I don't want to get bogged down in semantics here. My central claim is that postbiological civilization has the opportunity to become greater than what will have preceded it on this planet, esp. given that ecological destruction appears to be in human nature somehow.

naffat wrote:I don't want to get bogged down in semantics here.

Not interested in effective communication then?

My central claim is that postbiological civilization has the opportunity to become greater than what will have preceded it on this planet, esp. given that ecological destruction appears to be in human nature somehow.

And do you have anything to back up this claim, or is it something you extracted directly from your rectum?

hackenslash wrote:

naffat wrote:I don't want to get bogged down in semantics here.

Not interested in effective communication then?

Not interested in pointless hair-splitting.

hackenslash wrote:

My central claim is that postbiological civilization has the opportunity to become greater than what will have preceded it on this planet, esp. given that ecological destruction appears to be in human nature somehow.

And do you have anything to back up this claim, or is it something you extracted directly from your rectum?

Which part? If you mean the part about how "ecological destruction appears to be in human nature", I read a whole book about it, Too Smart for our Own Good: The Ecological Predicament of Humankind. The author puts down the ecological destruction apparently endemic to the human species to sociobiological forces concerning resource acquisition and status seeking.

If you mean the part about "postbiological civilization has the opportunity to become greater [than humanity]", that remains to be seen, but there are many reasons to expect that this is the case and many reasons to make it the case. Generally speaking, when something in nature is reverse engineered, it can then be improved greatly. As Alan Turing put it:

Once the machine thinking method has started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers. ... At some stage therefore we should have to expect the machines to take control, in the way that is mentioned in Samuel Butler's Erewhon.

The fact that we see so much variation in human ability is evidence on its face that improvements can be made. How far those improvements can go is anyone's guess but I see no reason to believe that the upper reaches of human ability are the limit.

naffat wrote:Which part? If you mean the part about how "ecological destruction appears to be in human nature", I read a whole book about it, Too Smart for our Own Good: The Ecological Predicament of Humankind. The author puts down the ecological destruction apparently endemic to the human species to sociobiological forces concerning resource acquisition and status seeking.

A whole book, eh? Anything a bit mroe robust, like, oh, I don't know, research from the primary literature?

If you mean the part about "postbiological civilization has the opportunity to become greater [than humanity]", that remains to be seen,

Ah, so just the ex recto then.

but there are many reasons to expect that this is the case and many reasons to make it the case. Generally speaking, when something in nature is reverse engineered, it can then be improved greatly. As Alan Turing put it:

Once the machine thinking method has started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers. ... At some stage therefore we should have to expect the machines to take control, in the way that is mentioned in Samuel Butler's Erewhon.

The fact that we see so much variation in human ability is evidence on its face that improvements can be made. How far those improvements can go is anyone's guess but I see no reason to believe that the upper reaches of human ability are the limit.

Well, the problem is that this is all speculation, and there are those who present compelling reasons for thinking that it may never be possible to build thinking machines, not least because of various problems with algorithmic formulations of AI. Me, I don't know, but nor am I really interested in vacuous speculations based on nothing more than wishful thinking, If you have anything rigorous to present, I'm all ears.

hackenslash wrote:

naffat wrote:Which part? If you mean the part about how "ecological destruction appears to be in human nature", I read a whole book about it, Too Smart for our Own Good: The Ecological Predicament of Humankind. The author puts down the ecological destruction apparently endemic to the human species to sociobiological forces concerning resource acquisition and status seeking.

A whole book, eh? Anything a bit mroe robust, like, oh, I don't know, research from the primary literature?

If you want I can give you the bibliography from this title. It is extensively researched.

That said, I expect more disingenuous goalpost shifting.

hackenslash wrote:

If you mean the part about "postbiological civilization has the opportunity to become greater [than humanity]", that remains to be seen,

Ah, so just the ex recto then.

Only if every prediction about the future is "out of the ass".

hackenslash wrote:Well, the problem is that this is all speculation, and there are those who present compelling reasons for thinking that it may never be possible to build thinking machines,

It's your turn to start providing sources.

I personally think that no "compelling" case can be made that thinking machines will never exist unless you are a substance dualist—in other words, if you believe in some kind of "soul". Now I don't know about you, but I am not a dualist. If artificial general intelligence cannot be built in the traditional disembodied von Neumann computing framework, so be it. Then use a different architecture!

hackenslash wrote:not least because of various problems with algorithmic formulations of AI.

I'd like to find out what you know about this subject. I'm guessing "not much".

n.b. I am as against logicism in AI and internalism in philosophy of mind as anyone, so any criticisms that focus on those aspects do not need to appear here.

hackenslash wrote:Me, I don't know, but nor am I really interested in vacuous speculations based on nothing more than wishful thinking, If you have anything rigorous to present, I'm all ears.

Let's get away from speculation for a moment, since you seem to be completely unwilling to entertain at all, at least about this particular subject. What about things that have been achieved in artificial intelligence beyond a shadow of a doubt? To me, the achievements in sensorimotor coordination are most impressive. Why? As Rodney Brooks pointed out in his classic paper Why Elephants Don't Play Chess:

It is instructive to reflect on the way in which earth-based biological evolution spent its time. Single cell entities arose out of the primordial soup roughly 3.5 billion years ago. A billion years passed before photosynthetic plants appeared. After almost another billion and a half years, around 550 million years ago, the first fish and vertebrates arrived, and then insects 450 million years ago. Then things started moving fast. Reptiles arrived 370 million years ago, followed by dinosaurs at 330 and mammals at 250 million years ago. The first primates appeared 120 million years ago and the immediate predecessors to the great apes a mere 18 million years ago. Man arrived in roughly his present form 2.5 million years ago. He invented agriculture a mere 19000 years ago, writing less than 5000 years ago and "expert" knowledge only over the last few hundred years.

