The Back Room

[Nexaduro]

Homework is finished. :thumbup:

 

40 minutes 'til lightsout. :thumbdown:

[archimage_a]

Too much deep, not enough sarcasm.

Sarcasm Mobile, AWAY!!!

 

Not the 10 dimentions, the multiverse theory, which states that there are infinite parallel universes in which one or more decisions were made differently.

So you glossed over the bit that said:

"Or you believe in the 10 dimentions theory."

....As an alternative theory, since your theory is clearly inadequate.

 

Also what you described is the 5th dimention...

 

And our brains functions exactly like computers, we need sensors (our senses) to detect everything, we have our inner ear to detect which way is up, similiar to a gyroscope. And to respect any aspects of physics, we have to experience or learn about it from one or more of our senses, as does a computer.

 

On an amazingly simple level, yes.

You could also say that a coughdrop functions exactly like a computer...It is hard on the outside, and melts in fire.

Or are brains are the same as mashmellows...They are soft and go you wouldn't want to eat one that had been a cupboard for two centuries.

...Or a Bird is like a Brick...They both fly when they are thrown, and both use gravity to land.

 

A computer, as we know them, is not capable of learning outside of its programming.

Cleverbot can 'learn'(I use the turn VERY loosely) how to respond to text...It cannot 'learn' how to paint...or even do basic arithmatics(reliably).

Deep Blue could 'Supposedly learn' how to play chess better...It cannot 'learn' how to paint.

 

A human can learn how to do most anything.

We cannot learn how to think faster than a computer, to move our hand faster than a computer, to produce massive amounts of heat like a computer...Why?

Because we are not built to do those things...We are built as a jack of all traits, master of none...Some few of us may be gifted, some few of us may be handicapped...but there are things we cannot do.

 

To create a ghost in the machine, a computer is not enough, the seed needed to spawn the ghost would have to be a program that constantly rewrites itself, with hundreds of tiny functions. Heck, it might even have to be capable of adapting to the computer, spreading via worms and comunicating (to share upgrades) with itself in order to trigger a sufficient bug to trigger the change that leads to its evolution.

Yes...

 

Are your purposefully designing a logic trap?

"

Human brains are the same as computers, but computers are incapable of sentience, while Humans are sentient.

Therefore the only possible answer is magic, we need to develop magic.

"

 

Your solution is not magical, it is a restatement of my solution, with more holes.

 

First:

A program that rewrites itself would be Entropic, it would need outside stimulation.

A program that rewrites part of itself by outside stimulation...like say...Paint...or the mouse?

A program that entirely rewrites itself by outside stimulation...Isn't in any way the defination of an Organic Mind...except perhaps in mind control...

A program that has the theoretical capacity to treat every part of its program as a varriable...is easily corruptable.

 

DNA doesn't work by being easily rewritten...it works by being extremely stable and hard to rewrite.

Mutations occur RARELY. Hence why we have not, significantly, evolved in the last 12,000 years.

What you are proposing is akin to writing a DNA sequence for a Radioactive Organ and implanting it into people and hoping they develop superpowers.

There IS a chance, yes...Does that chance fall into the realms of doability? No.

 

 

 

If you want to try to speedquest AIs then you should join the queue formed behind Alan Turing....I should warn you, it is 60 years long and counting.

 

>Teacher is mad

>You become apathetic to school

>Refuse to learn

>Grades plumet

>Parents called in

>They mad, teacher mad, errybody mad

>You resent not doing homework, but feel you could not change

>Grades are unrecoverable

>Drop out of high school

>Parents disown you

>Kicked out of house

>Sadness you felt that made you unable to do homework is now miniscule in comparison

>Life in ruins

>I really should of done that homework

 

Goes against my traditional 'If you do this the results will be CATASTROPHIC FOR ALL MANKIND' view, but what the hey:

 

Alternatively:

Teacher is mad

I appolgise

Teacher gives me an extention

I ignore the homework more

Teacher is mad

I appologise

Teacher gives out new homework

I do the new homework

I am glad I got a week off of homework

 

=)

 

This all seems theoretical to the point where it would be impossible to test. It's not really the place of sciences but philosophy.

