Life

Life is a strange thing, sitting here at age 24 I know that, barring any absurd advances in medical technology, I statistically won't be here in 40-60 years.  I think it was sometime in my teens I became morbid, and was horrified of this fact. Now I'm not so much afraid, but the thought still makes me feel sick to my stomach and sometimes it is one I can't turn off.  I know we all die, being born means you have to die. I don't believe in any meaningful sense of reincarnation or an afterlife.. that is to say if there is an afterlife the experience must necessarily be so fundamentally different an experience that if "I" were in it, I would rapidly cease to be "me", so much so that for all intents and purposes "I" am dead regardless.

 

Some people instead take comfort in living on through the memories of others, this isn't really living on though, 

and it's also incredibly short. What were the names of your grand-grand-parents? What about their parents? Chances are you don't know, and even if you do you probably don't actually know anything about them.   To be fair you never met them as I never met mine.

 

I also point out that any advance akin to what I mentioned above won't actually help. Living to 200 isn't any

 better per sey, only profound increases substantially alter our temporary experience.

 

What is someone to do? What CAN someone do? I didn't choose to be born, because there was no me to make

 such a choice. Now that a body has been born and become me, I simply don't want to die, at least not anytime soon, but, much like being born, that isn't a choice I get.  Which is fine, but how do I get that feeling out of the pit of my stomach then? How do I enjoy my life and the events in it amidst nihilistic knowledge?

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Wayne on AI

Being interested in robotics I get to hear a lot of arguments about what robots can or can't do, especially regarding robot intelligence. I will now clarify my opinion:

1) There is virtually nothing we can do that a robot couldn't hypothetically do better and faster.

2) That includes, provided the human race doesn't kill itself before developing the appropriate technology, thinking and conciousness. 

 

Most people are not aware just how advanced technology already is. We have a robot that speaks perfectly (in Japanese, but nonetheless), a robot that recognizes itself in the mirror, artificial brains that can learn to read from scratch on their own, artificial brains that can learn to predict the stock market with better accuracy than entire teams of experienced wall street advisors, artificial brains that can perform quick and accurate medical diagnosis, etc etc etc.  We have limited self-propigating learning systems which are essentially identical to the early (fetal) human brain. We have AI which passes the turing test for 2-3 year old humans (that means that adult humans talking to the AI can not tell the difference between it and a 2-3 year old child).

 People are going to be hit in the face with a lot of these things very soon. There is a very high potential for household affordable machines which are equal to adult human brains in the next 30ish years. There is a very high potential at least one super computer will well exceed that capacity and be well on the way to developing even better intelligences, resulting in a singularity event.

 This scares many people, putting things out of our hands in a sense. However I try to be more optimistic, the moment our species picked up a rock or a  stick our evolution became technological rather than purely biological, and this is just the next step. There is a risk of harm yes, but the potential for improvement via this path is nearly infinite.  Also, at very least, I think it will shut up the fundamentalist, after all once something other than human is on our level the whole god's image thing loses a lot of thrust.  Here is where most people will say that computers will always be, at best, simulations of our grandeur, that we can never know they actually think.  To those people I point out that you can never know humans, or even your own brain, are actually thinking.

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job

Got hired for a painting job starting Monday. Wage isn't great, but it's good hours and gives me some money. Also no one can complain and say I was lazy all summer.  I really wish people wouldn't do that, but they do, so meh.

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Yay

Found a place to live, room in a house including everything (heat, water, laundry, electricity, cable, internet) 15-20 min walk from Algonquin for $375.  Not exactly what I was hoping, but it's also $250-300 less a month than a bachelor apt. 

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bloody hell

So here I am, usask telling me my transcript arrived too late, getting all set for Algonquin in Ottawa, life is good. Then today I get an acceptance letter from USask for the Bachelor of Science in Engineering program.   So it's 4 years there for a degree, or 4 terms in Ottawa for a diploma with an option to do 2 more years in Thunder Bay for a degree if I want it.  The cost is about the same either way, the amount of time is the same.  Algonquin gets me potentially two pieces of paper, but restricts my options slightly. USask has lots of options, but if I'm tired of it 2 years in I get nothing.

 

I'm thinking Algonquin wins here, now if only they would tell me if the give credit for prior courses. 

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Just for fun

So I have a lot of free time it seems.  Since I don't think I can afford to take a proper program in physics/math, even a cheap one from Unisa (south africa) while I'm doing my robotics program, I've decided just to do it on my own.  That's really how I learn best, and I'm pretty sure I could just rock the GRE or something if I wanted to get into academic physics again.  I left because Dal had a screwed up alignment between math and physics departments when I enrolled, and I didn't have the mathematical confidence I do now.

 

I'll be working through the Motion Mountain text ( http://motionmountain.dse.nl/welcome.html ) , free online math text ( http://www.math.gatech.edu/~cain/textbooks/onlinebooks.html) , my hard copy text books, and the library if need be.  A lot of it will be review and should come quickly,  plus I pretty much love the more advanced stuff.  So.. here goes. 

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Stuff

 I am not at all affiliated with "Wayne's Place" restaurant in Hamilton. Yes, google ads thinks I am, but google ads is wrong. I have changed my blog title to help avoid this.

 

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Instead..

We decided to go with promise rings instead, which really does make more sense for both of us at this point in time. Still exciting, yay!

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