This suggests that problem solving behavior, language, expert knowledge and application, and reason, are all rather simple once the essence of being and reacting are available. That essence is the ability to move around in a dynamic environment, sensing the surroundings to a degree sufficient to achieve the necessary maintenance of life and reproduction. This part of intelligence is where evolution has concentrated its time—it is much harder. This is the physically grounded part of animal systems.

And what has been achieved on this front? I remember that DARPA wanted a mechanical elephant during the Vietnam War era for use in the difficult terrain of that country. Did they get it? Of course not! Such things were basically unthinkable then. Now on the other hand, sophisticated quadripedal motion is becoming a clear reality:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqMVg5ixhd0[/youtube]

Behaviors like chess-playing and proving theorems—where traditional AI efforts have been most successful—are more likely than not the icing on the cake.

EDIT - faulty links and other formatting issues

naffat wrote:... esp. given that ecological destruction appears to be in human nature somehow.

I find it hard to think of a species of animal that doesn't preform ecological destruction when they are not kept in check by other factors (other animals, disease, lack of resources...ect).

MacIver wrote:

naffat wrote:... esp. given that ecological destruction appears to be in human nature somehow.

I find it hard to think of a species of animal that doesn't preform ecological destruction when they are not kept in check by other factors (other animals, disease, lack of resources...ect).

Yeah. That's the problem with us. We're animals. Is there anything about "the Universe knowing itself" that requires being an animal?

I guess not. All we need is self-awareness/consciousness. Not any form of biological, evolution derived lifeforms. And as I fall into the camp that "consciousness" in nothing special - just instinct, memory and problem solving heaped upon one another until self awareness emerges (that's "emerge" with a small "e") then I believe that it's possible for AI or postbiologicals.

naffat wrote:If you want I can give you the bibliography from this title. It is extensively researched.

Why don't you present the best arguments and let's look at them. Up to now, all you've done is to assert it to be the case. Some refs would be good though.

My problem is simply that it's easy to read a book and believe what it says. I've fallen into that trap myself on occasion, and these days I'm a good deal more cautious about taking anybody's word for anything, unless they can actually support it.

That said, I expect more disingenuous goalpost shifting.

And why would you expect that? Can you point to an instance?

Only if every prediction about the future is "out of the ass".

Not ever prediction, no, but since this prediction is based on a turn of events that you merely assert will be the case, and further extrapolated to what you think the consequences will be, it's little better than the kind of made-up shit we experience all the time from supernaturalists.

It's your turn to start providing sources.

Well, Penrose for one. And yes, I know his conclusions are challenged, but there are arguments I haven't seen addressed as yet, mostly around the nature of intuition.

I personally think that no "compelling" case can be made that thinking machines will never exist unless you are a substance dualist—in other words, if you believe in some kind of "soul". Now I don't know about you, but I am not a dualist.

I'm not any kind of 'ist', and in fact I have no horse in this race, I'm merely challenging your absolutist statements, mostly because they ARE absolutist.

If artificial general intelligence cannot be built in the traditional disembodied von Neumann computing framework, so be it. Then use a different architecture!

Agreed, but what architecture, and is there one that will do the job?

I'd like to find out what you know about this subject. I'm guessing "not much".

Guess what you like. As I say, I have no horse in this race, but I do have a horse in the race of stating as categorical fact that which you extract directly from your arse.

n.b. I am as against logicism in AI and internalism in philosophy of mind as anyone, so any criticisms that focus on those aspects do not need to appear here.

Glad to hear it. I'm only against absolutist statements in any arena unless they can be supported, and even when they can be supported I'm suspicious.

Let's get away from speculation for a moment, since you seem to be completely unwilling to entertain at all, at least about this particular subject.

I'm willing to entertain whatever you can support.

What about things that have been achieved in artificial intelligence beyond a shadow of a doubt? To me, the achievements in sensorimotor coordination are most impressive. Why? As Rodney Brooks pointed out in his classic paper Why Elephants Don't Play Chess:

snip

Impressive indeed, but not the whole shooting match by any stretch, and there are still major obstacles to be overcome. Indeed, if you head over to the navel-gazers lounge, you can hear tales of wonder all about how we don't even know what consciousness actually is (and yes, you'll encounter a few dualists there, too).

Behaviors like chess-playing and proving theorems—where traditional AI efforts have been most successful—are more likely than not the icing on the cake.

Well, I'm less impressed than you at a computer that can play chess. From an algorithmic perspective, not hugely difficult. Recognise a pattern and follow simple rules. That said, I'll be interested in what you have to present. We used to have a member on the old forum that was a cognitive scientist heavily into the development of AI, and I have a few friends who worked on the UK government AI project for a time. It's not my area of interest, but I'm not entirely out of my depth, and I do know that some pretty monumental problems have to be solved before we can start patting ourselves on the back, and certainly before we can make categorical statements about what the future will be like.

I'll also challenge any statements that deal with speculations about our nature given that our awareness of our impact on ecology is relatively new, and not everybody is fully aware or accepting of it as yet. Our nature seems to be to learn what we can and to use what we learn, but of course that isn't true of all of us, in precisely the same way that your statement about our nature isn't true of all of us.

Really, I'm only asking you to own your statements, nothing more.

hackenslash wrote:

naffat wrote:If you want I can give you the bibliography from this title. It is extensively researched.

Why don't you present the best arguments and let's look at them. Up to now, all you've done is to assert it to be the case. Some refs would be good though.

For example:

The fundamental problem as regards the continuing existence of the human species is that, while we are ‘smarter’ than other species in our ability to develop technology, we, like them, follow the reaction, pioneering and overshoot principles when it comes to dealing with situations of sudden, continuous or great surplus. In keeping with this, and also like other animals, we are not karyotypically built so as to care about coming generations, other than those with which we have direct contact. As Georgescu-Roegen says, the (rat) race of economic development that is the hallmark of modern civilisation leaves no doubt about humans’ lack of foresight. Even if made aware of the entropic problem of the human species, humankind would not be willing to give up its present luxuries in order to ease the life of future generations.[1518] When problems arise we turn to the nearest solution to hand, and do not take into account the long-term consequences of our actions. In this regard we act irrationally. We humans, in whatever situation, will gladly use irreplaceable resources to produce a technological fix if it fills an immediate need. The longest we are prepared to put off gratification is perhaps a year, where in certain societies, though people may be dying of starvation, seeds are saved for the next year’s planting.

