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Category: singularity – Page 87

Actuarial Sciences Suffice?

000 actuarial erin

QUESTION: Actuarial Sciences Suffice?

ANSWER: Absolutely used by actuaries and some futurists, actuarial sciences are structurally linear and incomplete in a world mired by explosive nonlinearity, fluidly and incessantly.

EXCERPTED FROM THE WHITE SWAN BOOK:

WARNING: Dots are connected.

“…You can never plan [retrospectively, that is a posteriori or ex post facto] the future by the past…” Brackets are of the author.

To set the stage properly, I will start with an enlightening quote by Albert Einstein.

“…The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created then…”

Or, it could be better noted:

“…The significant problems we face [today] cannot be solved [in the future] at the same level of [démodé] thinking we were at when we created then [in the fossilized past]…” Brackets are of the author.

Besides:

As the past and the present are NEVER a script for the future, retrospective analyzes and historic data (a posteriori data provided by actuaries and statisticians) are always being disrupted by the final trends and outcomes.

WHY RETROSPECTIVE [A POSTERIORI] ANALYZES DON’T WORK:

“…After-the-fact [retrospective and hence a posteriori] no longer works [….] Bring it back if you have any trouble with it, and I’ll fix it somehow,’ was the standard comment when you used to pick up a bicycle, automobile, food mixer, or lawn mower from the repair shop. And the repairman meant what he said. He was confident that if he had overlooked anything or made a mistake of any kind, he would get a second shot at fixing [….] The ‘second shot’ is a luxury that no longer exists in many businesses. You get only one chance — after that, you’ll be talking only with attorneys, insurance agents, or bankers …”

And:

“ … Life used to be simple. You knew your customers on a first-name basis. Your product or service was a relatively simple one — understood by both you and your customer. Your name and reputation were sufficient to cover any error or oversight [….] But the world has become complex, too complex to allow such comfortable relationships. Consumer expectations are matching the complexities. Instantaneous news coverage of accidents and losses virtually precludes the private, out-of-sight settlement of risk effects that had previously allowed the after-the-fact resolution of risk to succeed …”

And:

“ … The breadth in that old idea is rapidly being squeezed out — like the inevitable tightening of a boa constrictor around its victim [….] The price for public exposure of loss is high. Managers have begun to realize that risk must be examined formally and resolved beforehand rather than being settled after-the-fact. And they learn from others. It was the 1982 sinking of the offshore drilling rig Ocean Ranger that spurred EXXON top management to order a systematic evaluation of their offshore drilling risks … Even though EXXON does not own such rigs, it recognized that even conducting operations aboard them created risks that demanded before-the-fact identification, evaluation, and control … ” [226] Brackets are of the author.

Hence:

Please remember: “… THE FUTURE IS NOT AN ECHO OF THE PAST…”

So, instead of retrospective data [a posteriori], it is much more important prospective data [a priori, ex ante].

BESIDES:

DEFINING THE TERM “…RETROSPECTIVE…”

“ … Retrospective comprises something that is looking back on, contemplating, or directed to the past [….] looking or directed backward [….] Applying to or influencing the past; retroactive [….] looking or directed backwards, esp in time; characterized by retrospection …. applying to the past; retroactive [….] directed to the past; contemplative of past situations, events, etc. [….] looking or directed backward [….] review, revision, another look, reassessment, fresh look, second look, reconsideration, re-evaluation, re-examination [….] Considering a past event or development [….] Something that is chronologically presented pertaining to business tasks, with the utter object to show the trajectory of those business tasks …”

AND ALSO:

DEFINING THE TERM “…PROSPECTIVE…”

“ … Prospective comprises something that is likely or expected to happen [….] that looks forward to the future [….] that it is anticipated or likely to happen [….] of or in the future [….] potential, likely, or expected [….] yet to be or coming [….] of or concerned with or related to the future Set of analyzes and studies developed, with the utter end of exploring or foretelling the future, regarding a determined subject matter …”.

