Tag: mailvox

Access issues

Difster has a solution for worldwide readers:

Some people are having trouble reading comments on your blog from other countries. Those outside of the US who are being routed to a country code and want to read comments can append /ncr to the end of your blogger address: http://voxday.blogspot.com/ncr

Also note that if you type in wwww before the blog address, you’ll go to a different location that is missing all of the comments. I don’t know how to eliminate this problem since I don’t know how it arose in the first place. Based on the link statistics, about 10 percent of the blog readers here are on the www location rather than the proper one.

Mailvox: the case for the Singularity

Agnosticon presents his argument for his Singularitarian faith, or as I prefer to think of it, the techno-apocalypse:
In response to whether exponential technology will continue, whether immortality is feasible, and the compatibility of transhumanism with Christianity:

Technological Singularity doesn’t only rely on continuous exponential growth of separate technologies. If you look at the history of technology, there hasn’t just been a single exponential curve that keeps advancing each technology. For instance, vacuum tube technology gave way to transistor technology that gave way to integrated circuits with shrinking scale and increasing speed.

The Kurzweilian Singularity is composed of a series of S shaped curves, each having a gradual initiation and leveling out phase and a middle exponential growth phase as technologies come to fruition and then lapse into obsolescence. The combined effect of technological paradigms appearing and then shifting to new ones are observed as Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns, Moore’s Law being just a special case. The LAR posits that complexity leverages itself to create more complexity.

The exponential nature of technological advance, particularly in anything that becomes an information science leads to what is now becoming a common pessimistic fallacy across a number of fields. The example Kurzweil gives is of the Human Genome Project which began in 1990 as a fifteen year project to sequence all of human DNA. Halfway into the project only a tiny portion of the genome had been completed, yet by the year 2000 nearly all of it had been finished. What researchers hadn’t realized, due to our inborn tendency to think linearly, is that gene sequencing had become an automated information science, amenable to exponential increase in efficiency.

If we consider the prospects for material immortality today, a similar distortion clouds our perception, namely you cannot extrapolate by linear means into the future and expect to come anywhere close to a realistic target. Not only is this because biology is now an information science, but also because the sophistication and intelligence of computational tools will also grow exponentially in the future.

The single greatest stumbling block for Singularity is the poor performance of software and artificial intelligence in the last half century. While Kurweil can confidently claim that the most powerful supercomputers today are roughly equivalent to the computational power of the human brain, and that by 2020 personal computers will share the same distinction, he cannot project a similar track for AI, which is crucially important. Most people interested in Singularity don’t believe it can happen without I.J. Good’s predicted Intelligence Explosion, whence intelligent machines are able to parse their own code and are smart enough to improve themselves recursively. It is possible that from that point onward, machine intelligence will explode in a positive feedback loop, giving rise to intellects many orders of magnitude beyond ours. The complex interdependencies of biological networks may be beyond our ape’s brains, but very likely they won’t be beyond the superintelligences that arise from the Intelligence Explosion.

The relatively poor performance of AI’s today, and the inability of narrow AI’s to generalize on their own to other domains is somewhat disheartening; however there is cause to be hopeful that things will change in the coming decade, mostly because research is now focusing more on general AI, and it is now known that narrow AI does not lead to insights in general AI. No matter how well DARPA gets a Hummer to cross the desert, that skill is not transferable to other domains.

Along with investigating general AI, the Singularity Institute is investigating means to ensure that superintelligent machines will not destroy us. Friendly AI is the new field that seeks to use decision theory and ideas about mind architecture to create minds that share our own values and retain those values perpetually throughout the intelligence explosion. The overall principle is summarized in the statement: “Gandhi does not want to commit murder, and does not want to modify himself to commit murder.” By grabbing any mind at random out of all of “mind space” the chance of picking one of benevolence is very low. However, by guiding the process onto favorable paths as the Singularity process initiates and unfolds, the theory is that we will be able to avoid those minds that are indifferent, or even hostile, to our existence.

