Jump to content

Hackers, cyberpunks, and technophilosophy


fermentor666

Recommended Posts

This forum is supported by the 12ozProphet Shop, so go buy a shirt and help support!
This forum is brought to you by the 12ozProphet Shop.
This forum is brought to you by the 12oz Shop.
  • Replies 218
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Hmmm, well now you are talking mathematics. I'm talking more about the universe and our understanding of existence, neither of which are infinite, unless you count theories about reincarnation or seperate dimensions/universe where your conciousness resides forever. But at a certain point, if we are to believe the universe is shrinking, all living things will eventually end, and I believe that all conciousness/soul would no longer exist.

 

To the contrary,

 

What is a point if not infinite?

 

Even if the universe is closed (which I personally doubt and which brane theory and m-theory openly negate) then all things will be brought to a point. An abstract concept of mathematics. There is no need to seperate our conceptions of the two.

 

And why isn't our understanding of existence infinite? We speak of it through language, no? We have rules of recursion which allow for an infinite possibility of combinations to express thoughts through finite number of terms.

 

The infinite is a much larger part of life than I think many people notice.

 

If you believe in science than mathematics is the universe. Nothing more, nothing less.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To the contrary,

 

What is a point if not infinite?

 

Even if the universe is closed (which I personally doubt and which brane theory and m-theory openly negate) then all things will be brought to a point. An abstract concept of mathematics. There is no need to seperate our conceptions of the two.

 

And why isn't our understanding of existence infinite? We speak of it through language, no? We have rules of recursion which allow for an infinite possibility of combinations to express thoughts through finite number of terms.

 

The infinite is a much larger part of life than I think many people notice.

 

If you believe in science than mathematics is the universe. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

 

But where does the point come from? If we were a simulation, there would have to be a starting point somewhere, and if this is a real universe or if there is a real universe out there, and if it did actually start somewhere rather than being a perpetual force, what started it?

 

And if there is no one there to record the point, does it actually exist? For all we know, the universe could be a collective hallucination and there may be no reality at all. Perhaps the universe has ended and we are living in the afterlife.

 

I was watching some science channel documentary on Stephen Hawkings black hole theory and one of the physicists was talking about how there may actually be millions and millions of tiny black holes, and we may even have black holes in our brains, which is an outrageous idea, but still possible. They theorized that information might go through a black hole and then become dispersed, shattered into little pieces and thrown back into the universe. But if it doesn't, then where does it go? Hawkings theorized that information disappears in a black hole, which would implicate that there is indeed an ending and beginning.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

hey... anyone remember when lopht was doing all those great rds hacks... shit was fucking comical... sorry just remembered it and thought about all the fun back in the day...

the hack rfp wrote scripts for? mad nt web servers got owned with that shit. wu-ftp was also remotely exploitable 24/7 in those days, gH bind exploits, to name a few others. i can honestly say i havnt done anything security-wise since 2000; with all this patriot act shit i bet network traffic monitering is nuts. or is it?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Singularity

 

Human history has been characterized by an accelerating rate of

technological progress. It is caused by a positive feedback loop.

A new technology, such as agriculture, allows an increase in population.

A larger population has more brains at work, so the next technology

is developed or discovered more quickly. In more recent times,

larger numbers of people are liberated from peasant-level agriculture

into professions that entail more education. So not only are there

more brains to think, but those brains have more knowledge to work

with, and more time to spend on coming up with new ideas.

 

We are still in the transition from mostly peasant-level agriculture

(most of the world's population is in un-developed countries), but the

fraction of the world considered 'developed' is constantly expanding.

So we expect the rate of technological progress to continue to accelerate

because there are more and more scientists and engineers at work.

 

Assume that there are fundamental limits to how far technology

can progress. These limits are set by physical constants such as

the speed of light and Planck's constant. Then we would expect that

the rate of progress in technology will slow down as these limits are

approached. From this we can deduce that there will be some time

(probably in the future) at which technological progress will be at

it's most rapid. This is a singular event in the sense that it happens

once in human history, hence the name 'Singularity'.

 

This is my definition of the concept. Vernor Vinge, in his series

of stories 'The Peace War' and 'Marooned in Real Time' had a different

definition. He implicitly assumed that there was no limit to how

far technology could progress, or that the limit was very very high.

