Oxenfurt lecture hall

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Mexico has some righteous volcanoes, several over 4,000 meters. One that is trying hard to reach the 4,000 meter mark, Volcán de Colima, erupts spectacularly every year or so, and it put on a show yesterday. Ash fell in nearby villages, but there were no reports of damage or injuries.

The Mexican Volcano Belt is formed by the subduction of the Cocos Plate under the North American Plate. Entrained water is carried into the subduction zone, contributing to the explosive violence of these volcanoes.

Volcano cam, in time-lapse.

[video=youtube;GHNQB8-mvQw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHNQB8-mvQw[/video]
 
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That´s quite humbling actually...

We had a volcano eruption around here in 2008. Not actually in Argentina, the Chaitén volcano is in Chile, but some Argentinean towns got covered by ash as well.
However, the worst part was suffered by the nearby Chaitén town in Chile, which had to be completely evacuated (around 4000 people, according to reports I´ve seen) and got absolutely covered by ash, and also overrun by a nearby river which got flooded by the ashes.
The satellite image of the ash cloud crossing Argentina entirely and reaching the Atlantic is quite impressive...
 
I know theres some fans of John Bell about the forum who might like to know he's finally being honoured in his hometown (apart from a plaque at the Uni).

John Bell: Belfast street named after physicist who proved Einstein wrong. Titanic Quarter is built on the old Harland & Wolff shipyards, and houses our budding Science Park.

(Shameless plug for this Genius' favourite book: The Sleepwalkers. This I understand, his theorem... not so much ;))
 
I know theres some fans of John Bell about the forum who might like to know he's finally being honoured in his hometown (apart from a plaque at the Uni).

John Bell: Belfast street named after physicist who proved Einstein wrong. Titanic Quarter is built on the old Harland & Wolff shipyards, and houses our budding Science Park.

(Shameless plug for this Genius' favourite book: The Sleepwalkers. This I understand, his theorem... not so much ;))

"The discomfort that I feel is associated with the fact that the observed perfect quantum correlations seem to demand something like the 'genetic' hypothesis. For me, it is so reasonable to assume that the photons in those experiments carry with them programs, which have been correlated in advance, telling them how to behave. This is so rational that I think that when Einstein saw that, and the others refused to see it, he was the rational man. The other people, although history has justified them, were burying their heads in the sand. I feel that Einstein's intellectual superiority over Bohr, in this instance, was enormous; a vast gulf between the man who saw clearly what was needed, and the obscurantist. So for me, it is a pity that Einstein's idea doesn't work. The reasonable thing just doesn't work."

Bell's body of work is sometimes called the most profound in the history of science. Whether or not that is so, it certainly goes to the core of what it means to be a theory of quantum mechanics. Whether the universe is predetermined or gives a multiple-worlds illusion of determinism, whether it can be described and measured fully by relativistic means or has what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance" in its foundation, are questions that Bell's work gives us the foundation to examine and demands that we take up the challenge.
 
"For me, it is so reasonable to assume that the photons in those experiments carry with them programs, which have been correlated in advance, telling them how to behave. This is so rational that I think that when Einstein saw that, and the others refused to see it, he was the rational man. The other people, although history has justified them, were burying their heads in the sand.

In that quote you can hear so clearly the echoes of Koestlers book if any evidence was needed that the perspective it brought to Bell regarding the nature of scientific discovery coupled with our generally unrecognised human tendency towards the irrational - whether actually supplying enlightenment or simply voice to his own nature like all good philosophy - empowered the man to greater levels of intellectual insight and free thought. That book should be compulsory reading across all fields of enquiry. Can't help but wonder what else he would have achieved, tragic loss to the world.
 
Hello again fellow thinkers.

Lately I've had a little (just a little) more time on my hands and found out there's a whole movement online (maybe offline too) of people warning about "the dangers of AI", which seems to derive from a modern phenomenon where business entrepreneurs are considered scientific authorities. One such doomsayer is the well known Elon Musk, a businessman who obviously needs to get a better grasp of what Artificial Intelligence actually is and stands for.

