So, Project Virgle is dead.
Scottyoman
a reason to stay a member?
Bryan Bishop
> I have noticed, that now this is just spam. Can anyone convince me of
> a reason to stay a member?
Project Virgle is not dead. I was talking with John Scalzi and some JPL
guys today about it. Remember, we told you about the OpenVirgle mailing
list, where there's a large amount of discussion on what's going on re:
programming and so on, if you want to help out that'd be awesome.
- Bryan
________________________________________
http://heybryan.org/
Engineers: http://heybryan.org/exp.html
irc.freenode.net #hplusroadmap
Paul D. Fernhout
those, even for my own work, as learning opportunities, see the end here,
citing Drew McDermott in, "Artificial Intelligence meets Natural Stupidity".
"PataPata critique: the good, the bad, the ugly"
http://patapata.sourceforge.net/critique.html
"The standard for such research should be a partial success, but AI as a
field is starving for a few carefully documented failures. Anyone can think
of several theses that could be improved stylistically and substantively by
being rephrased as reports on failures. I can learn more by just being told
why a technique won't work than by being made to read between the lines." "
Project Virgle, an April Fool's joke, as originally proposed had IMHO these
fundamental problems:
* A focus purely on Mars. Mars is interesting for tourism or habitating a
surface area less than Earth's, but it take a year or more to get there. The
better alternative is the asteroids. Some Earth-crossing asteroids are
literally accessible in days of flight, and if they were rebuilt a space
habitations can produce potentially a surface area thousands of times that
of Earth's. But Mars has a lot of psychological pull from sci-fi, so as a
compromise, and effort supporting any kind of space habitation (Moon,
Asteroids, Mars, moons of other planets, Oort cloud, and on Earth as well)
See:
http://groups.google.com/group/virgle/web/related-ideas-to-project-virgle
* A mention of a half-hearted "Open Source Planet" idea
http://www.google.com/virgle/opensource.html
which should have gone all the way. That is, Google & Virgin proposed a
corporation that would own all the patents and copyrights Virgle employees
made and sell them back to Earth, making Virglelites effectively dependent
on the good graces of that corporation. The alternative is such things being
freely shared with everyone anywhere, transitioning to a post-scarcity
economy of abundance, with a guaranteed income for every citizen, see:
"The Triple Revolution" (1964)
http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm
"Manna and the Australia Project"
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna5.htm
There is essentially in Virgle as proposed a confusion of being an
indentured servant (to Google) with being a citizen (of a free and
prosperous space habitation). I posted an essay on why the corporate serfdom
idea was misguided:
http://groups.google.com/group/virgle/msg/081919dbba30d1f7
"It was writing and reading "two weeks notice" that eventually made me
realize it would never work. Again: "So, when you get "fired" at Virgle --
it's out the airlock without a helmet? "
* Ignoring the rapid evolution in materials and computer technology towards
a technological singularity which will make all such efforts easier in the
future even in a short as twenty years or so.
http://groups.google.com/group/virgle/msg/68cb2b3234844d5d
"But I get the feeling that neither Zerzan or Hawken perhaps grasps the full
implications of the technological dimension from a broader "Singularity"
perspective (beyond simply being greener). It's in a sense the difference
between "doing more with less", and "doing more with more". :-) As I
mentioned previously, I'd expect that with increasing technology, over time
the amount of effort required for universal abundance is shrinking, and the
amount of free time people are willing to give away would be growing. At
some point those two curves cross, and after that point in time, universal
abundance through a post-scarcity economy (however it is organized in
detail) is very possible, even if it is not done beforehand for other
reasons. And opportunities grow from there (including ones beyond the
"market"). So those trends eventually make possible a free Project Virgle.
So, it is both the cultural evolution towards increasing charity and
compassion and freedom (Hawken's trends) as well as the improvements in
automation (Moravec, Kurzweil, Vinge, and so on to various
singularity-related ideas) that make an abundant future for all more and
more possible. A tremendously abundant future possibly -- depending on what
our values are in implementing it."