Summarizing and putting all the pieces together, the hardware Singularity is already in progress, the software Singularity has been less spectacular, though there have been significant flashes of brilliance. Software systems in general have steadily increased in complexity. Showcase systems like IBM’s Deep Blue chess player and Watson Jeopardy player have impressively beaten human players, but like the DARPA challenge, are still hampered by being narrow intelligences. This may seem like cause for pessimism, but remember 1998 during the genome project. Remember that we humans suffer the myopia of linear thinking.

The prospect of material immortality? I, for one, am doubtful we will ever get there alone. If there is one thing that we know for sure, it’s that human intelligence is not part of the exponential explosion. Humans are pretty much as smart, and as dumb, as we were thousands of years ago (give or take a Flynn Effect). But imagine, if you will, an intelligence a thousand times greater than ours working on the problem, or a hundred thousand, or a million. Imagine something as far beyond us as we are beyond a gnat.

Is transhumanism incompatible with Christianity? This depends on how you interpret the Singularity. If you recast the quest for material immortality just as the attempt to extend lifespan, I don’t see why you can’t regard it as another medical procedure, albeit an unusual one. Many things about the Singularity can be regarded as only methodologically materialistic and not as pure materialism. However, it would be disingenuous not to recognize that most Singularitarians are probably strict materialists. Things like mind uploading, which contradict doctrines about the human soul, are probably Christian heresies; however, I don’t see much problem with cryonics, nanotechnological resuscitation, and a very, very long life.

There is some question about what and who will be allowed into the post-Singularity “heaven.” If our AI’s are made to be friendly, it might be presumed that evil human intention won’t be allowed into the Singularity either, at least not into merged or uploaded minds. On the other hand, since vintage, unaugmented minds will probably be quite innocuous considering the superpowers that inhabit the Singularity, they may be relegated to a quiet, pastoral existence on a preserve of some type, should they choose to remain human. But even that type of human existence will probably be different than our lives today — or perhaps they will cater to nostalgia. You may be able to return to childhood and relive your life as many times as you want. By this time, human qualia will be understood as neural/cognitive processes; the capacity to feel happiness and reward, or erotic pleasure will be beyond the crass boundary provided us by evolution. Conversely, the ability to inflict arbitrary horror, anxiety and pain on a cognitive agent could conceivably be without bound. The post-Singularity Hell could make Christianity’s look like Disneyland.

If our minds are to populate the post-Singularity on equal status to the potencies of those around us, whether merged with us, or as individual identities, are we ready and willing to relinquish those aspects of ourselves that are inimical to a collective existence? A similar question could be asked of the Christian afterlife. How much of “you” can you afford to lose before you become “not you”?

Said Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn : “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

If you desire to live in full post-Singular status, you might face a similar quandary, and this may be the final answer to the question of immortality. Stealing a thought from Buddhism, it is change that defines the central aspect of our lives. It is unclear whether anyone ever lives beyond ten years in any actual sense, because after that interval we have changed beyond equivalent identity.

If we met our ten-year-ago selves, would we share any intimate empathy with them at all? We are engaged in a continual process of birth and becoming and death and dissolution. What we feel as nostalgia is the dim remembrance and mourning of a deceased relative who was ourselves. To achieve true immortality, we may need to reselect from “mind space,” this time choosing one capable perceiving an integrated experience throughout time. For human beings, immortality may be pure illusion.

Mailvox: the last man standing

CrisisEraDynamo requests a rebuttal:

How do you plan to answer Ray Kurzweil, Aubrey de Grey, and Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit), all of whom assert that aging will be conquered Real Soon Now?

Watching them die.

NB: I have nothing against any of them, you understand, but all three of them are older than me.

Mailvox: statistical illiteracy

dh appears to find it hard to distinguish between “X” and “virtually X”:

This will be difficult for VD to walk back in the future when he wants to try to hold his various intellectual foes to account for words they use. “Virtually Impossible” = “something that happens every day”. Got it.

First, as I have had to point out many times before, the purpose of an adjective or an adverb is to modify a word. Therefore, something that is “virtually impossible” is, by definition, not impossible. It is merely highly improbable. Does the state senator’s comment qualify?