AS WELL:

DEFINING THE TERM “… A PRIORI …”

“ … A Priori comprises that proceeds from a known or assumed cause to a necessarily related effect; deductive [….] Derived by or designating the process of reasoning without reference to particular facts or experience [….] Knowable without appeal to particular experience [….] Made before or without examination; not supported by factual study [….] relating to or involving deductive reasoning from a general principle to the expected facts or effects [….] to be true independently of or in advance of experience of the subject matter; requiring no evidence for its validation or support [….] existing in the mind independent of experience [….] conceived beforehand …”

A SYNONYM OF A PRIORI IS GIVEN BY THE TERM EX ANTE.

ALSO:

DEFINING THE TERM “… A POSTERIORI …”

“ … A Posteriori indicates the demonstration that entails the ascendance of the effect to the cause, or the properties of the essence of something [….] After examining the matter that is dealt with [….] Derived by or designating the process of reasoning from facts or particulars to general principles or from effects to causes; inductive; empirical [….] Knowable from experience [….] relating to or involving inductive reasoning from particular facts or effects to a general principle [….] derived from or requiring evidence for its validation or support; empirical; open to revision [….] from particular instances to a general principle or law; based on observation or experiment [….] not existing in the mind prior to or apart from experience [….] the process of reasoning from effect to cause, based upon observation …”

A SYNONYM TO A POSTERIORI IS ENTAILED IN THE TERM EX POST FACTO.

ABSOLUTE END.

Authored By Copyright Mr. Andres Agostini

White Swan Book Author (Source of this Article)

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Sam Chaltain — NEPC

Whenever I want to get a feel for the national mood, I look to Hollywood – and the films it thinks we’ll pay to see. In the post-911 malaise, there was the dystopian world of The Dark Knight. In the era of extended male adolescence, there’s just about anything from Judd Apatow. And now, in the shadow of the Technological Singularity, there are a slew of movies about humankind’s desire to transcend the biological limits of body and brain.

What’s the Singularity, you say? That’s the moment when the whole game board changes – the moment when artificial intelligence purportedly pulls even with, and then rapidly exceeds (or merges with) human intelligence. Hollywood’s best effort to portray it thus far is Spike Jonze’s Her, the unsettling story of a man who falls in love with his operating system, which also happens to be the first artificially intelligent OS (think Siri with a personality, and a conscience, and Scarlett Johansson’s voice). But there are others: Lucy, the film about a woman (curiously, also Scarlett Johansson) who begins to use 100% of her brain’s capacity; Transcendence, in which Johnny Depp plays a dying scientist who gives the Grim Reaper the slip by uploading his mind to the mainframe; and then, starting October 10, there’s Automata, a story about the moment man-made robots acquire a consciousness separate from their creators.

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Would you have your brain preserved? Do you believe your brain is the essence of you?

To noted American PhD Neuroscientist and Futurist, Ken Hayworth, the answer is an emphatic, “Yes.” He is currently developing machines and techniques to map brain tissue at the nanometer scale — the key to encoding our individual identities.

A self-described transhumanist and President of the Brain Preservation Foundation, Hayworth’s goal is to perfect existing preservation techniques, like cryonics, as well as explore and push evolving opportunities to effect a change on the status quo. Currently there is no brain preservation option that offers systematic, scientific evidence as to how much human brain tissue is actually preserved when undergoing today’s experimental preservation methods. Such methods include vitrification, the procedure used in cryonics to try and prevent human organs from freezing and being destroyed when tissue is cooled for cryopreservation.

Hayworth believes we can achieve his vision of preserving an entire human brain at an accepted and proven standard within the next decade. If Hayworth is right, is there a countdown to immortality?

To find out more, please take a look at the Galactic Public Archives’ newest video. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Cheers!

We live in world, where technological advances continually allow new and provocative opportunities to deeply explore every aspect of our existence. Understanding the human brain remains one of our most important challenges– but with 100 billion neurons to contend with, the painstakingly slow progress can give the impression that we may never succeed. Brain mapping research unlocks secrets to our mental, social and physical wellness.

In our upcoming releases for the Galactic Public Archives, noted American PhD Neuroscientist and Futurist, Ken Hayworth outlines why he feels that mapping the brain will not be a quixotic task. Through this, he reveals his unconventional plan to ensure humanity’s place in the universe—forever.