* Ignoring many of the useful ideas in space habitation are also useful for
making Earth prosperous and sustainable, and so a dual-use focus on Earthly
problems is more prudent and more sustainable:
http://groups.google.com/group/virgle/msg/74aaf5422b3d581f
"In general, I'd suggest that path to people here interested in space
settlement -- find something (free :-) to do (no matter how small) which you
care about which both has on Earth benefits and *also* is a step to learning
to live in space"
* A focus on proposing a launch and mission rather than what Google in good
at (organizing information and connecting people to support launches or
mission design), as well as ignoring coordinating somehow with all the other
ongoing efforts on related technology.
"Mining the Cognitive Surplus for OpenVirgle"
http://groups.google.com/group/virgle/msg/b835fa404c08c1b3
Nonetheless, some good came of it with the OpenVirgle project spinoff (Bryan
mentioned). There was also getting me off my duff to post some old stuff
here and also finally make an OSCOMAK wiki.
http://www.oscomak.net/wiki/Main_Page
That OSCOMAK web site is in the spirit of "organizing information and
connecting people" but frankly I'm probably not as good at that compared to
what Google could do if they put multiple people on that. :-) Still, the
power of the "cognitive surplus" will dwarf even that -- but it would help
to, like with Wikipedia, have several full-timers for a couple of years to
seed such a system till it reaches critical mass and can engage people. That
was the subject of a pre-proposal to NASA a decade ago (not funded, but also
not pursued aggressively by me).
Regrettably, some other obligations (as well as some distractions, including
generalizing my advice here to high school seniors into a book an
"post-scarcity Princeton") have kept me from doing more on OSCOMAK and
OpenVirgle lately. But I've been in this for the long haul, so delays of
months here or there don't worry me. We'll get all those places eventually
-- if we don't blow ourselves up first or worse. :-(
"DARPA Progam Manager Position on Self-Replicating technology"
http://groups.google.com/group/virgle/msg/64c7c2fb922a4bcf
And maybe within 50 years or less with the way technology is advancing, so
within the lifetime of many posting here.
Google, Virgin, NASA, or anyone else could advance the space habitation
cause related to Project Virgle by putting several people on an OSCOMAK-like
project for a couple of years to build that critical mass IMHO.
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
Doram
suffering from similar problems, but has also gotten bigger than just
a Google group. Currently, there are other resources that we are
trying to concentrate on, since we lost our manager for that group, it
has reduced our options for protecting or controlling it. Worse yet,
Google Groups in general seem to be suffering from attacks by
superusers/hackers who are spamming and porning up pages all across
the service. Please see our website ( http://www.openvirgle.net/ ),
which we _can_ protect, for links to other OpenVirgle resources.
Doram
On Aug 17, 12:56 am, Bryan Bishop <kanz...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday 15 August 2008, Scottyoman wrote:
>
> > I have noticed, that now this is just spam. Can anyone convince me of
> > a reason to stay a member?
>
> Project Virgle is not dead. I was talking with John Scalzi and some JPL
> guys today about it. Remember, we told you about the OpenVirgle mailing
> list, where there's a large amount of discussion on what's going on re:
> programming and so on, if you want to help out that'd be awesome.
>
> http://openvirgle.net/
>
> - Bryan
Bryan Bishop
> I agree with Bryan. Project OpenVirgle is still alive, though
> suffering from similar problems, but has also gotten bigger than just
> a Google group. Currently, there are other resources that we are
> trying to concentrate on, since we lost our manager for that group,
> it has reduced our options for protecting or controlling it. Worse
> yet, Google Groups in general seem to be suffering from attacks by
> superusers/hackers who are spamming and porning up pages all across
> the service. Please see our website ( http://www.openvirgle.net/ ),
> which we _can_ protect, for links to other OpenVirgle resources.
Another quick update. I'm working on a graphical 'storymaker' for linear
construction of designs and system schematics at the moment in a
javascript ui. I found myself in posession of a wonderful dataset that
facilitates this, so this might be of some interest. It's not quite the
simulator, of course.
- Bryan
________________________________________
Paul D. Fernhout
list owner for OpenVirgle so we can make changes to prevent spamming?
Way to go Doram! How did you get rid of the spam banner on the main
OpenVirgle page? Or did someone else do that?
http://groups.google.com/group/openvirgle
--Paul Fernhout
BD
it. I need the author's name and I can clean in bulk. I also made Paul
and admin. So he'll be able to help out as well.
And now me goes back to work.
Best regards.
Kasey Perkins
Paul D. Fernhout
haven for Spam and malware. :-(
--Paul Fernhout