Very true, that is what makes it interesting.

But once something has been proved it is very difficult to argue about it...Though it occationally happens...as with the Capacitor-Transformer of infinate power.

[Retech]

Alternatively:

Teacher is mad

I appolgise

Teacher gives me an extention

I ignore the homework more

Teacher is mad

I appologise

Teacher gives out new homework

I do the new homework

I am glad I got a week off of homework

 

=)

 

And then you discover that the teacher put in a zero for the gradebook, and you weep because you've just been demoted by a letter grade!

[Icuownage]

>Teacher has less homework to mark

>Leaves room

>Is hit by a car

>Would have survived if they were a few minutes later (the time it takes to mark homework)

>You make the connection a few weeks later

>Horrible guilt

>To make up for the guilt you study hard and do all the homework

>Good grades, good college/uni

>Nice paid job

>Get married

>Remember the teacher

>Feel like you did well for the teacher

>Visit their grave

>Leave nice flowers, and thank them.

[Retech]

>Teacher's spirit haunts you

>Spirit tries to possess you

>Try to get priest to exorcise the "demon"

>Wife thinks you had an affair and using excuse of demon to cover it up

>Proves that you didn't have an affair

>Wife thinks you're insane and leaves you

>You exit house early next morning to go to work

>Gets hit by car

>Would have survived if you left a few minutes later (time it takes to wait for wife to finish using the bathroom)

[archimage_a]

And then you discover that the teacher put in a zero for the gradebook, and you weep because you've just been demoted by a letter grade!

 

I know Britain doesn't have gradebooks.

I know that where Britain does use gradebooks they have zero impact on your final results.

I know I live in Britain.

I laugh at Retech.

 

Leave nice flowers, and thank them.

They rise from the dead to forgive you

They have a sever allergic reaction to the flowers

An ambulence is called

The paramedics load up the body

A swarm of bees is attracted by the flowers

The ambulence drives precipitously close to a cliff

The bees attack the driver

The driver goes into anaphalactic shock

The driver accelerates off the cliff

Gravity acts on the ambulence

Ambulence is pulled down into a convienently placed, combined, Orpharium, Hospital and Natural Gas Mine

Ambulence explodes

You feel guilty

You know that flowers are a bad idea.

[Retech]

>Rolls a natural 1 on Knowledge (Countries that aren't America)

>Hopes that modifier is high enough to know enough about Britain

>Adds a +5 circumstance bonus for being on a forum with Brits

>Adds -10 untyped bonus for being an American for Knowledge (Countries that aren't America)

>???

>Wonders why Archi expected an American to know anything about Britain

 

Editted for the sake of the national psyche of the Brits. America rulez, though.

Edited May 4, 2011 by Retech

[archimage_a]

[The_Mather1]

Yes, a self-rewriting program is easily corruptable, that's the entire point of it, since if it corrupts just the right way, it could gain a function that could potentially lead to some sort of evolution.

[archimage_a]

Potentially, yes.

Similarly, if you created a program that progressively altered itself by one character, you could create do the same thing...only in a more structured format.

 

However you run into a problem...since a self-rewriting program would rewrite the rewriting part of itself, resulting in a stop in rewriting...as such you would need the chain that gave the function of self awareness and then stopped the rewrite....Which is, essentially, a very sloppy version of natural selection...like putting a radioactive organ in something's DNA....Wait, didn't I already say that?

 

Ok, let me think...

A cell is made up of DNA, DNA is made up of Phosphate, Sugar and Nucleotides.

Sugar is 19 atoms.

Phosphate is approximately 8 atoms.

Nucleotides are, on average, 15 atoms.

 

1 base pair is, therefore, 84 atoms, approximately.

