Couple of things… A leap ahead in computing would not necessarily mean that Moore’s Law was not descriptive of the event. It could still follow the same exponential trend, yet look like a giant leap forward.
It is likely that Moore’s Law will continue due to economic pressure to find newer and faster ways to compute. This may not have to do with shrinking transistor sized, but may well involve other forms of computation or architecture for chips.
Oh… I also thought that I would throw this into the mix.
When a creationist or evolution-denier says that “No one has ever seen an ape evolving into a man, or a dinosaur evolving into a bird.” Often, what they mean is that an Ape literally turned into a man while it was alive. The more subtle creationist will just imply that a thing that was fully ape gave birth to a thing that was fully man, yet I have discovered that both types are to be considered about equally likely to be encountered.
Neither type of Creationist or evolution-denier seems to understand that were these things to occur, both would disprove the Theory of Evolution...
Also, for anyone who wishes to know how far some of these people go… William Dembski, who runs a “University” that teaches “Creation Science” has, as part of one of his classes, an assignment whereby they get credit for making posts critical of evolution and in support of creation on what they term “Hostile Internet Forums”. PZ Myers has taken to deleting any posts and banning any members who are discovered to be part of these classes. Richard Dawkins’ forums have yet to devise a strategy against this sort of thing...
On the issue of “Have you ever seen an Ape evolving into a Human?” and the requested video tape (We get that too at RDF), I have found the following to be very helpful in showing just how stupid the claim is. Simply ask the person:
“How do you know that your father is really your father? Do you see him have sex with your mother to conceive you? How do you know that she did not have sex with someone else? Do you have a video tape to prove this?”
They of course, will have to admit that they take it as given based upon the testimony of their parents.
But, no creationist is going to let a thing like reality or evidence stand in their way. In the words of more than a few Creationists, such as the founder of the Creation Museum: If reality and scripture contradict, reality is wrong and scripture is right (paraphrased, as this has been stated in more ways than I could possibly recount here)
The report of creationists deploying the tactic in question (finding a transitional fossil where one was not previously creates two gaps that now need to be filled by other fossils), is not a Poe.
As a very active member of the Richard Dawkins Foundation Forums (RDF), I can tell you that I have seen this ploy used on more occasions than I can count.
This is in addition to people who think that Evolution also means that there should exist the Crockoduck, the Cat-dog, and the Bird-fish (to name just a few), or that Evolution means that Polar Bears had the Color scared off of them (attributed to one Richard Byers, notorious for Stoopid on the RDF. We never discovered what exactly scared Polar Bears white as he was banned for violations of the user’s agreement before he could get around to describing the process of being scared white).
Now, I must read the rest of this article. Just wanted to clear this up. If anyone is interested, I am sure that I could get exact links to the posts on RDF that make such claims. Although they represent the most insipid and fanatic of religious persons in the world, they remain terrifying that anyone could remain so willfully ignorant in the face of experts (there are more than a few real scientists on the RDF in the fields of Paleontology, Evolutionary Biology, Mathematics, Computer Science, and Cog Sci).
This is exactly the interpretation that I formed of Karma after my brief exchange with… with… I forget who, but it was an Eastern European Gentleman. In it, he said he downvoted a comment due to it being vague and repetitious. So, I did a quick study of those comments that were strongly upvoted and discovered that the vast majority had contributed something to the dialog.
Although, not having a lot of Karma has led me to be rather slow to post anything as a main blog post where the Karma seems to have more weight (if I am interpreting this correctly). I do have something I have been working on, but the “Karma to Burn” does make me hesitant to post something that could send my karma score into the negative.
I find this to be a silly argument, as it assumes that not much will change about the methods of teaching, or of rejuvenation by the time that these people (who have been frozen) are re-constituted in one manner or another.
True, we would be antiquated and ignorant by the standards of the day, but just going into the process of freezing gives us a mind-set that shows us that we must be ready to abandon just about everything we know when and if we wake again. The Man from 1400 discussed in the article did not have that mindset and it was discussed as if his freezing had been an accident rather than an act of intention.
Plus, there is another reason to thaw the people out who have been frozen: Rule of Law. These people have all signed contracts based upon their conception that when and if we develop the technology to reanimate them, that we will do so. I have not examined a contract from Alcor or another cryonics program, so this may be an implicit assumption of the process.
