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Thursday, June 02, 2016

We All Have Our Little Dreams It Seems

Hey, I wish Elon Musk was just a Holodeck character too.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

I kinda like (in a laughing at the destruction of humanity kinda way) when I hear people act and talk about how good it is that he has given money to both sides. As if he did not do that simply to ensure whoever got elected would be on his side.

jimf said...

Dream along with me. I'm on my way to a star. . .

Elon Musk (and Stephen Hawking) are relatively new to this party
(though unlike us mere internet geeks, they're "worthy" of attention
by the mainstream media), but some of lesser-known geeky old-timers are
still keeping the faith, bless their little hearts.

Remember a certain old sparring partner who showed up in the
comment threads here in posts such as:
From Future Shock to Future Fatigue
http://amormundi.blogspot.com/2008/01/from-future-shock-to-future-fatigue.html ?

He's still defending his hero in the first comment on:

Not A Review Of Neoreaction A Basilisk
Andrew Hickey
May 30, 2016
https://andrewhickey.info/2016/05/30/not-a-review-of-neoreaction-a-basilisk/

AI, AI, AI, AI
canta y no llores. . .

jimf said...

> AI, AI, AI, AI

We just don't understand it.

But apparently Facebook's computers do:

Facebook's DeepText A.I. can read, understand your posts
Sharon Gaudin
Jun 2, 2016
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3078519/artificial-intelligence/facebooks-deeptext-ai-can-read-understand-your-posts.html

Unknown said...

Well of course Musk is protecting us from the robot apocalypse after all. He needs defending.

Dale Carrico said...

This poofter prefers real musk over digi-Musk.

jimf said...

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/06/cytological-utopia-and-the-rap.html
-----------
Cytological Utopia and the rapture of the eukaryotes
By Charlie Stross

If you're a regular on this blog you're probably more than
a little familiar with the Rapture of the Nerds
(as Ken Macleod calls it). . .

You're probably also familiar with the Simulation Argument,
originally proposed by philosopher Nick Bostrom and most
recently discussed in public by Elon Musk. . .

This kind of intellectual masturbation is pleasurable but
ultimately unproductive insofar as we can't -- at least
from here -- examine either our own future outcomes or the
context in which our universe is embedded. . .

Let us posit for the sake of argument that one or the other
case is actually true; that either we are living in an
afterlife sim or that our descendants are going to colonize
the universe, achieve immortality, and resurrect us all:

Who, in this thought-experiment, qualifies as "us"?

This is an essential conundrum at the heart of the Fed[o]rovite/Kurzweilian
theory of the singularity as afterlife: where do you draw the line
between consciousness and unconscious life, and then between life
and un-life? Worse: it stacks the deck for the simulation hypothesis
with additional unwelcome abstraction layers, multiplies the problem
of suffering unimaginably. . ., and bloats the minimum viable
capacity of the computing substrate required for a successful ancestor
simulation to the point where it may not be possible within the
physical constraints of a material universe.

(And this is where my next non-series SF novel will probably come from ...)

. . .

Charlie Stross replied to this comment from Nader
June 3, 2016
76:

> Incidentally, I'm very intrigued by the prospect of a novel
> which treats the question raised here.

Spoiler (for something I'm still writing): it's not about the
question raised here, it's about the implications of people who
believe this shit gaining influence and attempting to implement
their various conflicting agendas. (Meta-spoiler: it all
ends in tears before bedtime.)
====


"But it's just a crazy game, and when it ends, it ends in tears."

Dionne Warwick - A House Is Not Home Live 1964
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olvaDzUi8c8

jimf said...

A YouTube paean to Elon Musk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaAJAwi3Q1U
The guy who is saving the world
Boyinaband
Published on Jan 21, 2015

Sometimes you come across people who completely change your
perception of what a human being is capable of. Today I'm
going to show you one of those people. Someone who is basically
a real-life Iron Man, but less of a douche and with slightly
fewer glowing blue fusion reactors embedded in his chest
(or at least he hides it well). . .

So who is this superhero who's saving us from the brink
of collapse? There was a genius billionaire in that
picture, but it wasn't Robert Downey, Jr. The dude
chilling with Tony Stark was Elon Musk, who Robert Downey, Jr.
actually based the character of Iron Man on, by
analyzing Elon's mannerisms, talking to him, and adding
a healthy scoop of douche. . . So I was like "Holy crap,
this guy is literally fixing the world. How did I not
know about him? Is he famous? . . ."