From the point of view of evolution, to react spontaneously to one’s immediate environment has been the best policy for all species up to now. But now, in our case, in acting spontaneously we are not only worsening the situation for our own species, but for all other complex species as well.

^ This is all more or less obvious on its face. Unless you're going to tell me that evolution engenders far-sightedness. Are you? But, anyway, note 1518 points to "Economics and entropy" (1972) by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen.

A lot more where that came from.

hackenslash wrote:My problem is simply that it's easy to read a book and believe what it says. I've fallen into that trap myself on occasion, and these days I'm a good deal more cautious about taking anybody's word for anything, unless they can actually support it.

Then primary literature has the same problem.

hackenslash wrote:

That said, I expect more disingenuous goalpost shifting.

And why would you expect that? Can you point to an instance?

You just did it, see above.

hackenslash wrote:Not ever prediction, no, but since this prediction is based on a turn of events that you merely assert will be the case

Advances in things like neuromorphic computing and embodiment have nothing to do with it, I guess.

hackenslash wrote:it's little better than the kind of made-up shit we experience all the time from supernaturalists.

Not even remotely similar.

hackenslash wrote:

It's your turn to start providing sources.

Well, Penrose for one.

Penrose is a brilliant mathematician, but those claims are almost universally recognized as quackery. To start with, there is the claim that microtubules are somehow fundamental to consciousness. This revolves around quantum mechanical claims. I am not greatly familiar with QM but to my knowledge:

• The timescales of neural activity make quantum effects irrelevant.
• Quantum computers do not transcend the limits of the "ordinary" Turing machine.
• Cockroaches have these same microtubles. So?
• Creativity in computation can be achieved without recourse to Chopraesque quantum woo-woo; it's done all the time with metaheuristics like genetic algorithms and PSO on the run-of-the-mill desktop and laptop computers we have today, by use of random number generators. Creativity as a fundamental architectural principle is being explored by others. ("It sounds cockamamy, but it is true. Scientists have found that the brain’s 100 billion neurons are surprisingly unreliable. Their synapses fail to fire 30 percent to 90 percent of the time. Yet somehow the brain works. Some scientists even see neural noise as the key to human creativity.")

Then there's the questionable use of Gödel's theorems, which is another issue. Anyway I'm not impressed by Penrose's claims about AI, and neither is just about anyone else informed about the subject.

hackenslash wrote:And yes, I know his conclusions are challenged, but there are arguments I haven't seen addressed as yet, mostly around the nature of intuition.

Yeah? Go on. Enlighten me with his impressive case that humans are capable of hypercomputation.

hackenslash wrote:I'm not any kind of 'ist', and in fact I have no horse in this race, I'm merely challenging your absolutist statements, mostly because they ARE absolutist.

It seems more like veiled angst that we will eventually go the way of the dinosaur.

hackenslash wrote:Agreed, but what architecture, and is there one that will do the job?

Remember what I said about creativity and noise? There is no need for quasi-mystical statements about quantum blahhaha like Roger Penrose made, and the link between creativity and noise was being investigated well before he started barking up that wrong tree. For instance, in the 1950s or so it became known that substances like LSD are known to enhance creativity:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7fOuPTZtWI[/youtube]

The major action of a substance like LSD is through agonism of the serotonin receptor 5-HT2A. From the Blackwell Companion to Consciousness:

The most well known hallucinogenic substances, the indolamines such as LSD and psilocybin, produce hallucinations and other effects by interfering with the brain’s serotonin (or 5-HT) system. This is also true of the tryptamine derivatives such as N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and the phenylethylamines such as mescaline. The main site of action of these drugs are believed to be presynaptic 5-HT2A receptors located on excitatory inputs to large neurons in a deep layer (layer V) of the cerebral cortex where they abnormally prolong excitation (Aghajanian & Marek 1999).

Here is the paper in question: http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v21/n ... 5318a.html

And here is its abstract:

This brief review traces the serotonin (5-HT) hypothesis of the action of hallucinogenic drugs from the early 1950s to the present day. There is now converging evidence from biochemical, electrophysiological, and behavioral studies that the two major classes of psychedelic hallucinogens, the indoleamines (e.g., LSD) and the phenethylamines (e.g., mescaline), have a common site of action as partial agonists at 5-HT2A and other 5-HT2 receptors in the central nervous system. The noradrenergic locus coeruleus and the cerebral cortex are among the regions where hallucinogens have prominent effects through their actions upon a 5-HT2A receptors. Recently, we have observed a novel effect of hallucinogens—a 5-HT2A receptor-mediated enhancement of nonsynchronous, late components of glutamatergic excitatory postsynaptic potentials at apical dendrites of layer V cortical pyramidal cells. We propose that an effect of hallucinogens upon glutamatergic transmission in the cerebral cortex may be responsible for the higher-level cognitive, perceptual, and affective distortions produced by these drugs.

The effect then appears to be one of pushing thoughts and perceptions that are normally filtered out of consciousness over the top by increasing their gain in the nervous system—an enhancement of noise.

Psychopathology has also been implicated in creativity. Perhaps the earliest example of such an observation is Seneca the Younger's remark: "There is no great genius without some touch of madness." Hans Eysenck did a lot of work tying creativity to the trait he called "psychoticism" and neuroimaging has since borne out his psychometric research.

Similarly, people who have mental illness in their family have a higher chance of being creative.

Associate Professor Fredrik Ullen believes his findings could help explain why.

He looked at the brain's dopamine (D2) receptor genes which experts believe govern divergent thought.

He found highly creative people who did well on tests of divergent thought had a lower than expected density of D2 receptors in the thalamus - as do people with schizophrenia.

