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"Where do minds belong? : Intelligence could have been moving back and forth between biological beings and machine receptacles for aeons" : [^] by Caleb Scharf, "director of astrobiology at Columbia University in New York. He is the author of Extrasolar Planets and Astrobiology (2009), which won the Chambliss Astronomical Writing Award."
A wonderful antidote to the latest prognostications of Kurzveil, Hawking, Musk, et. al., that we are about to ravaged by our frankensteins-on-their-way-to-sentience.
I find this 3100 word essay a masterpiece of expository writing with scientific, cosmological, and philosophical content, and I think many of you would enjoy it (that means you: Marc Clifton ... unless you are in your "contrarian" quantum state 
As someone who has pretensions to be a writer of fiction (not just mere lies), I find the idea of an evolved race of machines making the decision to relinquish virtual immortality and choose transient biological incarnation ... fascinating. Take that one step further, as Scharf does, and consider the possibility that we (homo saps) are the "ghosts of machines past" (if so, obviously degenerate, hell-bent on self-destruction and the destruction all other species and biota ... Scharf does not say, or imply).
Aeon.co, and Quanta (quantamagazine.org), have become two websites where I regularly read articles on science, philosophy, biology, and more. For me, they represent the zenith of excellent digital publishing. Yeah, there's TED, which is so decorated with beautiful young people with spotless minds singing hosannas to a technoid future ... but, TED just doesn't play as well in my head (age ? cynicism ? stoicism ? allergy to euphoria ?).
enjoy, Bill
«The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you.» Soren Kierkegaard
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BillWoodruff wrote: I find the idea of an evolved race of machines making the decision to relinquish virtual immortality and choose transient biological incarnation ... fascinating
Apart from being completely silly, you mean.
No-one wants a "downgrade"; that's not how the universe works (don't fall for all the nonsense about entropy).
Would you swap with a dog? An ant? An amoeba?
The voice of reason: "I can do everything better than you, why should I want to be you?"
Without the voice of reason, stories are no more than fairy tales.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I would be disappointed if my post did not elicit at least one snort from a carp.
However:Mark_Wallace wrote: No-one wants a "downgrade"; that's not how the universe works
It's too bad that the late Stephen Jay Gould is not still here so he could know that a major thesis of his seminal work on evolution (post Darwin), the disappearance of complex adaptations over time when they no longer promote gene transmission (a possibility as valid as that of a ... now ... not directly functional adaptation being used for some other purpose ... what Gould referred to as the process of exaptation), is invalid according to you.Mark_Wallace wrote: Without the voice of reason, stories are no more than fairy tales.
Without imagination the voice of the heart, and the child, is not heard.
How you are able to see this essay, full of a western scientific rationality grounded in hypothesis, theory, and experiment, that everyone from Marcus Aurelius to Occam to Darwin to Russell would applaud, as being irrational: that's beyond me ! Occam's Razor would suggest you did not actually read it, or simply used it as a mirror to preen your image of yourself as "rational" in.
Stephen Jay Gould:
"Included in this "almost nothing," as a kind of geological afterthought of the last few million years, is the first development of self-conscious intelligence on this planet—an odd and unpredictable invention of a little twig on the mammalian evolutionary bush. Any definition of this uniqueness, embedded as it is in our possession of language, must involve our ability to frame the world as stories and to transmit these tales to others. If our propensity to grasp nature as story has distorted our perceptions, I shall accept this limit of mentality upon knowledge, for we receive in trade both the joys of literature and the core of our being." from "Literary Bias on the Slippery Slope," in "Bully for Brontosaurus."
«The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you.» Soren Kierkegaard
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BillWoodruff wrote: what Gould referred to as the process of exaptation), is invalid according to you.
Not at all.
The very basis of natural evolution (or "shotgun evolution", or whatever you will), whether universal or genetic, is that many branches will occur, and most will fail.
And being the best at something doesn't mean being the most likely to survive -- many's the class that's died out because it adapted too well to doing too few things (efficient breeders, for example, have often been known to eat themselves to extinction, by consuming all their resources).
I doubt very much that you would find a class or species that has devolved, however. You might find that several more advanced branches died out, leaving only lesser branches, but no species goes backward down the chain.
Just look at a list of the "fittest". Earthworms and grass stand high on the list, but no-one and nothing wants to devolve into an earthworm or grass.
Viewing ourselves as the most perfect beings, which every other animal, plant, or robot aspires to becoming, is pure arrogant narcissism -- and building rationalisations in an effort to make that belief credible doesn't fall far short of maniacal religious fervour.
BillWoodruff wrote: Without imagination the voice of the heart, and the child, is not heard.
Without imagination, all you can write is cr@p stories. What's your point? That has nothing at all to do with what I said -- and the last person who called me unimaginative ended up eating their words very shamefacedly. As did the one before that. Etc.
If you wish to write children's fairy stories -- all imagination and no common dog -- go 'ed; but even children hate it when they read something that makes no sense to them.
