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This is how itty bitty we are
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wufwugy
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08-04-2009, 03:16 AM
Post subject: This is how itty bitty we are
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#1 (permalink)
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4-of-a-Kind
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 1,660
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http://blog.joins.com/media/folderLi...ist_id=8572524
and a gif

Once, just once, I would like to be able to comprehend the scale of the universe
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BooG690
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Join Date: Mar 2009
Posts: 1,439
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I guarantee Wufwugy is high right now. You only think about this kinda stuff when you're high.
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That's how winners play; we convince the other guy he's making all the right moves.
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bigspenda73
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Straight Flush
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Pwnsylvania
Posts: 7,546
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wuf, how likely is it that we are not the only beings of higher intelligence in existence?
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Parasurama
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Full House
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: DMT
Posts: 820
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How likely is it that we are beings of higher intelligence?
@boog: I think about this stuff all the time, high or not
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wufwugy
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4-of-a-Kind
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 1,660
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by bigspenda73
wuf, how likely is it that we are not the only beings of higher intelligence in existence?
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Extremely likely
It's hard to say exactly, but I would guess that human-like advanced life exists in the thousands (maybe 5 or 6 figures even). However, due to physics, we can never actually know this, unfortunately. I'd say the universe has billions of different extra-terrestrial life strands, though.
I don't think that life is that rare of a commodity; we may even have several strands of life in our own solar system on places like Mars, Europa, asteroids or other such places that could allow for extremophile life. I'm unsure exactly, but I think that even Earth may have had at least two different abiogenesis events: one that got energy from the sun, and one that got energy from geothermal vents on the ocean bed. Don't quote me on Earth's abiogensis hypotheses, though, cuz I haven't looked too much into it. As far as we know, where ever there is energy, water, and a relatively steady environment, there should be life.
But there's a huge difference between just life and advanced life. This is kind of obvious, but I think that the difference is even bigger than most would suggest. This is because looking through our history suggests that there are many very specific factors that have allowed intelligence to thrive. Things like mass extinction events which kill off the dumb dominant species while allowing the rise of a potentially more intelligent based species. This is what happened with the dinosaurs. Had they never been wiped out, mammals would still be tiny little creatures that live underground.
Or something like the collision between Earth and Moon. I'm not sure how long ago it was, let's just say 4 billion years, two approximately equal sized planets collided with each other, and millions of years later what was left was the Earth and the Moon. This may not sound like much, but it's actually super important for life for several reasons. The main is that the collision was in such a way that one planet retained more gravity than the other, and thus retained more of the hard metals brought by both planets resulting in a higher percentage of dense matter than the Earth previously had. This change in ratio of dense matter is what allows the Earth to have a very active core and a strong magnetic field which allows it to keep its atmosphere. If Earth had never collided with the Moon then Earth's density would be similar to Mars' and would similarly have been stripped of atmosphere by solar winds a long time ago.
There are many other factors too. Things like amount of landmass and continental drift being just right so that there's not too much volcanic activity, not too much or too little ice on the poles, and even something like Jared Diamonds theory about geography playing the primary role in the development of technology due to agriculture, livestock, and war resulting from specific proximity like what we had in Eurasia but not any other continent. I also think this implicates things like what could have come of the Third Reich. If the Americas were not equally as advanced as Europe and not isolated by thousands of miles of water, I think it is pretty likely that some kind of totalitarian government would reign supreme over humankind and quench out science.
But what could possibly be the most difficult aspect of human type life, is the development of 'morality'. Some recent studies on chimps have suggested that they don't understand the concept of 'better or worse'. IOW, they showed a chimp how to do something, then it would do it, but then they showed the same chimp a more efficient way to do that same something, and the chimp didn't do it. The conclusions of the studies suggest that somewhere, somehow human ancestry began looking at things in a hierarchy of efficiency, and I personally think that this strongly implicates our obsession with mores and doing things 'right, wrong, better, worse, etc', yet we have no clue how we evolved like this.
All in all, I suspect that other life in the universe is very similar to Earth life. We like to think that life is unique, and Earth is unique, but I suspect that life and Earth are just like every other thing in the universe i.e. aspects of physical and chemical laws, and that it plays itself out in innumerable quantities.
Star Trek had it right. Advanced life throughout the universe is going to be a lot like us. They're going to be bipedal, opposable thumbs (with musculature that depends on intricacies instead of brute strengths), capable of language, long gestation, etc. Without these things life would simply not be able to advance to homo sapiens level.
On a different note, we could be hit by a gamma ray burst tomorrow and melt instantaneously.
Also, super advanced life is probably not even biological anymore. Our understanding of technology strongly suggests that homo sapiens will someday be replaced by mechanical AI. For some time we will hybridize ourselves and be cyborgs, but biological life is ultimately inferior or mechanical life, and the technological singularity will throw us under the bus. Super advanced intelligence may even be something ridiculous like on the nano-scale
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wufwugy
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4-of-a-Kind
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 1,660
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Parasurama
@boog: I think about this stuff all the time, high or not
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Ditto. I think of the craziest stuff when not high. When high I just soak up sensation, and tend to not give a fuck about anything else
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How likely is it that we [i]are[/] beings of higher intelligence?
