Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?
Ben, There is obvious confusion here. MOST mutations harm, but occasionally one helps. By selecting for a particular difficult-to-achieve thing, like long lifespan, we can discard the harmful mutations while selecting for the helpful ones. However, selecting for something harmful and easy to achieve, like the presence of genes that shorten lifespan, the selection process is SO non-specific that it can't tell us much of anything. There are countless mutations that kill WITHOUT conferring compensatory advantages. I could see stressing the flies in various ways without controlling for lifespan, but controlling for short lifespan in the absence of such stresses would seem to be completely worthless. Of course, once stressed, you would also be seeing genes to combat those (irrelevant) stresses. In short, I still haven't heard words that suggest that this can go anywhere, though it sure would be wonderful (like you and I might live twice as long) if some workable path could be found. I still suspect that the best path is in analyzing the DNA of long-living people, rather than that of fruit flies. Perhaps there is some way to combine the two approaches? Steve On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 8:37 PM, Ben Goertzel b...@goertzel.org wrote: On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 11:34 PM, Steve Richfield steve.richfi...@gmail.com wrote: Ben, It seems COMPLETELY obvious (to me) that almost any mutation would shorten lifespan, so we shouldn't expect to learn much from it. Why then do the Methuselah flies live 5x as long as normal flies? You're conjecturing this is unrelated to the dramatically large number of SNPs with very different frequencies in the two classes of populations??? ben *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modifyhttps://www.listbox.com/member/?;Your Subscription http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?
Bryan, *I'm interested!* Continuing... On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 11:27 AM, Bryan Bishop kanz...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 6:25 AM, Steve Richfield wrote: Note my prior posting explaining my inability even to find a source of used mice for kids to use in high-school anti-aging experiments, all while university labs are now killing their vast numbers of such mice. So long as things remain THIS broken, anything that isn't part of the solution simply becomes a part of the very big problem, AIs included. You might be inerested in this- I've been putting together an adopt-a-lab-rat program that is actually an adoption program for lab mice. ... then it is an adopt-a-mouse program? I don't know if you are a *Pinky and the Brain* fan, but calling your project something like *The Pinky Project* would be catchy. In some cases mice that are used as a control group in experiments are then discarded at the end of the program because, honestly, their lifetime is over more or less, so the idea is that some people might be interested in adopting these mice. I had several discussions with the folks at the U of W whose job it was to euthanize those mice. Their worries seemed to center in two areas: 1. Financial liability, e.g. a mouse bites a kid, whose finger becomes infected and... 2. Social liability, e.g. some kids who are torturing them put their videos on the Internet. Of course, you can also just pony up the $15 and get one from Jackson Labs. Not the last time I checked. They are very careful NOT to sell them to exactly the same population that I intend to supply them to - high-school kids. I expect that if I became a middleman, that they would simply stop selling to me. Even I would have a hard time purchasing them, because they only sell to genuine LABS. I haven't fully launced adopt-a-lab-rat yet because I am still trying to figure out how to avoid ending up in a situation where I have hundreds of rats and rodents running around my apartment and I get the short end of the stick (oops). *What is your present situation and projections? How big a volume could you supply? What are their approximate ages? Do they have really good documentation? Were they used in any way that might compromise anti-aging experiments, e.g. raised in a nicer-than-usual-laboratory environment? Do you have any liability concerns as discussed above? * Mice in the wild live ~4 years. Lab mice live ~2 years. If you take a young lab mouse and do everything you can to extend its life, you can approach 4 years. If you take an older lab mouse and do everything you can, you double the REMAINDER of their life, e.g. starting with a one-year-old mouse, you could get it to live ~3 years. How much better (or worse) than this you do is the basis for judging by the Methuselah Mouse people. Hence, really good documentation is needed to establish when they were born, and when they left a laboratory environment. Tattoos or tags link the mouse to the paperwork. If I/you/we are to get kids to compete to develop better anti-aging methods, the mice need to be documented well enough to PROVE beyond a shadow of a doubt that they did what they claimed they did. Steve --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?
