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Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist. At the 2008 TED conference in Monterey, she talked about an amazing experience of being able to observe changes in her own consciousness and perceptions as she was having a stroke. This experience forever changed her outlook on life in a positive way.
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Regular readers of Nested Universe may be interested in taking a look at the iSGTW site at www.isgtw.org. This weekly newsletter promotes grid computing and stories of grid-empowered science and scientific discoveries from around the world.
An article that I wrote, Distributed Computing and the Singularity appears in the March 19, 2008 edition.
Chris K. Haley, NestedUniverse.net
The A.I. Effect describes a human cognitive bias to discount improvements made in the science of Artificial Intelligence. Problems that in the past that were seen as extremely difficult, or intractable, are now seen in retrospect as having obvious solutions which no longer need to be described in terms of artificial intelligence.
Similarly, I believe that a "Singularity Effect" describes the discounting of advances in other technology areas such robotics, genetics, nanotechnology, etc. Consider how some of these technologies would have appeared to an observer from even 50 years ago:
Welcome to the Singularity!
Chris K. Haley, NestedUniverse.net
Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann was an Austrian physicist who made important contributions to the area of statistical thermodynamics. He lived in the last half of the 19th century and proposed that the low-entropy (high order) universe that we live in is the result of a random fluctuation in a larger, higher entropy (lower order) metaverse.
Although Boltzmann's proposal was made in advance of quantum mechanics, his idea is similar to modern day theories that the universe arose from a quantum vacuum fluctuation. Quantum mechanics predicts that particles can spontaneously arise from the vacuum if they are short-lived. Even in a perfect vacuum, pairs of particles and anti-particles are constantly being created and destroyed. This is possible because the total energy of the particle anti-particle pairs is zero.
In fact, the total energy of the universe appears to be zero [Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, chapter 8]. Particles have positive energy, and the negative energy represented by the gravitational field of the entire universe appears to be exactly enough to cancel out the positive energy of the particles.
This idea leads to a paradox. In a metaverse that is larger than ours, random fluctuations of the size to create a universe such as our own will happen. Due to the size and number of particles in such a universe, these fluctuations will be exceedingly rare. The anthropic principal - the fact universes will only be observed when they are hospitable to observers - makes the amount of time between such fluctuations meaningless. These fluctuations could be happening every quadrillion years, or once every googolplex number of years. Fluctuations of a much smaller magnitude that simply create one fully formed brain for a brief amount of time should be happening with enormously higher frequency than universe-creating fluctuations. Such brains would be the smallest possible creations that would give rise to a sentient observer and are called Boltzmann Brains. The fact that such brains do not appear to exist is called the Boltzmann Brain Paradox.
There are a number of ways out of this paradox. One of the base assumptions could be false. Perhaps there is no metaverse or such quantum fluctuations do not happen on large scales.
Or, it possible that the concept of the Boltzmann Brain is true and you are the only sentient observer in the universe right now, complete with false memories of a life which did not exist. False inputs to your brain only make it appear that there are other observers with you. If true, it's possible that you will cease to exist in just a ...
Chris K. Haley
NestedUniverse.net
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is nearing completion of the world's largest and most complex scientific instrument. The final element in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was lowered in place on January 22, 2008. The LHC is a particle accelerator which will be used to accelerate tiny particles to extraordinarily high velocities to observe their resulting transformation in collisions with one another. The facility is scheduled to begin operation in May, 2008. There have been a number of news articles in the past few years that have speculated on remotely possible catastrophic risks posed by the LHC.
One speculation is that the LHC will create miniature black holes. If this happened, standard physics theory expects that these black holes would evaporate very quickly due to Hawking Radiation. However, some have suggested a remote possibility that these miniature black holes would not evaporate, but would grow to consume the Earth within a short period of time.
Another highly unlikely possibility is that strangelets could be produced. Strangelets are hypothetical objects that are comprised of roughly equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks. The concern is that these objects would begin to change other matter that they come in contact with into strange matter, resulting in a runaway process that converts the entire Earth to strange matter.
The consensus within the physics community is that the operation of the LHC is safe. Studies have been conducted which have analyzed the risks and concluded that these catastrophic scenarios are not credible. The official position of CERN is that experiments in particle accelerators are completely safe and the risks have already been adequately analyzed and dismissed in previous studies. A small minority, however, disagree. James Blodgett noted that Dr. Walter L. Wagner is so concerned about the existential risks of experiments to be conducted at the LHC that he is proceeding with an effort to initiate legal action against CERN to force it to conduct additional safety studies.
Chris K. Haley
NestedUniverse.net
Michael Graham Richard has a great post about a cognitive reasoning bias called the conjunction fallacy. He cites an example from the work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman:
Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.
