Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence

Steve, it is a Renesan course on Tue, September 7 and 14. I have read Jack Williamson, not all 90, and he would have been included in another course I proposed to Renesan on science fiction themes. Maybe in the future. davew On Wed, Aug 9, 2017, at 09:57 AM, Steven A Smith wrote: > Dave - >

[FRIAM] schadenfreude - a political rant

After Trump won, something I had been telling people would happen since January last year, Nick constantly questioned me as to my schadenfreude-ic attitude - taking pleasure in the misery of all the astounded liberals. Watching Bill Maher with some friends - also hard core liberal democrats - I

Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

I think Wagner and Monod agree, actually. If I extrapolate what Jenny said Wagner said, *mutation's* randomness is a statement of ignorance, presumably about where innovation comes from in biological evolution. So, both Monod and Wagner would say innovation comes from mutation. On

Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

Thanks, Glen, Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen ? Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2017 11:48 AM To:

Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence

"Genetic algorithms need not be, but can be, stochastic. Genetic algorithms are adaptive; but they need not be stochastically adaptive" [..] "Without this particular stochasticicty, there would only ever have been one species on earth, if that, and that species would now be long extinct

Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence

Nick, In science, these three terms are generally interchangeable. Their common usage is that they all describe activities, or "events", that are "subject to chance". Such activities, events or processes that are described by these terms are governed by the laws of probability. They all

Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence

Marcus, Let me clarify what I meant by saying that evolution is stochastic By "evolution", I do not mean genetic algorithms. Genetic algorithms need not be, but can be, stochastic. Genetic algorithms are/adaptive; /but they need not be/stochastically /adaptive. On the other hand,

[FRIAM] The apocalypse

What's the matter with your president? I am worried we are heading to the apocalypse. The "fire and fury" threat feels like the Cuban missile crisis or worse.http://blog.cas-group.net/2017/08/the-apocalypse/ And then there is the issue of global warming which the Trump administration ignores

Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

Some of us tend to care more about applied power more than the explanatory power. Also as Frank suggested there are practical limits to the size of genomes that can be simulated. I could imagine epigenetic / regulatory analogs being beneficial though. Marcus Sent from my iPhone On Aug 9,

Re: [FRIAM] schadenfreude - a political rant

Dave writes: "Watching Bill Maher with some friends - also hard core liberal democrats - I was struck by two things: 1), all the fury and ridicule heaped on Trump (deservedly so) is really nothing more than schadenfreude at the misery of Trump and his circle. Pleasurable perhaps, but just as

Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

Totally agree. Maybe a few of us can read the Wagener book (apparently he shows up at the Santa Fe institute from time to time as an external something or other) and see what we can do with the ideas. I'll be in Amsterdam but can follow e-mail threads to skype. Jenny On 8/9/2017 10:01

Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence

thanks for the reference, I was not aware of the Renesan Institute before this, though I had heard somewhere about the first listed lecture/course/seminar on "the Trickster". I don't see your course in the lineup? I will be out

Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

The random + current thing sounds like a Markov process. If the next value is independent of the current value then it's random. If it depends on the current value and no previous values it's Markov of order 1. If it depends only on the current value and the one before and none before that,

Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

Maybe you're looking for the term "Markovian"? http://mathworld.wolfram.com/MarkovProcess.html On 08/09/2017 07:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose value > was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it's last value. So

Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

Jenny - What a powerful quote: /Natural selection can //preserve//innovations, but it cannot create them./ In my own maunderings about the (continued?) relevance of Free Markets and Capitalism, it has occurred to me that the value of said Free Markets may well be restricted to the

Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

Steve, According to Jacques Monod, chance mutations are the /only /form of innovation in living systems. On p. 112 of his book "Chance and Necessity" he says "...since they [chance mutations] constitute the /only/ possible source of modifications in the genetic text,...it necessarily

Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence

Dave - Most excellent of you to do this, and what will be your venue for this class? Are you familiar with our own Jack Williamson 's vague parallel work in his "Humanoids" which began in 1947 with the Novelette: "With Folded Hands". I do not

Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

Nick, Re: your queston about stochastic processes Yes, your specific description "AND its last value" is what most uses of "stochastic process" imply. But, technically all that is required to be a "stochastic process" is that each next step in the process is unpredictable, whether or not

Re: [FRIAM] The apocalypse

Jochen, "What's the matter with your president?" And it is the west cost states at the most risk. States that voted for H! Marcus From: Friam on behalf of Jochen Fromm Sent: Wednesday, August 9, 2017 1:34:15

Re: [FRIAM] What are the scenarios? Game theory?