We admit to teasing you with the below link in preparation for the main events.

VICTORY: Getting Fortune-500 Prospective Client’s Cash, Continually and Successfully! By Mr. Andres Agostini at www.linkedin.com/in/AndresAgostini

HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS ACCORDING TO THESE COMPANIES:

Mitsubishi Motors, Honda, Daimler-Chrysler’s Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company, Google, Xerox, Exxon-Mobil, Boeing, Amazon, Procter & Gamble, NASA and DARPA, Lockheed Martin, RAND Corporation and HUDSON Institute, Northrop Grumman Corporation, etc.

a Amazon and Lifeboat

FIRST. You fully study the corporation’s story and current culture and lexicon.

SECOND. You fully study the corporation’s financial and legal and compliance and tax standing.

THIRD. If the corporation is publicly traded, you strongly look into this.

FOURTH. You fully study the corporation’s industry and all of its competitors.

FIFTH. If the industry to which belongs the designated corporation is facing an extraordinary unforeseen challenge, make a long executive presentation for the middle-management executives, fully acknowledging the details of said challenge and suggesting, as per authoritative authors in the subject matter, a well-organized myriad of viable fundamental solutions.

At all times, you are to make this executive presentation like a presentation to a sacred university professor and classroom, hence an institutional one only, and not a marketing one as you objective is to break the ice with your targeted corporate client ONLY through meaningfulness, utility, relevance, and purposefulness.

In no slide you would mention your name, but in your solemn business cards.

Throughout this executive presentation, you will NEVER be addressing any theme natural to your Core Business’ Products and/or Services, but in your solemn business cards.

(Commentary to FIFTH. Why does it have to be a long executive presentation? I will respond through Napoleon Bonaparte’s best practices.

Every time a General (Manager) under his Command would give him a one-page letter (memo, slide), Napoleon would say to his General in question,

“…General (Manager), you are to wage a grave military campaigns full of dynamics and details … I want to KNOW everything at all in advance, every detail at all, large or tiny, in order for me to issue my most-detailed commanding plans for your campaign …”

Frequently, Napoleon would dishonorably discharge this General (Manager) or have his head role for incompetence, incompetence is another word for people with a Mind “Engaged” in worshiping The Least Mental Effort, thus repudiating the “extra mile” effort.

Clearly, Napoleon, during his life time and early on, heavily warns against Corporate America CEOs wanting JUST a 1-page memo delivered via email.

SIXTH. Then, you call the prospective corporate client’s P.R. person Or Communications officer and tell them about what you would like to do.

You send a letter with a summary of your presentation via FEDEX. They will give you a time and board room for your presentation, to be received by the corporation’s middle-level and supervisory-level management workers.

SEVENTH. Once you drive you car to the corporation’s office, pay extreme attention to (first) the lower-level security personnel, (second) the front-desk receptionist, and, if possible, and (third) to the great janitorial staff.

Get extremely respectful with them and treat them as the Chairman and become a bit friendly as you try to get the company’s ethos’s by and through the lower-level security personnel, the front-desk receptionist, and the great janitorial staff.

Listen and mind-record their word types and wording construes most carefully.

In my case, by observing the front-desk receptionist for ten (10) minutes, I can tell you exactly what type of corporate culture there is about my coping with, much more importantly than those confidential underground reports by Wall Street Bankers and Trader.

EIGTH. Before starting the executive presentation, say to the audience that you would like to introduce yourself to each one of them and shake their hands, to bring about much more psychological proximity and fore-acceptance.

Then, explain the order of your executive presentation. Second, with great care, deliver the presentation without attacking people, institutions, or even ideas.

Use, with extreme care and utility, their parlance and corporate culture at all times while you get, from A to Z, very solemnly.

Once you have thoroughly and calmly finished your executive presentation, use the Lee Iaccoca’s rule and say,

“ …okay, we have completed this executive presentation and through it we saw this, that, x, y, z,…” in a summarized way.

Give them now boundaryless time and psychological space to ask you zillion questions in the Q-and-A.