Ben, Genescient has NOT paralleled human mating habits that would predictably shorten life. They have only started from a point well beyond anything achievable in the human population, and gone on from there. Hence, while their approach may find some interesting things, it is unlikely to find the things that are now killing our elderly population. Continuing... On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 11:59 AM, Ben Goertzel b...@goertzel.org wrote: I should dredge up and forward past threads with them. There are some flaws in their chain of reasoning, so that it won't be all that simple to sort the few relevant from the many irrelevant mutations. There is both a huge amount of noise, and irrelevant adaptations to their environment and their treatment. They have evolved many different populations in parallel, using the same fitness criterion. This provides powerful noise filtering Multiple measurements improve the S/N ratio by the square root of the number of measurements. Hence, if they were to develop 100 parallel populations, they could expect to improve their S/N ratio by 10:1. They haven't done 100 parallel populations, and they need much better than 10:1 improvement to the S/N ratio. Of course, this is all aside from the fact that their signal is wrong because of the different mating habits. Even when the relevant mutations are eventually identified, it isn't clear how that will map to usable therapies for the existing population. yes, that's a complex matter Further, most of the things that kill us operate WAY too slowly to affect fruit flies, though there are some interesting dual-affecting problems. Fruit flies get all the major ailments that kill people frequently, except cancer. heart disease, neurodegenerative disease, respiratory problems, immune problems, etc. Curiously, the list of conditions that they DO exhibit appears to be the SAME list as people with reduced body temperatures exhibit. This suggests simply correcting elderly people's body temperatures as they crash. Then, where do we go from there? Note that as you get older, your risk of contracting cancer rises dramatically - SO dramatically that the odds of you eventually contracting it are ~100%. Meanwhile, the risks of the other diseases DECREASE as you get older past a certain age, so if you haven't contracted them by ~80, then you probably never will contract them. Scientific American had an article a while back about people in Israel who are 100 years old. At ~100, your risk of dieing during each following year DECREASES with further advancing age!!! This strongly suggests some early-killers, that if you somehow escape them, you can live for quite a while. Our breeding practices would certainly invite early-killers. Of course, only a very tiny segment of the population lives to be 100. As I have posted in the past, what we have here in the present human population is about the equivalent of a fruit fly population that was bred for the shortest possible lifespan. Certainly not. ??? Not what? We have those fruit fly populations also, and analysis of their genetics refutes your claim ;p ... Where? References? The last I looked, all they had in addition to their long-lived groups were uncontrolled control groups, and no groups bred only from young flies. In any case, since the sociology of humans is SO much different than that of fruit flies, and breeding practices interact so much with sociology, e.g. the bright colorings of birds, beards (that I have commented on before), etc. In short, I would expect LOTS of mutations from young-bread groups, but entirely different mutations in people than in fruit flies. I suspect that there is LOTS more information in the DNA of healthy people 100 than there is in any population of fruit flies. Perhaps, data from fruit flies could then be used to reduce the noise from the limited human population who lives to be 100? Anyway, if someone has thought this whole thing out, I sure haven't seen it. Sure there is probably lots to be learned from genetic approaches, but Genescient's approach seems flawed by its simplicity. The challenge here is as always. The value of such research to us is VERY high, yet there is no meaningful funding. If/when an early AI becomes available to help in such efforts, there simply won't be any money available to divert it away from defense (read that: offense) work. Steve --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?
We have those fruit fly populations also, and analysis of their genetics refutes your claim ;p ... Where? References? The last I looked, all they had in addition to their long-lived groups were uncontrolled control groups, and no groups bred only from young flies. Michael rose's UCI lab has evolved flies specifically for short lifespan, but the results may not be published yet... --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?
Ben, It seems COMPLETELY obvious (to me) that almost any mutation would shorten lifespan, so we shouldn't expect to learn much from it. What particular lifespan-shortening mutations are in the human genome wouldn't be expected to be the same, or even the same as separated human populations. Hmmm, an interesting thought: I wonder if certain racially mixed people have shorter lifespans because they have several disjoint sets of such mutations?!!! Any idea where to find such data? It has long been noticed that some racial subgroups do NOT have certain age-related illnesses, e.g. Japanese don't have clogged arteries, but they DO have lots of cancer. So far everyone has been blindly presuming diet, but seeking a particular level of genetic disaster could also explain it. Any thoughts? Steve On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 8:06 AM, Ben Goertzel b...@goertzel.org wrote: We have those fruit fly populations also, and analysis of their genetics refutes your claim ;p ... Where? References? The last I looked, all they had in addition to their long-lived groups were uncontrolled control groups, and no groups bred only from young flies. Michael rose's UCI lab has evolved flies specifically for short lifespan, but the results may not be published yet... *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modifyhttps://www.listbox.com/member/?;Your Subscription http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?