The pace of progress became very rapid, and then at some point

mankind simply disappeared in some mysterious way. It is implied that

they ascended to the next level of existence or something. From the

point of view of the 20th century, mankind had become incomprehensively

different. So that time horizon when we can no longer say anything

useful about the future is Vinge's Singularity. One would expect

that his version of the Singularity would recede in time as time

goes by, i.e. the horizon moves with us.

 

When will the Singularity Occur?

 

The short answer is that the near edge of the Singularity is due about

the year 2035 AD. Several lines of reasoning point to this date. One

is simple projection from human population trends. Human population

over the past 10,000 years has been following a hyperbolic growth trend.

Since about 1600 AD the trend has been very steadily accelerating with

the asymptote located in the year 2035 AD. Now, either the human

population really will become infinite at that time (more about that

later), or a trend that has persisted over all of human history will

be broken. Either way it is a pretty special time.

 

If population growth slows down and the population levels off, then

we would expect the rate of progress to level off, then slow down as

we approach physical limits built into the universe. There's just one

problem with this naive expectation - it's the thing you are probably

staring at right now - the computer.

 

Computers aren't terribly smart right now, but that's because the

human brain has about a million times the raw power of todays' computers.

Here's how you can figure the problem: 10^11 neurons with 10^3 synapses

each with a peak firing rate of 10^3 Hz makes for a raw bit rate of

10^17 bits/sec. A 66 MHz processor chip with 64 bit architecture has

a raw bit rate of 4.2x10^9. You can buy about 100 complete PC's for

the cost of one engineer or scientist, so about 4x10^11 bits/sec, or

about a factor of a millionless than a human brain.

 

Since computer capacity doubles every two years or so, we expect that

in about 40 years, the computers will be as powerful as human brains.

And two years after that, they will be twice as powerful, etc. And

computer production is not limited by the rate of human reproduction.

So the total amount of brain-power available, counting humans plus

computers, takes a rapid jump upward in 40 years or so. 40 years

from now is 2035 AD.

 

Can the Singularity be avoided?

 

There are a couple of ways the Singularity might be avoided. One

is if there is a hard limit to computer power that is well below the

human-equivalent level. Well below means like a factor of 1000

below. If, for example, computer power were limited to only a

factor of 100 short of human capacity, then you could cram 100 CPU

chips in a box and get the power you wanted. And you would then

concentrate on automating the chip production process to get the

cost down. Current photolithography techniqes seem to be good

for a factor of 50 improvement over today's chips (maybe a real

expert can correct this figure for me if I am off). So it seems

that we need at least one major process change before the Singularity

and maybe it doesn't exist.

 

Another way to possibly avoid the Singularity is by humans messing

themselves up sufficiently. The argument goes that the work involved

in killing people is roughly constant over time, but the energy

and wealth available to each person goes up over time. So it becomes

easier over time for small numbers of people to kill ever larger

numbers of people. Then, given a small but finite rate of loonies

bent on mass murder, you eventually kill off large numbers of people

and set things back.

 

The usual technologies pointed to are nuclear weapons and engineered

plagues. One can describe scenarios like the hobbyist mad scientist

of the future extracting Uranium from sea-water (where it is present

in a few parts per billion), and then separating the U-235 with a

home mass-spectrometer, and building a bomb with his desktop milling

machine. It all is designed on his 'SuperCAD version 9.0' design

software.

 

Some Other Interesting Thresholds

 

Human life expectancies have been increasing at about 0.1 years

per calendar year. If the rate of progress in medical areas increases

by a factor of 10, then life expectancy will be increasing as fast

as you are aging. This means your projected lifespan suddenly jumps

from being in the mid to upper 80 year range to a much larger number.

From my point of view as a 36 year old, biotechnology is making

gratifyingly rapid progress even today, and I hope that this will feed

jumps in life expectancy in the future.

 

Whether the size of a factory or a Drexler-style assembler, the complexity

of a self-replicating machine is probably about constant. At some point

we will have tools capable of modeling and designing such machines, and

shortly therafter building them. A finite investment in building the

first such machine will yield an exponentially expanding output. This

has radical consequences for wealth levels, etc. Even nearly self-

replicating machines (say 99% capable) will have dramatic economic

effects.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maybe the singularity will birth artificial intelligence and maybe AI is actually the next step in human evolution. Or maybe AI will outlast humans as mammals outlasted the dinosaurs. Or make us extinct.