Which is more likely?
1. Linda is a bank teller.
2. Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement,
Take a moment to think about this question and your response before reading further to see the correct answer. Which do you think is more likely? The representativeness heuristic has its hand in helping us make the erroneous choice. From the Wikipedia entry:
The representativeness heuristic is a heuristic wherein commonality between objects of similar appearance is assumed. While often very useful in everyday life, it can also result in neglect of relevant base rates and other errors.
One way to think about the question more logically is to replace the propositions in the question with simple variables:
Which is more likely?
1. A
2. A and B
It can never be possible for statement 2 to have a higher probability than statement 1 because statement 2 makes an additional requirement. For example, if there is a 10% probability that Linda is a bank teller, and a 90% probability that Linda is active in the feminist movement, then the combined probability of Linda being a bank teller that is also active in the feminist movement is 10% multiplied by 90%, or 9%. So statement 1 has a 10% probability of being true, and statement 2 has a 9% probability of being true. Since we can't have a probability that is greater than 100%, there is no condition that could be combined with A that would be able to make the combined probability of A and B being true greater than the probability of A being true alone.
Chris K. Haley
NestedUniverse.net
PhysOrg.com is reporting that researchers at Purdue University are working to develop a system that would use a network of cell phones to track radiation in an effort to prevent terrorist attacks with dirty bombs or nuclear weapons. Tiny solid-state radiation sensors are already commercially available and the additional circuitry would not add significant bulk to portable electronic products. The researchers tested the system and demonstrated that it is capable of detecting a weak radiation source 15 feet from the sensors. A fully developed system could cover a nation with millions of cell phones equipped with radiation sensors able to detect even light residues of radioactive material. Because cell phones already contain global positioning locators, the network of phones would serve as a large scale tracking system that would require no intervention from individual users.
Chris K. Haley, NestedUniverse.net
NewScientist is reporting that Dr. James J. Yoo of the Wake Forest University Institute for Regenerative Medicine has developed a way to use inkjet printer technology to build up three dimensional human tissues by printing layers of cells.
Dr. Yoo's research efforts are focused on tissue engineering technologies and cell-based therapies for the repair and replacement of diseased tissues and organs. Some of the tissues that may be produced by his invention include nerve, skin, pancreatic islet, and bone tissue.
Chris K. Haley, NestedUniverse.net
I have been an active supporter of a number of distributed computing projects for years. In the early 1990s, I participated in the Great Internet Mersenne Prime search and its challenge to find the largest prime numbers. I refocused my efforts on the SETI@home project in 1999 for two reasons. I felt that a distributed computing search for extraterrestrial radio transmissions was a great way to conduct SETI research for a relatively modest cost by analyzing data that was already being captured for other astronomical research projects. I also felt that, while mathematical research is a noble cause, SETI research had something more concrete to offer humanity, despite the enormous probabilities of success. There are certainly more unimportant things that could be done with spare computer cycles.
Recently, I've been reading the writings of Michael Anissimov, who is a leader in the Singularity community and a prolific science and technology writer. Michael co-founded the Immortality Institute, and is the Fundraising Director, North America for the Lifeboat Foundation. Michael is extremely intelligent and writes on a wide range of topics from Life Extension to Nanotechnology to Artificial Intelligence. His outlook for the future is inspiring and thought provoking. Two articles of his had a completely different outlook on the subject of SETI than my own: Aliens - There Are None and Aliens - Stop Looking. His arguments are persuasive and have convinced me to do some more research of my own on the subject, including the Fermi paradox.
But even if I'm not yet as convinced as Michael is in terms of calling for an outright end to SETI research, I realized that there are many more distributed computing projects that I can participate in that have a higher probability of affecting mankind in a positive way in the near term. For example, rosetta@home's search for the 3-dimensional shapes of proteins and the folding@home project to understand how proteins fold are both worthy projects. They have a high likelihood of helping understand and creating treatments for major diseases by using idle computer time from desktop computers.
Accordingly, I will be focusing the vast majority of my idle computer cycles on projects like these. The fact that I don't find these projects as personally exciting or interesting isn't the point. Finding ways to get through the Singularity quicker by helping humanity in the best way possible is.
Chris K. Haley, NestedUniverse.net
The Washington Post reported that scientists from Stemagen, a stem cell research company based in La Jolla California, created embryonic clones of two adults that developed to a stage that was more advanced than any previous experiment had achieved. The goal of Stemagen's research is to create personalized stem cells for patients suffering from various diseases that can then be grown into replacement tissues. Tissues fabricated in such as manner would not be rejected by a patient's immune system.
Chris K. Haley, NestedUniverse.net
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