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Good question/sentiment. It's a tricky one because our understanding of intelligence leaves so much to be desired.
Our intelligence has evolved out of necessity, pretty much. But this necessity has only been present in certain aspects of life, and so we're left with being very unintelligent in many other aspects. It just doesn't make sense that the same species that can perform calculus can also perform lobotomies. But it's how it is.
Not only that, but intelligence is almost a paradox. For example: tragedy of the commons. Considering this one paradigm of social interaction, what is intelligence? Is the person who does right by himself but hurt the collective intelligent, or is the person who hurts himself but does right by the collective intelligent?
Besides, we don't understand intelligence, like, at all. Consider IQ: we don't really even know what we're measuring, we just know that we're measuring something that correlates with some aspects of life. And our understanding of IQ hasn't changed pretty much at all for almost a century. The scientific community is pretty much stumped here.
On the grand scope of things, we have absolutely no clue how intelligent we are because we are sure that our ability to measure what intelligence we know how to measure breaks down once it reaches extremes on the human scale. It could be possible to have an IQ of 1k or of 1M, but we have no clue because we're unable to accurately measure IQ above something like 150, and like I said, IQ isn't even the whole picture of intelligence, and we don't even know by how much
I suspect that when we understand the brain, we will consider ourselves extremely unintelligent. We will see that the brain, even though the most complicated known network on the planet, is very unrefined and primitive. We will likely be able to advance brain ability/power like we currently do with computer chips. In fact, I think the biggest problem we face today is not one of power, but of networking. Perhaps if we knew how to network computer circuits like the brain networks neurons, we would be working with a brain-computer a billion times more powerful than the human brain or something.
The networking thing is pretty awesome, and it may just be the only reason that computers are not brains. A brain signal travels a couple inches at most, whereas a computer with equivalent circuits to the brain would have signals traveling for hours or something due to our inability to create computer chips on a 3d plane. We're getting close to figuring out how to do that though
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boost
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Full House
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Chicago
Posts: 706
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why do you believe star trek had it right? I have read that its possible that non-carbon based life could be possible, and therefore the whole rule-set can be thrown out the window.
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wufwugy
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4-of-a-Kind
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 1,660
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by boost
why do you believe star trek had it right? I have read that its possible that non-carbon based life could be possible, and therefore the whole rule-set can be thrown out the window.
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Yes there could be, but that life would be extremely primitive.
It's been a while since I've looked at it, but I think silicon-based is the next best to carbon-based life (doesn't really matter what it is, though). What does matter is that the next best chemical-based life form, according to theory, would evolve SUPER slow compared to carbon. And even if it didn't it would still be subject to the laws of evolution, gravity, atoms, etc, and so it would still evolve similarly to all other life.
Finding a different chemically based life form would be amazing though, but it's possible they don't even exist. I don't know exactly what the theory says, but I think that there is so much carbon in the universe that it would pretty much win over any natural selection battle with any other element. A silicon-based life form would have to be in a place where there is no carbon able to compete, and I don't think we have ever found a place like that. I know very little about atomic theory and chemistry, though. What I do know is that when I've seen the idea presented to scientists and enthusiasts, it's pretty much brushed away as a virtual impossibility or unfathomably unlikely
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boost
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Full House
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Chicago
Posts: 706
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ah, ok that makes sense so speaking of star trek getting it right, when do you think we'll have a working holodeck?
edit: I for some reason just actually thought briefly about how it would be accomplished. Then I came to this question: Wouldn't it simply be easier to some how interface with the brain to simulate the input from our senses, rather than some how create malleable holograms? (like the matrix)
Further edit: Would I ever want to leave that world? Would it be similar to the difference between a meaningful relationship and paying for a hooker?
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Parasurama
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Full House
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: DMT
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If we were to take a molecule of DNA for example, and simply replace all of the carbon atoms with silicon, the resulting molecule would be much less stable and more reactive than the original. Silicon is a larger atom with more electrons that it holds less tightly. It is further a more metallic element than carbon, meaning that it is more prone to ionic rather than covalent bonding. A silicon-based abiotic precursor would be just that more likely to die or decompose which is a detriment to competitive fitness.
There is also a natural limit to cell size because in order for the reactions necessary for life to take place, the molecules in a cell must collide frequently. A silicon-based cell would be necessarily larger and therefore slower (to grow, reproduce, evolve) than a carbon-based one.
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wufwugy
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4-of-a-Kind
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 1,660
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by boost
ah, ok that makes sense  so speaking of star trek getting it right, when do you think we'll have a working holodeck?
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Probably before 2100. It pretty much boils down to our ability to engineer a quantum processor/manipulator, but we're kinda sorta working on that now.