If, however, you wish people to involve themselves in your stories, you have to make them believe in the stories, so the stories have to make sense.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Thank you for sharing, Bill! A very enjoyable read, especially the first two thirds. His main idea, presented in the last third, while an interesting thought, I think he should and could have easily discussed it in more detail. Wouldn't there be new sources of energy, rendering a bad energy efficiency irrelevant, if still existent? Wouldn't a human brain with a machine body and a co-processor be a more logical choice for evolution if the energy efficiency had to be improved, not requiring putting themselves into cosmic isolation again? etc.
cheers, Sascha
If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't. — Lyall Watson
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He and his mother took on false identities to hide from the Nazis, who invaded their country in 1944 and sent hundreds of thousands of Jews to concentration camps. During the Hungarian Uprising against Soviet control, Grove escaped to the United States. He studied chemical engineering at the City College of New York, and got his Ph.D at the University of California at Berkeley in 1963.
We need a wall.
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regerteast wrote: During the Hungarian Uprising against Soviet control, Grove escaped to the United States
Except most Hungarians would say he ran away. Mrs Wife's late father didn't leave, he stood on the ramparts in Esztergom protesting against the Soviets and a good friend was shot standing next to him. He later spent time in prison for opposing the occupation.
veni bibi saltavi
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Quote: Except most Hungarians would say he ran away
I for one am very grateful that he came to the USA where he made a *major* contribution to the welfare of our republic. And he certainly had far better opportunities here than in Hungary under the communists. It was a win for the USA, a win for Andy and a loss for the communists. My heart pumps chocolates for the communists!
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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RIP Gróf András István, born in Budapest, dontchaknow.
veni bibi saltavi
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if they quit, aggressively persue WRONGFUL RESIGNATION in order to inspire fear. This is the biggest BANG FOR YOUR BUCK in cost savings. But it's just my opnion. In the realm of vertical to horizontal displacement promotions of salary in the paradigm given that in reality issues of 1) Trust 2) Employee Engagement 3) Contributions Accept and 4) Work/Life Belance are paramount in itself that a gross salary disposition violets in itself 1) IF THE SALARY IS BELOW MARKET VALUE, AN ISSUE OF TRUST EXISTS, domino folling into 2) ENGAGEMENT LOWERED DUE TO LOWERED TRUST, to 3-> contributions lower due to effortless trustless engagementedloss resulting to the big: Pay a reasonably fair market value, they can CHOOSE to be there,
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Kent Sharkey wrote: But "happiness hero"? Someone needs a slap.
Not at all. My current job title is Sadness Villain, so it only makes sense that the universe balance itself.
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Assorted largish chunks of JavaScript development (NPM, Node.js, Gulp, babel, probably many more) were just broken because one person decided to stop working on one small module (that left pads text).[^]. Fortunately, it didn't take long for a fix, but it's funny how we sometimes find houses of cards very comfortable until the wind picks up.
From the thread:
Quote: wait nope, there's literally no way to fix this for older versions. you've basically broken every single version of babel. you can't republish over already published packages. babel relies on line-numbers with a fixed version and line-numbers relies on left-pad with a fixed version.
TTFN - Kent
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The reason he did so is because NPM took control of one of his packages because a law firm with the same name wanted them to. NPM is getting a LOT of flak for doing that, as is the law firm.
Seriously, how many people will confuse a JS module with a law firm. Those lawyers need to be put out of business.
What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?
The metaphorical solid rear-end expulsions have impacted the metaphorical motorized bladed rotating air movement mechanism.
Do questions with multiple question marks annoy you???
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I thought it was software company that started the issue? i.e. Kik messenger, used some heavy handed lawyers to stop the use of kik as a name in another software project. NPM folded under the legal challenge and removed the kik code so the user nuked all of his NPM stuff including left pad.
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What do you call a busload of lawyers going over a cliff?
A good start
What's brown and black and looks good on a lawyer?
A doberman.
Oh oh, one more...
How do you get a lawyer out of a tree?
Cut the rope. 
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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It was Kik Messenger that objected to the authors use of kik - leading the author to take down all of his packages when npm removed kik. Source[^]
This space for rent
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That's enough to bring me out of retirement! 
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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Too bad I do not like beer. Like wine, but really doubt I have the palate for a wine taster
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Drink wine of different colour
Vomit onto palette
Sell it for abstract modern art.
The image of a weather angel appeared over the northeastern US. The strong winds were produced by the angel hovering overhead.
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Go for it!
I'd apply myself, but since I quit guzzling gallons of beer every day a few years back, I find that it gives me heartburn. Now I guzzle gallons of scotch, instead, and have no trouble with heartburn, so if you hear of a similar position with a scotch distiller, I'll be very interested.
Will Rogers never met me.
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Quote: Tempe, AZ. 526 S Mill Ave. March 26th
Well, now... 
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