Are we Unique?

As of now EVEN with our limited knowledge we can assure that there are (were) no two human beings alike. For that matter existence of two similar objects (any objects even in their lowest form of existence) itself is a highly improbable possibility. Of course, I am talking on gene to gene and atom to atom basis. My point is if there are this many of constraints in forming two similar objects with the limited combinations why we can’t expect that WE ARE UNIQUE. Let u be the creator and just compare the combinations (of ???) you have for the manufacture of a human body with that of a planet like ours(hey just consider the physical aspects, otherwise you'll end up in messing all kinds of things, and that’s altogether a different science). So just imagine how improbable it is to have two sets of similar conditions which caused to the rise of life in its present form. Finally my point is simple. "As long as u don’t expect the one very similar to you (again on gene to gene and atom to atom basis) in your very next door it is reasonable enough to believe that WE ARE 'THE' LUCKIEST ONES ON OUR OWN AND THE, OTHERWISE, LONE UNIVERSE (pack the string theory for the time being).

Learn about Gravitation Lens

It is from Einstein's equivalence relation (General theory of relativity).

According to it, Space time is curved around an object having mass The greater the mass, greater the curvature. If you see through such a curved space-time, image seems Stretched to you around the corners of the object this is gravitational lensing(also known as optical effect of gravitation)

Information about Maths

The other day I was reading Roger Penrose's book named something like "The Large, The Small and The Human Mind," in which he draws these three interconnected spheres labeled:

1.Mentality,
2.Physical World,
3.Platonic World.

The first sphere Mentality represents the human brain, the second sphere the world we live in and the third sphere the world of mathematics which seems to be the most obscure than the other two, yet the most useful. It is with the help of mathematical concepts that we are able to explain the dance of the heavenly bodies and the existence of the electrons, protons and numerous other sub-atomic particles: in short mathematics-this game of numbers and symbols-has succeeded in explaining most of our material world. With the use of a few mathematical principles, we shall in the future be able to explain everything in the Universe (it's just a hope). Now, mathematics is the creation of Man. It is an outcome of Man's thinking. It has no meaning in itself and is just a tool. It is with this tool that man has been paving the path to the Unknown, for centuries. Furthermore, mentality can be regarded as some kind of vague physical structure. It can be said to be a part of Nature.

My Summarisation

Banach-Tarski describes a way of breaking apart an object into several pieces, and re-assembling them in a way which does not preserve mass in this simple mass-preservation model. Thus, a process analogous to this is not possible in this matter preservation model.

The immediate consequence is that the matter preservation model I have described is not a viable mathematical model of physics in which some sort of "Banach-Tarski process" is possible; and equivalently, in any world which is described by matter preservation, there cannot be any process resembling what is described by the Banach-Tarski theorem.

Could it be that there is a matter-preservation model in which Banach-Tarski is possible -- for instance, if point masses are possible? Maybe; but then what's the point of talking about tearing apart the empty space in between into unmeasurable sets and re-assembling them? You take apart mostly empty space, and re-assemble it into mostly empty space; whoop-de-doo.

So, with respect to simple models of matter conservation, Banach-Tarski seems at best peurile and utterly uninteresting; and at worst, utterly unrealistic because a re-assembly process analogous to the Banach-Tarski would not perserve mass.

Now, matter is not actually conserved in our world, but matter with energy seems to be conserved. Perhaps tearing apart a sphere into immeasurable pieces requires a large amount of energy: but we don't have a good model for this, and making models of the world for the sake of theorems instead of observed data is not good science. It is in principle an interesting way of building world-models, but it is not clear that this is how science should work.

This is the basis of my argument in the other thread. I was working with an intuitive model of matter preservation, which can be formalized into what I have described above.

Big Bang Theory Information

The Big bang is one of the theories developed to explain the origin of universe. According to it the universe starts from a big hot ball which is million million times hotter than the sun. The particles are in the state of plasma where there are no atoms. The burst of this hot ball lead to the formation of universe. But this does not explain all the phenomena in the universe it's just a good attempt to explain the formation of universe. No one knows what is before the Big bang as all the law of physics General Law of relativity itself fails in the singularity of the Big Bang (Its theory of relativity which predicted the Big Bang)

loggeinn

Information about Moon Landing

Man never landed on the moon! It was the biggest lie of the 20th century. Americans did it because of the cold war between them and the Russians. The 1960's American newspapers were dominated by the threats that Russians are going to land on the moon before them and there they would set a nuclear base, seems funny but its true!, they were threatened. Americans tried it many times but there shuttles or rockets hardly even left the ground. Meanwhile the Russians sent the first satellite in space, which again challenged the Americans. As a result, they came up with this fraud. When they were successful to launch some of their rockets in 1969-72, they really orbited around the earth while the astronauts were playing on the American land. Before, the Russians had sent a dog in space, it died immediately as the rocket crossed the earth’s magnetic field because of the immense radiation. They concluded that no man could ever reach the moon unless he is protected by 6-foot thick lead sheet all the time. The suits that they wore barely had a 1-inch thick aluminum protection.

