Hofstadter “discussion” six.

[Don Stockbauer]

AI means smart computers. Now, your strongest systems are humans in synergism with machines. AI is fine as long as we’re not trying to make completely mechanical systems. We should be aiming at making machines smarter so they can work in synergism with humans better. IMHO.

[Don Stockbauer]

I think true AI will be achieved when dictation software is 100 percent accurate.

[Don Stockbauer]

The best way to detect extraterrestrial civilizations is for the Earth to become a stronger tool for detecting them via some mechanism.

[Don Stockbauer]

What’s wrong with Trump colluding with Russia? Russia is populated by
Homo sapiens, isn’t it?

[Don Stockbauer]

If one could show that all human and machine communication has the form of neural network communication, wouldn’t that prove the Global Brain right there?

[Don Stockbauer]

I wonder if the global brain model is correct?

[Don Stockbauer]

So, the more the global brain is discussed the more self-awareness it achieves, and greater self-awareness translates into greater intelligence, just as humans have greater self-awareness than chimpanzees and are thus more intelligent.

[Don Stockbauer]

What the global brain needs to become stronger and stronger is discussion of it.

[Don Stockbauer]

Is your mind a tool?

[Don Stockbauer]

Hunter gatherers were really primitive people, but think about this. You go to your office, you hunt for information, you gather it together and put it in a report for your boss - you’re a hunter gatherer. Only the level of the content has risen.

[Don Stockbauer]

I am the modren man.

With parts made in Japan.

[Don Stockbauer]

All this talk about illegal immigration, why is it that when you look at the photographs of the entire Earth as seen from space you don’t see any national boundaries except maybe for all those trees they cut down between the USA and Canada.

[Don Stockbauer]

I’m a cowboy,
On a steel horse I ride.
I’m wanted,
Dead or Alive.

[Don Stockbauer]

Self – organization does the work for you.

[Don Stockbauer]

What’s really going on, with the global brain and everything, makes Science Fiction look like a Dick and Jane story.

[Don Stockbauer]

Let me please introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste.

[Don Stockbauer]

(Your erudite comment here.)

[Don Stockbauer]

I can see the Belt of Venus.

[Don Stockbauer]

I can see the jockstrap of Jupiter.

[Don Stockbauer]

So is your glass half empty, or half full, or the excluded middle?

Or maybe one quarter full, and three quarters empty,....infinity.

[Don Stockbauer]

There’s one area in which people have infinite power over you and you’re helpless: the ability to leave you.

[Don Stockbauer]

I’d love to change the world,

but I don’t know what to do.

So I leave it up to you.

[Don Stockbauer]

Hofstadter cannot consistently assert this statement.

[Don Stockbauer]

One could possibly liken the task of improvising a six-part fugue to the playing of 60 simultaneous blind games of chess, and winning them all. To improvise an 8 part fugue is really beyond human capability.

- GEB

beyond human capability?

Famous last words.

[Don Stockbauer]

Boy, things are sure getting complex, aren’t they? But then, complexity is intelligence, isn’t it?

[Don Stockbauer]

With every mistake we must surely be learning.

[Don Stockbauer]

How can one decide what to post when there are a near infinity of statements one could post?

[Don Stockbauer]

Is Maria there?

[Don Stockbauer]

What a paradox. You complain to your friend that he or she is not talking to you enough. That makes them not want to talk to you.

[Don Stockbauer]

My favorite part of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey isn’t that little baby feller there at the end but it’s when Bowman uses the hands of the Betty to open the airlock. A refreshing example of mechanics beating electronics.

[Don Stockbauer]

Will so-called “super intelligent” AIs be protected against someone opening a back panel and sloshing in a gallon of water.

[Don Stockbauer]

There’s a movie where space aliens attacked a truckload full of chickens being taken to market and brings them back to their home planet for biological research. It’s called Poultry Heist.

[Don Stockbauer]

There was a movie where dishonest grocers injected water into the meat they sold to increase its weight. It was called “Altered Steaks.”

[Don Stockbauer]

Things are sure getting complicated, aren’t they? Does complication translate into intelligence?

[Don Stockbauer]

“As I ramshack their homes they want to shake my hand.”