Ascertain to respond fully, accurately, on the point and with NONE MANIPULATION at all. If there is something that you do not know, tell them, research the answer fully, and get back with the answer via FEDEX-ed hard-copy.

Once you have responded all of the questions, give them an exact copy of the Executive Presentation, with the additional attachment of the authoritative literature you used in your evidence-based research.

Do this in hard-copy only and put it a nice white envelope. You give one package to each attendee and give the P.R. Manager three or four more for the CEO and the Board Members.

NINE. If you followed through to ULTIMATE PERFECTION, points #1 through #8, step by step, you will see them ask you something along these lines,

“…Okay, Mr. A, we like you evidence-based research and executive presentation and wonder who in the marketplace could offer these solutions to us …” Without being or sounding desperate, you will say quickly and softly, “… Our Company can fully take care of those for you …”

And the idea now is that you go from a Pro Bono Executive Presentation into a formal for-business conversation with your prospective corporate client.

As the formal conversation begins, as per my long experience, tell them kindly that in parallel you want to fulfill the corporation’s Guidelines to become a Registered Contractor as per your company’s Lines of Professional Practice.

Also in parallel, ask the mid-level managers that you are formally talking to that you would like to gain more familiarity by doing some small talk with lower-level employees, including the lower-level security and janitorial staff.

Put in writing a detailed overview and hand to him or her personally.

Sometimes these folks know the corporation better than the CEO.

THEN, FOLLOW THROUGH THESE PRACTICAL TENETS CONDUCIVE TO OUTRIGHT VICTORY:

(1.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Procter & Gamble, talk to them through the notions of and by Process Re-engineering.

(2.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at GE, talk to them through the notions of and by Six Sigma, and Peter F. Drucker’s Management by Objective (MBO). While you are with them, remember to commend on the Jack Welch’ and Jeff Immelt’s master lectures at GE’s Crotonville.

(3.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at RAND Corporation and HUDSON Institute, talk to them through the notions of and by Herman Khan’s (Dr. Strangeloves’) Scenario Methodology.

(4.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Mitsubishi Motors and Honda and Daimler-Chrysler’s Mercedes-Benz and Maytag, talk to them through the notions of and by Kaisen.

(5.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at NASA and DARPA and the Industrial-Military Complex, talk to them through the notions of and by Systems Approach with the Perspective of Applied Non-Theological Omniscience. And, also, want to get funded by DARPA? How? The pathway is extremely easy and promissory. Just give them an unimpeachable real-life demonstration of how to “violate” the Laws of Physics correctly and frequently, for Life!

(6.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Lockheed Martin, talk to them through the notions of and by Lean, Six Sigma and Skunk Works.

(7.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Toyota, talk to them through the notions of and by Toyota Production System (methodology). Please remember: TPS is also known as “…Thinking People System…”

(8.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Royal Dutch Shell, talk to them through the notions of and by Pierre Wack’s Scenario Methodology.

(9.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Mayo Clinic, talk to them through the notions of and by Dr. Joseph Juran’s (Total Quality Assurance) Prescription (ISBN: 978–0787900960).

Also remember to conjointly speak, at all times, of efficiency, productivity, and ROI as it stems in the incessant real-time reckoning of man-hours per patient cured and healed.

To this end, you might wish to peruse this great title: The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management by Peter F. Drucker (ISBN: 978–0061345012).

(10.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Google, talk to them through the notions of and by Strong Quantum Supercomputing and Human-Death Reverse-Engineering, as well as Curing Human Death.

(11.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Xerox, talk to them through the notions of and by PARC (Palo Alto Research Center Incorporated).

(12.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at ExxonMobil, talk to them through the notions of and by Efficiency and Productivity as well as Return On Investment (ROI) per Petroleum Barrel produced (outputted), and Project Management.

(13.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Boeing, talk to them through the notions of and by Aerospace Engineering, Avionics, Systems Engineering, Reliability Engineering, Safety Engineering, Industrial Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering.

(14.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence), talk to them through the notions of and by Superintelligence entrenched, in “… plain sight…,” in the covert ad infinitum realm of Dark Energy and Dark Matter.