Ben, On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 1:07 PM, Ben Goertzel b...@goertzel.org wrote: I'm speaking there, on Ai applied to life extension; and participating in a panel discussion on narrow vs. general AI... Having some interest, expertise, and experience in both areas, I find it hard to imagine much interplay at all. The present challenge is wrapped up in a lack of basic information, resulting from insufficient funds to do the needed experiments. Extrapolations have already gone WAY beyond the data, and new methods to push extrapolations even further wouldn't be worth nearly as much as just a little more hard data. Just look at Aubrey's long list of aging mechanisms. We don't now even know which predominate, or which cause others. Further, there are new candidates arising every year, e.g. Burzynski's theory that most aging is secondary to methylation of DNA receptor sites, or my theory that Aubrey's entire list could be explained by people dropping their body temperatures later in life. There are LOTS of other theories, and without experimental results, there is absolutely no way, AI or not, to sort the wheat from the chaff. Note that one of the front runners, the cosmic ray theory, could easily be tested by simply raising some mice in deep tunnels. This is high-school level stuff, yet with NO significant funding for aging research, it remains undone. Note my prior posting explaining my inability even to find a source of used mice for kids to use in high-school anti-aging experiments, all while university labs are now killing their vast numbers of such mice. So long as things remain THIS broken, anything that isn't part of the solution simply becomes a part of the very big problem, AIs included. The best that an AI could seemingly do is to pronounce Fund and facilitate basic aging research and then suspend execution pending an interrupt indicating that the needed experiments have been done. Could you provide some hint as to where you are going with this? Steve --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?
I'm writing an article on the topic for H+ Magazine, which will appear in the next couple weeks ... I'll post a link to it when it appears I'm not advocating applying AI in the absence of new experiments of course. I've been working closely with Genescient, applying AI tech to analyze the genomics of their long-lived superflies, so part of my message is about the virtuous cycle achievable via synergizing AI data analysis with carefully-designed experimental evolution of model organisms... -- Ben On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 7:25 AM, Steve Richfield steve.richfi...@gmail.comwrote: Ben, On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 1:07 PM, Ben Goertzel b...@goertzel.org wrote: I'm speaking there, on Ai applied to life extension; and participating in a panel discussion on narrow vs. general AI... Having some interest, expertise, and experience in both areas, I find it hard to imagine much interplay at all. The present challenge is wrapped up in a lack of basic information, resulting from insufficient funds to do the needed experiments. Extrapolations have already gone WAY beyond the data, and new methods to push extrapolations even further wouldn't be worth nearly as much as just a little more hard data. Just look at Aubrey's long list of aging mechanisms. We don't now even know which predominate, or which cause others. Further, there are new candidates arising every year, e.g. Burzynski's theory that most aging is secondary to methylation of DNA receptor sites, or my theory that Aubrey's entire list could be explained by people dropping their body temperatures later in life. There are LOTS of other theories, and without experimental results, there is absolutely no way, AI or not, to sort the wheat from the chaff. Note that one of the front runners, the cosmic ray theory, could easily be tested by simply raising some mice in deep tunnels. This is high-school level stuff, yet with NO significant funding for aging research, it remains undone. Note my prior posting explaining my inability even to find a source of used mice for kids to use in high-school anti-aging experiments, all while university labs are now killing their vast numbers of such mice. So long as things remain THIS broken, anything that isn't part of the solution simply becomes a part of the very big problem, AIs included. The best that an AI could seemingly do is to pronounce Fund and facilitate basic aging research and then suspend execution pending an interrupt indicating that the needed experiments have been done. Could you provide some hint as to where you are going with this? Steve *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modifyhttps://www.listbox.com/member/?;Your Subscription http://www.listbox.com -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC CTO, Genescient Corp Vice Chairman, Humanity+ Advisor, Singularity University and Singularity Institute External Research Professor, Xiamen University, China b...@goertzel.org I admit that two times two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, two times two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too. -- Fyodor Dostoevsky --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?