[Don Stockbauer]

100 billion stars in the galaxy. 100 billion galaxies in the universe. So if we go extinct, what’s the impact on the universe? Kind a like well we’re gonna have to let you go. there’s 1000 people waiting in line for your job

[Don Stockbauer]

Why is there anything at all?

[Don Stockbauer]

Does it pay to destabilize the world situation with bluffs?

[Don Stockbauer]

What was the first computer program that you wrote? Mine was to numerically integrate the restricted three-body problem using the Runge-Kutta method.

In my days back in the 70s computers weren’t very available to individuals. The first time I used one was as a junior in college , believe it or not.

[Don Stockbauer]

Thank you, Professor Jeffries.

[Don Stockbauer]

The Control Data Corporation 66/6400 was a mighty fine machine, you betcha.

[Don Stockbauer]

So was the Cyber 74.

[Don Stockbauer]

Let us close our eyes while satellites go on much faster.

[Don Stockbauer]

Eating at Fossati’s.

[Don Stockbauer]

In San Antonio in observance of the Green River.

[Don Stockbauer]

What if there was a planet where it was required by law if you receive a message from someone you must return it. Professor Hofstadter thought this was a truly horrible idea, who came up with such a horrible concept? I told him I did ; no one ever returns my messages . I would like to see people forced to do that and since you Professor Hofstadter returned my message here, I thank you.

[Don Stockbauer]

Do you think that we humans would be better off now had we never developed language?

[Don Stockbauer]

Wondering about how the human race would be if it had never developed language is kind of like wondering what the human race would be like had there been no oxygen in our atmosphere.

[Don Stockbauer]

This is the way the world goes. Not with a bang, but a whimsy. – Kurt Vonnegut

[Don Stockbauer]

What happens when the world gets so complicated no one can deal with it anymore?

[Don Stockbauer]

It’s about there for me already.

[Don Stockbauer]

Can a networked Humanity pull it off?

[Don Stockbauer]

The Earth becomes overpopulated. Overpopulation means more nodes for the global brain. More nodes mean a more intelligent global brain. A more intelligent global brain solves the overpopulation problem.

[Don Stockbauer]

Your death, which is eternal, has no more significance than a single flake of snow evaporating back into the cold mountain air.

[Don Stockbauer]

Feats don’t fail me now.

[Don Stockbauer]

How many sentences are there?

Well ,

1 is a number.
2 is a number.
3 is a number.

[Don Stockbauer]

(Your witty comment here).

[Don Stockbauer]

I think our civilization is advancing as fast as detonated nuclear weapon but nobody notices because of the “a rising tide raises all boats” effect. Wouldn’t it be neat if our global civilization becomes one of the top ones in the entire Universe?

[Don Stockbauer]

I remember a Star Trek: The Next Generation where Picard comes to our time and someone asks him what his salary is (you may have seen this). Now, I’m paraphrasing, he replied, “We don’t have salaries in my time. Everybody as a birthright is given all they need for survival. On top of that, each of us is given access to the entire riches of our civilization and they are beyond your wildest imagination.”

[Don Stockbauer]

It seems to me that the way we handle messages, writing them, reading them, deleting them, archiving them, etc is what forms the global communication network into an artificial neural network. Once it has the form of a neural network the global brain falls right out of that.

[Don Stockbauer]

Does anyone know the formula relating the number of degrees below the horizon the sun is and the altitude of the shadow wedge directly opposite the sun? I thought I had it figured out geometrically that the answer is the two numbers are the same; however, preliminary observations indicate that the shadow wedge rises much more quickly than that.

[Don Stockbauer]

You see, when the sun is 1° down the light rays should pass over your head and create a shadow wedge 1° high above the opposite horizon. But it seems like the shadow wedge rises much more quickly than that. I built a way to measure degrees but every day since I built it there’s been clouds on the eastern horizon at sunset making the wedge impossible to see , but I will keep on until successful . A partial success was had yesterday , the shadow wedge seemed to be 6° tall when the sun was 2° down. Our friend the Internet describes the shadow wedge but doesn’t seem to have any information on what I’ve been talking about here.

[Don Stockbauer]

Sickness will surely take the mind where minds don’t usually go. Come on the amazing journey, and learn all you should know.

[Don Stockbauer]

Of course it would help to receive feedback from people, but that certainly is too much to ask for.