Are we alone in universe..?

The universe is vast. You and I or anyone else cannot imagine how huge it is. There are billions of galaxies out there each containing billions of billions of stars. Even if 1% of all these stars have a planetary system like our solar system, that means millions of cases and the chances are pretty huge for another life form, be it intelligent or not. It is almost harder to think that we are the only one. It is naive to think that since we haven't found any other intelligent life near us then there is no life form in the universe. The nearest star to our earth is 4 light years away. That means the image we see of that start is from 4 years ago, that is how far it is and that is just the closest start.

Is there any other Civilization in Universe

Why we haven't communicated with any other civilization yet? If the civilization would exist right now in some other galaxy, it would take millions of years for the signal to arrive - have you considered that. And what makes you so sure; we haven't received any signal from other civilizations? Maybe we are just stupid enough not to recognize such signals, as we think that every life form out there must fit in our earthly standards. Maybe if we would start to think more open-mind we could find more unbelievable miracles of our universe out there. I wouldn't be surprised, if some kind of life would exist also in our own Solar system – for Example on Titan, and I would be even less surprised if we wouldn't recognize those life forms at first.

About the Banach & Tarski theorem

In other words, the Banach & Tarski theorem describes a process that implies a physical model which is different (and incompatible) with LCME (a currently accepted description of our world). An instance of a process that is possible and entirely compatible with a physical model implied by the Banach & Tarski theorem could be judged to be similar or analogous to an instance of a process that is compatible with LCME. A process that is analogous to a Banach & Tarski process could indeed be observed in our world, depending on the exact definition of analogy. In order to complete your argument, you would need at least to provide a definition of 'analogy' or 'similarity'. Now, maybe you think you've done that, by presenting the LCME physical model and how it is mathematically inconsistent with a physical model implied by Banach and Tarski. The problem is that of analogy. Your unstated premise is that no 2 instances of a processes described by incompatible physical descriptions can ever be 'analogous' or 'similar'.

An Intellectual Science

You know that humanity's science and technology has been developed primarily as a result of our sight. We saw the sun going round us and realized its periodicity. And hence we got day and night. And slowly developed the geocentric theory and with more observations, got the heliocentric theory. Then came 1400s with Newton etc., who studied light and it's splitting and then there was a lot more study of EM waves which though we could not see with the naked eye, we realized that they were there because of an extension of visible light and because of their effects on various photographic plates etc. And so we studied all science using eyesight. Be it quantum mechanics, or whatever. All based on Electro magnetic theory. The question is this. What would science be like, if sight was not present? Note; do not consider a blind man situation, but an organism with more advanced senses like touch, sound etc. (say a smart bat). I got this doubt because in all science fiction stories, aliens are shown having pretty much the same technology we do or hope to do. What if their evolution skipped sight for a preferable sense which is more useful in their environment?

Nano-technology and science

The science of the miniature- nanotechnology, though a relatively new field is fast emerging as the 'favorite of all' kind of technological arena due to its application in almost every field, from medicine to fabrics. 'Nano' in Greek means dwarf and material, when reduced to Nano dimension (10-9metre =1namometre) shows drastic changes in Physical, Chemical, magnetic, optical, mechanical and electrical properties. This promises exiting applications in bio science, medical science, environment, electronics, cosmetics, security and variety of other fields.

Everything on this earth is made up of atoms, which are the smallest particles. The properties of everything are determined by the arrangement of the atoms. Thus, if atoms in coal are rearranged, we can get diamond. At present, though scientists are able to move molecules and atoms in a mass yet they are still not able to precisely manipulate them. But in future, nanotechnology will allow as redesign easily and create what we want exactly. Further, Nano materials would be very light, strong, transparent, and totally different from bulk material because they are a thousand times smaller than the diameter of human hair, which is around 60 microns.

Gravitational Lensing

It is from Einstein's equivalence relation (General theory of relativity)

According to it, Space time is curved around an object having mass The greater the mass, greater the curvature. If you see through such a curved space-time, image seems Stretched to you around the corners of the object this is gravitational lensing(also known as optical effect of gravitation)

On density variation

We can now also consider the dilation described above to be a valid choice of f, if we let g(x)=1/8. The total mapping doesn't preserve density as we required in our simple model of Newtonian mechanics, but now we have a mapping which can be used to describe a gas whose container has expanded in volume by a factor of 2 in all dimensions. (This transformation is still forbidden if we set g(x)=1, which corresponds to the matter-creating transformation which was forbidden in the structured-Newtonian regime.)

It's worth noting that the rotation and translation maps from the Newtonian regime cannot have a decrease in density everywhere in the matter-preservation model: that is, we can't have g(x)<1>

Halting problem and Artificial Intelligence

So we all know that solving the Halting problem is impossible (i.e. it's not decidable). It's also impossible to create a program that is capable of analyzing other computer programs because this problem is equivalent to the Halting problem. (i.e. The program being analyzed could have an infinite loop and there is no way to detect this infinite loop because of the Halting problem).