(15.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Loyd’s of London, Swiss RE, Munich RE, and Allianz, talk to them through the notions of and by Minimax, Statistics, Actuarial Science, Predictive Analytics, and Systems Engineering.

(16.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Amazon, talk to them through the notions of and by Low-Cost And High-End Online Commerce, Content Creation, Hi-Tech, Quadcopters (Commercial Flying Drones), and Eternal Staggering Innovation. Don’t forget to mention the Mechanical Turk.

(17.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Northrop Grumman Corporation, talk to them through the notions of and by State of the Art: Quality, Continuous Improvement, Customer Satisfaction, Leadership (Man-Management and Statesmanship), Integrity, People, Suppliers, Sound Business Management, “…Best in Class…” Products and Services, and how to preemptively countermeasure Chinese penetrations and otherwise of both commercial and government networks in the United States.

NOTE: I know great c-suite consulting incumbents and other professional service providers who want to get the undivided attention of 90% of the CEOs above at once.

The majority of those CEOs are august applied scientists. They are only into applied scientific management. Ergo, they really need to get ready to be multidimensional and cross-functional and multifarious.

There is, NEVER EVER, no Internet resource, nor an online book or article giving you this most-profound advice/

Authored By Copyright Mr. Andres Agostini
White Swan Book Author
www.linkedin.com/in/andresagostini
www.amazon.com/author/Agostini

Among transhumanists, Nick Bostrom is well-known for promoting the idea of ‘existential risks’, potential harms which, were they come to pass, would annihilate the human condition altogether. Their probability may be relatively small, but the expected magnitude of their effects are so great, so Bostrom claims, that it is rational to devote some significant resources to safeguarding against them. (Indeed, there are now institutes for the study of existential risks on both sides of the Atlantic.) Moreover, because existential risks are intimately tied to the advancement of science and technology, their probability is likely to grow in the coming years.

Contrary to expectations, Bostrom is much less concerned with ecological suicide from humanity’s excessive carbon emissions than with the emergence of a superior brand of artificial intelligence – a ‘superintelligence’. This creature would be a human artefact, or at least descended from one. However, its self-programming capacity would have run amok in positive feedback, resulting in a maniacal, even self-destructive mission to rearrange the world in the image of its objectives. Such a superintelligence may appear to be quite ruthless in its dealings with humans, but that would only reflect the obstacles that we place, perhaps unwittingly, in the way of the realization of its objectives. Thus, this being would not conform to the science fiction stereotype of robots deliberately revolting against creators who are now seen as their inferiors.

I must confess that I find this conceptualisation of ‘existential risk’ rather un-transhumanist in spirit. Bostrom treats risk as a threat rather than as an opportunity. His risk horizon is precautionary rather than proactionary: He focuses on preventing the worst consequences rather than considering the prospects that are opened up by whatever radical changes might be inflicted by the superintelligence. This may be because in Bostrom’s key thought experiment, the superintelligence turns out to be the ultimate paper-clip collecting machine that ends up subsuming the entire planet to its task, destroying humanity along the way, almost as an afterthought.

But is this really a good starting point for thinking about existential risk? Much more likely than total human annihilation is that a substantial portion of humanity – but not everyone – is eliminated. (Certainly this captures the worst case scenarios surrounding climate change.) The Cold War remains the gold standard for this line of thought. In the US, the RAND Corporation’s chief analyst, Herman Kahn — the model for Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove – routinely, if not casually, tossed off scenarios of how, say, a US-USSR nuclear confrontation would serve to increase the tolerance for human biological diversity, due to the resulting proliferation of genetic mutations. Put in more general terms, a severe social disruption provides a unique opportunity for pursuing ideals that might otherwise be thwarted by a ‘business as usual’ policy orientation.

Here it is worth recalling that the Cold War succeeded on its own terms: None of the worst case scenarios were ever realized, even though many people were mentally prepared to make the most of the projected adversities. This is one way to think about how the internet itself arose, courtesy the US Defense Department’s interest in maintaining scientific communications in the face of attack. In other words, rather than trying to prevent every possible catastrophe, the way to deal with ‘unknown unknowns’ is to imagine that some of them have already come to pass and redesign the world accordingly so that you can carry on regardless. Thus, Herman Kahn’s projection of a thermonuclear future provided grounds in the 1960s for the promotion of, say, racially mixed marriages, disability-friendly environments, and the ‘do more with less’ mentality that came to characterize the ecology movement.

