Author: Duane Johnson
5
Nov
What a night! It was electrifying to see the crowds in Chicago and watch Obama give his acceptance speech. I’ve been watching for reactions around the world, and I thought this comment was a very interesting cause for additional celebration:
Saudi journalist Samir Saadi said that Obama’s election means “the U.S. has won the war on terror.”
“Given Obama’s name, his background, the doubts about his religion, Americans still voted for him and this proved that America is a democracy,” he said. “People here are starting to believe in the U.S. again.”
I think that what people widely understand to be true is the connection Obama has to everyone (like I mentioned in my last post). Russian anthropologist Ilya Utekhin said it better than I did, however:
“An African American president appears to have more sensitivity to the cross-cultural diversity of the world, and this is a promise of a more creative and flexible foreign policy,” he said.
David Lammy, in Britain, noted the remarkable symbolism of change when he commented:
“Now black and white can raise their shoulders high and can turn a page on issues of inequality,” he said, marveling at the “amazing image” of a black family living in the White House.
Many people are inspired by this clear change visible in the highest office of the country.
Author: Duane Johnson
4
Nov
I haven’t been entirely happy with Obama’s various compromises and changes of heart.
But today, I realized just how connected to America he is, and I felt a little bit better. As everyone notes first, he is black. But he is white, too, and raised by a single mom. His grandma
died of cancer today. His
aunt is an illegal immigrant. He’s an active Christian. His father is Muslim. His mother was a humanist. He’s married, and has two young, beautiful girls. He’s smart and well-educated.
When we have so many divisive issues to talk about, who better to lead our country than someone with an understanding heart, someone who is connected in some way to almost every kind of person in America? If I could vote, I’d give Barack a chance.
Good luck to all you voters out there today. Let the counting begin!
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Author: Duane Johnson
1
Nov
It’s been a week since the Singularity Summit in San Jose, so isn’t it about time I wrote about it? Ok, let’s put the homework aside for a moment. What an awesome conference!
My two favorite presentations were from Cynthia Breazeal and Neil Gershenfeld. Cynthia presented her research on “mind reading robots”, specifically, the work she has done to understand how human beings model the emotions of
other human beings. In the picture below, the robot Kismet is trying to understand through visual observation the intent of a researcher (the researcher “wants the bag of chips in the box” and is using a key to try to get in). I think this line of research (trying to understand how human beings model the internal processes of other human beings) is a very useful one. I’ll be watching
Cynthia’s work.
Also on my list of favorites was MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld. For the first time, I was able to see how computers are only a small piece of the great “computational puzzle” of the universe. Neil put it concisely: physics is the most powerful computer. What his work is centered on is finding ways to combine “bits with atoms” so that we can bring the world of ethereal information and the world of real atoms (fabricated things) together. For example, he has been working to bring what he calls “
fab labs” to various parts of the world so that under served communities (both here in the USA as well as afar in, say, India and Africa) can build exactly what they need to improve their lives. As he points out in his book “Fab”, there is little use in sending computers to schools in Africa if they don’t have electricity. But they do have the power of the sun, as well as their ingenuity, and if they can learn to master the art of fabrication then they can solve the immediate needs in their region.
I was too busy listening to Neil’s talk to get a picture, so I’ve included a photo above from
TED.
There were a few more pictures taken and if you’d like to browse, feel free to do so on my
flickr account.
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Author: Duane Johnson
29
Oct
Neat idea: trade permission to use your computer for free gaming. While you play, your CPU is used to compute tasks orchestrated by Plura Processing. In turn, the game developer is paid for making the connection between the game player and the person or company that wants to hire out computational tasks.
I think I like the idea because I love gaming and don’t like to pay for it. I wonder how many others there are out there who feel the same way…
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Author: Duane Johnson
25
Oct
Q&A:
1. Talk about keep the humans in the driver seat : particular kind of intelligence that generates war, torture, etc. Possible to engineer an intelligence without baggage? Even if it is not superintelligent, maybe turn world over to it. We can’t give up our faults because of what we are.
- We carry around “bloody baggage”. Going forward, intelligence will be nicer in positive sum game. Playing positive sum games because much more plausible (with higher intelligence).
- Phenotypic evolutionary changes may have stopped with civilization, but culturally we’ve improved in last 5 centuries. Reason to be optimistic.
2. Do you believe climate change will have a significant impact on the singularity?
- Possible existential threat if it leads to nuclear war. Not one of the most serious existential threats that we would face, however, so “probably no”.
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Author: Duane Johnson
25
Oct
Author: Duane Johnson
22
Oct
I was thinking about conspiracies the other day and kinda stumbled into the realization that the idea of a devil is probably the most widely adopted conspiracy theory in the history of the world. Of course, not everyone is Christian, but the idea of personified evil was, as far as I understand it, first taught by the ancient Persian, Zoroaster (the father of Zoroastrianism) and later adopted by Christianity.
Isn’t it an interesting conspiracy? The idea as I’ve been taught it goes something like this: there is a real, but almost always invisible male being out there somewhere who is not omnipotent, but nevertheless powerful. He is selfishly interested in the destruction and misery of all people everywhere, and he devotes (as nearly as I can tell) every waking moment to the cunning art of deception. What’s more, he is actually interested in me individually and I can never be sure if he’s watching, possibly learning about me and my weaknesses. Having learned about my individual weaknesses, he will use his surreptitiously gained information against me.
I guess I just hadn’t thought of this as a conspiracy theory before, probably because I learned about the devil in my youth before I even knew what a conspiracy was. Sometimes I wonder if the theory does more harm than good. I’ve found that people take the theory in varying degrees of seriousness, and those who take it extremely seriously sometimes make me nervous. The problem with most conspiracies is that there is never sufficient evidence to actually pin the blame on the correct party. Thus, whether something that happens to a person is actually caused by a devil is never something that person can be sure of, and so the theory itself can occasionally be the cause of paranoia (whether or not the theory is correct).
Ok, Duane. Back to homework now.
Update: I apologize if I offended anyone. This was an exercise in looking in at my own culture “from the outside” and I didn’t mean to be confrontational.
Author: Duane Johnson
16
Oct
Kelty and I are going to the Singularity Summit in San Jose next weekend. I’m so excited to go! I feel like I will be among giants, just kind of observing and learning from their ways of thinking. Who knows, maybe we’ll start a new DNA club, or talk about the next steps to combining biological and robotic components. Or maybe we’ll stick to the basics and try to estimate when artificial intelligence will be strong enough to convince most human beings that it is sentient. Fun times!
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Author: Duane Johnson
5
Oct
Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne has led a campaign to reveal some dangers in the practice of “naked short” selling. In his view, it was a part of the cause of the failure of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, and Lehman Brothers. Now, a very interesting article has been published at The Register that ties pieces of the story together: it seems that one Mr. Gary Weiss—who has deep connections with the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (the institution that would be in a position to know how bad the naked shorting situation is)—has been actively keeping Byrne’s view of naked shorts out of the picture on Wikipedia. Sounds rotten to me. Here’s the full Register article.
Related: My article a little over a year ago on Fractional Reserve Brokeraging
Author: Duane Johnson
30
Sep
After
making a big deal out of his “suspending the campaign” to go rally the [Republican] troops in Washington—in order to get the $700 billion bailout package passed—John McCain had a funny comment about the house’s failure to pass the bill:
“Senator Obama … infused unnecessary partisanship into the process. Now is not the time to fix the blame…”
This reminds me of something Kelty once said among friends when we were playing an intense game of cards: “Stop being so competitive! *I* want to win!”
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