If that is the Best anti-cryonics argument heard so far, then it is a lousy argument.
Edit: Also, if, when revived, the person is going to have an indefinitely long life, then any re-training would be trivial in terms of cost.
As for why I don’t say Life instead of Intelligence Life, that is because I think that Life itself will continue in one fashion or another regardless of what we do.
I do think that Intelligence is important now that we have it, and that may be similar to a tall man assuming that tallness is the most important virtue in some eyes (although I find it to be a stretch of an analogy—Tallness is obviously a disadvantage at many times, and I could probably find a good reason to favor shortness… But, that aside...).
I don’t know why Intelligence would not be (or, to use a word that I hate: Why it should be) the characteristic that should be most valued. Is there a reason that Intelligence should not be the most important factor or characteristic of life?
I figured that might be why… My comment was not really very useful, and I realized that, but his Green-ness did make me think “He’s in the Matrix” all through the video (as you too have noticed).
He could offset this in the future by hanging a reddish-orange cloth behind him… Or, maybe Yellowish would be best to prevent him from over-correcting the color. I used to do a lot of video work and probably should have mentioned this to begin with above (that I really knew why he was green), and have had to do some really strange make-up or lighting to correct for a camera or ambient light color that was causing bizarre skin-tones (the very worst was having to make a guy nearly blue to offset an orange cast)
Why is Razib Green?
I am a little unsure how to answer this response.
I am speaking of intelligent Life as being the only thing of importance. I mentioned that the list of things you mention are important to US (Humanity), and I said that these qualities may not be important for all forms of intelligent life. It may be that humanity will have run its course and will need to make room for another form of intelligence. I find that to be a little bit disturbing, but I would rather see intelligence continue in some form than not at all.
And, I said that even among humans the qualities you mention are not universal, nor homogeneous. So, I am not sure what you are asking… It may be the case that I am arguing for two different points of view.
I think the same applies, regardless of the PDF’s notification. Just the name alone would make me suspicious of trusting anything that came from them.
Now, if the Empirical Defense Task Force told me that I was about to be tortured (and they had the same described reputation as the PDF)… I’d listen to them.
I see the issue, while I care about my own behavior, and others… I don’t care to base it upon silly examples. And, I think this is a silly and contrived situation. Maybe someone should do a sitcom based upon it.
On further consideration… In the first comment, I said that Dr. Evil Would not care, which is completely consistent with Dr. Evil Not having any idea
Pardon… I was not clear.
Dr. Evil would not care to indulge in a philosophical debate about whether he may or may not be a duplicate who was about to be tortured unless he was strapped to a rack and WAS in fact already being tortured. Dr. Evil(s) don’t really consider things like Possible Outcomes of this sort of problem… You’ll have to take my word for it from having worked with and for a Dr. Evil when I was younger. Those sorts of people are arrogant and defiant (and contrary as hell) in the face of all sorts of opposition, and none of them I have known took to well to philosophical puzzling of the sort described.
My comment above is meant to say “How do you know that you’re not about to be tortured right now?” and “Dr. Evil would have the same knowledge, and discard any claims that he might be about to be tortured for the same reasons that you don’t feel under threat of torture right now, and for which you would discard a threat of torture at the present moment (immanent threat).” (if you do feel under threat of torture, then I don’t know what to say)
He wouldn’t, any more than you have no idea if you are in danger of being tortured either.
I got that…
I think it a little too contrived. And, I think that a Dr. Evil would say to hell with it.
Excuse me… But, we’re talking about Dr. Evil, who wouldn’t care about anyone being tortured except his own body. Wouldn’t he know that he was in no danger of being tortured and say “to hell with any other copy of me.”???
Yeah! that AI doesn’t sound like one that I would let stick around… It sounds… broken (in a psychological sense).
Sorry, Hal, but I am a cold and heartless person who thinks that maybe I deserve to be tortured for untold thousands of years (for whatever reason), and this version of me may, in fact, sit and ask to be entertained by the description of you torturing me… Besides, I know that you don’t have the hardware requirements to run that many emulations of me.
According to the guy from Intel (Justin Ratner) at the 2008 Singularity Summit. Moore’s Law ended in 2005⁄06. The discrete transistor is a thing of the past according to his talk.