 

Personally, I do not rule out the possibility that cognizant life can form out of the internet. Call me crazy, but right now we still don't how life or intelligence was created, so it is still theoretically possible that self-aware intelligence can be created within our technology without our knowledge. Sort of like the movie "Colossus: The Forbin Project" or "Wargames". For all we know, there could be something out there right now, living in cyberspace.

 

Where did you copy that singularity article from? Who wrote it?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

^ Dani Eder. whoever that is.

 

 

excelent point btw, but the fundamental flaw with producing sentient life has been choice/emotion.

 

whilst machines may capable of 1000^ the power of the human brain, their reasoning is limited to cold-hard logic.

 

and that's the basic conflict between good/evil that has gone on since the dawn of man.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

^ Dani Eder. whoever that is.

 

 

excelent point btw, but the fundamental flaw with producing sentient life has been choice/emotion.

 

whilst machines may capable of 1000^ the power of the human brain, their reasoning is limited to cold-hard logic.

 

and that's the basic conflict between good/evil that has gone on since the dawn of man.

 

 

 

But that's the thing, life itself spawned out of cold, hard logic, assuming there was a universe before there was life. Why couldn't it spawn out of a machine or the internet? I don't think it could spawn out of say, a toy robot or a car, but I like to think of the internet as this writhing mass of intelligence that may just need a spark to become aware.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

one theory could be perspective. even as we converse, its still just text floating around and without a pov to base the info on, A.I is still limited to being a slightly more well constructed version of a dumb terminal.

 

furthermore, there is an article written by a former 0-09wtc employee who described a system designed by oracle that can give a situtational analysis for a multitude of real world "scenarios". think paycheck (minus the shitty acting)

 

the problem cited with these particular systems is usually some scenario in which all of humanities problems are solved in a nanosecond when "it" decides "we" need to "start over". add to the equation religious zelots begging for their version of the end and there you have the biggest hoax ever.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and im a baptist saying this......

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hackers should be like Gary.

 

 

 

why are these computers on the internet and not on an intranet?

 

i just dont understand why, if they wanted to keep this secret, they would make it all easily available. excuse my inner conspiracy theorist here, but it would be so simple for this to not happen that it is completely possible they want this information trickled out in this fashion. even if it is to just make more people feel helplessly under control.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

why are these computers on the internet and not on an intranet?

 

i just dont understand why, if they wanted to keep this secret, they would make it all easily available. excuse my inner conspiracy theorist here, but it would be so simple for this to not happen that it is completely possible they want this information trickled out in this fashion. even if it is to just make more people feel helplessly under control.

 

Well, the 'officials' think the public is too stupid, or doesn't care. They think 'nerds' just play computer games and watch porn, and hack for fun.... Which is not too far from the truth... Bit I like to believe that there are people out there who are capable of nearly anything once through a firewall or whatever.

 

If I could talk to all hackers at once, I'd say 'Hack the governments computers to pieces, and re-take control.'

 

There's a lot of documents on computers which need to be viewed... always is. But, most of them are available these days, through national archives and whatnot... It's jut the time and effort to physically go through 100'ds of boxes to find that one paragraph which changes a whole situation.

 

Like this guy, he sifted:

(From Martial law)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 months later...

old tech, mams. developed by and for military apps.

i don't feel like searching right now, but the next big thing

in aerospace will be mind controlled jets/helo's.

 

 

this is neat

Virtual world sharpens mind-control

http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn12136

 

 

 

EE Times:

'Mind reading' technology aims to help control computers

http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202201609

 

 

oh, damn. i searched and didn't mean to...here

http://www.af.mil/news/airman/0296/look.htm

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dude, I know it's old, I follow this stuff closely as well. Some dudes even have mind-controlled hardware on Second Life.

 

The point is, it's gonna be on toys now. All scary technology eventually trickles down to the consumer.

 

 

sorry. i didn't mean it to come out the way you took it. wasn't be a smart ass.

you've gotta figure that for it being produced as a toy, the military industry has

probably perfected it or is very close.

 

logic says that they are at least 50 years ahead of public (i'm going off of things like

the blackbird, etc)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


×
×
  • Create New...