The thalamus serves as a relay centre, filtering information before it reaches areas of the cortex, which is responsible, amongst other things, for cognition and reasoning.

"Fewer D2 receptors in the thalamus probably means a lower degree of signal filtering, and thus a higher flow of information from the thalamus," said Professor Ullen.

He believes it is this barrage of uncensored information that ignites the creative spark.

This would explain how highly creative people manage to see unusual connections in problem-solving situations that other people miss.

Here again we are talking about diminished filtering of noise in cognition. How does this correspond to artificial intelligence and the like? In metaheuristic optimization there is a trade-off between "exploration" and "exploitation". Exploration is going in search of new solutions; exploitation is refining what is known. In all these optimization methods there is at least one way to increase the noise if greater exploration is desired. Notably, in particle swarm optimization, which is a model of a society, exploration can be enhanced by increasing the importance attached to the individual best solution rather than the best solution of one's neighbors. This results in more aloof, more idiosyncratic behavior of the "people" in the society, just as is seen in major psychotic illnesses.

So, in conclusion, Penrose's appeal to quantum mechanics appears to be completely superfluous. The reality of creativity is, in a sense, mundane, but it is also amazing in the sense that the principle is altogether simple. If we want creative behavior in machines, then we must not expect perfect execution of instructions as is the case in von Neumann architectures. Creativity can be achieved in these traditional architectures with RNGs, but it is to be fully exploited in unconventional neuromorphic architectures whose most fundamental components operate imperfectly. (A knock-on advantage of this change is that, without the need to separate logic levels by magnitudes on the order of volts, as opposed to millivolts, size and power consumption will be reduced, allowing embodiment, and thus a full realization of the artificial general intelligence concept.)

One can thus imagine tuning the noise to an optimum level. If the machine intelligence is narrow-minded, use noise. And if that don't work, use more noise!



I suspect that we will live in truly exciting times!

hackenslash wrote:Guess what you like.

I don't need to guess. You're revealing your level of knowledge through your behavior here.

hackenslash wrote:Glad to hear it. I'm only against absolutist statements in any arena unless they can be supported, and even when they can be supported I'm suspicious.

I don't know what this talk of "absolutism" is about. The only way you can make a case is if biological evolution has a privileged place in creating consciousness. Mainstream cognitive science implicitly and even overtly accepts that artificially intelligent beings can exist. The strongest current in philosophy of mind in cognitive science is functionalism (a philosophy I do not espouse because of my externalist leanings btw—none of which preclude machine intelligence however), and that is explicitly on board with / derived from a lot of thinking in artificial intelligence.

hackenslash wrote:I'm willing to entertain whatever you can support.

Somehow I suspect that nothing will count as support.

hackenslash wrote:Impressive indeed, but not the whole shooting match by any stretch

Sure but fortunately we have a huge military-industrial complex that seems hell-bent on achieving general machine intelligence.

hackenslash wrote:Well, I'm less impressed than you at a computer that can play chess.

I'm not all that impressed by chess-playing computers.

hackenslash wrote:From an algorithmic perspective, not hugely difficult. Recognise a pattern and follow simple rules.

Yeah kind of. (Grandmaster level performance wasn't quite that easy though.)

hackenslash wrote:We used to have a member on the old forum that was a cognitive scientist heavily into the development of AI, and I have a few friends who worked on the UK government AI project for a time.

It really shows that their knowledge has rubbed off on you.

hackenslash wrote:and I do know that some pretty monumental problems have to be solved

And they had better be solved. Otherwise this planet is toast.

hackenslash wrote:I'll also challenge any statements that deal with speculations about our nature given that our awareness of our impact on ecology is relatively new, and not everybody is fully aware or accepting of it as yet.

More likely, also from Too Smart for Our Own Good:

I believe that, from a socio-psychological point of view, there are three major factors that account for the failure on the part of the vast majority of educated people to admit what is happening, and none of them is that they are unaware of it. The first, and perhaps most important, is that it does not accord with the way they see the world (which is largely determined by short-term contingencies, in particular capitalists’ desire to make as large a profit as possible); the second is that the facts themselves are unsavoury; and the third is that the effort that would be required to change them is gargantuan. Thus, though most educated people are aware that something is terribly amiss in the human situation, and that it bodes ill for our children, the negative view of the human condition as is implied by environmental research of the past 50 years or so is both psychologically and practically repressed.

^ that and evolutionary propensities towards short-term thinking which have already been mentioned and I doubt the human species has much of a future on this planet. That is not of course to say that sentience doesn't.

hackenslash wrote:Really, I'm only asking you to own your statements, nothing more.

For all your complaining about ex recto etc. it should be obvious to anyone reading this thread that one of us can develop their ideas rather elaborately and the other has "Uh ... Penrose! ... Intuition!" Can you guess who is who?

naffat wrote:Then primary literature has the same problem.

Are you fucking serious? You don't see the qualitative distinction between peer-reviewed literature and opinions extracted directly from the rectal cavity?

You just did it, see above.

Point it out or fucking retract. Merely re-asserting is the height of fuckwittery.

Advances in things like neuromorphic computing and embodiment have nothing to do with it, I guess.

They have plenty to do with it, but you're still extrapolating from your arse.

Not even remotely similar.

So you assert. Meanwhile, in the 'evidence presented' column...

Penrose is a brilliant mathematician, but those claims are almost universally recognized as quackery.

Utter fucking shit. They have been challenged, but hardly 'universally recognised as quackery'. Is this hyperbolic shit what we can expect from you in the future? Or am I extrapolating from my arse, as you seem to have done.

To start with, there is the claim that microtubules are somehow fundamental to consciousness. This revolves around quantum mechanical claims. I am not greatly familiar with QM but to my knowledge:

• The timescales of neural activity make quantum effects irrelevant.
• Quantum computers do not transcend the limits of the "ordinary" Turing machine.
• Cockroaches have these same microtubles. So?
• Creativity in computation can be achieved without recourse to Chopraesque quantum woo-woo; it's done all the time with metaheuristics like genetic algorithms and PSO on the run-of-the-mill desktop and laptop computers we have today, by use of random number generators. Creativity as a fundamental architectural principle is being explored by others. ("It sounds cockamamy, but it is true. Scientists have found that the brain’s 100 billion neurons are surprisingly unreliable. Their synapses fail to fire 30 percent to 90 percent of the time. Yet somehow the brain works. Some scientists even see neural noise as the key to human creativity.")

