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Author Topic: Space Thread  (Read 366695 times)

Graknorke

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1275 on: October 18, 2015, 08:34:34 pm »

Surely the biggest issue with brain uploading is the nature of brain activity. It's not like a programmable computer, the software is very closely tied to the hardware, so computing the same processes on anything else would require either a general understanding of how the logical system works as a whole (unlikely to ever happen), or to simulate the physical system directly, which I can only assume is by far less computationally efficient than the impossible alternative.
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Starver

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1276 on: October 19, 2015, 07:24:13 am »

This discussion of perpetual nutrition reminds me of The Manna Machine.  An 'Ancient Astronauts' explanation of the biblical survival of the the Moses and the Israelites, fleeing across the desert.

Pretty much total bunkum (IMO... others disagree1... [edit: i.e. disagree with me]), but it solves some of the problems of using pure solar power for lifecycle (or electronic brain!) powering, during the long drift between stars.  (Introduces others, but engineering is often such a compromise...)


1 Note the disingenuous (or credulous) nature of that article.  Two adjacent questions "But how did Moses acquire an atomic plant? And what became of it?" are followed by "The answer... [to the latter question only, not bothering to address the first problem..]", which is taken as plausible.  And, later "Can there be two devices [of this kind]?" - Obviously not, therefore they are the same, therefore they both existed.  And, therefore, having existed, it came from aliens or UFOs, but he chooses to believe that it was more likely angels. QED! <ahem>
« Last Edit: October 19, 2015, 08:21:41 am by Starver »
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Reelya

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1277 on: October 19, 2015, 07:48:57 am »

I don't like your linked debunker's theory either. That angels did it rather than aliens. But you linked Uri Geller, a celebrity psychic as your source, so you shouldn't be surprised that it's bullshit. He's the source of the "psychic spoon benders" trope. Basically a stage magician who claims to have real magic powers.

There are better theories about manna. e.g. dried tree sap, and/or bug feces from feeding on the same trees.
« Last Edit: October 19, 2015, 07:55:08 am by Reelya »
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TempAcc

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1278 on: October 19, 2015, 08:08:23 am »

Or locusts :v
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Reelya

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1279 on: October 19, 2015, 08:15:32 am »

The problem is that the ancients knew what locusts were. They would have just said God sent them locust snacks. The sap actually condenses on the ground overnight with the dew, and forms flakes similar to described for manna in the blibe.

Starver

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1280 on: October 19, 2015, 08:19:15 am »

I don't like your linked debunker's theory either. That angels did it rather than aliens. But you linked Uri Geller, a celebrity psychic as your source, so you shouldn't be surprised that it's bullshit. He's the source of the "psychic spoon benders" trope. Basically a stage magician who claims to have real magic powers.

There are better theories about manna. e.g. dried tree sap, and/or bug feces from feeding on the same trees.
You misread my intended narrative, there, although I'll admit I didn't make it easy on you, the way I structured it.

I call bunkum (am on the side of the debunkers), but for the sake of balance I add a link where Uri Geller disagrees about it being bunkum, but (in believing it to exist) goes further/off-at-a-right-angle into actual Angels-territory.


[Gone back and qualified "IMO, others disagree" with "i.e. disagree with me".  You'd read it as "IMO, and others also disagree, like this notorious kook I'm linking...", I know.]
« Last Edit: October 19, 2015, 08:27:14 am by Starver »
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Nick K

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1281 on: October 19, 2015, 08:50:18 am »

To my knowledge, there's no historical evidence that the ancient Israelites were ever enslaved in Egypt, so I don't think we need to worry too much about scientific explanations for Manna.
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i2amroy

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1282 on: October 19, 2015, 12:07:14 pm »

To my knowledge, there's no historical evidence that the ancient Israelites were ever enslaved in Egypt, so I don't think we need to worry too much about scientific explanations for Manna.
This right here. We've reached the point where even the Israelite historians are claiming that they were never actually enslaved by Egypt ala Moses. :P That entire part of the bible is all mixed up with anachronisms, disagreeing numbers, etc. as well as suffering from a huge lack of historical evidence (and at least a fair bit of historical evidence that deliberately contradicts stuff in that part of the bible).
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Reelya

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1283 on: October 19, 2015, 12:58:48 pm »

The slaves part was complete bullshit. But if you read the account of Joseph carefully, you notice that Joseph systematically takes control of food/money/livestock/land/people. The last bit of that is when he herds the Egyptians off the productive lands and into cites (i.e. concentation camps where their movements can be controlled, and they will now be slaves in exchange for food). But that treatment is only dished out to native Egyptians. Meanwhile he hands out the best lands to his invading countryfolk. It's basically a textbook perfect account of an invasion and colonialism.