As I pointed out in the comments, the Center for Disease Control reported that an average of 473 white men were annually infected with HIV through heterosexual contact over the course of a four-year statistical study. Now, dh had already admitted that the chances of being infected for anyone, male or female, having heterosexual relations with an infected individual, was 30 in 10,000, or one in 333. Is that sufficiently improbable to qualify as “virtually impossible”? No, I don’t think so. However, we’re not done yet.

However, this does not distinguish between men and women, which is necessary because it is easier to transmit the virus from male to female than from female to male. That is why an average of 841 white women annually contracted the virus through heterosexual contact in the same study. This means that men are estimated to contract the virus at a rate that is about 60 percent of the female rate, thereby lowering the one in 333 figure to around one in 500.

Still not “virtually impossible” in my book, but we’re getting closer. Now we have to take into account the fact that these one in 500 odds only apply to sex with an infected female. So, we have to return to the CDC, which tells us that there are 682,668 Americans presently living with HIV, 26,966 of whom are white females. This represents one in 3,649 of the 98,408,776 white females in America. Note that it is appropriate to include the entire female population here because children are also included in the AIDS statistics that we are citing due to mother-to-child transmission.

Since it isn’t possible to contract the virus from someone who doesn’t have it, this means that a white man who has sex with a white woman has approximately a 1 in 1,824,682 chance of contracting the virus. This compares rather favorably with the 1 in 58,618 chance of being legally executed, the 1 in 147,717 chance of dying in a dog attack, and the 1 in 615,488 chance of dying in a fireworks discharge.

In other words, for a normal white man like Stacey Campfield, it is, in statistical fact, highly improbable, or if you prefer, “virtually impossible”, to acquire the HIV virus, which of course is necessary in order to spread it.

And before anyone starts complaining that white-on-white heterosexual relations doesn’t encompass everyone, I will note that the entire context in which the statement was made concerned the significant difference in practical risk factors among different population demographics. Campfield’s point, and it was entirely correct, is that it is totally absurd to discuss HIV infection as if it presents a similar risk to everyone, regardless of their race, sex, or sexual behavior, which of course is the main reason the mainstream media’s dire predictions of a heterosexual AIDS epidemic, still less “a national disaster as great as a thermonuclear war”, were so wildly incorrect.

And in conclusion, I will point out that in a nation of 310 million people, a “virtually impossible”, one in 1.9 million event is indeed very likely to happen every single day. Or, as is the case here, about 1.3 times per day.

Mailvox: dating site science

AA asks about a new study purporting to demonstrate that religion only benefits people where it is a free rider:

What do you think about the newly released study that claims that religious beliefs only make people happier due to cultural factors? According to the new study of almost 200,000 people in 11 European countries, people who are religious have higher self-esteem and better psychological adjustment than the non-religious only in countries where belief in religion is common . In more secular societies, the religious and the non-religious are equally well-off.

“The results suggest that religiosity, albeit a potent force, confers benefits by riding on cultural values,” study researcher Jochen Gebauer of Humboldt University in Berlin and colleagues wrote online Jan. 5 in the journal Psychological Science.

Do you think this study indicates the truth or is there any other valid reasons why religion creates better lifestyles for people in need of purpose?

My initial assumption is that this study is the usual propagandistic garbage put out by pseudoscientists who are dishonestly attempting to bolster their preconceived opinion with a false sheen of science. No doubt it is the sort of quasi-scientific study that purports to “prove” that all conservatives are racist, low IQ child molesters and therefore all decent human beings have no choice but to vote for Nancy Pelosi.

[Stops to read the referenced article about the study.]

Bingo. Here is the money quote:

“Gebauer and colleagues wanted to know if larger cultural forces contribute to the well-being of spiritual sorts. They turned to eDarling, the European version of dating websites like eHarmony or Match.com. Users of eDarling answer a question in their profiles about how important religion is to them; while setting up their profiles, they also complete psychological surveys asking them how “calm,” “cheerful” and “content” they feel, among other measures of happiness, life satisfaction and self-esteem.”