I agree with all of that, but that doesn't address the fundamental problem of precisely what consciousness is

Then there's the questionable use of Gödel's theorems, which is another issue.

I agree completely, and in fact Gödel's work was something that I thought I understood until quite recently, when I was put right on the topic.

Anyway I'm not impressed by Penrose's claims about AI, and neither is just about anyone else informed about the subject.

Indeed, but that doesn't alter the fact that there are still major problems to be overcome. Simply insisting that there is a solution is the kind of fervour we see from the religious all the time, and I'm less impressed by that than your are about Penrose's claims.

Yeah? Go on. Enlighten me with his impressive case that humans are capable of hypercomputation.

Where did I assert that?

It seems more like veiled angst that we will eventually go the way of the dinosaur.

Actually, extinction of humans isn't something I'm particularly bothered about. I've told you my motivations, so I'll thank you not to project your own issues onto me.

Remember what I said about creativity and noise? There is no need for quasi-mystical statements about quantum blahhaha like Roger Penrose made, and the link between creativity and noise was being investigated well before he started barking up that wrong tree. For instance, in the 1950s or so it became known that substances like LSD are known to enhance creativity:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7fOuPTZtWI[/youtube]

The major action of a substance like LSD is through agonism of the serotonin receptor 5-HT2A. From the Blackwell Companion to Consciousness:

The most well known hallucinogenic substances, the indolamines such as LSD and psilocybin, produce hallucinations and other effects by interfering with the brain’s serotonin (or 5-HT) system. This is also true of the tryptamine derivatives such as N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and the phenylethylamines such as mescaline. The main site of action of these drugs are believed to be presynaptic 5-HT2A receptors located on excitatory inputs to large neurons in a deep layer (layer V) of the cerebral cortex where they abnormally prolong excitation (Aghajanian & Marek 1999).

Here is the paper in question: http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v21/n ... 5318a.html

And here is its abstract:

This brief review traces the serotonin (5-HT) hypothesis of the action of hallucinogenic drugs from the early 1950s to the present day. There is now converging evidence from biochemical, electrophysiological, and behavioral studies that the two major classes of psychedelic hallucinogens, the indoleamines (e.g., LSD) and the phenethylamines (e.g., mescaline), have a common site of action as partial agonists at 5-HT2A and other 5-HT2 receptors in the central nervous system. The noradrenergic locus coeruleus and the cerebral cortex are among the regions where hallucinogens have prominent effects through their actions upon a 5-HT2A receptors. Recently, we have observed a novel effect of hallucinogens—a 5-HT2A receptor-mediated enhancement of nonsynchronous, late components of glutamatergic excitatory postsynaptic potentials at apical dendrites of layer V cortical pyramidal cells. We propose that an effect of hallucinogens upon glutamatergic transmission in the cerebral cortex may be responsible for the higher-level cognitive, perceptual, and affective distortions produced by these drugs.

The effect then appears to be one of pushing thoughts and perceptions that are normally filtered out of consciousness over the top by increasing their gain in the nervous system—an enhancement of noise.

Psychopathology has also been implicated in creativity. Perhaps the earliest example of such an observation is Seneca the Younger's remark: "There is no great genius without some touch of madness." Hans Eysenck did a lot of work tying creativity to the trait he called "psychoticism" and neuroimaging has since borne out his psychometric research.

Similarly, people who have mental illness in their family have a higher chance of being creative.

Associate Professor Fredrik Ullen believes his findings could help explain why.

He looked at the brain's dopamine (D2) receptor genes which experts believe govern divergent thought.

He found highly creative people who did well on tests of divergent thought had a lower than expected density of D2 receptors in the thalamus - as do people with schizophrenia.

The thalamus serves as a relay centre, filtering information before it reaches areas of the cortex, which is responsible, amongst other things, for cognition and reasoning.

"Fewer D2 receptors in the thalamus probably means a lower degree of signal filtering, and thus a higher flow of information from the thalamus," said Professor Ullen.

He believes it is this barrage of uncensored information that ignites the creative spark.

This would explain how highly creative people manage to see unusual connections in problem-solving situations that other people miss.

Here again we are talking about diminished filtering of noise in cognition. How does this correspond to artificial intelligence and the like? In metaheuristic optimization there is a trade-off between "exploration" and "exploitation". Exploration is going in search of new solutions; exploitation is refining what is known. In all these optimization methods there is at least one way to increase the noise if greater exploration is desired. Notably, in particle swarm optimization, which is a model of a society, exploration can be enhanced by increasing the importance attached to the individual best solution rather than the best solution of one's neighbors. This results in more aloof, more idiosyncratic behavior of the "people" in the society, just as is seen in major psychotic illnesses.

So, in conclusion, Penrose's appeal to quantum mechanics appears to be completely superfluous. The reality of creativity is, in a sense, mundane, but it is also amazing in the sense that the principle is altogether simple. If we want creative behavior in machines, then we must not expect perfect execution of instructions as is the case in von Neumann architectures. Creativity can be achieved in these traditional architectures with RNGs, but it is to be fully exploited in unconventional neuromorphic architectures whose most fundamental components operate imperfectly. (A knock-on advantage of this change is that, without the need to separate logic levels by magnitudes on the order of volts, as opposed to millivolts, size and power consumption will be reduced, allowing embodiment, and thus a full realization of the artificial general intelligence concept.)

One can thus imagine tuning the noise to an optimum level. If the machine intelligence is narrow-minded, use noise. And if that don't work, use more noise!



I suspect that we will live in truly exciting times!

And how does that address the question of architecture?