Kahn was a true proactionary thinker. For him, the threat of global nuclear war raised Joseph Schumpeter’s idea of ‘creative destruction’ to a higher plane, inspiring social innovations that would be otherwise difficult to achieve by conventional politics. Historians have long noted that modern warfare has promoted spikes in innovation that in times of peace are then subject to diffusion, as the relevant industries redeploy for civilian purposes. We might think of this tendency, in mechanical terms, as system ‘overdesign’ (i.e. preparing for the worst but benefitting even if the worst doesn’t happen) or, more organically, as a vaccine that converts a potential liability into an actual benefit.

In either case, existential risk is regarded in broadly positive terms, specifically as an unprecedented opportunity to extend the range of human capability, even under radically changed circumstances. This sense of ‘antifragility’, as the great ‘black swan’ detector Nicholas Taleb would put it, is the hallmark of our ‘risk intelligence’, the phrase that the British philosopher Dylan Evans has coined for a demonstrated capacity that people have to make step change improvements in their lives in the face of radical uncertainty. From this standpoint, Bostrom’s superintelligence concept severely underestimates the adaptive capacity of human intelligence.

Perhaps the best way to see just how much Bostrom shortchanges humanity is to note that his crucial thought experiment requires a strong ontological distinction between humans and superintelligent artefacts. Where are the cyborgs in this doomsday scenario? Reading Bostrom reminds me that science fiction did indeed make progress in the twentieth century, from the world of Karl Čapek’s Rossum’s Universal Robots in 1920 to the much subtler blending of human and computer futures in the works of William Gibson and others in more recent times.

Bostrom’s superintelligence scenario began to be handled in more sophisticated fashion after the end of the First World War, popularly under the guise of ‘runaway technology’, a topic that received its canonical formulation in Langdon Winner’s 1977 Autonomous Technology: Technics out of Control, a classic in the field of science and technology of studies. Back then the main problem with superintelligent machines was that they would ‘dehumanize’ us, less because they might dominate us but more because we might become like them – perhaps because we feel that we have invested our best qualities in them, very much like Ludwig Feuerbach’s aetiology of the Judaeo-Christian God. Marxists gave the term ‘alienation’ a popular spin to capture this sentiment in the 1960s.

Nowadays, of course, matters have been complicated by the prospect of human and machine identities merging together. This goes beyond simply implanting silicon chips in one’s brain. Rather, it involves the complex migration and enhancement of human selves in cyberspace. (Sherry Turkle has been the premier ethnographer of this process in children.) That such developments are even possible points to a prospect that Bostrom refuses to consider, namely, that to be ‘human’ is to be only contingently located in the body of Homo sapiens. The name of our species – Homo sapiens – already gives away the game, because our distinguishing feature (so claimed Linnaeus) had nothing to do with our physical morphology but with the character of our minds. And might not such a ‘sapient’ mind better exist somewhere other than in the upright ape from which we have descended?

The prospects for transhumanism hang on the answer to this question. Aubrey de Grey’s indefinite life extension project is about Homo sapiens in its normal biological form. In contrast, Ray Kurzweil’s ‘singularity’ talk of uploading our consciousness into indefinitely powerful computers suggests a complete abandonment of the ordinary human body. The lesson taught by Langdon Winner’s historical account is that our primary existential risk does not come from alien annihilation but from what social psychologists call ‘adaptive preference formation’. In other words, we come to want the sort of world that we think is most likely, simply because that offers us the greatest sense of security. Thus, the history of technology is full of cases in which humans have radically changed their lives to adjust to an innovation whose benefits they reckon outweigh the costs, even when both remain fundamentally incalculable. Success in the face such ‘existential risk’ is then largely a matter of whether people – perhaps of the following generation – have made the value shifts necessary to see the changes as positive overall. But of course, it does not follow that those who fail to survive the transition or have acquired their values before this transition would draw a similar conclusion.

