathematics, called E8 – a complex, eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points first found in 1887, but only fully understood by mathematicians this year after workings, that, if written out in tiny print, would cover an area the size of Manhattan.
E8 encapsulates the symmetries of a geometric object that is 57-dimensional and is itself is 248-dimensional. Lisi says “I think our universe is this beautiful shape.”
What makes E8 so exciting is that Nature also seems to have embedded it at the heart of many bits of physics. One interpretation of why we have such a quirky list of fundamental particles is because they all result from different facets of the strange symmetries of E8.
Lisi’s breakthrough came when he noticed that some of the equations describing E8′s structure matched his own. “My brain exploded with the implications and the beauty of the thing,” he tells New Scientist. “I thought: ‘Holy crap, that’s it!’”
What Lisi had realised was that he could find a way to place the various elementary particles and forces on E8′s 248 points. What remained was 20 gaps which he filled with notional particles, for example those that some physicists predict to be associated with gravity.
Physicists have long puzzled over why elementary particles appear to belong to families, but this arises naturally from the geometry of E8, he says. So far, all the interactions predicted by the complex geometrical relationships inside E8 match with observations in the real world. “How cool is that?” he says.
The crucial test of Lisi’s work will come only when he has made testable predictions. Lisi is now calculating the masses that the 20 new particles should have, in the hope that they may be spotted when the Large Hadron Collider starts up.
“The theory is very young, and still in development,” he told the Telegraph. “Right now, I’d assign a low (but not tiny) likelyhood to this prediction.
“For comparison, I think the chances are higher that LHC will see some of these particles than it is that the LHC will see superparticles, extra dimensions, or micro black holes as predicted by string theory. I hope to get more (and different) predictions, with more confidence, out of this E8 Theory over the next year, before the LHC comes online.”
Is this the fabric of the universe?
www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml
Mathematicians have successfully scaled their equivalent of Mount Everest. Today they unveil the answer to a problem that, if written out in tiny print, would cover an area the size of Manhattan.
A two dimensional representation of E8, courtesy of Peter McMullen and John Stembridge
At the most basic level, the calculation is an arcane investigation of symmetry – in this case of an object that is 57 dimensional, rather than the usual three dimensional ones that we are familiar with. Although this object was first discovered in the 19th century. there is evidence that it could contain the structure of the cosmos.
Mathematicians are known for their solitary style of working, but the combined assault on what is described as “one of the largest and most complicated structures in mathematics” required the effort of 18 mathematicians from America and Europe for an intensive four-year collaboration.
The feat may baffle most people but could have unforeseen implications in mathematics and physics, which won’t be evident for years to come, said the American Institute of Mathematics.
“The group of symmetries of this strange geometry called E8 is one of the most intriguing structures that Nature has left for the mathematician to play with,” commened Prof Marcus du Sautoy of Oxford University, currently in Auckland. “Most of the time mathematical objects fit into nice patterns that we can order and classify. But this one just sits there like a huge Everest.”
What makes this group of symmetries so exciting is that Nature also seems to have embedded it at the heart of many bits of physics. One interpretation of why we have such a quirky list of fundamental particles is because they all result from different facets of the strange symmetries of E8. I find it rather extraordinary that of all the symmetries that mathematician’s have discovered, it is this exotic exceptional object that Nature has used to build the fabric of the universe. The symmetries are so intricate and complex that today’s announcement of the complete mapping of E8 is a significant moment in our exploration of symmetry.”
For the feat, the team used a mix of theoretical mathematics and intricate computer programming to successfully map E8, (pronounced “E eight”) which is an example of a Lie (pronounced “Lee”) group. Lie groups were invented by the 19th century Norwegian mathematician Sophus Lie to study symmetry.
Underlying any symmetrical object, such as a sphere, is a Lie group. Balls, cylinders or cones are familiar examples of symmetric three-dimensional objects. Today’s feat rests on the drive by mathematicians to study symmetries in higher dimensions. E8 is the symmetries of a geometric object that is 57-dimensional. E8 itself is 248-dimensional.