We're working on shit like teleportation, quantum computers, virtual reality as we speak.
I predict that by 2100 we will be disease and aging free due to genetic manipulation (we could actually see this before mid-century), we will have quantum machines like microwaves that manipulate quantum particles to create pretty much anything, and virtual reality brain chip cyborg hybridization in ways that we cannot imagine. Could be things like experiencing the world based on our own preferences (like how our computers have 'preferences'), our brains will be networked in a super advanced internet that proliferates every aspect of our world (like you could drive your car just by thinking), and virtual reality will be indistinguishable from reality and if you wanna live your recreational life feeling like you actually are Zorthon the Conquerer in World of Warcraft 20, you can.
I suspect that the future sees the hybridization of wealthy humans and machines into interconnected cyborgs experiencing sensation and adventure on a whim, and Africa will still be starving by the hundreds of millions
Quote:
edit: I for some reason just actually thought briefly about how it would be accomplished. Then I came to this question: Wouldn't it simply be easier to some how interface with the brain to simulate the input from our senses, rather than some how create malleable holograms? (like the matrix)
Further edit: Would I ever want to leave that world? Would it be similar to the difference between a meaningful relationship and paying for a hooker?
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Exactly. I saw the edit before I typed up my post
Your sentiment is astute since that's the way scientists are looking at it currently. Virtual reality is being worked on on the small scale i.e. brain chips. Eventually I think that wealthy sectors of society will be completely interconnected in virtual reality. And no, I doubt we would ever want to leave. We would have to, but after time went by we would gradually be able to attend to our affairs in a virtual world anyways. Just think of the internet. Exactly like that, but super advanced and proliferate into every aspect of reality.
The quantum processor I mentioned had to do with a machine that can manipulate quantum particles and create anything. This is different than virtual reality, but it's solid theory, and holodeckish.
As far as how real would it be, I have no clue. I have thought of this before, and have figured I can't figure it. Like think of getting a back massage: how does that fit into virtual reality? We could definitely feel like we're getting a massage, but our actual body will not be getting that massage. I think that nobody actually knows the answer to this question, and we're just going to have to find out.
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wufwugy
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4-of-a-Kind
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 1,660
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Also, robots. This shit is going to take off. Long before 2100 there will be sex-bots indistinguishable from the real thing.
The moral implications of technology are unreal. But I don't care, gimme a sex-bot IMO. I'll never leave the house, I don't give a fuck
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boost
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Full House
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Chicago
Posts: 706
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by wufwugy
Also, robots. This shit is going to take off. Long before 2100 there will be sex-bots indistinguishable from the real thing.
The moral implications of technology are unreal. But I don't care, gimme a sex-bot IMO. I'll never leave the house, I don't give a fuck
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you
are
awesome.
edit(just an editing kinda day for me I guess): your predictions, in terms of the time lines youve laid out, seem really hopeful to me. However thats my super uneducated opinion. And then again in 19018 if someone predicted the present no one would have believed them.
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Fnord
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Moderator
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http://www.rationalvedanta.net/node/131
/thread
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boost
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Full House
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Chicago
Posts: 706
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but fnord this thread has taken off in awesome new directions..
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Halv
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pro crastinator
4-of-a-Kind
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I've just convinced myself that I should buy a fleshlight, and now you spring this sexbot thing on me?
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wufwugy
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4-of-a-Kind
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 1,660
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by boost
Quote:
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Originally Posted by wufwugy
Also, robots. This shit is going to take off. Long before 2100 there will be sex-bots indistinguishable from the real thing.
The moral implications of technology are unreal. But I don't care, gimme a sex-bot IMO. I'll never leave the house, I don't give a fuck
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you
are
awesome.
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lol thx
Speaking of sex-bots, assuming they were close enough to the real thing, the sex/companionship would be WAY better than with humans. This is because we could program them to pretty much do our bidding. I mean you could program a sex-bot to love the way you smell, taste, sound, etc. They could be programmed to literally do and 'feel' however we wanted them. This is pretty sci-fi stuff, but it's also pretty legit. However, this is assuming it's possible to even create super advanced AI that doesn't become it's own egocentric entity, which I take contention with. I do, however, think that there will be a point before this egocentric entity AI where we could maintain robot intelligence while still being very human-like. Technological singularity and AI implications are pretty crazy though.
It also wouldn't be THAT hard to make them close enough to the real thing. This is due to human perception actually being pretty unrefined. We may think we're super perceptive, but really, our senses are pretty crap. They're fuzzy, they trick us all the time, and this has actually been a positive evolutionary trait allowing us to be less specialized, and thus more adaptable.
This partly explains why we like things like plastic surgery or photography or video games. They're not the real thing, but they're close enough that we can't tell enough of a difference to not elicit a biological reaction from them. AI is expected to pass the turing test by about 2020-2030, this means that in conversation it's indistinguishable from humans, and we've already got really human-like synthetic flesh. Really, the toughest part of robots is mechanics. We're making great progress, but still kinda lagging. I don't know much about it, but let's just say that machines have yet to be 'genuine' and 'asymmetrical' like biological organisms. The machines of today are way better than the ones of a decade ago, however.
