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Crocker's rules
"Never is etiquette and 'good form' observed more carefully than by experienced travellers when they find themselves in a tight place."
-Sir Ernest Shackleton
I recently stumbled across Crocker's Rules. You can find many versions of them on the net: this particular rendition is from DoWire.org:
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My plans for 2006
This being the end of 2005, it's a good time to review a couple of my 2005 projects:
Character recognition
I spent a bunch of time this fall working on a character recognition program. The main point of the project was to test some theories I had about AI (both about some specific approaches to AI, and also some more general theories about how ( Read more... ) -
Mistaken identity
In Singularitarian / SL4 circles, the question of identity comes up a fair bit, often in relation to "uploading". A typical scenario goes like this: we develop upload technology that can scan your brain and make an exact functional copy on a computer. If the upload process destroys your original brain, is the version on the computer still " ( Read more... ) -
What I believe about the Singularity
1 The Singularity will occur within the next few decades.
1.1 We will soon develop human-equivalent AI, either by brute-force simulation of the human brain, or by a more traditional engineered approach.
By human-equivalent AI, I mean an AI with cognitive abilities at least equal to those of a human being. It isn't necessary for an AI to be ( Read more... ) -
Let's build a brain!
How hard would it be to build a human-level AI?
One interesting way of looking at this problem is to examine how hard it would be to run a computer simulation of a human brain.
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The rapture for nerds
Ellen commented the other day that the Singularity is essentially the nerd equivalent of the Rapture, which is an interesting way of looking at it. -
The Sony Librie
Now for something completely different... because I'm a total geek, I just bought a Sony Librie.
The quick version:
- E-book technology has finally arrived. The Librie is a flawed but viable device.
- However, getting content for it is pretty much a showstopper. You probably shouldn't buy it.
The long version:
Personally, I find the idea of a ( Read more... ) -
Further thoughts on immortality
Another point occurs to me, having to do with demographics. Currently, certain demographic groups (for example, certain fundamentalist religious groups) have much higher birthrates than the population at large. The net result is a slow increase in the proportion of the population belonging to those groups, which may or may not be counteracted ( Read more... ) -
The transparent laboratory
I've just started reading David Brin's The Transparent Society. I've been recommending it to people for years as one of the most important books on its particular topic, but in spite of that, I've somehow never gotten around to reading it. His basic premise is that rather than trying to preserve our privacy, we should accept the inevitability ( Read more... ) -
The Singularity is near
Through a combination of good luck and low cunning, I've managed to get my sticky little fingers on an early copy of Kurzweil's latest book (many thanks to SIAI and AC2005 for providing my copies!)
The bottom line: it's everything I'd hoped for. Just as Spiritual Machines was pretty much an updated replacement for Intelligent Machines ( Read more... )