Sent to you by Sean McBride via Google Reader: You: Computer modeling of belief systems, ideologies, religions, political systems, political movements, economic systems, global power elites, organizations, persons. (via FriendFeed) via FriendFeed on 10/22/08 You posted a message “Computer modeling of belief systems, ideologies, religions, political systems, political movements, economic systems, global power elites, organizations, persons.” Wednesday at 9:48 am - Comment Mike Reynolds and Uldis Bojars liked this Sean: This isn't even a sentence; what are you trying to say? - eggsy I'm defining a frame for a certain line of research with a topic cluster. Some folks will get it. - You The thought behind the thought: the Semantic Web will provide a unified framework for conducting computer modeling and data mining for all these activities and many more. - You And: possibly a simple binary system of pluses and minuses will get us 90% of the way towards the goal of modeling these social and psychological systems. - You What if we are a computer model? - eggsy We might well be. Or an experiment in genetic engineering. I don't know. - You in some sense all those things are themselves models, or structures based on models ... something recursive in all of this ... and one interesting addition, climate, for want of a better word ... at every point on the planet the models are different, in a different climate .... - Gregory Lent I suspect you'd have an easier time dumbing down those systems, ideologies, movements etc. until computers can model them. But I'm somewhat cynical about the whole Semantic Web notion. - Steven Kaye A list of nouns is ok, tho i prefer a single gerund. - j1m Steven - what are your reservations about the Semantic Web? I think it may be possible to model any degree of complexity with simple triples. - You Models will make sense if they allow for evolutionary breakthroughs. Things like adaptation and survival of the fittest. Would genetic algorithms with a shifting fitness function work? - Mike Reynolds Mike - I'm not sure I understand you. Can you elaborate? What I do think is that computer models of the world -- and THE computer model of the world -- a global superintelligence which integrates all computer models, ontologies, data sets, data mining algorithms, etc. -- could track and often predict in real time any changes in the real world of any kind, evolutionary, devolutionary or otherwise. A GS (global superintelligence) could also actively intervene to react to change or to create change, including radical evolutionary change. There really are no obvious limits. - You Sean: are you alluding to this http://www.guardian.co.uk/tech... - melmcb Great pointer, Mel - and, yes, this is an important facet of this emerging and rapidly self-evolving global superintelligence I have mentioned. The potential of automated and AI-based social network analysis to map in excruciating detail the social behavior of the entire human race is unlimited. The dangers for totalitarian abuse are also unlimited. It is important for the general public to understand this technology as well as it possibly can, and for democracies to impose controls on the abuse of this power. But there are also potentially enormous benefits for everyone in automated social network analysis. Super article: you caught this before I saw it. :) - You From the Guardian article linked to by Mel: "The iLink system had several goals, including real-time learning by matching queries and communities users; adapting to user demands and directions, providing accuracy in message targeting and routing and, finally, dynamic user profile correction based on community behaviours and identification of community experts. The learning in iLink occurs by watching a natural social network, and selecting effective strategies that emerge from the system as the members try to solve problems. The system continuously monitors the real social network and it is capable of drafting from the social network's learning." - You Whatever is useful in the ILink system should be folded into Friendfeed. I wonder if Bret Taylor and Paul Bucheit are tracking this research. - You Sean - Thanks for your response. My POV is that there can't be one 100% correct global super intelligence. Just as there is subjectivity in our daily lives, a computer model would likely also involve some subjectivity. Regarding my specific comments, I was referring to a much narrower simulation. - Mike Reynolds modeling nature would be a challenge, an entire system with out subsets, completely self-referential, everything connected to everything and influence everything, seamless ... - Gregory Lent Mike - a global superintelligence would integrate all human subjective models and treat them as theories to be empirically tested, intensively and relentlessly. It would learn which subjective models seem to be most closely correlated with the real world, which are most objective. It would never be "perfect" -- but its understanding of the real world would continue to grow without limits. (Actually, there are many physical limits: we could be hit by an asteroid or suffer some other natural disaster which would destroy all life and technology on this small planet.) - You Gregory - graphing the cosmic grid -- it's doable. The universe is a network of entities and relations. (I am not trying to say that any model, no matter how sophisticated, can contain reality in its entirety -- it almost certainly can't. But some models are better than others.) - You Essentially this global superintelligence is a meta-intelligence machine. - Mike Reynolds Mike - a global superintelligence would integrate all the best artificial intelligence and data mining algorithms in the world, all the documents, all the databases, all the sensors, etc. This thing is coming together as we speak, and very quickly. - You Things you can do from here: - Subscribe to FriendFeed using Google Reader - Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites