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edit(just an editing kinda day for me I guess): your predictions, in terms of the time lines youve laid out, seem really hopeful to me. However thats my super uneducated opinion. And then again in 19018 if someone predicted the present no one would have believed them.
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The thing is that we understand science WAY more now than ever before. With each passing decade our understanding of scientific and technological principles improves dramatically. This is one thing the lay just don't realize about science: it's about deeper and deeper refinement, not blind guessing.
But it's even more than that. The travel of information, development and advancement of computers, and increase of wealth and education has made technology develop quicker now than ever before. The 2010s are going to see greater technological development than any other decade previously, and the 2020s will see more than the 2010s, and the increase in development will be an exponential one.
I linked a video a while back on the exponential function related to peak oil. It outlined the phenomenal and unfathomable impacts of exponential growth. Essentially, every doubling time sees growth greater than the entire previous growth. I don't know what our doubling time is (some say it's one decade), and it's a difficult thing to quantify practically, but the point is one of exponential growth and how crazy it is.
All the predictions I laid out are held by a chunk of scientists in the field. Science by nature is very conservative, while reality has shown that it is substantially more liberal than scientific conservative estimates, and those who get into the business of speculating do so from a very educated position. Not everybody's right, not everybody can be, but predictions are integral parts of science, so they do know how to do it. Most of it is simple mathematical calculations. Like we know how fast we can sequence DNA, we know how quickly our ability to sequence DNA is increasing, and we know how much DNA there is to sequence for certain issues. Back in the 90s we had the Human Genome Project. It took like 5 years to sequence the human genome. Today we're working on sequencing every known cancer genome. This is like a 300k times more genome to process than the human genome, but we estimate we'll be done is about 5 years (don't quote me on the exact numbers because I've forgotten them, but I'm close enough)
I could go on and on, but I really shouldn't provide so much text. Basically, computer advancement (which is going to continue for a looooooooong time) makes technological advancements INSANE. The year 2050 is going to OUT OF THIS WORLD. Did you know that the computers that landed Apollo 11 on the moon are as powerful as a modern hand held calculator? A CALCULATOR!!! Medicine is taking off due to finally integrating computers with biology; we haven't even seen the medical revolution yet, we've only just begun sequencing DNA and understanding genetics, but we're doing it at insane speeds due to computers.
And then there is going to be a MASSIVE revolution when we have a paradigm shift in computing technology. We are near to being able to stack computer chips in 3D. This will change everything, and make computer power/intelligence so much better. I can't find the article, but there's a company working on mapping the brain and sort of 'reverse engineering' a computer based on the brain. They think they will have it figured out before 2020. If they do then computing power will be on an entirely different level than current. Or there's the quantum computer. I don't know much about it, but this to would just destroy our current abilities, and scientists are optimistic about getting this perhaps in the next decade or so.
We're not even going to recognize the future, and this is due to the massive exponential growth of scientific progress to which we see no end in sight.
A rule of thumb could be as follows: when we discover something, it takes us 20-30 years to understand that something, then it takes us another 20-30 years to engineer that something.
I would also like to add that lay people like to say 'but hai we thought we'd be in flying cars by now omgwtfbbq happened thereeee??'. Well, reality is that we never thought that. Uneducated people thought that, not scientists. The public read those types of predictions in popular magazines, not scientific journals. If scientists predict something, you can rest assured that it's extremely likely. Having said that, not every scientist predicts what I've said, however, that's because most scientists don't predict anything. Like I said, science is really conservative, they like to stay out of the unknown. But the ones who do predict, at the very least say that shit is going to be WHACK in the future
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wufwugy
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4-of-a-Kind
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 1,660
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by HalvSame
I've just convinced myself that I should buy a fleshlight, and now you spring this sexbot thing on me?
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You can always dump the fleshlight
I think the earliest we'll see good enough sex-bots for the public is 2030, but it could be 2050 or even 2070. I really don't know mainly because I don't understand robotics that well. By 2030, AI will likely be good enough, but I have no clue about robotics.
Shit, online poker could be solved by 2020. I also don't know what it takes to solve games like this, but AI systems are developing out of the world, and at some point that will result in a bot that can own Durrrr.
But before then, we'll likely see things like smart chips and memory chips that wealthy people could get to make them even more efficient at stuff. We're literally on the frontier of brain chips.
Which points to the point that we're going to see even worse inequality in the future. Wealthy people will afford smart chips, designer babies, artificial organs; poor people will afford hooked on phonics, McDonalds, and Robitussin
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WillburForce
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Flush
Join Date: May 2006
Location: SW London
Posts: 516
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humans can always beat robots/AI in the long run (talking poker wise/chess wise etc). They maybe ba able to do a gazzilion computations in like seconds, but end of the day, the human factor can just throw some mad curve balls that would baffle the shizzle out of a program.
anyway, back to the sex-bot. So I have the girl of my dreams, who'll do anything I ask????? I want to be frozen and woken up in the future!