No doubt in their next study, Gebauer and his colleagues will report the astonishing news that contra all the media reports, there is no epidemic of obesity in America as only two percent of the women on eHarmony report themselves to be “overweight”. Not only is the ridicuous study entirely based on a notoriously unreliable form of self-reporting – it’s a DATING SITE, for crying out loud – but it contradicts many studies based upon more concrete metrics for measuring psychological health, such as alcoholism, suicide rates, and prescriptions for drugs used to treat depression.

Here, for example, is a study that uses the objective measure of hypertension as a metric and directly contradicts the conclusions of the eDarling-based study.

“With the help of a large Norwegian longitudinal health study called HUNT, researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) were able to find a clear relationship between time spent in church and lower blood pressure in both women and men.

“We found that the more often HUNT participants went to church, the lower their blood pressure, even when we controlled for a number of other possible explanatory factors,” says Torgeir Sørensen, a PhD candidate from the School of Theology and Religious Psychology Centre at Sykehuset Innlandet (Inland Hospital). “This is the first study of its kind in Scandinavia. Previous research from the United States has shown that there is a possible link between people who attend church and blood pressure.”

In fact, if we are to take dating site science seriously, we can conclude that there are other, more important factors in making people happy. For example, OKCupid relies on the same sort of self-reporting “science” and concludes that women’s self-confidence increases with weight and age.

“Curvy women pass skinny ones in self-confidence at age 29 and never look back. They also consistently have the highest sex drive among the groups.”

So there is the scientific utopia of which so many secularists dream. Obese and godless old women rutting confidently, and often, with each other. Oh sweet Sappho! Do you understand the significance of this? Do you realize what this means? There is now a scientific basis for Lesbian Dorito Night!

Mailvox: hit me with your best shot

Agnosticon hasn’t delved deeply enough into the archives to understand why things work the way they do:

If a blog is purposed for argument and not just banal discussion, then opposing views are essential for its content. Of course, this would also depend on quality of opposition, and most regulars here will immediately begin insulting self-proclaimed atheists, so it can be concluded that this blog doesn’t really value argument. I think many here are here to socialize with like-minded others. It’s possible that true argument might not be possible due to asymmetry of opinion, although that isn’t necessarily a disqualifier. Conventionally, a “troll” is not just someone who shows up only for argument, rather a person who shows up to derail argument. It would appear that Vox means to argue, since his posts are so often provocative, yet when engaged he often seems too ready just to score a couple points, declare victory, and get out. There are other people here who seem genuinely interested in argument.

Agnosticon first fails to distinguish between legitimate and substantive arguments versus those that are obviously stupid and fallacious in considering whether the Dread Ilk are interested in arguments in general. He seems to be unaware that I have written a book in which dozens of popular atheist arguments are conclusively demolished and have addressed many more on this blog over the past four years, so when yet another clueless college kid shows up and starts spouting off half-understood atheist pablum that everyone has seen before, it is hardly a mystery that he meets with nothing but ridicule, especially when he presents his outdated arguments in an obnoxious and confrontational manner. And why would they be ever be interested in taking such interlocutors seriously, especially when over the last eight years, we have seen this sort of individual lie, move the goalposts, refuse to admit when they are conclusively proved wrong, and otherwise behave in an intellectually unserious manner?

In the very thread in which Agnosticon commented, we have the example of Dan, who cannot understand that utilitarian philosophy is not “a rational basis in fact”. Does he honestly recommend that such an individual be taken seriously? And if so, how?

The second thing that Agnosticon fails to recognize is that there is substantial proof right here on this blog that I am genuinely interested in argument of a sufficiently high quality. I have zero interest in arguing for the sake of arguing, much less wasting my time on people who are insufficiently intelligent to say anything new or interesting. It’s not a case of scoring a couple of points, declaring victory, and getting out, it is simply about qualifying potential opponents. If a person is incapable of avoiding very basic logical and factual errors, or if it is apparent that they rely upon the usual chicanery such as redefining basic terms and so forth, then there is absolutely no chance they are going to present an argument that I can’t shred with ease. But rather than refusing to give everyone a shot, I prefer to permit anyone one or two opportunities to say something interesting or effective. If they want to waste that opportunity on a trivial drive-by comment or two, that’s their choice.

If they can’t deliver a substantive argument, or if I can identify their glaring mistakes – or worse, intellectual dishonesty – at first glance, then they’re done as far as I’m concerned. I already know how the prosecution will proceed and it’s all over but for the formalities even before it has begun. And really, considering the number of comments and emails I receive, that’s the only way it is possible to allow pretty much everyone who wants one a shot.

So don’t waste it on nonsensical blather if you wish me, or anyone else, to take you seriously. I’m quite willing to give Agnosticon the opportunity to present a case for his Singulatarianism, or what I described in The Irrational Atheist as apocalyptic techno-heresy, even though he has one strike against him for having demonstrated an inability to distinguish between logical and philosophical integrity and logical and philosophical necessity. But if he can’t present one, that’s hardly reflective of my unwillingness to engage in substantive argument.

It’s pretty simple. Right now I owe Dominic my next entry in our ongoing debate on the existence of God. Once that concludes, whenever that may be, I’m sure I’ll engage someone else in a substantive and detailed debate. Debt deflation might be a good one. But I’m simply not going to focus any time or attention on commenters who publicly demonstrate that they have neither the intelligence nor the intellectual integrity to present a challenge that is both substantive and interesting. Of course, the primary purpose of this blog is for me to amuse myself. Everything else is secondary; I’m pleased that some of you find it worth reading on a regular basis, but that’s not its raison d’etre.

Mailvox: the question of Palestine

The Deuce queries:

A question though, Vox: what’s your position on the Israel/Palestine debacle, and what our position should be regarding it, and do you think Ron Paul’s position is correct?

My position on the Israel/Palestine issue is the same as it is concerning every land dispute around the world. It’s neither my business nor my concern, I don’t care one little bit about it, and the two sides are welcome to fight it out as long as they care to do so. I think the US position should be to stay completely out of it since we have neither allies nor interests there, and moreover, those who are citizens of either side should be barred from any involvement in American electoral politics in order to prevent any attempts to draw the United States into it.

I don’t know the specifics of Ron Paul’s position, but based on his general principle of non-interventionism, I suspect it is in line with my own.

Unfortunately, history suggests that the only long-term solution to the conflict will involve ethnic cleansing of one sort or another. I suspect the Arabs will win in the end, despite Israel’s many current advantages, due to demographics and because far too many Jews haven’t followed through on the basic idea of Zionism, which is that Jews would actually move to Israel. Far too many of them prefer to live in the West where they can reap the benefits of European culture; they say “next year in Jerusalem” even though there is no longer anything preventing them from moving there.

The long term problem is that what historically was a powerful moral justification for a Jewish homeland has vanished now that it is obvious that many, if not most Jews, don’t want to live there.

Mailvox: a request

Beau is scheduled for surgery:

Please mention this as a mailvox for the regulars: I’m heading in for another heart procedure in a few hours. Having just celebrated the happiest Christmas in several years, being blessed in marriage, family, ministry and good friends, the peace experienced right now is so palpable as to be near indescribable. I am in good hands.

Being easily tired, lurking has its benefits – except of course expression. If I had one final thought to give to the Ilk, it would be a word of encouragement writ bold at the top of my lungs, “Jesus!”

Beau is the best of the Ilk; he puts into daily practice what far too many of us only believe to be right and he does so without rancor. He feeds the hungry, devotes his time to the poor and outcast, and he shares the Gospel with everyone, especially those who need it most. I encourage you to pray that he recover fully and stick around to continue doing the Lord’s work for years to come.

UPDATE: Beau writes post-surgery: “All is well. Instead of another iteration of open heart, the exploratory work revealed the recent October re-plumb is in fact functioning fine. Thank God and thank you all for the words of prayer.”

