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1. • CommentAuthorJoker4ever
   • CommentTimeFeb 28th 2007

    
   Ok so if you read this please reply.
2. •  
     CommentAuthorniten
   • CommentTimeMar 5th 2007

    

   Haha…

   I defy you!

   Sigh...

   I like(d) the forums. I am of the opinion that this is a good way to communicate.

   Especially if all your computers are busted, and you have to get it where and when you can. Computer time, I mean. Of course. WTF did you think I meant, anyway?

3. • CommentAuthorSwaff
   • CommentTimeMar 7th 2007

    
   Well I read once in a while. I suppose we do need to revive this and other areas of Fudo.
4. • CommentAuthorFlowchart
   • CommentTimeMar 7th 2007

    
   Since strife breeds discussion in the civilized world, here are some points to get us started:
   
   Souls don't exist:
   I can prove this, since...
   
   Minds are social hallucinations:
   Which we can show since...
   
   P != NP
   Which is true since...
   
   We're Turing Machines and cannot express the polynomial conversion string from P -> NP.
5. • CommentAuthorJoker4ever
   • CommentTimeMar 8th 2007

    
   Um... I'd just like to thank Flowchart for reminding me and everybody else why nobody posts here.
6. •  
     CommentAuthorniten
   • CommentTimeMar 8th 2007

    

   I dunno…I challenge your assumption that we’re Turing machines.

   But I’d agree that souls don’t exist. So we’re mostly in agreement.

   Anyway, has it been proved that we can’t express P -> NP? Maybe if you just set your mind to it…

7. • CommentAuthorFlowchart
   • CommentTimeMar 8th 2007

    
   Niten, on what grounds do you challenge us as TMs?
   
   (P = NP || P != NP) is an open question. If it had been proved that the transform P -> NP could not exist (equivalent to inexpressible) then the question is solved, since no invertible function NP -> P => P != NP.
   
   I am in the process of constructing a framework relating complexity, time, space and energy, and some very promising consequences have made me somewhat giddy w/r/t creating the first true AI and thus last machine mankind ever has to design.
   
   ATM it looks to me as if the search for proof P != NP eludes us because we (human TMs) operate by local-greedy-search, and thus, like an Irishman's directions, we cannot get there from here, BUT more promisingly, it's starting to look as if we cannot get there from somewhere else either.
   
   Great fun.
8. • CommentAuthorSwaff
   • CommentTimeMar 9th 2007

    
   I'm with Joker on that one.
9. •  
     CommentAuthorniten
   • CommentTimeMar 17th 2007

    

   Hrm, alright…

   Let me reverse the question; what makes you think we are turing
   machines?
   Unless I misunderstand the term, it has a very specific meaning.
   It implies mathematical computation. We don’t got that, except
   at the highest level. Our thought process is some sort of a
   distributed mess, which happens throughout the brain. Any
   appearance of logic is…not accidental, not coincidental…but a
   result of long years of evolution. Co…aw, shit, there’s a term
   for that. It evolved towards logic, because logic is useful
   from a survival point of view, but logic does not underlie the
   thought process. It would seem to me that implies that the brain
   isn’t a turing machine. Correct me if (where?) I’m wrong.

   The first AI? Can you elaborate?

   So…what’re you up to these days?

10. • CommentAuthorFlowchart
    • CommentTimeMar 20th 2007

     
    Niten: Ah, yes, you thoroughly misunderstand the term.
    
    No mathematical computation is implied (though, not surprisingly, that's how we envision computation), nor is any logic required.
    
    Essentially, the Universal Turing Machine is an idealized computer, capable of any computation.
    NB: Computation is specifically defined. It has nothing to do with calculation, instead it is the manipulation of strings over some language, based on some rules.
    
    For a small & dirty primer, wiki is our friend:
    
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_language
    and
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computability_theory_%28computer_science%29
    and
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine
    
    I also recommend a quick browsing through the math:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countability
    
    What you're referring to as our "distributed mess" has nothing to do with our status as TMs. It is provable that any computational system X (whatever be its form) can be mapped to some TM Y.
    
    Next, note that we are associative networks, trained by stimulus from birth. Your nervous system (together with hormones, enzymes etc (basically the gritty bits)) is the physical instantiation of a learning network.
    
    Now, understand that you are an "open system", as in not separate from the environment you find yourself in. Visual, tactile, audio etc stimulus all inform your nervous system at all times.
    
    The final jump is to realize the language you as a TM traverses is not a spoken language but a sensory one, composed of tokens which your neural network associates with past experiences. Our spoken languages etc are a subset of the stimulus fragments a human is immersed in from birth. QED.
    
    The "first AI" is used again in a strict sense, here meaning the first machine of which we can ask "Are you alive?" and which will answer "Yes" and mean it. Essentially, this reduces to a semantic language processor (which is what we are too), only its capacity for growth is not limited by biology and structure. I have in mind a distributed system composed of nodes of interaction (think either fuzzy feedback network or quantum entangled bits), such that the information capacity of the system is limited only by available energy for creating/modifying edges in the weighted directed graph. Such an entity, once "taught to be alive" (yes, a loaded phrase), will have the capacity for immortality. Can you see why?
    
    I'm currently looking for work (spent the day at a job fair downtown), and trying to sort this stuff out sufficiently to write it all down so other people can understand it. I've filled up a few scribblers so far, but the end is not in sight.
    
    It is a difficult topic, since a serial tokenizable language (think English) is a special case of a serial continuous language (think music), which in turn is a special case of a parallel continuous language (think LOTS of music). Can we move between these? (Hah, a trick question!)
    
    But here's the question I'm trying to ultimately solve:
    What is the structure of information?
    
    Glee!
11. •  
      CommentAuthorniten
    • CommentTimeMar 24th 2007 edited

     

    Alright, fair enough….. I’ll reread that a few times and think about it a bit.

    What structure do you expect information to have? Wouldn’t information be any lack of complete chaos? Any structure at all?

    I guess it’s still governed by math, though…so it may have some kind of structure. Is that your line of thought?

    Hold on, what the fuck; my dictionary doesn’t have math in it?!?

12. • CommentAuthorFlowchart
    • CommentTimeMar 27th 2007

     
    Good news: I'm employed again for the first time in many years.
    Bad news: I'm employed again for the first time in many years.
    
    That is all.
    
    Well, actually, no, there's more.
    
    Notice that you cannot simply define information as lack of chaos. What does that mean? Realize that pure RANDOM is a very tricky concept, and that 2 truly random globs of data are as far apart from each other as they are from organization. It is difficult to quantify entropy in this informational sense, and yet, intuitively, there exists ORDER in information, and thus there must by necessity be lots of order in highly complex information.
    
    So tired.
13. • CommentAuthorreaper
    • CommentTimeMar 4th 2009

     
    Joker!
    
    I read your message! none of the others though, they were too long