Dylan Love — Business Insider

“Today there’s no legislation regarding how much intelligence a machine can have, how interconnected it can be. If that continues, look at the exponential trend. We will reach the singularity in the timeframe most experts predict. From that point on you’re going to see that the top species will no longer be humans, but machines.”

These are the words of Louis Del Monte, physicist, entrepreneur, and author of “The Artificial Intelligence Revolution.” Del Monte spoke to us over the phone about his thoughts surrounding artificial intelligence and the singularity, an indeterminate point in the future when machine intelligence will outmatch not only your own intelligence, but the world’s combined human intelligence too.

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By Clément Vidal — Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium.

I am happy to inform you that I just published a book which deals at length with our cosmological future. I made a short book trailer introducing it, and the book has been mentioned in the Huffington Post and H+ Magazine.

Inline image 1
About the book:
In this fascinating journey to the edge of science, Vidal takes on big philosophical questions: Does our universe have a beginning and an end, or is it cyclic? Are we alone in the universe? What is the role of intelligent life, if any, in cosmic evolution? Grounded in science and committed to philosophical rigor, this book presents an evolutionary worldview where the rise of intelligent life is not an accident, but may well be the key to unlocking the universe’s deepest mysteries. Vidal shows how the fine-tuning controversy can be advanced with computer simulations. He also explores whether natural or artificial selection could hold on a cosmic scale. In perhaps his boldest hypothesis, he argues that signs of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations are already present in our astrophysical data. His conclusions invite us to see the meaning of life, evolution, and intelligence from a novel cosmological framework that should stir debate for years to come.
About the author:
Dr. Clément Vidal is a philosopher with a background in logic and cognitive sciences. He is co-director of the ‘Evo Devo Universe’ community and founder of the ‘High Energy Astrobiology’ prize. To satisfy his intellectual curiosity when facing the big questions, he brings together many areas of knowledge such as cosmology, physics, astrobiology, complexity science, evolutionary theory and philosophy of science.
http://clement.vidal.philosophons.com

You can get 20% off with the discount code ‘Vidal2014′ (valid until 31st July)!

— Singularity Hub

http://cdn.singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/diamandis-gsp-2014-opening-ceremony.jpg

“It’s that time again.” These were the words on more than one pair of lips at Singularity University’s 2014 Graduate Studies Program (GSP) opening ceremony.

The 10-week summer program was Singularity University’s first offering six years ago, and it remains at the heart of Singularity University’s mission today—to use technology to positively impact a billion people in the next ten years.

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Uploading the content of one’s mind, including one’s personality, memories and emotions, into a computer may one day be possible, but it won’t transfer our biological consciousness and won’t make us immortal.

Uploading one’s mind into a computer, a concept popularized by the 2014 movie Transcendence starring Johnny Depp, is likely to become at least partially possible, but won’t lead to immortality. Major objections have been raised regarding the feasibility of mind uploading. Even if we could surpass every technical obstacle and successfully copy the totality of one’s mind, emotions, memories, personality and intellect into a machine, that would be just that: a copy, which itself can be copied again and again on various computers.

THE DILEMMA OF SPLIT CONSCIOUSNESS

Neuroscientists have not yet been able to explain what consciousness is, or how it works at a neurological level. Once they do, it is might be possible to reproduce consciousness in artificial intelligence. If that proves feasible, then it should in theory be possible to replicate our consciousness on computers too. Or is that jumpig to conclusions ?

Once all the connections in the brain are mapped and we are able to reproduce all neural connections electronically, we will also be able run a faithful simulation of our brain on a computer. However, even if that simulation happens to have a consciousness of its own, it will never be quite like our own biological consciousness. For example, without hormones we couldn’t feel emotions like love, jealously or attachment. (see Could a machine or an AI ever feel human-like emotions ?)

Some people think that mind uploading necessarily requires to leave one’s biological body. But there is no conscensus about that. Uploading means copying. When a file is uploaded on the Internet, it doesn’t get deleted at the source. It’s just a copy.