 

Which means, for every 1 basepair represented you need 84 random mutations to occur.

For every 2 basepairs represented you need 7,056 random mutations to occur.

For every 3 basepairs represented you need 592,704 random mutations to occur.

Thats 1 Codon.

 

Now there are 64 different codons, but only 20 Amino Acids, so lets simplify it to 20 codons.

 

So there is a 1 in 20 chance that that specific codon will be the right one for a specific gene sequence.

 

So out of 11,854,080 sequences, we have 1 usable codon.

 

Now, Human DNA has 1 million Codons, however the majority of which are 'junk' or stuff related to proper coding.

There are 7,667 codons which are specifically used to code humans....not very many...

 

To correctly represent the 'human code', your program could, potentially, have to go through:

A number that exceeds the calculating capacity of Excel and Calculator...

 

 

Now, supposing you built a protected database of the 20 Amino Acids, so that each was represented by a symbol, which the computer read as the full 84 atoms.

Then we have...A number that is still too large to be represented... and that is only 20^7,667

 

But anyway, lets assume, that this number is 1*10^153,340 (Which is (20/20)^(7,667*20)...Not sure cancelling works with powers, but only way I could think of getting a number)

Now, each of those symbols is 1 bit...so that is... 1*10^153,331 Gigabits? Thats around 1*10^19,166 Gigabytes, I think.

That seems like an awfully large amount of data...but remember that that is the theoretical max amount of total data. The actual amount of data required would be:

153,340 bits. Or 19 Kilobytes.

 

So working on the assumption that you had Tianhe-I working on the program...you could do 2,500,000,000,000,000 bits at a time. Or 16,303,638,972 programs per second.

(I am just gonna assume perfect conditions)

Now that is 1.63*10^13, per second.

Meaning the total time taken to calculate everything, assuming perfect conditions, would be 11,795, or about 3 hours.

 

So we know have the 1*10^19,166 Gigabytes of data. We then need to run said data. Said data requires:

1 program = 153,340 symbols, at 592,704 bits per symbol.

The resulting requirement 5.6 second per program run.

Now, 5.6*1*10^153,340 is a large number...

A very large number....a number so large, in fact, that even using the most powerful computer present, even ignoring all the neccessary runtimes and what not required to make said program work, would take:

(1,892,160,000,000 (seconds in a millenia) or 1.9(rounding up)*10^12)

37,662.5 Millenia. Or 37 Million years...or 37,000,000 years

 

Natural, comparatively, took 3.5 Billion years (or 3,500,000,000 years) so you are about 92 times faster.

 

 

Anyway, now that we have the 'Human Program' we need to run it. This takes 5.6 seconds each time you want to run it.

There are 50 Trillion Cells in the Human Body...for the purposes of ease we will assume each cell has 1 strand of DNA.

Thus 50,000,000,000,000 * 5.6 seconds = 2,800,000,000,00,000 seconds, or 8,878.7 Millenia...or 8.8 Million years per full cycle*.

 

So, natural evolution's ooze is bubbling away nicely.

Computer is smoothly running 1 iteration of itself every 8 million years.

 

Lets advance to the 3.5 Billion year mark:

Natural Evolution has resulted in 6.5 Billion Humans, with DNA of ((64/64)^(1,000,000*64)) 1*10^64,000,000 bits, and 50,000,000,000,000 Cells, running those 64 million bits once every...lets be generous, *7 years (Time it supposedly takes for the body to replace itself). So total number of operations completed in a year is: 1*10^457,142,857,142,857,142,857

 

If Operation Bootstrap discovered the perfect program on its very first try, and ran it, knowing that it was perfect, with its full resources...It would be rounding year 76 of its run.

 

 

 

Now, of course, more computers you had the more processing power...Also a higher power requirement.

In the above example: 4.04 Megawatts are consumed, or 12,915,072,000,000,000,000 Joules or 1.3*10^19 for the 37 million years. Less than 1 year's worth of global power consumption...Probably enough to bankrupt anyone who tried it, but it would certainly be doable.