“E8 was discovered over a century ago, in 1887, and until now, no one thought the structure could ever be understood,” said Prof Jeffrey Adams, Project Leader, at the University of Maryland. “This groundbreaking achievement is significant both as an advance in basic knowledge, as well as a major advance in the use of large scale computing to solve complicated mathematical problems.”
“This is an exciting breakthrough,” said Prof Peter Sarnak at Princeton University. “Understanding and classifying the representations of E8 and Lie groups has been critical to understanding phenomena in many different areas of mathematics and science including algebra, geometry, number theory, physics and chemistry. This project will be invaluable for future mathematicians and scientists.”
The ways that E8 manifests itself as a symmetry group are called representations. The goal is to describe all the possible representations of E8. These representations are extremely complicated, but mathematicians describe them in terms of basic building blocks. The new result is a complete list of these building blocks for the representations of E8, and a precise description of the relations between them, all encoded in a matrix, or grid, with 453,060 rows and columns. There are 205,263,363,600 entries in all, each a mathematical expression called a polynomial. If each entry was written in a one inch square, then the entire matrix would measure more than seven miles on each side.
The result of the E8 calculation, which contains all the information about E8 and its representations, is 60 gigabytes in size. This is enough to store 45 days of continuous music in MP3-format. If written out on paper, the answer would cover an area the size of Manhattan. The computation required sophisticated new mathematical techniques and computing power not available even a few years ago.
“This is an impressive achievement,” said Hermann Nicolai, Director of the Albert Einstein Institute in Potsdam, Germany. “While mathematicians have known for a long time about the beauty and the uniqueness of E8, we physicists have come to appreciate its exceptional role only more recently – yet, in our attempts to unify gravity with the other fundamental forces into a consistent theory of quantum gravity, we now encounter it at almost every corner,” he said, referring to efforts to combine the theory of the very big (general relativity) with the very small (quantum mechanics). “Thus, understanding the inner workings of E8 is not only a great advance for pure mathematics, but may also help physicists in their quest for a unified theory.”
Imagining the 10th Dimension
This is a really killer video presentation that helps you understand higher physical dimensions… kind of like the book “Flatland” but this one goes up to the 10th dimension wheras Flatland focused on 4, and only gave you a taste of 5 and 6 at the end.
Thanks to Djeeno for telling me about this one…
It seems kind of clear to me that when we dream, we are experiencing a broader range of dimensional reality than we do while awake… I also tend to think that we only shut this stuff out because we don’t need it to survive in this collective social creation that we inhabit.
Everyone has had moments where they’ve fallen asleep for only a few minutes but dreamed seemingly hours of dreams… Everybody has had bizarre other-worldly dreams that seemed almost like alternate realities… a lot of times these dreams come with whole new sets of memories for this other life you just jumped into.
Once i fell asleep and found myself in the middle of a prehistoric foot-race of some kind… i was stuck in a pit and all these people in tribal clothes were running and jumping over the thing… and suddenly all this memory came flooding in… i remembered the reasons why i was involved in this race… i knew that i had hit my head when i fell in this pit and had been knocked out for a minute. I remember all the drama between family and peers that I had experienced during the week leading up to this race.
What if i was dead? Would i enter a dreamlike state and never wake up from it? Would i enter some reality and inherit all the memories of that life and simply pick up from there?
I believe that, when you dream, you are meandering through higher dimensions and exploring cross-sections of infite possibilities… i think that sometimes you can gain a little control and you can focus on one reality for a lot longer… hence vivid and profound other-world experiences… And I think that this 10-dimensional model that the physics world has come to embrace explains this… i think this video illustrates this very clearly.
How can we experience lifetimes of memory in the blink of an eye? Because in higher dimensions, infinite realities can be experienced as a single point.
We know that if we are not allowed to dream, we go crazy or die… I think this is because we HAVE to return to our higher dimensional selves… there is a natural rhythm here… we zoom in on the multiverse and focus on one point of perspective… on consciousness…. like learning to focus on a stereogram… then at night our soul “exhales” and pulls back from focus, allowing us to stretch our spiritual legs and “recharge”… then we take a deep breath and dive right back in when we wake up.
Breathe in… Breathe out… Breathe in… Breathe out… just like everything else in our universe.
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