Mailvox: science and free will

CG asks about the implications of time delay in decision-making:

I have read a number of scientific papers asserting that free will doesn’t exist. The Libet experiment, where a person pushes a button, but the brain registers the signal 7 seconds before the time the person made the choice, is one of the more well-known studies. What do you make of these scientific assertions that free will doesn’t exist? You didn’t really address it in The Irrational Atheist or on your own blog.

No, I didn’t bother, because the sort of experiments cited are not evidence that free will doesn’t exist. In fact, any scientific assertion that free will does not exist on the basis of these experiments does nothing more than demonstrate that scientists receive insufficient training in basic logic.

To make this argument, they are assuming that free will relies solely upon “the person” and not “the brain”. Or to put it more precisely, that “the person” is the conscious aspect of the mind and “the brain” is the unconscious. But the unconscious part of the mind is a part of the same mind as the conscious one! Relying on this false distinction is akin to insisting that because I reacted reflexively to movement out of the corner of my eye before I realized it, I did not move.

But clearly I did move. And I decided to move. I merely did not consciously decide to move. The observable fact of the matter is that we make unconscious decisions every single day, and they are an important aspect of our free will. To demonstrate that free will does not exist, it would be necessary to demonstrate that all humans exhibit the same unconscious reactions to the same stimuli; any variance in the reactions would indicate that humans are agents possessing the ability to make choices even if they are not consciously aware of the choices they are making.

The core mistake they are making here is to assume that everything unconscious is therefore determinate. That is an observably false equivalence.

There is nothing even remotely remarkable about this experiment. Having been a 100m sprinter, I’ve always been perfectly aware that the body moves before the conscious mind realizes it. I was usually in the middle of my second stride out of the blocks before I realized I was already running. In most of my races, I never even consciously heard the gun.

And every martial artist knows that if you’re thinking about your next strike or block, you will be too slow. By the time you consciously see the window and decide “it’s open, therefore I should attack it”, it’s already too late. The fundamental goal of martial arts training is to train your body and free your mind so that you enter a state where you are making the correct decisions without thinking about them. This is the state that most athletes recognize as being “in the zone”.

Mailvox: true or false

Puacon has four questions:

1) True/False: Ron Paul is a political Leninist, i.e. an admirer of Lenin’s “salami tactics” via Rockwell/Rothbard (see Rothbard’s Ethics of Liberty for more…)

2) True/False: You (Vox) support this political Leninism, based on your support of Dr. Paul

3) True/False: Leninism is based on deception and dishonesty…lying about being a racist to infiltrate and control racist groups, etc. This is considered pragmatic, benefits outweighing costs (more liberty vs. associating with racists).

4) True/False: Dr. Paul isn’t a racist. He just lied about being a racist in order to get money, support, etc. as per point 3.

These are not trick questions. I’m not judging you either way, just trying to get a handle on your positions on above.

1. False. A Leninist is not someone who admires, embraces, or uses any tactic that Vladimir Lenin happened to historically utilize. Also, the addition of the adjective “political” is redundant, as Leninism is an intrinsically political ideology. Since a Leninist is someone who subscribes to “the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism”, it is patently obvious that Ron Paul is not a Leninist of any kind.

2. False. I do not support the establishment of socialism. Nor does Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, or Murray Rothbard.

3. False. Puacon is confusing a tactic which was historically used by Leninists and other groups with Leninism itself. You might as reasonably claim that Ron Paul is a “political Muslim”, as the tactic you are describing is known in Islamic theology as taqiyya. Moreover, Puacon is committing a second error in assuming that because Rothbard believe the tactic was useful, Ron Paul is therefore utilizing it.

4. I can’t answer this question due to the erroneous assumptions implicit in it. I believe that all human beings who are science-literate or conscious of race could be considered racist, myself included, and there is no shortage of empirical evidence and scientific studies demonstrating that this is the case. If Ron Paul, like most people, has said that he is not racist, he is mistaken in that sense. But that does not mean he is lying about it.

I note with some amusement that Puacon’s mischaracterization and misidentification of his target on the political spectrum could, by his own erroneous metric, be accurately described as “Stalinist”.