Steve, Capable and effective AI systems would be very helpful at every step of the research process. Basic research is a major area I think that AGI will be applied to. In fact, that's exactly where I plan to apply it first. Dave On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 7:25 AM, Steve Richfield steve.richfi...@gmail.comwrote: Ben, On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 1:07 PM, Ben Goertzel b...@goertzel.org wrote: I'm speaking there, on Ai applied to life extension; and participating in a panel discussion on narrow vs. general AI... Having some interest, expertise, and experience in both areas, I find it hard to imagine much interplay at all. The present challenge is wrapped up in a lack of basic information, resulting from insufficient funds to do the needed experiments. Extrapolations have already gone WAY beyond the data, and new methods to push extrapolations even further wouldn't be worth nearly as much as just a little more hard data. Just look at Aubrey's long list of aging mechanisms. We don't now even know which predominate, or which cause others. Further, there are new candidates arising every year, e.g. Burzynski's theory that most aging is secondary to methylation of DNA receptor sites, or my theory that Aubrey's entire list could be explained by people dropping their body temperatures later in life. There are LOTS of other theories, and without experimental results, there is absolutely no way, AI or not, to sort the wheat from the chaff. Note that one of the front runners, the cosmic ray theory, could easily be tested by simply raising some mice in deep tunnels. This is high-school level stuff, yet with NO significant funding for aging research, it remains undone. Note my prior posting explaining my inability even to find a source of used mice for kids to use in high-school anti-aging experiments, all while university labs are now killing their vast numbers of such mice. So long as things remain THIS broken, anything that isn't part of the solution simply becomes a part of the very big problem, AIs included. The best that an AI could seemingly do is to pronounce Fund and facilitate basic aging research and then suspend execution pending an interrupt indicating that the needed experiments have been done. Could you provide some hint as to where you are going with this? Steve *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modifyhttps://www.listbox.com/member/?;Your Subscription http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?
Ben, On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 8:44 AM, Ben Goertzel b...@goertzel.org wrote: I'm writing an article on the topic for H+ Magazine, which will appear in the next couple weeks ... I'll post a link to it when it appears I'm not advocating applying AI in the absence of new experiments of course. I've been working closely with Genescient, applying AI tech to analyze the genomics of their long-lived superflies, so part of my message is about the virtuous cycle achievable via synergizing AI data analysis with carefully-designed experimental evolution of model organisms... I should dredge up and forward past threads with them. There are some flaws in their chain of reasoning, so that it won't be all that simple to sort the few relevant from the many irrelevant mutations. There is both a huge amount of noise, and irrelevant adaptations to their environment and their treatment. Even when the relevant mutations are eventually identified, it isn't clear how that will map to usable therapies for the existing population. Perhaps you remember the old Star Trek episode about the long-lived population that was still locked in a war after hundreds of years? The episode devolved into a dispute over the potential value of this discovery - was there something valuable in the environment, or did they just evolve to live longer? Here, the long-lived population isn't even human. Further, most of the things that kill us operate WAY too slowly to affect fruit flies, though there are some interesting dual-affecting problems. Unfortunately, it isn't as practical to autopsy fruit flies as it is to autopsy people to see what killed them. As I have posted in the past, what we have here in the present human population is about the equivalent of a fruit fly population that was bred for the shortest possible lifespan. Our social practices could hardly do worse. Our present challenge is to get to where fruit flies were before Rose first bred them for long life. I strongly suspect that we have some early-killer mutations, e.g. to people off as quickly as possible after they pass child-bearing age, which itself is probably being shortened through our bizarre social habits of mating like-aged people. Genescient's approach holds no promise of identifying THOSE genes, and identifying the other genes won't help at all until those killer genes are first silenced. In short, there are some really serious challenges to Genescient's approach. I expect success for several other quarters long before Genescient bears real-world usable fruit. I suspect that these challenges, along with the ubiquitous shortage of funding will keep Genescient out of producing real-world usable results pretty much forever. Future AGI output: Fund aging research. Update on studying more of Burzynski's papers: His is not a cancer cure at all. What he is doing is removing gene-silencing methylization from the DNA, and letting nature take its course, e.g. having their immune systems kill the cancer via aptosis. In short, it is a real-world anti-aging approach that has snuck in under the radar. OF COURSE any real-world working anti-aging approach would kill cancer! How good is his present product? Who knows? It sure looks to me like this is a valid approach, and I suspect that any bugs will get worked out in time. WATCH THIS. This looks to me like it will work in the real-world long before any other of the present popular approaches stand a chance of working. After all, it sure seems to be working on some people with really extreme gene silencing - called cancer. Steve --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?