You seem to think I'm wedded to Penrose's claims. I'm not, I simply understand that there are still major obstacles, and your absolutist claims don't address them.

I don't need to guess. You're revealing your level of knowledge through your behavior here.

What behaviour would that be? Perhaps you didn't see the sign over the door. This is the place where claims are challenged, especially absolutist claims with regard to unkowns, and you have those in spades, it seems.

I don't know what this talk of "absolutism" is about. The only way you can make a case is if biological evolution has a privileged place in creating consciousness.

Not at all. I need only point out that only organic entities are conscious. That doesn't mean that it has to evolve, by any stretch. You're seriously over-reaching here.

Mainstream cognitive science implicitly and even overtly accepts that artificially intelligent beings can exist.

Of course it does, because intelligent beings exist. What the barriers are that need to be overcome are not even fully understood as yet, but here you are insisting what the future holds.

The strongest current in philosophy of mind in cognitive science is functionalism (a philosophy I do not espouse because of my externalist leanings btw—none of which preclude machine intelligence however), and that is explicitly on board with / derived from a lot of thinking in artificial intelligence.

Oh look, the Stanford Dictionary of navel-gazing. Quelle surprise.

Somehow I suspect that nothing will count as support.

Then you suspect wrong.

Sure but fortunately we have a huge military-industrial complex that seems hell-bent on achieving general machine intelligence.

And this makes a difference because..?

Yeah kind of. (Grandmaster level performance wasn't quite that easy though.)

Of course not, nor would I suggest that it was.

It really shows that their knowledge has rubbed off on you.

Personalisation won't aid you in your quest to present evidence.

And they had better be solved. Otherwise this planet is toast.

Hahaha. This planet is fucking toast either way, and in fact AI isn't going to help much there.

More likely, also from Too Smart for Our Own Good:

I believe that, from a socio-psychological point of view, there are three major factors that account for the failure on the part of the vast majority of educated people to admit what is happening, and none of them is that they are unaware of it. The first, and perhaps most important, is that it does not accord with the way they see the world (which is largely determined by short-term contingencies, in particular capitalists’ desire to make as large a profit as possible); the second is that the facts themselves are unsavoury; and the third is that the effort that would be required to change them is gargantuan. Thus, though most educated people are aware that something is terribly amiss in the human situation, and that it bodes ill for our children, the negative view of the human condition as is implied by environmental research of the past 50 years or so is both psychologically and practically repressed.

Actually, I suspect that much of the lethargy in this regard stems directly from people's clinging to their imaginary friends, and the idea that they are favoured and will be saved.

^ that and evolutionary propensities towards short-term thinking which have already been mentioned and I doubt the human species has much of a future on this planet. That is not of course to say that sentience doesn't.

I don't disagree with that.

For all your complaining about ex recto etc. it should be obvious to anyone reading this thread that one of us can develop their ideas rather elaborately and the other has "Uh ... Penrose! ... Intuition!" Can you guess who is who?

Well, thankfully, my performance in this thread isn't the entirety of my output here, which is considerable. Those reading the thread know my motivations well enough to understand why you're being challenged, and why I won't simply take your word for it (not that I actually give a flying fuck what others think, of course).

That's how we do things here. The general operating principle in play is that ideas are disposable, and that bad ideas only exist to be disposed of. Only by challenging ideas can we actually ascertain which are the bad ones.

That said, you've presented some good material here, and I will read with interest Too Smart For Our Own Good, but it doesn't actually go any way toward your categorical claim concerning what the future holds.

I look forward to your future output.

hackenslash wrote:

naffat wrote:Then primary literature has the same problem.

Are you fucking serious? You don't see the qualitative distinction between peer-reviewed literature and opinions extracted directly from the rectal cavity?

The "rectal cavity" assertion is still lacking.

hackenslash wrote:

You just did it, see above.

Point it out or fucking retract. Merely re-asserting is the height of fuckwittery.

Claiming first that I just made shit up. Then backing away from that when I said I had an entire book making that case and demanding "primary literature", which I can also provide, since there are hundreds of references in that title.

hackenslash wrote:They have plenty to do with it, but you're still extrapolating from your arse.

What exactly do you think you need?

hackenslash wrote:

Penrose is a brilliant mathematician, but those claims are almost universally recognized as quackery.

Utter fucking shit. They have been challenged, but hardly 'universally recognised as quackery'.

Oh yeah? You'd be hard-pressed to find many positive reviews of Penrose among his peers. Most are critical, quite a few are openly derisive. Michael Shermer, for instance, speaks of Penrose—at least on this subject—in the same breath as "Ramtha":

http://www.michaelshermer.com/2005/01/quantum-quackery/

hackenslash wrote:I agree with all of that, but that doesn't address the fundamental problem of precisely what consciousness is

Then why bring up Penrose?

hackenslash wrote:Indeed, but that doesn't alter the fact that there are still major problems to be overcome. Simply insisting that there is a solution is the kind of fervour we see from the religious all the time, and I'm less impressed by that than your are about Penrose's claims.

No, it's a simple dictum from a pioneer in computing, Alan C. Kay: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

hackenslash wrote:

Yeah? Go on. Enlighten me with his impressive case that humans are capable of hypercomputation.

Where did I assert that?

You at least implied it, a) by appealing to Penrose and b) by complaining—vaguely—about "the algorithmic formulations of AI".

hackenslash wrote:And how does that address the question of architecture?

I already told you: neuromorphic architectures will remedy / are remedying the deficits that Penrose is talking about. (Though your criticism actually seems to come more along the lines of that put forward by Hubert Dreyfus. Same thing applies though mutatis mutandis.)

hackenslash wrote:What behaviour would that be? Perhaps you didn't see the sign over the door. This is the place where claims are challenged, especially absolutist claims with regard to unkowns, and you have those in spades, it seems.

Your problem appears to be confusion over where the burden of proof sits. Broadly speaking, the corpus of cognitive science work up to this point gives us reason to anticipate a priori that AGI can be made a reality, not the opposite.

hackenslash wrote:Not at all. I need only point out that only organic entities are conscious.