You start tying the whole world into the grid and the energy requirement skyrockets...and even with all the computers on Earth devoted to it, it will still, probably...if we assume there are about 1,000,000,000 computers in the world...and each of them has an average of 500 GFLOPS then the total processing power is 500 EFLOPS or 200,000 times more than the above example.

As such it would take 46 years to complete 1 cycle, and 185 years to develop the 'Human Code'. Again, this does not include any of the extranous data, or processing data, or any other factors involved with the realities (rogue hackers, people shutting off their power.

 

It also assumes that the average is 500 GFLOPS, which is woefully over optimistic, with most computer averaging at less than 100. However I really don't feel like trawelling about trying to find the average, so over optimism AWAY!

 

Also reminding you that this is not a super-omni-incredible powerful AI...it is a very slow human...Approximately 2 in 13 times as fast. (This may be over optimistic, since I didn't allow for any sort of though process, I just emulated a human body. The Neurons themselves would require processing power, but given we don't know how much processing power a human brain has...it seems foolish to guess.)

 

Also, this whole thing would require some sort of elemental simulator as well, in conjunction with some sort of atom location software. So this is only the very lowest, not possible, amount of time required.

 

You could, therefore, make the arguement that, what if you didn't try to emulate a human, and instead created an all natural computer. Yes, you could. You could turn on your computer tommorrow morning, having ingenously designed a program that randomly generates script, and discover you are now enslaved to computerkind, prepare to recycle your relatives, eat Soylent Green and work in the sillicon mines.

 

There is NO way to guess how complex or simple said code would be...

However, it is unlikely to be less simple(or simpler) than the Human Coding part of the Genome.

 

 

Conclusion:

Short of hacking the internet for the better part of two centuries...minimum(I would say)...along with coding an elemental simulator...Or by banging your head into the keyboard until bits of brain fly out and are assimilated by the motherboard to create an semi-organic AI...The possibly of spontanously generating an AI is remote.

[The_Mather1]

It's a project that would take virtually forever, but it's way more likely to suceed than trying to script something that does things that aren't part of its script.

[Alg]

And all you'll need is a computer that can run for that long and 2,000+ years worth of people to maintain it. Probably also a decent power source that you know will last that long without any problems...

[The_Mather1]

Mask, a few thousand PS3s, a sterile, air-tight, refidgerated room and a geothermal generator would do.

[Alg]

And this doesn't seem at all impractical to build? Plus, perfection stops at the ideal world. There are going to be little quirks and errors, those are going to be what requires maintenance.

[The_Mather1]

There is nothing that can go wrong, with no dust, no access to any outside information and faultless software, the units can't bug or become infected. With a refridgerated room they can't overheat. And with geothermal power, the only thing that can cut the power would be something that causes massive damage to the Earth itself.

[Seraphi]

Perfection is a myth. There is no such thing as flawless software.

[Alg]

So, how do you refrigerate a room big enough to hold a few thousand PS3s, and how do you keep it airtight? Those things might not be huge, but a few thousand of them is going to take up space.

Things only start to fail more as time goes on, and you're talking about thousands of years.

[The_Mather1]

Of course there is, but there's no such thing as a perfect software, the difference being that a flawless software does not glitch or bug by itself, a perfect software would not glitch or bug no matter what happens. Flawless software for the units would simply be LAN software made specifically for PS3s working on the AI script.

 

Mask, you know what a cold storage building is, right? You just take one of those,seal the doors with rubber and lead the ACs outlet to its intake.

[archimage_a]

It's a project that would take virtually forever, but it's way more likely to suceed than trying to script something that does things that aren't part of its script.

I agree...If anyone suggests that idea I will be sure to tell them it is wrong... :thumbup:

 

Thus far all I have said is that nature would take forever to do the job, but at the end of it, the job would be done well.

Compared to doing it by hand, which would take forever and probably not be that well done.

