The Singularity is Far: A Neuroscientist's View

boingboing ^ | 7/14/11 | David J. Linden

[Westbrook]

We are Borg.

You will be assimilated.

Resistance is futile.

[marktwain]

It is an interesting take. Kurzweil isn't wrong, it is just that his timing is off.

As we are dealing in the realms of predicting future progress, I am glad to have another researcher put forward his input.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Individualism is irrelevant.
Conservatism is irrelevant.

Your personal and technological unigueness will be added to the Collective.

[tired&retired]

Excellent article.... However, they are chasing butterflies they will never catch in looking for memories stored within the body.

Quote...”I am a neurobiologist and I have spent the past 28 years engaged in studies of the cellular and molecular basis of memory and cognition.”

Give me one hour in a lab under scientific scrutiny and I will prove that memories are not stored in the body, but are anchored in the body. I've been to the neuroscience symposiums and listened to Kandel, LeDoux, and others present about memory storage. Memories are no more stored in the brain than the music you hear coming from a radio is stored within it!

I do a simple experiment that reads people's memories with a methodology that is easily verifiable. It bypasses their critical senses and the critical mind, thus eliminating the biased variable of perception influencing results. It is a cause and effect measurable stimulus/response technique. I never considered psychology a science(even though I also have a degree in it)prior to discovering this methodology as study results could only show correlation.

When I stand ten feet from a blindfolded person who has ear plugs in, do not say anything or physically touch their body, I move my hand through their stored memories and their body moves in specific patterns which indicate who the memory involved, how they responded to the event, and approximately how old they were when the event happened. It's instant depth psychology. Forget the years of psychoanalysis. This technique is pretty accurate with memories since conception.

Memories are stored in fields around the body, in specific patterns that are easily read. I've been doing it for twenty years. Took me this long to figure out the neural pathways to understand how it works.

[hopespringseternal]

In every field of human endeavor you see this disconnect between the people who know and are doing the work and those that sit through a lecture or two half asleep and think they have enough of an understanding to predict the future.

It's the "A" students' dilemma living in a world run by "C" students.

Where science has gone terribly off course it is because the "C" students took over and started making wild extrapolations with limited data and knowledge. Take global warming (cooling) and evolution (just try to find any work on the mechanisms of biochemical evolution).

Both took a limited set of data at a time when our fundamental understanding was (is) limited and extrapolated to absurd conclusions.

[tired&retired]

Quote from article.. “For example, we now know that chemical modification of DNA through a process called methylation can alter its structure and the way in which it interacts with a set of regulatory/structural proteins called histones, thereby silencing the expression of certain genes. This is one of several mechanisms that controls the regulation of gene expression or “epigenetics”. Such insights have explained a whole set of puzzles and are a major step forward in our understanding of genetics.”

This whole field is fascinating. Randy Jirtle, here at Duke University is a leading researcher in this area. In 2003, his research with the agouti mice showed how to reverse DNA mutation that corrected defects for several generations of offspring in research mice that were genetically predisposed to obesity, cancer and diabetes.

Here is an interesting link.. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/epigenetic-mice.html

There was a NOVA special on his research a few years ago.

[ngat]

“When I stand ten feet from a blindfolded person who has ear plugs in, do not say anything or physically touch their body, I move my hand through their stored memories and their body moves in specific patterns which indicate who the memory involved, how they responded to the event, and approximately how old they were when the event happened. It’s instant depth psychology. Forget the years of psychoanalysis. This technique is pretty accurate with memories since conception”

I don’t understand how you “ move your hand through their stored memories “ . Where can I find documention about your experiment?

[Westbrook]

Fascinating.

Do you have a white paper or dissertation on this methodology?

If so, is it published?

I would be very interested in reading it.

[Westbrook]

> I don’t understand how you “ move your hand through their
> stored memories “ . Where can I find documention about your
> experiment?