The best analogy to understand that is cloning. Identical twins are an example of human clones that already live among us. Identical twins share the same DNA, yet nobody would argue that they also share a single consciousness.

It will be easy to prove that hypothesis once the technology becomes available. Unlike Johnny Depp in Transcend, we don’t have to die to upload our mind to one or several computers. Doing so won’t deprive us of our biological consciousness. It will just be like having a mental clone of ourself, but we will never feel like we are inside the computer, without affecting who we are.

If the conscious self doesn’t leave the biologically body (i.e. “die”) when transferring mind and consciousness, it would basically mean that that individual would feel in two places at the same time: in the biological body and in the computer. That is problematic. It’s hard to conceive how that could be possible since the very essence of consciousness is a feeling of indivisible unity.

If we want to avoid this problem of dividing the sense of self, we must indeed find a way to transfer the consciousness from the body to the computer. But this would assume that consciousness is merely some data that can be transferred. We don’t know that yet. It could be tied to our neurons or to very specific atoms in some neurons. If that was the case, destroying the neurons would destroy the consciousness.

Even assuming that we found a way to transfer the consciousness from the brain to a computer, how could we avoid consciousness being copied to other computers, recreating the philosophical problem of splitting the self. That would actually be much worse since a computerized consciousness could be copied endless times. How would you then feel a sense of unified consciousness ?

Since mind uploading won’t preserve our self-awareness, the feeling that we are ourself and not someone else, it won’t lead to immortality. We’ll still be bound to our bodies, but life expectancy for transhumanists and cybernetic humans will be considerably extended.

IMMORTALITY ISN’T THE SAME AS EXTENDED LONGEVITY

Immortality is a confusing term since it implies living forever, which is impossible since nothing is eternal in our universe, not even atoms or quarks. Living for billions of years, while highly improbable in itself, wouldn’t even be close to immortality. It may seem like a very large number compared to our short existence, but compared to eternity (infinite time), it isn’t much longer than 100 years.

Even machines aren’t much longer lived than we are. Actually modern computers tend to have much shorter life spans than humans. A 10-year old computer is very old indeed, as well as slower and more prone to technical problems than a new computer. So why would we think that transferring our mind to a computer would grant us greatly extended longevity ?

Even if we could transfer all our mind’s data and consciousness an unlimited number of times onto new machines, that won’t prevent the machine currently hosting us from being destroyed by viruses, bugs, mechanical failures or outright physical destruction of the whole hardware, intentionally, accidentally or due to natural catastrophes.

In the meantime, science will slow down, stop and even reverse the aging process, enabling us to live healthily for a very long time by today’s standards. This is known as negligible senescence. Nevertheless, cybernetic humans with robotic limbs and respirocytes will still die in accidents or wars. At best we could hope to living for several hundreds or thousands years, assuming that nothing kills us before.

As a result, there won’t be that much differences between living inside a biological body and a machine. The risks will be comparable. Human longevity will in all likelihood increase dramatically, but there simply is no such thing as immortality.

CONCLUSION

Artificial Intelligence could easily replicate most of processes, thoughts, emotions, sensations and memories of the human brain — with some reservations on some feelings and emotions residing outside the brain, in the biological body. An AI might also have a consciousness of its own. Backing up the content of one’s mind will most probably be possible one day. However there is no evidence that consciousness or self-awareness are merely information that can be transferred since consciousness cannot be divided in two or many parts.

Consciousness is most likely tied to neurons in a certain part of the brain (which may well include the thalamus). These neurons are maintained throughout life, from birth to death, without being regenerated like other cells in the body, which explains the experienced feeling of continuity.

There is not the slightest scientific evidence of a duality between body and consciousness, or in other words that consciousness could be equated with an immaterial soul. In the absence of such duality, a person’s original consciousness would cease to exist with the destruction of the neurons in his/her brain responsible for consciousness. Unless one believes in an immaterial, immortal soul, the death of one’s brain automatically results in the extinction of consciousness. While a new consciousness could be imitated to perfection inside a machine, it would merely be a clone of the person’s consciousness, not an actual transfer, meaning that that feeling of self would not be preserved.

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This article was originally published on Life 2.0.