 

Mask, a few thousand PS3s, a sterile, air-tight, refidgerated room and a geothermal generator would do.

 

Enter a small Earthquake that damages the Geothermal Plant, faulty seals that let trace dust in, faulty hardware that overheats and explodes...Archeologists from the year 2200 blowing a hole in the wall.

Water in the air crystalising and shorting something out, or wearing down the rubber(idk).

The seals breaking down due to the cold temperatures.

Minor cracks in the [enter any componant] caused by heating and cooling of [componant].

Static electrical build up starts a fire.

Powersocket overloads and no one is around to press the breaker.

Powersocket overloads and there is no breaker so starts a fire.

 

It is certainly possible for a few thousand PS3s, in a Sterile, Air-Tight, Dry, Refrigerated Room, could survive undisturbed for all that time...

It is also possible that a minor Earthquake occurs and the whole thing falls into a fissure. Or your contractors were lazy and didn't shut a door. Or a man with a bomb.

 

Tis also possible that I will spontanously develop a mechanical brain due to radiation from my computer screen...

 

 

A further alternative is that your self rewriting software scripts an overload and a PS3 explodes, sending flaming wreckage across the room...So you might want to fill the room with Helium, or Argon...or some other inert gas.

 

 

Perfection is a myth. There is no such thing as flawless software.

I disagree.

Take a simple digital clock...It will count up endlessly, reaching a preset point and reseting itself.

The software cannot develop a flaw because there is nothing which can go wrong.

 

Yes, there could be a hardware failure, or it could get hit with a hammer causing a failure...but the software itself cannot cause a fault.

 

Another example is roleplaying games...If there are a million rules, which were not written with specific reference to each other then it is possible to construct characters that were never intended to be created.

However, if there is 1 rule, then no matter how much you use that one rule, you cannot construct a character that was never intended.

Similarly, if there are a million rules, which were all, painstakingly, balanced against each other, so that all possibly characters were considered and thus no character could ever be constructed which was not intented...then character creation would be flawless.

 

It is simply a matter of creating a situation where the user cannot outwit the designer...As long as that condition is met, the software will function perfectly.

[Retech]

Or, human instruments would detect a huge "vein of metals" in the ground and start trying to extract your PS3s.

[Alg]

Mask, you know what a cold storage building is, right? You just take one of those,seal the doors with rubber and lead the ACs outlet to its intake.

For potentially thousands of years or more.

As far as I know, it can be done. It's just so unbelievable impractical that you're better off doing anything else.

[The_Mather1]

Retech, I don't think anyone would call a seemingly normal cold storage "in the ground".

[Nero]

WATCH OUT NINJAS!

[Ieyfura]

WATCH OUT NINJAS!

 

Watch out for what? *vanishes from existence again*

[Nexaduro]

Read this. My grandfather told me today at dinner. I haven't laughed so hard in my life.

[hide]My grandfather's friend, a fellow former FBI agent, has a pair of ill-suited neighbours. The one to his right breeds pet rabbits, while the one on his left owns a rather vicious dog. The two men have a mutual understanding, and get along farely well, despite this roadblock. One day, when both neighbours happened to be out on vacation, my grandfather's friend came home from work and found the dog in his backyard. It was shaking a dead rabbit by its neck. The man ran up to the dog and shooed it away, worrying that such an event could begin a feud between his neighbors. So he decided to clean up the dead rabbit, to avoid conflict. He brings it inside, washes it in the tub, and blowdries it off. He then heads over to his righthand neighbour's lawn and props the rabbit up against its cage, to give it a semblance of life.

 

The next day the righthand neighbour is home, and goes outside to check on his rabbits. My grandfather's friend hears the man yelling, and goes outside to investigate.

"Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god!"

"What's wrong?"

"Oh my god! Oh my-"

"What's wrong, friend?"

"This rabbit, it's dead... I BURIED IT YESTERDAY!"[/hide]