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Artificial Intelligence
by anna at 05:51 PM on September 17, 2003
You know that clunker Stephen Spielberg shot along about the time that stalker broke into his mansion and threatened to rape his frail ass? Well, this has nothing to do with that. *sips wine, curses Isabel the Whore*
As a lad I was diagnosed with terminal genius, borderline variety. I say diagnosed as it's not all it's cracked up to be. Indeed, it's more of a curse than any blessing. There's the matter of inflated expectations. We're supposed to know a lot of things. We're supposed to excel academically. Ah but there's so much we're clueless about.
I don't understand viscosity let alone viscosity breakdown. I don't know whether my motor oil should have more or less of it and if so, why. I don't know whether duel overhead cams would serve my engine better than single underhead cams would. Beats me what would constitute the optimal number of liters for said engine.
My house is full of mysterious systems and appliances. Sometimes they break and cause me great anguish. I'll fool around with them for hours and only when my family threatens to move into a hotel will I call in an expert.
In the midst of my myriad household projects I always find myself staring blankly at shelves stocked with a wide variety of flanges, couplings and such. I have no inkling which one(s) I need. If I try to explain my plight to the salesman, he stumps me with some esoteric question about brand, style or model. Same thing happens whenever I try to buy car parts.
I haven't a clue about website design. I don't know what URL stands for. Al Gore's outlandish claims aside, I have no idea where the internet came from or who put it there. I wouldn't know megahertz of RAM from a battering ram. Nor do I know why my computer continually kicks me offline citing some "illegal operation" I've performed. Hell, I don't even peruse porn for fear of cookies.
I've watched despairingly as my life savings disappeared for lack of the proper PIN-logon name combo. I don't take my antipsychotic meds cuz I can't noodle through the cryptic bottle-opening instructions. For a borderline genius I'd awfully dense. But I'm hardly to blame.
Instead of imparting some practical knowhow, we're all taught evolution as if it's gospel. Yet nagging questions linger in my mind. Darwin's theory holds that species are always mutating and that Mother Nature smiles upon a select few of the mutants. But human or animal nature nature belies that. The tendency is to either kill or shun freaks of nature. Neither increases one's odds of reproduction. How does Mr. Smarty-pants Darwin answer that?
And if we're so evolved, why do so many societies seem to be devolving into chaos, mayhem and attendant misery? From Liberia to Somalia to North Korea such conditions are the norm. Even here in the US we have areas under the de facto control of wanton criminals. Go to far Northern California and wander into a violent pot farmer's field if you doubt me on this. The police are helpless to stop these M-16-toting thugs.
Come on Darwin, you old, dead, bearded fart. Speak up.
Fact is our education system crams young heads full of useless information and then sends us out into the world hopelessly unprepared for real-life situations. And it teaches us to think too much, so we're plagued by pointless questions like those posed above.
Now, getting back to your supposed resident genius. I've got a hurricane bearing down on me. Mr. & Ms. Chilla and their two offspring will soon be swimming for their lives. Our house will be largely underwater. I've taken one step to prepare for this impending catastrophe: stocked up on wine.
comments (21)
...well, you see anna....mutations do little to increase the stock of one's genetic viabilty. intitially, quite the opposite can occur. instead, these mutations serve a primary function of enabling a life from to adapt to a new climate, or to changes within the existing one. of course eventually when they have adapted, and others have not and have perished, well then genetic viability becomes a function of pure availability, which in turn.....
by darwin at September 17, 2003 8:38 PM
it's because we interfere with natural selection. the general public requires warning labels on coffee so they'll know it might be hot. rather than allow the stupid and clueless to remove themselves from the gene pool, we let them hire lawyers and sue for millions of dollars when the world failed to protect them from their own stupidity and cluelessness.
at this point in human history, the intelligent people are the ones limiting their family size. everyone else is breeding like roaches.
is this a classist statement? why yes, it is. it's also the truth, the sad, unavoidable truth.
we're so fucking doomed.
by lizard at September 17, 2003 8:55 PM
Excellent points, both. But here's the god's honest truth: Evolution is a fine concept so long as you regard it in the collective sense. However, I don't want to be tracing my own geneology on one of those sites and run across some ape-man fourteen generations back. It's damn demeaning and yes, we are indeed doomed. Accidental alliteration!
by anna at September 18, 2003 6:40 AM
Man did not descend from apes; man descended along with apes (ie, concurrently). Common misconception.
Human evolution has moved outside the body, for the most part-- it's now mostly cultural and technological. Rather than people themselves adapting to an environment, people adapt their tools to it. Or make their environment evolve to suit them. Which will, yes, doom the environment and us when the food crops we depend on disappear because people cut down all the trees so there's more wind so the topsoil's blown away and seeds had nothing to take root in but they wouldn't have anyway because there's too much UV light, etc. etc.
How else would you regard the concept of evolution besides in the collective sense? It's not mention to be looked at on an individual level, the timescale's too short.
by Adam at September 18, 2003 8:16 AM
Don't feel bad Anna. I don't know shit either. Oh! Amy and I stocked up on wine too. There's going to be a bootycane blowing through our apartment while the hurricane goes on outside. Wooohaaaa!
by Ezy at September 18, 2003 8:59 AM
ezy, i hear the (brown) eye of the storm is nicest. find cover(s)!
by lajoie at September 18, 2003 12:58 PM
You guys be too funny. And Adam it's always cool to here from you. I know it's supposed to be thought of in a collective sense but like I said, I'm dense. I think about an ape-man in my distant lineage and I don't like it one bit.