Owen writes: "The toughest part is that South Korea is being held hostage. NK can devastate SK even if hit with a pre-emptive strike." How about Trump defines SK as an undesirable economic competitor to the U.S. that steals jobs, and cuts them loose. He has no doubt been briefed on the

Re: [FRIAM] The apocalypse

Jochen, He’s out of his friggin mind. There are those who feel that the risk arising from the stultification of our political system was so bad that it justified taking this sort of existential risk (Hey, Dave!), but I am not one of them. Small interesting things ARE starting to happen,

[FRIAM] What are the scenarios? Game theory?

>From BBC a reasonable summary: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40879485 My question is simple: what *are* the alternatives? Is there an interesting game theoretic analysis? The toughest part is that South Korea is being held hostage. NK can devastate SK even if hit with a pre-emptive

Re: [FRIAM] schadenfreude - a political rant

On 08/09/2017 08:58 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > It helps a little, though, I think that comedians and commentators keep > pounding on the moron theme. It clearly worked with the White House because > they started doing off-camera interviews. I actually laughed out loud at this segment:

Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

Steve, What's powerful about it? What is presented to the world by the epigenetic system is not mutations but "hypotheses" about ways to live. And presumably epigenetic systems are shaped by natural selection to produce more or less plausible hypotheses. The randomness is largely

Re: [FRIAM] The apocalypse

It's bad enough that he's "out of his friggin' mind", but a CNN piece today asks, "Could Congress stop Trump from bombing North Korea?" The reporter's conclusion is basically that no, it couldn't. I think we all should scared witless that Trump may well pull the trigger. My only hope is that

Re: [FRIAM] The apocalypse

I doubt that North Korea has the ability to hit a tiny island like Guam in the Pacific, but it can without doubt destroy the 9 million capital Seoul near the border with weapons bought from Russia or China.  The danger of a nuclear apocalypse is greatest when the world has forgotten how

Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

Nick - I am very glad to note that you are recovering and your scrappiness is properly returning! What’s powerful about it? Nothing more than it is such a succinct statement negating the popular fallacious apprehension of the mechanism of evolution, suggesting that there is a causal link

Re: [FRIAM] The apocalypse

I'm not following the public debate/discussion on this, but I think we discussed this here a few months ago? Even though I lived and worked in the belly of the (Nuclear Weapons Complex) beast for decades, I admit to not knowing with any degree of certainty how direct the "Launch Codes" and

Re: [FRIAM] The apocalypse

I (razzingly) suggest bad summer movies or that somehow all the Doom will some freeze in place at the same time. Perhaps we shall some how find a bunch of tribbles, zombies, a large rock in the sky, and dinso's all at the same time and that because of the Doom Metter the'll just stay their, thus

Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence

"Right. Then you use gradient ascent. But what if you are scheduling a job shop for throughput when there are thousands of variables most of which have discrete values?" I'd try to code it up for a SMT solver like Z3, or look for a SMT solver that had theories that closely matched the

Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence

For what its worth - I will be teaching a short class next month in Santa Fe, "Isaac Asimov and the Robots." Two points of coverage: 1) the robots themselves invent and follow a "Zeroth Law" that allows them to eliminate individual human beings with a result the exact opposite of Hawking et. al.'s

Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence

Right. Then you use gradient ascent. But what if you are scheduling a job shop for throughput when there are thousands of variables most of which have discrete values? Frank Frank Wimberly Phone (505) 670-9918 On Aug 8, 2017 10:41 PM, "Marcus Daniels" wrote: > Frank

Re: [FRIAM] the self

Ha! We bald people clearly have a stronger sense of self than hairy people. On August 8, 2017 6:06:12 PM PDT, Marcus Daniels wrote: >Gasp. Loss of _hair_? _Who_ would say such a thing? -- ⛧glen⛧ FRIAM

Re: [FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence

FWIW, I tend to use stochastic to mean a process with a collection of variables, some of which are (pseudo) randomly set and some of which are not. A "random process" would imply a process where either all the variables are random OR where the randomly set variables are dominant. A process can

Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

An excellent foray into such a topic is /Arrival of the Fittest: how nature innovates/ by Andreas Wagner. From the Preface: the power of natural selection is beyond dispute, but this power has limits. Natural selection can /preserve/ innovations, but it cannot create them. And calling the

[FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

Hi everybody, Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog. I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours. First. I had always supposed that a stochastic process was one whose value was determined by two factors, a random factor AND it's

Re: [FRIAM] random v stochastic v indeterminate

Ah, good to see you nick. How fairs you? On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 8:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > Hi everybody, > > > > Thanks for your patience as I emerge (hopefully) from post-surgical fog. > > > > I figured I best start my own thread rather than gum up yours. > > >