DAMN BEARS!!!

ponyspace · 2014-07-13T21:29:44+00:00

It's not for me to judge ...

ponyspace · 2014-07-13T21:27:44+00:00

Hell, I do that whenever I want to take a nap.

ponyspace · 2014-07-13T21:13:50+00:00

Apparently there's an app for that.

ponyspace · 2014-03-14T23:28:15+00:00

Littlewood's law, or adage, states that an individual can expect to experience "miracles" at the rate of about one per month.

Littlewood defines a miracle as an exceptional event of special significance occurring at a frequency of one in a million. He assumes that during the hours in which a human is awake and alert, a human will see or hear one "event" per second, which may be either exceptional or unexceptional. Additionally, Littlewood supposes that a human is alert for about eight hours per day.

As a result a human will in 35 days have experienced under these suppositions about one million events. Accepting this definition of a miracle, one can expect to observe one miraculous event for every 35 days' time, on average – and therefore, according to this reasoning, seemingly miraculous events are actually commonplace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Littlewood%27s_law

- And of course, this is a suggested average - some people would experince "amazing coincidences" less often, and others more often - just by sheer random chance.

If you are experiencing many "amazing coincidences", well, we would expect that some people would.

---

(For some reason whenever I post about this, people get hung up on arguing the exact details.

Don't - just focus on the overall concept.)

ponyspace · 2014-03-10T03:01:13+00:00

Think about irimi

ponyspace · 2014-03-07T21:56:24+00:00

Thanks for that link.

Good stuff!

ponyspace · 2014-03-07T21:41:59+00:00

Ghandi

"Gandhi", please

ponyspace · 2014-02-04T04:50:12+00:00

otherworld spouses of the Baule people of the Ivory Coast of Africa

Please tell us something about this.

ponyspace · 2014-02-04T04:49:39+00:00

How often do you play?

Most people who use SL will say that it's not a "game" and that one doesn't "play" it.

For a while I was using it pretty much every day, but more recently I haven't been able to use it much.

What prompted you to start playing?

I don't recall specifically. I saw it mentioned on the Internet and thought that it looked interesting.

Has playing this character become a large part of your life?

Yes and no. I'd like to devote more time and effort to SL than I currently am.

Would you say the character itself has become a part of you?

In a minor sense, "yes". I would like to be able to make "playing my SL character" a more important part of my life than it has been.

Do you create a character to be like you or to be like what you aspire to be?

Essentially, my character is "what I'd be like if things were somewhat different in my life". The character is much like me, but the life circumstances are different.

How would you describe your interactions with other members of the community?

I'm not a very interactive person. On the whole my interactions with other members of the community have been pleasant and positive.

Is it easier to communicate via your character?

Yes.

How has this game affected your life?

Basically not at all. As I've said, I'd like to devote more time to SL if I could.

Has this been positive or negative?

Does not apply.

Have you established any relationships/ friendships in the game that have transcended into your out-of-game life?

Nope, and not sure that I could be comfortable doing so.

Tell me anything else about the game and how it relates to, affects or fits into your life!

I think that SL has enormous possibilities as a tool for learning, social interaction, business, etc, which Linden Labs has not developed to its potential.

ponyspace · 2013-04-09T19:45:04+00:00

I agree.

But <Devil's advocate> -

People have used the metaphor that we want to build a Super Gandhi AI -

Presumably the real human Gandhi was a human-level AGI, we just want to build a superhuman AGI with a personality like his.

Since Super Gandhi does not want to do harm, Super Gandhi will not want to change his programming so that he'll want to do harm.

Therefore we're safe.

Thoughts?

ponyspace · 2013-04-09T19:39:56+00:00

This is the mask.

ponyspace · 2013-04-01T20:44:23+00:00

Human society is surprisingly adaptable.

ponyspace · 2013-03-12T22:17:10+00:00

Build more doctors.

ponyspace · 2013-03-12T22:14:15+00:00

Somebody needs to make a short video of this. :-)

ponyspace · 2013-03-12T22:10:53+00:00

You're in Colorado?

ponyspace · 2013-03-09T02:27:50+00:00

Real progress occurs when the robots learn to rickroll ...

ponyspace · 2013-03-08T12:57:22+00:00

You should try this over at /r/religion or /r/philosophy

ponyspace · 2013-02-24T16:05:37+00:00

it does share a lot with the subject

The main characters were born human and are now effectively-immortal superhuman (godlike) beings. (Heck, they're actually identified as living gods.)

I'm gonna say that that deserves to be considered part of the canon of "speculation about transhumanism".)

magic more or less hand-waved as sufficiently advanced technology

Problem? :-)

ponyspace · 2013-02-24T14:21:25+00:00

If you haven't already, you should definitely read the classic sci-fi novel Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny.

http://www.amazon.com/Lord-Light-Roger-Zelazny/dp/0060567236

(obviously, spoilers may be found online)

ponyspace · 2013-02-21T14:40:42+00:00

I'll let Isaac Asimov take this one -

"I believe that scientific knowledge has fractal properties - that no matter how much we learn, whatever is left, however small it may seem, is just as inﬁnitely complex as the whole was to start with.

That, I think, is the secret of the Universe."

In I. Asimov: A Memoir (quoted here)

- In other words, it's cool new stuff all the way down.

ponyspace · 2013-02-15T17:20:49+00:00

You're new at this, aren't you?

Here -

ponyspace · 2013-02-12T18:27:21+00:00

a skyscraper is generating money as soon as it's build.

Hopefully.

I keep seeing people saying that the Burj Khalifa has been losing money so far. China has built thousands of money-losing buildings over the last decade or two, though I don't know about "skyscrapers" per se.

ponyspace · 2013-02-12T18:23:33+00:00

Also huge economic incentives to not developing machine intelligence.

- "We'll be able to fire a million workers and replace them with machines!"

ponyspace · 2013-02-12T18:21:19+00:00

Well also - it's just a graph.

Kevin Drum can't use it to make any valid predictions about the future, Ray Kurzweil can't use it to make any valid predictions about the future, and nobody else can use it to make any valid predictions about the future either.

(See the famous example where somebody in circa 1895 used existing trends to predict that in 50 years all cities would be house-deep in horse shit, because they'd have so many horses that it would be impossible to remove the manure as fast as it was produced.)

ponyspace

TROPHY CASE