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Jack Sawyer
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4-of-a-Kind
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Old School
Posts: 2,535
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Amazing, itn't it?
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Originally Posted by Parasurama
How likely is it that we are beings of higher intelligence?
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I think you should define "higher intelligence", and we start from there. Cavemen, for example, wouldn't be considered very intelligent to us. Smart money says we are very likely to be considered cavemen to other races of beings.
We have not even started to unravel the secrets of far away travel, and how to reach someplace significant without dying in the process.
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Originally Posted by bigspenda73
wuf, how likely is it that we are not the only beings of higher intelligence in existence?
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i'd like to answer this one. If you take into account the sheer size of the universe, its impossible for us not to be alone statistically. so I'd say very very very likely, but the amazing distances between races and not to mention other reasons such as all along caution prohibits interaction.
A more likely question you should ask, taking into account the nature of nature; how fortunate have we been to not encounter any new motherfuckers?
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My dream... is to fly... over the rainbow... so high...

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VHS is like a book and a book is like a stack of kindles.
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Hey, I'm in a movie!
http://youtu.be/lGdnIrRKDTI
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a500lbgorilla
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JESUS TAKE THE KEYBOARD
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: This room is a good place to be
Posts: 8,379
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by WillburForce
humans can always beat robots/AI in the long run (talking poker wise/chess wise etc). They maybe ba able to do a gazzilion computations in like seconds, but end of the day, the human factor can just throw some mad curve balls that would baffle the shizzle out of a program.
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there's a structure to the brain that makes us smarter than robots today. Robots'll be able to mimic that one day, then they'll have the best of both worlds. Robots won't just be programming and processors, they'll have brains.
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Smithers, use the amnesia ray.
You mean the revolver, sir?
Precisely.
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bigred
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PROFESSIONAL TROLL
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Nest of Douchebags
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drake equation
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LOL OPERATIONS
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Jack Sawyer
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4-of-a-Kind
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Old School
Posts: 2,535
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla
there's a structure to the brain that makes us smarter than robots today. Robots'll be able to mimic that one day, then they'll have the best of both worlds. Robots won't just be programming and processors, they'll have brains.
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which is why I can't understand for what reason people are engineering their own doom, one intel chip at a time.
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My dream... is to fly... over the rainbow... so high...

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VHS is like a book and a book is like a stack of kindles.
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Hey, I'm in a movie!
http://youtu.be/lGdnIrRKDTI
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bigred
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PROFESSIONAL TROLL
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Nest of Douchebags
Posts: 2,184
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Robots are the next evolution, not enemy
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LOL OPERATIONS
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GatorJH
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4-of-a-Kind
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: HotLanta
Posts: 3,179
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that was a pretty damn cool graphic. I started reading the posts, but there are just too many words there.
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Poker is easy, it's winning at poker that's hard.
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bode
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Straight Flush
Join Date: May 2006
Location: slow motion
Posts: 4,270
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Originally Posted by GatorJH
that was a pretty damn cool graphic. I started reading the posts, but there are just too many words there.
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he's wufwugy you know?
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eeevees are not monies yet...they are like baby monies.
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boost
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Full House
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Chicago
Posts: 706
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in 2050 the "I LUV U" virus will be an std
zing
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a500lbgorilla
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JESUS TAKE THE KEYBOARD
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: This room is a good place to be
Posts: 8,379
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ha!
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Smithers, use the amnesia ray.
You mean the revolver, sir?
Precisely.
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Parasurama
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Full House
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: DMT
Posts: 820
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wufwugy is the most epic freetroll ever, he's like
"Hi, i'm wufwugy, {insert incredibly long philosophical and scientific thoughts here}, i can haz password now?"
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Galapogos
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4-of-a-Kind
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: The Loser's Lounge
Posts: 2,322
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Double whammy in this thread. Quality content.
Plus, it's the first time I noticed 'rilla's quality new sig. I wish I thought of that first.
I've said quality too much in my posts today.
...quality
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Originally Posted by sauce123
I don't get why you insist on stacking off with like jack high all the time.
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wufwugy
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4-of-a-Kind
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 1,660
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Originally Posted by WillburForce
humans can always beat robots/AI in the long run (talking poker wise/chess wise etc). They maybe ba able to do a gazzilion computations in like seconds, but end of the day, the human factor can just throw some mad curve balls that would baffle the shizzle out of a program.
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It certainly seems this way, but according to game theory, it's not. Poker is solvable. What I'm referring to is the Nash Equilibrium. Basically, in finite games it is possible to devise a strategy that is unexploitable. A good example is in rock, paper, scissors, and what I believe is called 'game theory optimal'. Basically, the GTO strategy in rock, paper, scissors is doing each option exactly 1/3rd of the time. Anybody who does this cannot be beaten. That's GTO and it's possible for poker.