I think he means that he simply moves his hand through the space surrounding the blindfolded, ear-plugged subject.

Is that correct, t&t?

[hfr]

The moment of the cosmic reset:

"But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." (2 Peter 3:10-13)

"And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful." (Revelation 21:4-5)

Anchored or stored: "and the elements shall melt with fervent heat", " . . . all these things shall be dissolved . . . " (2 Peter 3:11a) , " . . . for the former things are passed away. " (Revelation 21:4b)

The details of personality and how it is related to the immortal soul are obscure to say the least. However it is interesting to note what the Bible has to say about the end of the present world and the creation of a new world. There seems to be a wiping out of some aspects of what is "in" the brain ( like synaptic connections and the individual electro/chemistry that has something to do with personality ) when the brain with all the elements of the cosmos "shall melt with fervent heat".

Then there is this: "Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. " (1 Corinthians 13:8-13)

Personality elements like "Tongues"(= language), they shall cease; "Knowledge" shall vanish away.

What is it that remains? Faith, hope, and love which is the greatest of the three. Those are the essential character of Christ (God is Love) that is imparted to us in salvation. The "Beloved Disciple", John, said this, "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." (1 John 3:2) When we "see" Jesus we will be transformed into His likeness. The Apostle Paul said "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality." (1 Corinthians 15:52-53) Changed in the "twinkling of an eye", instantaneous change into the likeness of Jesus.

And it's instructive to recall that God said to Moses, "And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live. " (Exodus 33:20) To see the face of God destroys the flesh, but the redeemed shall see Jesus as He is and be instantly changed into the His likeness and put on the newness of life immortal. That is the blessed hope of Christians. And it is through the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that we are redeemed, "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." (1 John 1:7)

[givemELL]

Just imagine nanobot politics, not using nanobot thought at all.

[Bigg Red]

Good points. This is priceless:

It’s the “A” students’ dilemma living in a world run by “C” students.

[ken21]

we will all be obamabots and romneybots.

si.

[Bigg Red]

Please ping me with the answer about where one might read this. Thanks.

[Matchett-PI]

bttt --For your reading pleasure:

.. Myths of the Tenured

<>

Animals do not live in the cosmos, only in their nervous systems

<>

This problem of the left hijacking science was recognized by.. Michael Polanyi, as early as the mid-1940s.

"Science is and must be exciting, since it relies on largely unspecifiable clues which can be sensed, mobilized and integrated only by a passionate response to their hidden meaning.... This is the unaccountable element which enters into science at its source and vitally participates throughout, even in its final result. In science this element has been called intuition." --Michael Polanyi, Scientist and Philosopher

"....In an essay entitled The Unaccountable Element in Science, he explains how it is impossible in the practice of science to replace unspecifiable acts of personal judgment -- AKA, intuition -- with the operation of explicit reasoning, as if our minds operated like machines. This applies not only to scientific discovery, but to "the very holding of scientific knowledge."

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Gee, will it kill him in minutes, hours, days, weeks or months?

[darth]

I am inherently skeptical, but your post is fascinating.

Any further material available?

BTW, I have read The Singularity Is Near by Kurzweil. I concluded that he is an optimist and is not considering the many negative forces that slow economic and scientific progress.

That said, I think that his projections of AI are spot on. It’s just that such research is not all aimed at the betterment of the human race.

I guarantee that governments, e.g., China, large corporations, and wealthy individuals are RACING to develop the next generation of AI.

Imagine the implications of superfast human-like AI as it is applied to cyberwarfare, engineering problems, market trading algorithms, etc.

This research will be motivated by the drive for power and wealth, as always.

[Matchett-PI]

"...And it's instructive to recall that God said to Moses, 'And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.'"

"...Now, what is so interesting about this is that, at the top of that mountain, man doesn't discover an equation, or a singularity, or subatomic particle. Rather, what he discovers is another... face

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks LibWhacker. Ray Kurzweil ping.