On 10 August 2010 16:44, Ben Goertzel b...@goertzel.org wrote: I'm writing an article on the topic for H+ Magazine, which will appear in the next couple weeks ... I'll post a link to it when it appears I'm not advocating applying AI in the absence of new experiments of course. I've been working closely with Genescient, applying AI tech to analyze the genomics of their long-lived superflies, so part of my message is about the virtuous cycle achievable via synergizing AI data analysis with carefully-designed experimental evolution of model organisms... Probably if I was going to apply AI in a medical context I'd prioritize those conditions which are both common and either fatal or have a severe impact on quality of life. Also worthwhile would be using AI to try to discover drugs which have an equivalent effect to existing known ones but can be manufactured at a significantly lower cost, such that they are brought within the means of a larger fraction of the population. Investigating aging is perfectly legitimate, but if you're trying to maximize your personal utility I'd regard it as a low priority compared to other more urgent medical issues which cause premature deaths. Also in the endeavor to extend life we need not focus entirely upon medical aspects. The organizational problems of delivering known medications on a large scale is also a problem which AI could perhaps be used to optimize. The way in which things like this are currently organized seems to be based upon some combination of tradition and intuitive hunches, so there may be low hanging fruit to be obtained here. For example, if an epidemic breaks out, why should you vaccinate first? If you have access to a social graph (from Facebook, or wherever) it's probably possible to calculate an optimal strategy. --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?
The think the biggest thing to remember here is that general AI could be applied to many different problems in parallel by many different people. They would help with many aspects of the problem solving process, not just a single one and certainly not just applied to a single experiment/study. I'm confident that Ben is aware of this On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Bob Mottram fuzz...@gmail.com wrote: On 10 August 2010 16:44, Ben Goertzel b...@goertzel.org wrote: I'm writing an article on the topic for H+ Magazine, which will appear in the next couple weeks ... I'll post a link to it when it appears I'm not advocating applying AI in the absence of new experiments of course. I've been working closely with Genescient, applying AI tech to analyze the genomics of their long-lived superflies, so part of my message is about the virtuous cycle achievable via synergizing AI data analysis with carefully-designed experimental evolution of model organisms... Probably if I was going to apply AI in a medical context I'd prioritize those conditions which are both common and either fatal or have a severe impact on quality of life. Also worthwhile would be using AI to try to discover drugs which have an equivalent effect to existing known ones but can be manufactured at a significantly lower cost, such that they are brought within the means of a larger fraction of the population. Investigating aging is perfectly legitimate, but if you're trying to maximize your personal utility I'd regard it as a low priority compared to other more urgent medical issues which cause premature deaths. Also in the endeavor to extend life we need not focus entirely upon medical aspects. The organizational problems of delivering known medications on a large scale is also a problem which AI could perhaps be used to optimize. The way in which things like this are currently organized seems to be based upon some combination of tradition and intuitive hunches, so there may be low hanging fruit to be obtained here. For example, if an epidemic breaks out, why should you vaccinate first? If you have access to a social graph (from Facebook, or wherever) it's probably possible to calculate an optimal strategy. --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?