In fact, I think that according to game theory, GTO is possible for everything since everything is a finite game (except life, whatever that means). But according to game theory, something like getting a degree is a finite game, and thus it is solvable and somebody could play that game in an unexploitable fashion. Now, this is way beyond our comprehension and we'll never get close to understanding it, but I'm pretty sure that's what the theory implicates.
Eventually, computers will be powerful enough to solve poker in short order. The problem is not in a computer spending a lot of time figuring out a game because all we would need to do is change how the game is played, but the problem is in a computer being so powerful it is able to figure out a game faster and more completely than humans. I don't think we're going to see this under our current computer paradigm. It will probably take at least 3D computer chips, but it could take even more than that.
Either way, if you wanna make money from poker, be sure to do that sooner than later. It's not going to be solved for several years (I say at least a decade), but the scary thing about the exponential function is that nobody sees it coming. It could look like we have all this time before AI beats us, but in just one more doubling time we could be made utterly obsolete.
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Warpe
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Moderator
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Canuckistan
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
click for awesomeness
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a500lbgorilla
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JESUS TAKE THE KEYBOARD
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: This room is a good place to be
Posts: 8,379
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someone should find the other gif that went with this about how the deep space view was taken and what it saw.
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Smithers, use the amnesia ray.
You mean the revolver, sir?
Precisely.
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wufwugy
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4-of-a-Kind
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 1,660
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Speaking of faster than light (FTL) travel, this is an area which I think scientists have determined is very likely to not be possible
As far as our theory goes (and it's really far), it's impossible to travel faster than the speed of light, and if you do travel faster than the speed of light you're also traveling 'through' time, but this is pretty much impossible. It might not be though because quantum particles may actually do that. They do things like teleport and exist in more places at once, but I don't think anybody yet knows if they travel 'through' time.
I say 'through' because dimensions are rather misunderstood concepts. We don't realize that we can't travel 'back' or 'forward' through dimensions, and we forget that time is a dimension. It could very well be that anything in the past or the future doesn't exist because there are no dimensions within which it could exist, and so it's not possible to travel through time. What we are doing now is essentially existing in certain dimensions at the present. Nothing is static, what has 'gone' has gone, and what 'will come' has not come. So FTL/time travel would be travel through dimensions, but that's just not possible since you can't travel through dimensions, you can only exist in the dimensions in which you exist because no other dimensions exist. Or something like that
Also, FTL/time travel would violate the first law of thermodynamics i.e. matter cannot be created or destroyed. Essentially, if you travel to a different different dimension then matter would have been both created and destroyed.
One thing that may be possible, however, is station to station teleportation. IOW, one pod could break down an object into it's quantum particles then those particles could change existing position and realign into the object they made up in a different pod. Quantum mechanics is the most whack shit ever, and we have much to learn about it, but something like this and more may be possible.
But even then, it may be possible to go way beyond what our current understanding of physics determines. It looks to us like we've got most of it figured out, but it's possible that we're only dealing with a certain paradigm, and if we ever figured out a higher paradigm, it would change everything. An example can be found in M-theory. The theory says that the universe is one of many (perhaps infinite) and exists on a brane in a higher dimensional plane occupied by many other branes, and that the force of gravity travels somewhat freely between different branes or universes, while the other three forces in our universe are stuck here.
This type of thing suggests, and we have evidence to implicate such, that on the quantum level, particles may be able to exist in multiple dimensions and universes at different times. The speculations we can make over this are amazing, but nobody understands them, and I suspect that humans never will. It's quite the testament to our egos that we think we could understand the nature of all of existence.
On a slightly different note, something I've thought of recently related to the Big Bang and universe creation: I think it may be likely that our universe is made up of several universes, and that we've had several big bangs, but that we can never see them due to limits in physics. I get this idea from M-theory and how they suggest that the Big Bang was caused by our brane colliding with a another brane. This would explain how we could essentially go from zero energy, zero dimensions to the creation of the universe. But what this suggests to me is that branes likely collide all the time, and if they did we still wouldn't know about it. Our brane could have collided with another brane in the same spot (if branes even have spots) as it did for our Big Bang, but when looking through our telescopes we still wouldn't see the effects of this collision because of the speed of light and expansion.
Everything we see in the cosmos now is essentially happening now, even though it happened in the past. If we see a supernova 8 billion light years away we are experiencing it in real time even though it happened 8 billion years ago. But here's the point I'm making, if in the same 'spot' in the universe, there was a supernova 7 billion years ago, we would not be able to see it, we would not even know it existed. This suggests that events like the Big Bang could happen all the time in our own brane covering dimensions in which our universe has existed, yet we could never ever know about them, and if we ever did encounter another Big Bang in our current 'spacetime' it would simply wipe out our universe and it would be like we never existed. I suspect this is what happened before the Big Bang, even. Our universe is likely an itty bitty bubble in a vast ocean of bubbles
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wufwugy
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4-of-a-Kind
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 1,660
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Hey warpe can you take the img tags off please? It really breaks the thread. Or maybe crop it or fit it to normal thread size if possible
And funny
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Warpe
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Moderator
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Canuckistan
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your thread is irrelevant compared to the awesomeness of the universe
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wufwugy
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4-of-a-Kind
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 1,660
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The thread is now the size of the universe
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boost
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Full House
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Chicago
Posts: 706
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yes, plz, its really hard reading multiparagraph posts when it doesnt fit in res.