Musk (and probably others) warn about some fiction-inspired, robot apocalypse where "AI's" (I've previously discussed how wrong that is) surpass human intelligence and control all or most facets of our lives. Specifically, I do understand the dangers of autonomous, weaponized machines (we're living it now with the drone program). Since Musk appears to be a defendant of all things conservative and military it is to be expected his idea of how to apply autonomous systems is, of course, weapons of mass destruction.

But what Musk apparently doesn't know is that AI is not an entity, it is a research field. That it has been around since the 1950's. That is currently is an integral part of our lives, with applications present in electronic devices, digital services and entertainment. And that we're only starting to understand reasoning, memory, learning, planning, in the human cognitive level, and trying to combine different explanations in the behavioral, mathematical and physiological domains.

Other alarmists are also warning of the dangers of machines, like "they only use pure logic" and would kill children and so on. Or the horrible shock of realizing "the machine learned by itself!". These are ridiculous claims by ridiculous people, judging on the basis of mainstream media, science fiction and business investors. Meanwhile, scholars focus on actually understanding human cognition and implementing these elements in devices that will make our life easier, because understanding ourselves is essential to our survival and because autonomous devices can truly help in the house and assist in hospitals. We need autonomous learning so machines can improve without constant human guidance, but the idea that machines could reach human-like intelligence while relying on pure implicative logic is absurd. The argument is similar to saying: "if dogs could talk, they'd just talk about shitting and eating". IF dogs could talk, their underlying neural and cognitive apparatus facilitating this complex function would give them access to a much wider worldview. Sadly many alarmist online comments come from computer-related professionals who understand programming, but know nothing of AI, human cognition or the evolution of the human brain.

But the truth is the dangers of "dangerous AI" are real. As real as the dangers of, say, a psychotic murderer on the loose. Or actual weapon design. Whether we decide to build weaponized, autonomous killing machines is up to us. They certainly don't build themselves. And we can't blame the gun for killing an innocent person. Even though we are many years away from the fictional level of AI that average people envision, it IS time to ask ourselves what we want to do with it, should it ever occur.

Here are some opinions of known people who actually work on the field: http://www.computerworld.com/articl...ay-elon-musks-fears-not-completely-crazy.html.

People like Musk aren't stupid, they're just misinformed. But it's concerning that average people listen to them more than to the scholars whose entire life has been devoted to studying and understanding these things.

Thoughts?
 
@volsung: You need to understand Musk. He is not misinformed and I'm sure he knows quite well what AI is. However he is a futurist. And when he talks, it can sound like he means the present, but he often means some abstract future (really abstract - meaning anything in the future). So your comparison with science fiction is not accidental. Science fiction authors are usually futurists in the sense that they try to predict (to the best of their ability) what can happen, and they create fiction based on that. Musk isn't a writer, but his mode of thinking is very similar. Who else would create a company (SpaceX) claiming that the whole reason he did is to provide an option for humanity to spread to other planets to avoid some disastrous events? He is not your typical entrepreneur.

So he is talking theoretically, that intelligent machines can pose a danger. And it's not a novel concept at all - this is quite extensively covered in science fiction. Musk just likes to mull these ideas as if it's a common present day issue. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as it's not about negativism, but about something positive to do.
 
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"they only use pure logic"
I hate this "reasoning". They are saying the same thing about Technocracy. Since when is logic or pure logic a bad thing? Since part of that logic must always be, if I want to further exist, I need to make sure, that I am being accepted and thus should not do anything on the contrary, neither robots nor technocracy would ever do anything worse than humans are doing anyway. If at all reasoning backed by logic and rather than emotions would consider wider implications and do less bad things.
Regerding technocracy in particular: Choose one more parameters in your objective function and you are good to go: Population happiness. (Or if there are others missing add them.)
 
You´ll find all kinds of "movements", both online and offline, of people warning about probably every technology-related subject which has been used by science fiction authors to describe apocalyptic or dystopian future scenarios. One can only hope that these movements don´t get strong enough to prevent technological development in areas which could really be helpful for mankind.

For example, something that really irks me is the recent hate for nuclear energy, which seems to be having an effect in the policies of developed countries (as far as I can tell, at least). And that´s terrible in my opinion... research on different energy sources should be encouraged, not repressed.
 
Cold (meaning, at readily achievable temperatures and pressures) fusion would indeed be a boon, but its terrible reputation (as an outright fraud) has caused the defunding of any further attempt at serious research.
 
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