On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 6:25 AM, Steve Richfield wrote: Note my prior posting explaining my inability even to find a source of used mice for kids to use in high-school anti-aging experiments, all while university labs are now killing their vast numbers of such mice. So long as things remain THIS broken, anything that isn't part of the solution simply becomes a part of the very big problem, AIs included. You might be inerested in this- I've been putting together an adopt-a-lab-rat program that is actually an adoption program for lab mice. In some cases mice that are used as a control group in experiments are then discarded at the end of the program because, honestly, their lifetime is over more or less, so the idea is that some people might be interested in adopting these mice. Of course, you can also just pony up the $15 and get one from Jackson Labs. I haven't fully launced adopt-a-lab-rat yet because I am still trying to figure out how to avoid ending up in a situation where I have hundreds of rats and rodents running around my apartment and I get the short end of the stick (oops). - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?
On 10 August 2010 18:43, Bob Mottram fuzz...@gmail.com wrote: here. For example, if an epidemic breaks out, why should you vaccinate first? That should have been who rather than why :-) Just thinking a little further, in hand waving mode, If something like the common cold were added as a status within social networks, and everyone was on the network it might even be possible to eliminate this disease simply by getting people to avoid those who are known to have it for a certain period of time - a sort of internet enabled smart avoidance strategy. This wouldn't be a cure, but it could severely hamper the disease transmission mechanism, perhaps even to the extent of driving it to extinction. --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?
I should dredge up and forward past threads with them. There are some flaws in their chain of reasoning, so that it won't be all that simple to sort the few relevant from the many irrelevant mutations. There is both a huge amount of noise, and irrelevant adaptations to their environment and their treatment. They have evolved many different populations in parallel, using the same fitness criterion. This provides powerful noise filtering Even when the relevant mutations are eventually identified, it isn't clear how that will map to usable therapies for the existing population. yes, that's a complex matter Further, most of the things that kill us operate WAY too slowly to affect fruit flies, though there are some interesting dual-affecting problems. Fruit flies get all the major ailments that kill people frequently, except cancer. heart disease, neurodegenerative disease, respiratory problems, immune problems, etc. As I have posted in the past, what we have here in the present human population is about the equivalent of a fruit fly population that was bred for the shortest possible lifespan. Certainly not. We have those fruit fly populations also, and analysis of their genetics refutes your claim ;p ... ben g --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?
Bob, their are serious issues with such a suggestion. The biggest issue, is that there is a good chance it wouldn't work because diseases, including the common cold, have incubation times. So, you may not have any symptoms at all, yet you can pass it on to other people. And even if we did know who was sick, are you really going to stay home for 2 weeks every time you get sick? If I were an employer, I would rather have you come to work when you feel up to it. Another point I've given to germaphobes is that let's say you are successful at avoiding as many possible germs as possible and avoid getting sick as much as possible. That means that you are likely not immune to some common colds and such that you should be. So, when you are old and less capable, your immune system will not be able to fight off the infection and you will die an early death. Dave On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 1:51 PM, Bob Mottram fuzz...@gmail.com wrote: On 10 August 2010 18:43, Bob Mottram fuzz...@gmail.com wrote: here. For example, if an epidemic breaks out, why should you vaccinate first? That should have been who rather than why :-) Just thinking a little further, in hand waving mode, If something like the common cold were added as a status within social networks, and everyone was on the network it might even be possible to eliminate this disease simply by getting people to avoid those who are known to have it for a certain period of time - a sort of internet enabled smart avoidance strategy. This wouldn't be a cure, but it could severely hamper the disease transmission mechanism, perhaps even to the extent of driving it to extinction. --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?
I've decided to go. I was wondering if anyone else here is. Dave --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?
I'm speaking there, on Ai applied to life extension; and participating in a panel discussion on narrow vs. general AI... ben g On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 4:01 PM, David Jones davidher...@gmail.com wrote: I've decided to go. I was wondering if anyone else here is. Dave *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modifyhttps://www.listbox.com/member/?;Your Subscription http://www.listbox.com -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC CTO, Genescient Corp Vice Chairman, Humanity+ Advisor, Singularity University and Singularity Institute External Research Professor, Xiamen University, China b...@goertzel.org I admit that two times two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, two times two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too. -- Fyodor Dostoevsky --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