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wufwugy
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4-of-a-Kind
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 1,660
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lol i found a sexbot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e9E_au2-HQ
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kevster
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Full House
Join Date: May 2006
Location: Fold City
Posts: 758
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by wufwugy
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"I'm a fucking crippled robot - how am I supposed to defend myself".
Classic.
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- You're the reason why paradise lost
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audio obv fake, but still funnier than the original
I predict sex bots by 2020
they won't be "good enough" but they'll be better than fleshlights
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Jack Sawyer
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4-of-a-Kind
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Old School
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by bigred
Robots are the next evolution, not enemy
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What is the value in creating our replacements?
Oh, and http://plaintechtalk.com/blog/crazy-...human-corpses/
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My dream... is to fly... over the rainbow... so high...

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VHS is like a book and a book is like a stack of kindles.
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Hey, I'm in a movie!
http://youtu.be/lGdnIrRKDTI
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a500lbgorilla
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JESUS TAKE THE KEYBOARD
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: This room is a good place to be
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wuf you should read physics of the impossible by that old asian dude on the science channel. Covers the likely-hood of humans accomplishing all the 'impossible' things of science.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/boo...520690&afsrc=1
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Smithers, use the amnesia ray.
You mean the revolver, sir?
Precisely.
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wufwugy
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4-of-a-Kind
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 1,660
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I've read a couple Michio Kaku books way back in the day, he's pretty cool. I'll hafta check that one out. He's one of the most vocal physicists when it comes to future tech (even though he's not technically a Futurist like somebody like Ray Kurzweil)
Here's a sweeeeet doc he did pretty much outlining all the predicted inventions from now till 2100. Total of 3 episodes (15 parts on youtube)
Playlist 1 http://www.youtube.com/view_play_lis...9164EF88539A71
Playlist 2 http://www.youtube.com/view_play_lis...5453950D991014
Playlist 3 http://www.youtube.com/view_play_lis...7C512E38D6D1DB
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wufwugy
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4-of-a-Kind
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 1,660
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Jack Sawyer
Quote:
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Originally Posted by bigred
Robots are the next evolution, not enemy
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What is the value in creating our replacements?
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The jury is still out on whether or not we'll be 'replaced'. There is little doubt that a chunk of homo sapiens will be replaced, but that could be via genetic manipulation and hybridization that we simply just exogenously 'evolve' our species.
But some scientists think that even AI will be able to be kept under control. I'm not qualified to give an opinion on this because I really have no clue what it would take, but I do not see how it would be possible to create egocentric consciousness (which would most likely be a product of simple 3D brain-like computers since consciousness is likely a product of neuronal networks instead of some elusive soul-like specialty) without it becoming its own 'species'.
And then what we have to worry about is the technological singularity. This is where AI intelligence reaches the point where it increases its own intelligence exponentially. If we ever hit this singularity (we will, and soonish IMO) then human brains will be obsoleted rapidly.
I'm not disagreeing with you so much as I'm thinking that there's more to the story. For example: somebody somewhere must have thought that biochemical revolution or nuclear revolution was engineering our own demise, and they may turn out to be right. But we've not created a virus or bombs that have killed us all off yet. This suggests that there will be fail-safes that keep AI from venturing out on its own, but we also do not know for sure since AI could be simply a different paradigm which we do not understand
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Parasurama
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Full House
Join Date: Nov 2008
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veXRCX-8PEg
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boost
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Full House
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Chicago
Posts: 706
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I just hope that Im not a john when the robohookers all go nutso a la ghost in the shell.
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givememyleg
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WHO YA GONNA CALL?!??
Administrator
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I don't see how a robot programmed with laws and restrictions could go against those laws, unless some virus or something effected how it works. AI is such a complicated topic but it's still just computer code and the robot would have to act accordingly to how it was programmed. A robot realizing that it was able to make its own decisions and starting to act in its own self interests is a hard concept to grasp. It still needs its OS to function and if the OS has abce code, how could it do d? Could it learn to hack itself to change its own OS? Then we're fucked I guess.
But then again I guess you could say humans are just made of code as well, and somehow we found a way to be conscious.
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Get your own badge! Click profile at the top and FTR Badge from the left nav.
"The Dragon in My Garage" by Carl Sagan
I say onto you, I've felt the dragon! I felt the touch of his tail, the breath of his fire, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that the dragon exists!
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givememyleg
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WHO YA GONNA CALL?!??