This is the first thing I thought of:

http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html

"They're made out of meat."

"Meat?"

"Meat. They're made out of meat."

"Meat?"

"There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."

"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?"

"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."

"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."

"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."

"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."

"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they're made out of meat."

"Maybe they're like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage."

"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take long. Do you have any idea what's the life span of meat?"

"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."

"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."

"No brain?"

"Oh, there's a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat! That's what I've been trying to tell you."

"So ... what does the thinking?"

"You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat."

"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"

"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?"

"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."

"Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."

"Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?"

"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual."

"We're supposed to talk to meat."

"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there. Anybody home.' That sort of thing."

"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"

"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."

"I thought you just told me they used radio."

"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."

"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"

"Officially or unofficially?"

"Both."

"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."

"I was hoping you would say that."

"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?"

"I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say? 'Hello, meat. How's it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?"

"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can't live on them. And being meat, they can only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."

"So we just pretend there's no one home in the Universe."

"That's it."

"Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You're sure they won't remember?"

"They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."

"A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's dream."

"And we marked the entire sector unoccupied."

"Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?"

"Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again."

"They always come around."

"And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone ..."

hackenslash wrote:Oh look, the Stanford Dictionary of navel-gazing. Quelle surprise.

Do you actually know what functionalism or anything is about or are you one of those people who likes mouthing off about how useless philosophy is?

hackenslash wrote:And this makes a difference because..?

Few organizations have done more for machine intelligence to this point than the US military, and they have gotten things done in this department which were unthinkable as little as ten years ago.

hackenslash wrote:Personalisation won't aid you in your quest to present evidence.

Well, so far, your claim to knowledge of this subject amounts to:

• Penrose.
• I have friends who worked in this sector.

In other words, you're striking out here.

hackenslash wrote:Actually, I suspect that much of the lethargy in this regard stems directly from people's clinging to their imaginary friends, and the idea that they are favoured and will be saved.

Apparently, atheism overrides the sociobiological basis of the human species. See, for someone who complains about ex recto assertions, you are better at them than I am.

naffat wrote:Claiming first that I just made shit up. Then backing away from that when I said I had an entire book making that case and demanding "primary literature", which I can also provide, since there are hundreds of references in that title.

Ah, I see, so it's reading comprehension you have trouble with, is it? I made no such claim, or perhaps your language education didn't extend to the recognition of an interrogative.

As for the book, I'm far less interested in that (although I do intend to read it, as it looks interesting) than I am in the primary literature. See, anybody can write a book. Sustaining claims is more strenuous.

I'll look at the rest when I have little more time. I have pressing matters ot deal with elsewhere.

hackenslash wrote:

naffat wrote:Claiming first that I just made shit up. Then backing away from that when I said I had an entire book making that case and demanding "primary literature", which I can also provide, since there are hundreds of references in that title.

Ah, I see, so it's reading comprehension you have trouble with, is it?

No, I can read just fine. However I am dealing with someone who decided to be a douche out of the gate and, for all his arrogance, displays little comprehension of the subject in question. (Beyond "Um ... Penrose!")

hackenslash wrote:As for the book, I'm far less interested in that (although I do intend to read it, as it looks interesting) than I am in the primary literature.

18 pages of references:

http://depositfiles.com/files/7uofzid5i

Have a ball...

hackenslash wrote:
That is how we do things here . The general operating principle in play is that ideas are disposable and that bad
ideas only exists to be disposed of . Only by challenging ideas can we actually ascertain which are the bad ones

Surely it is not bad ideas but falsifiable ones which are disposable : As notions of good or bad here are subjective emotional terms and do not apply to scientific hypotheses as such : That would only be for philosophical ideas which are non falsifiable and so cannot be proven or disproven : And given your famous disregard for that discipline now one does not think you were referring to it any way : I know this is invoking semantics and argumentum ad lexicon but it is important to be as precise as one can in use of language as you yourself have previously acknowledged

naffat wrote:No, I can read just fine. However I am dealing with someone who decided to be a douche out of the gate and, for all his arrogance, displays little comprehension of the subject in question. (Beyond "Um ... Penrose!")

Arrogance, eh? I'll tell you what's arrogant, and I'll tell you what I comprehend:

I comprehend that you erected an assertion that neither you nor all the world's fucking experts in cognitive science have a fucking prayer of supporting robustly. That there is even going to be an y such fucking thing as a 'post-biological civilisation, for a start. I don't need to know the first fucking thing about cog-sci to know that that claim is extracted directly from your arse, and that you know precisely as much about this as I do, namely fuck all.

You may know a lot about cognitive science, but I know about claims, and you've made one that you simply cannot support. Stick that in your little comprehension.

surreptitious57 wrote:Surely it is not bad ideas but falsifiable ones which are disposable

Actually, the first ideas to be disposed of are unfalsifiable ones, because they are untestable and have no value. Then come the rest of the untestable ones (of which unfalsifiable ones are a subset).

As notions of good or bad here are subjective emotional terms and do not apply to scientific hypotheses as such

Drivel. Good and bad in this context have nothing to do with emotion, and everything to do with accord with reality. If an idea is not in accord with reality, it is disposed of. Ultimately, all ideas are disposable, but we retain the ones that work.

That would only be for philosophical ideas which are non falsifiable and so cannot be proven or disproven

It isn't the case that philosophical ideas are infalsifiable. Some are, some aren't. Those that aren't are useless and disposed of. Those that are get tested and those that withstand testing are retained. The rest are discarded.

And given your famous disregard for that discipline

I don't have a disregard for that discipline, famous or otherwise. I simply recognise its remit, while those who think the umbilicus is a source of information about the universe do not. I have a great deal of respect for philosophy, but none for navel-gazing, for which I have nothing but contempt. It isn't like my position on this hasn't been made crystal clear on countless occasions.

now one does not think you were referring to it any way

Well, the notion that ideas are disposable entities is a philosophical one so, while I wasn't referring to philosophy per se...