The coffee-is-hot warning reminds me of my favorite album title. I believe the band is Fugazi. It's called....drum roll....Bricks Are Heavy.
by anna at September 18, 2003 1:17 PM
i think that was L7, who did "bricks". and all girl hard core grunge band if i remember right. but fugazi did manage the song titles "two beats off" and "Walken's syndrome", to their credit.
by lajoie at September 18, 2003 1:35 PM
Those info pamphlets on the drugs won't tell you everything, Anna, and that class of drugs in particular haven't been around long enough for all the information to come in. I'd say your best bet is to find doctors that know their stuff and keep up on the latest articles. Some doctors are real slackers. It's almost criminal. You'll be popping up with side effects all over the place and all they'll do is shrug and look confused, or assume they're unrelated.
That having been said, a lot of times the cure is still better than the disease. That is, assuming you've been correctly diagnosed. Now that's a whooooole other story.
by jean at September 18, 2003 2:11 PM
I'm sorry Jean but I can't let you go believing I'm some misdiagnosed schizophrenic. I haven't had any meds prescribed for me; I just threw that in for effect. (Proper semicolon, ET?) But it does remind me of another cool album title: Dave Davies' You're Never Alone with a Schizophrenic.
by anna at September 18, 2003 2:48 PM
i personally did not descend from apes. my ancestors are the great thunder lizards of the latter cretaceous period.
(actually they're aliens, but people look at me funny when i say that).
by lizard at September 18, 2003 4:17 PM
Ohhhhh... (nods sagely)
by jean at September 19, 2003 1:19 AM
Anna: it is? Woo. Neat. Thanks.
If I hadn't been reading a lot lately about evolution and the attacks on it by creation science, I wouldn't have said anything, but it's been on my mind.
re Bricks Are Heavy: In "So Long And Thanks For All The Fish," the Douglas Adams book, one of the characters loses it mentally after discovering that a packet of toothpicks has instructions on it, to the effect of '1. pick up toothpick; 2. insert between teeth.' The character-- Wonko the Sane-- avers, "any civilisation that had so far lost it's head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a packet of toothpicks, was no longer a civilisation in which I could live and stay sane."
Moving completely off-topic, the physical description of Wonko-- aka John Watson-- is perhaps the most beautifully, wonderfully absurd thing I've ever read: "If you took a couple of David Bowies and stuck one of the David Bowies on top of the other David Bowie, then attached another David Bowie to the end of each of the arms of the upper of the first two David Bowies and wrapped the whole business up in a dirty beach robe you would then have something which didn't exactly look like John Watson, but which those who knew him would find hauntingly familiar."
by Adam at September 19, 2003 8:10 AM
That is some cryptic imagery there. Loved it. It is....what?
by anna at September 19, 2003 8:28 AM
We've gotta kill/shun those darn freaks b'fore they outcompete us at our niche. Mind you, being human, our successors'd have to be much better at blowing things up, hence the death/x-ray eyes of B-movies yore. The modern darwinian synthesis just means that if any such mut'nts do arise, they'd have to be enough better than us to combat such protectionism.
And for the record, I was evolved from kittens. Big ones, with mean nasty teeth.
by flibble at September 21, 2003 10:51 PM
and here i thought apostraphes were supposed to shorten words.
by lajoie at September 22, 2003 11:31 AM
Nah.. they're just for decoration, kinda like tinsel. Anything's gotta be better than using vowels. Even the word sounds unpleasant, like bowels. If only "y"'s were a acceptable substitute rather than making you seem like a wanna-be-welsh.
by flibble at September 22, 2003 6:39 PM
n'ce. s'gg'st''n k'ndly t'k'n.
by lajoie at September 22, 2003 7:33 PM
yet another lingustic debate breaks out and all I have to add is that Flibble makes me laugh. Please comment more.
by anna at September 22, 2003 7:33 PM
uh oh. anna's one of the other 15 users right now. i feel like were sharing a moment. in time. together. let's get drunk.
by lajoie at September 22, 2003 7:36 PM
Dear Sirs,
Will you consider visiting my website and reading a book I've written- "How to Design a Universal Artificial Intelligence." For over ten years, I have been working on a method of semantic interpretation that applies in any situation. From this technique, I believe that an program can be constructed which will pass the Turing Test. The book is currently online, in its entirety, and I'm requesting your review of this work. This is it, this is real, this is "the" program. This is the next and last operating system.
I currently have the entire book online, in html, for anyone to read (and a paperback is available for purchase). I can promise you that this is not an amateurish attempt to make a counterpart machine. This is an approach that is based upon a method of semantic interpretation that is fail-safe. In adult form, this machine will recognize and analyze all human actions, all discrete human actions, without fail. This is a program that can break down human conversation into its elemental parts and elemental motives. This is a very different approach than that of others studying human cognition.
I would hope that you understand that I am quite knowledgeable in my profession of construction, the installation of Fire Sprinkler Systems, and that I have inadvertently studied human behavior from a very different perspective. I am, essentially, a construction worker. I do not have a college degree, just a few credits from community college. I am not a psychologist, a biologist, a mathematician, or even a programmer. I am a behaviorist. And like other behavioral psychologist I am only analyzing what is tangible, calculable. My research is based upon empirical data.
I thank You for your time, and I hope that you will consider this approach to the Turing problem.
Wil Holland
by WilHolland at December 15, 2004 11:24 PM