So, looking for "enslaved Jews" of course is going to be a bullshit excercise, because that's not what the bible even says. You have to look for conquerers who were semites from the Canaan region.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyksos

^ These guys fit the bill pretty well. They were almost certainly of semitic Canaanite origins, settlers came into Egypt over a long period, historians even account a plague that weakened the native Egyptian dynasties, which lead to them taking over the place. Additionally, their attested capital was Avaris. And this seems to be the exact location of the "Land of Goshen" refered to in the bible. Obviously this was before "Jews" were a thing. It's possible that the stories in the bible aren't all about the Jews, but they're from pre-existing Canaanite stories.
« Last Edit: October 19, 2015, 01:09:42 pm by Reelya »
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LordBaal

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1284 on: October 19, 2015, 01:19:22 pm »

And all this (albeit very interesting indeed) have something to with with SPACE because..... we are planning to send jewish slaves to construct pyramids on the moon?
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Il Palazzo

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1285 on: October 19, 2015, 01:22:59 pm »

And all this (albeit very interesting indeed) have something to with with SPACE because..... we are planning to send jewish slaves to construct pyramids on the moon?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Utz53zoJGTM
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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TheBiggerFish

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1286 on: October 19, 2015, 02:06:43 pm »

And all this (albeit very interesting indeed) have something to with with SPACE because..... we are planning to send jewish slaves to construct pyramids on the moon?
Potato!
* TheBiggerFish ollies outy (into SPACE!)
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jaked122

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1287 on: October 19, 2015, 02:32:40 pm »

Now imagine that instead of modelling a physical neuron, we create an approximation of one using a neural network that has been trained to approximate a neuron. This can be done over time for every single type of neuron, this is a slow method, but I cannot imagine it being slower than physically modelling a neuron. Physical modelling is difficult enough that even a naive implementation of matrix multiplication, as would happen in this "neural" network in O(n^3) would probably outpace it significantly.  I think that this model might resemble a multi-in-multi-out version of a perceptron, with some sort of approximating function to determine synaptic reconnections and topological changes. The overall network layout may very well approach something like a Convolutional-Neural-Network, or CNN. CNNs are the sort of network used by the google image searching functions. They are very interesting and have a lot of improvements to be made on them before I'd trust them to simulating me. But I trust that ensemble methods built to hybridise this network type with additional machine learning methods such as decision trees or any other sort of model that you'd like.


Alternatively we can have a genetic algorithm if you'd prefer, that would model more processes in the brain and eventually lead up to a high fidelity simulation using the minimum(this is what evolutionary algorithms tend towards) amount of complexity to achieve a level of realism. This is a tricky method to write because sometimes genetic algorithms end up finding optimal solutions for only their fitness function, so these minds may have various quirks that may prohibit them from being... normal I guess.


Fuck all knows if these models can handle learning in a coherent fashion, but there's no reason that we can't just make a electronic equivalent of a neuron that wouldn't follow the natural processes reasonably well.


I just know that if I am offered the chance to create a drastically flawed upload using one of these methods, I would watch the output very closely. I just know that these would run more efficiently than an actual brain simulation. I'm okay with that because I can't guarantee that computers capable of that are going to exist for a very long time. I am also hesitant to embrace that methodology because simulating reality is inherently less efficient than using approximating functions such as the ones I described before, as running an emulation of a Turing machine on a Turing machine tends to just add a constant value multiplier to time and space complexity while offering very few benefits. So what that they might not have the same qualia? Just so long as the output for a given input approximates the output I would give in that situation, I.E. I can predict its actions and it can predict mine(Thus the Upload and I are very similar), I don't think that it matters terribly much.


As for the organic computers that have been brought up earlier, I trust them even less to hold up to the rigors of interstellar space.
Organic computers will fail in unpredictable and trivially non-correctable ways in an environment rich in hard radiation; among these methods of failure will be cancer. Uncontrollable reproduction is the failure case that I imagine for a biological computer travelling through a radiation-heavy medium such as interstellar space. Alternatively, it would end up with the same sort of neurological damage that certain acute radiation poisonings cause, which is potentially even worse because some of the people affected in such a way by radiation damage ended up becoming very aggressive and incoherent before dying.




As for Jewish Space Slaves, or JSS... I don't see why they'd need to be Jewish. I mean, they can be, but if we're going to embark into the business of Space Slavery(tm), we're going to do it in a 21st century way; free of selection due to religion, ethnicity, or any other conceivable prejudices other than "Are they suitable for the work of space slaves?". This means that while we can be called "Space Slavers"(tm), they won't be able to call us racists or bigots.

Starver

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1288 on: October 19, 2015, 02:43:39 pm »

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Going to the moon?



(Also, emulating each neuron with an artificial neural network?  Yeah, I'm of the conclusion that the best emulator for a brain is a brain.  Any actual layer of abstraction is going to be significantly inefficient.)
« Last Edit: October 19, 2015, 02:45:22 pm by Starver »
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jaked122

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1289 on: October 19, 2015, 04:10:07 pm »

(Also, emulating each neuron with an artificial neural network?  Yeah, I'm of the conclusion that the best emulator for a brain is a brain.  Any actual layer of abstraction is going to be significantly inefficient.)
Neural networks are usually just matrices of various sorts that get multiplied together with an input. They don't work on noncontinuous functions very well, and I'd imagine that the brain has a lot of nonlinear effects, so breaking down the brain into 10^12  neural networks makes sense to me.


I've run simulations for things like molecular mechanics, and what people want is a quantum-accurate(with effects that are not entanglement) representations of the brain, down to the molecular level. That's absurd.


And I don't believe that we'd capture all the quirky things going on at molecular levels if we simply threw mathematicians at it, so I instead propose we use neural networks, which properly configured are very good at emulating quirky things.


Also most slow neural networks have thousands of "neurons", but the ones I envision for this brain simulation are much smaller than that.
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