I know this is invoking semantics

Semantics is good, and never let anybody tell you otherwise. Again, my position on this has been made abundantly clear over the years, and I even have a little football metaphor that I like to employ when somebody erects the 'it's just semantics' trope, namely that the trope is the intellectual equivalent of diving in the penalty area.

and argumentum ad lexicon

Well, that's not really about semantics. Argumentum ad lexicum is a form of argumentum ad populum, because lexicons are descriptive, not prescriptive. There are few words whose meaning is entirely unambiguous (omnipotence and omniscience are two of them).

but it is important to be as precise as one can in use of language as you yourself have previously acknowledged

Well yes, but what's really important is that it is understood what you mean when you are talking, and that's precisely why semantic discussions are important. As long as your meaning is clear and you're not pushing definitions too far off base (such as the aforementioned usage of omnipotence and omniscience that doesn't take account of what 'omni' means), then it's all good. It's about communication, and semantics is the heart of communication, because semantics is about what we mean.

hackenslash wrote:I comprehend that you erected an assertion that neither you nor all the world's fucking experts in cognitive science have a fucking prayer of supporting robustly.

Mainstream cognitive science generally presupposes that such a thing is possible. Though I am personally not quite as gung-ho about substrate independence as other cognitive scientists are, it is a staple of their research program. To conclude that you are more or less as sentient as I am—despite my doubts—is to acknowledge that it's not the particular atoms in the body that count, it's their relations to each other and the rest of the world that counts. This of course raises a further question: why is carbon magic?

Until you can answer that, I will note that your counterargument is still nothing but a namedrop of Roger Penrose, whose quantum woowoo is in no way, shape or form specious or, as you like to say, "ex recto".

Hit the books—you now have your 18 pages of "primary literature" references for starters—and spare me your verbal diarrhea.

hackenslash wrote:There are few words whose meaning is entirely unambiguous (omnipotence and omniscience are two of them).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbole

These are some of the hits from the Corpus of Contemporary American English for "omniscient":



Here are some hits for "omnipotent":



Notice that, in either case, many of the instances are hyperbolic. In fact, some are quite a bit more hyperbolic than the context in which the passage I cited used these words. I would not be one bit surprised if I could find results just like this in other English corpora.

I'm starting to notice a pattern with you, hackenslash. You complain about other people talking out of their ass, then you go and do it yourself.

But please do entertain me with me more readings from Semantics: A Sperglord Approach.

hackenslash wrote:
the first ideas to be disposed of are unfalsifiable ones because they are untestable and have no value

Good and bad in this context have nothing to do with emotion and everything to do with accord with reality

It is not the case that philosophical ideas are unfalsifiable

I have a great deal of respect for philosophy but none for navel gazing

I completely disagree that non falsifiable ideas should be discarded and for the reason they they can not automatically be
invalidated : An example which I have used before : There is complex life elsewhere in the Universe : So by your criteria
this should be rejected because it can not be proven but that is due to a current limitation in technological capability and nothing else : Now I know you would not accept this but it does invalidate your assertion however : So the natural default position for any non falsifiable hypothesis which could be true is to accept that possibility and not invalidate it until then

See you are using good and bad here as pertaining to objective truth : And not as moral indicators which is how they are more commonly applied hence the confusion of your usage : An example : One plus one equals two is not a good idea but
a proven mathematical statement : Notions of good and bad here as tradititionally used are of no consequence : A better choice of terms would be right or wrong which although moral indicators too are also reference points for objective truth

Can you give any examples of philosophical ideas which are falsifiabe : I ask this because philosophy per se is all about
them and non scientific or non mathematical ones cannot be objectively proven or disproven as such : You cannot after
all examine an idea under a microscope now can you : At least not in the objective scientific sense

I see I shall have to discard the notion that hackenslash thinks most of philosophy a load of old bollocks : This a meme that is remarkably difficult for me to remove how ever ha ha ha but I shall try : Your recent statement that Russell is one of the very few you have time for does nothing to dispel the stereo type how ever : I suspect that philosophy irritates you because it is a non falsifiable discipline whereas you are hardwired only for accepting what is objectively true so bit of a disconnect between you and it there : You certainly have more respect for physics than philosophy though : So I some times think you are being a tad closed minded on all matters philosophical : As the natural default position from a logical perspective as I have previously referenced is to discard nothing unless or until it has been falsified : That includes that which cannot ever be falsified as well

naffat wrote:

hackenslash wrote:I comprehend that you erected an assertion that neither you nor all the world's fucking experts in cognitive science have a fucking prayer of supporting robustly.

Mainstream cognitive science generally presupposes that such a thing is possible. Though I am personally not quite as gung-ho about substrate independence as other cognitive scientists are, it is a staple of their research program.

Argumentum ad verecundiam. Keep it up.

To conclude that you are more or less as sentient as I am—despite my doubts—is to acknowledge that it's not the particular atoms in the body that count, it's their relations to each other and the rest of the world that counts. This of course raises a further question: why is carbon magic?

Ad hominem. You want to go for the full fucking set?

Until you can answer that, I will note that your counterargument is still nothing but a namedrop of Roger Penrose, whose quantum woowoo is in no way, shape or form specious or, as you like to say, "ex recto".

It's a fuck of a lot more than that, it's a recognition that presupposition of a future state of affairs is not fucking evidence. You have not begun to support it, nor can you.

Hit the books—you now have your 18 pages of "primary literature" references for starters—and spare me your verbal diarrhea.

Still waiting to hear about what the primary literatue can tell me about your vacuous blind assertion concerning 'post-biological civilisation', on the supposition that there will ever be such a thing in light of the fact that there are still major problems to solve.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbole

Oh, it purports to lecture me on fucking language now, eh? Good fucking luck with that.

These are some of the hits from the Corpus of Contemporary American English for "omniscient":

Excellent: Erect bollocks I already addressed as if I didn't already address it. Let us all know how that works out for you.

Meanwhile, that evidence about 'post-biological civilisation' again?