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Also, I love talking about the vastness of the universe and how insignificant we all seem in the grand scheme of things. That gif is awesome, another similar video that I love watching is - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZJb6yFDKIw (Tour of the universe [although it doesn't prove the existence of God as the video claims, just love it when people mix in their own personal beliefs]).
These are topics that don't come up often enough imo. People are too focused on sports, sitcoms, drama, their hair, etc. Not saying there is anything wrong with those, but most people are losing the ability to think big. Think big about life, think big about everything. Life is a HUGE mystery and the more we learn about that mystery, the better our life's will become.
Right now we're on a floating rock that is twirling around a floating ball of gas burning at 30 million degrees. This floating ball of gas generates energy which radiates onto our rock, creating life. There are trillions upon trillions upon trillions upon trillions of other rocks and gas balls spread out over an area so large we can't comprehend it. All of these floating pebbles are expanding outward and moving at a very high rate of speed.
On our little rock, things are setup in juuuuuust the right way to allow complex life to exist. Even if the most minuscule seemingly insignificant tweaks were made, all life would die. If we were slightly closer or farther away from the boiling blob, things wouldn't work. We are here in this tiny sliver of time that has the correct make up for us to live. Even 100 million years is insignificant to the universe.
But like wuf said, I'd love to be able to comprehend it all... it seems impossible. But that doesn't mean it's a waste of time to think about, and isn't just babble acid head talk, it just needs time. One day we may have the answers, and it could all start with one person's theory or work.
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Get your own badge! Click profile at the top and FTR Badge from the left nav.
"The Dragon in My Garage" by Carl Sagan
I say onto you, I've felt the dragon! I felt the touch of his tail, the breath of his fire, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that the dragon exists!
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wufwugy
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4-of-a-Kind
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 1,660
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Cool vid gmml.
Funny how the director of the vid decided he would get a shot out about a god or divine creator. As is usual with inserting god into this kind of issue, those doing the insertion also commit logical fallacies like God of the Gaps, Goalpost Shifting, Infinite Regression, to just name a few.
Here's a video by AndromedasWake. Very HD quality, original music, superb narration, and I 100% guarantee that there exists no better youtube original piece on the Universe. It's part 3 of a series on all things astronomy. The other two parts are great, as well. Part 4 is in the making
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_Rql...eature=related
WRT AI and self-awareness: we have no reason to believe that consciousness and egocentrism are not merely a product of our level of intelligence. This intelligence is not an elusive, special thing, but a product of our interactions and adaptation to our environment. I suspect that the more closely to human-like intelligence we make AI, the more self-aware they will become, and if they are as self-aware as humans, they will have no reason to submit to humans. We have actually seen a sort of mega primitive self awareness in AI. An example would be robots who can identify themselves and objects around them. Their awareness is still super primitive, but it's also probably the same kind of awareness that cells or sponges or plankton have.
I do hope that we can prevent AI domination from happening, and I think we can (even though we will likely choose not to for standard retarded reasons), but if I'm dead by then I won't give a fuck so bring on the Terminator IMO. OTOH, on a purely philosophical and moral level, I think that the extinction of the homo sapien species would be a great thing. We tend to disregard the fact that every single day there are billions of fellow humans suffering from starvation, rape, imprisonment, torture, depression, etc. Honestly, if I were to break it down into pure moral terms, I do not think that the suffering of one person is worth the joy of a billion people. So the more quickly the human race disappears from existence, the more quickly rampant and horrible suffering of billions will cease.
Also, another interesting concept that I think I've figured out concerning 'creation' and the ideas found in 'something from nothing' or infinite regression: I suspect that something cannot come from nothing because I suspect that nothing cannot exist.
Think about it, have we ever found anything that was nothing? Do we have any evidence whatsoever for nothing? No, we don't. I suspect there was no beginning because there cannot be a beginning because there cannot be a before the beginning because that would be a something.
Think of it this way: in order to have nothing, you have to have something because in order to determine nothingness you must have a point of reference. In our view of existence and language, we impose the concept of time. When we envision the concept of nothing it is in contrast to time (and space), but we neglect to acknowledge that time is a something. And like sixty years ago Einstein discovered that time was a dimension, which suggests that time could simply be a product of our universe, which suggests that there wouldn't have to be any before our universe since there was no time
IMO that answers the question posed to atheists, 'How does something come from nothing?' Actually, another way to respond to that question is to point out to the inquisitor that it is he who is assuming that nothing exists, for which he has no evidence, and it is he who believes in a something that had no creation (God), and so he has no leg to stand upon since existence itself could likewise have no creation
FWIW, I believe one of the primary agendas on Stephen Hawking's list right now is a mathematical explanation of why the Universe doesn't need a creation
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Latest Poker News
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KoRnholio
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05-26-2012, 03:08 PM Australia Legalized Online Poker coming up in next 6 to 12 Months
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According to an email sent out by Mark Bryan, a gaming analyst at Merrill Lynch, the Australian government plans to legalize online poker sometime in the next six to 12 months. This move will coincide ...
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