If we cannot create a program that can analyze other programs then we cannot create a machine that is capable of learning from other machines. In order for a machine to learn from the behavior of other machines it has to be programmed in such a way so that it could analyze other programs and we already said that this is impossible.

One fundamental property of our mind is its ability to learn by, for example, analyzing the behavior of other human beings.

If we cannot create a machine that is capable of learning then would not that mean that there is little hope for duplicating our minds through technology?

Programming a neural net

Programming a neural net is not a big hairy deal. The easiest way to get a good grounding is to log onto Cornell's open source courseware and look for something in about 4th year computer science.

You need:
1) A basic understanding of probability and markov chains
2) The ability to write a tiny little module that takes a single input value and returns one of up to three or four values with stated probability. This will be your node, and you will have as many of them as you can put up with in your net.
3) The ability to use object oriented programming (to create a node class that replicates them a bit more elegantly) and some sense of good structure would save a lot of work and be more elegant besides. Other little things might be useful.

It's really handy to write out your structure on paper before you start - are you familiar with finite state automata? - You want diagrams that look a bit like those. It helps. It also helps to know what you will get your net to do, and how you will teach it - again this comes down to structure, and courseware is really handy for providing examples. Here at UBC the course is at the 400 level, and I think the textbook is cited online. I will try and remember to attach a few links here when orkut is not being overrun by rabid monkeys.

Human versus non-human

I am not assuming or believing that all AI approaches are equal or related to human being. I do not say that consciousness is a requirement or a possible consequence. I am just dropping some questions in other to listen to some discussion about those.

However, I do agree that since I am human, the concept that I use for both consciousness and intelligence are that of a human. By consciousness I mean to be aware that I exist and also (this should not be part of the definition, but it helps) that I can think by myself.

The questions remain:
1) Is it possible to have human-like (or better than human) intelligence in other kind of hardware, a computer for example?
2) Is there a relationship, even some kind of cause and effect relationship between human-like intelligence and consciousness?
3) Very important but extremely hard do formalize. I do not mean simulation of "appearance" of intelligence in any way. I want true intelligence, whatever that means.

Creativity, emotions and computer

Hi people I've a question in my mind. It may be awkward...but still I want to discuss it. Normally what intelligence is defined is the way one act in certain situation but if we take a broader view then different things affect on ones intelligence that is natural ingenuity, creativity, knowledge and emotions or u can say emotional intelligence. If we take all these things together then we see that computer cannot act as human being. Computer is just mathematical methods which are discovered by human beings and if some genius discovers more powerful method then computer will fail. And it is true in many times. Then y we and other people compare human being and computer in this respect. It is obvious is not it CREATOR IS ALWAYS BEST THAN CREATION

Difference between human mind and AI

As I mentioned computer cannot have the fundamental creativity. And creativity is defined as non algorithmic and discontinuous according to idealist theorists, example Abraham Maslow. There are two kinds of creative acts. The first, called situational creativity, is algorithmic and consists of inventive permutation and combinations of existing contexts to bring about something novel. This is the creativity that human most often pursue in their ego modality and computers can handle in principle. But there is also fundamental creativity which is a discovery of something new in a new context. This is the creativity that we ascribe to the great deeds of great people such as Einstein and Mozart, Tagore and Darwin. This kind of creativity involves the primary processes of the quantum self-experience. It is available to all of us but is relatively rare because it requires a quantum leap of discontinuity, transcendence, and freedom.

Imitating evolution

Like all Computer Science degree holders, I took an AI programming class. In it, we learned about various neural networks, designed to be similar to animal brains. All these were simulated in matrices for speed. I was toying with the idea of a neural net that simulated more features of the human brain. Things like cell death and new cell birth (part of forgetting and learning as resources are limited), overall system depression/happiness (for guiding learning in certain directions), dendrites of various lengths with stimulants to trigger growth (idea that neuron should connect to cells near them, forming chains and clusters of related concepts that then connect outwards). Anyway, as I played with all these, the matrix was getting more and more crowded. Besides, as a C/C++ programmer I find structs and objects more intuitive. I was wondering what people thought of the idea of simulating natural brains using a struct or object describing all these behaviors, occasionally spawning and killing off new ones, and having signals traverse the web of structs from the input points.

A brute-force approach to Artificial Intelligence

With ever-increasing memory capacities and processing speeds and advances in distributed computation, and *assuming* that technological/scientific advances spur new understanding of the human brain in the next 50 years, I believe it will be possible within our lifetimes that we will have enough horsepower to emulate, to arbitrary precision as the years go on, a human brain. If this emulation is "good enough", then whether it will have a "self" is a purely philosophical issue. However, it seems certain that with enough understanding and horsepower, we can create intelligence.