Machine

Very very VERY interesting psychoanalysis of George Bush. A lot of things I didn't know about him: the death of his sister, cruelty to animals, constant anxiety. Very much worth watching.

A googletechtalk on Science Commons - the science arm of Creative Commons. I really need to take a closer look at all this, particularly Neurocommons.

Chris Anderson, editor of WIRED, talks (only 16 min) about the 'four stages of any new technology': critical price (often $400..?); critical number of units distributed; displacement of existing technologies; technology becomes free.

Since John McCain is winning on the republican side I decided to watch the candidates@google featuring him. Yuck. Seriously. Us/them, forces of evil. If he wins there'll be a strain on the world for years to come. Funny how the audience rips him appart at the end though

Intel and Jimbo

Highly recomended interview with Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel and on the board of directors of Google, on the progress of Intel, with particular focus on it's investments in Asia. Includes some very tangible observations on the structure and causes of the current shift in power towards Asia.

Interview with Wikipedia and Wikia founder Jimmy Wales. Re China: Wikipedia is completely blocked in China......

Mother of all info-pools

I massively and foolishly underestimated iTunes Store.

In case you've not yet experienced it, please let me introduce:

iTunes U

Aubrey and Asia

Aubrey de Gray (googletechtalks) on how to beat cancer.

Major conference/panel debate on globalization in Asia. Part 2 of the same conference is even more interesting. I've been relatively apathetic about politics for several years now, but the Asian twist to things may be what I've been waiting for. The West will HAVE to listen and will finally have to question it's absurd moralism and look at where things are really going.

Also, after Stefan's latest video on procrastination I've had enough of him, at least for now. "As children we are treated as slaves"... simply not true, certainly not for everyone.

There's freedom and then there's freedom

In response to my latest update of the philosophy section over at iPlant.eu my dad wrote me the following. Thought I'd share with the world.

---

Thanks for updating me on your philosophy. You claim that free will is:

"the ability to abstain from the base route of least resistance and pursue more challenging but ultimately richer lives."

"overcoming one’s limitations"

"the capacity for strength, courage, acting on foresight."

What I don’t quite understand is your basic view of the neural machinery of the brain. As far as I can gather, thinkers like Dennett and Crick advocate some form of metaphysical reductionism, i.e. the view that "all phenomena will eventually be explained in terms of the actions of material components, which are the only effective causes in the world." Here is a classic statement from Crick:

"The Astonishing Hypothesis is that "you", your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules…"you’re nothing but a pack of neurons."

Other thinkers like Searle and Chalmers seem to be saying something quite different. The neural machinery of the brain is basic but it gives rise to something quite different, consciousness (whatever it is). Consciousness has "effective power" and some thinkers talk about "top-down" causation.

Where do you stand? Is free will ultimately the result of neurons action potential and the chemical contents flowing into the synaptic cleft? Does the neural machinery of the brain give rise to something radically different which possesses the capacity to "choose"? Kierkegaard and the whole existentialist movement argue in favour of a "higher" level of existence, whatever it is.

---

Some videos

On the science of Leonardo da Vinci. Seems he was thoroughly holistic at a time where reductionism was taking off and complexity theory was still centuries away. Interesting.

FORA.tv interview with Jane Goodall. Legend.

Steven Pinker on the use of innuendos and hidden meanings in social life. Starts out entertaining but gets bloody dull.

A stateless society?

Hah, seems youtube didn't eat my comment after all. AND Stefan actually replied:

Me: Stefan, the reason I can't take you all that seriously is that even if the Bush administration fits the picture of this horrible peadophile moster you make the state out to be, the same just isn't true of the Swedish government (I'm Swedish) that provided bunkers for every citizen during the Cold War etc. If you could just take a more balanced view and admit that there are SOME benefits to top-down control..

Stefan: So you don't mind that the Swedish government will shoot parents if they don't pay for state indoctrination?

Me: It depends completely on what the government is asking me to accept, that's my point. I prefer a society where certain good (yes, good, as in high quality) rules are enforced by force because I don't have the same faith in human nature (free rational choice, free market principles, freedom, whatever you want to call it) as you do. Not all governments are monsters.

I hope he'll reply again but I doubt it.

More info

On the possible role of quantum computing in brain function. I'd be lying if I said I understood 2% of the two preceeding lectures but this third one simply hints at how the principles of quantum computing, now recognized as a real phenomena, may be harnessed in the brain (which would mean that Penrose, Searle and others are actually right!). To top it off the guy's final piece of evidence rests on how great psychadelics are :D:D

Stefan Molyneux goes nuts about the film Lions for Lambs :) I haven't actually seen the film but it's definitely one of Stefan's more engaging attacks on the state. Posted the following comment but as usual I think youtube ate it: "Stefan, the reason I can't take you all that seriously is that even if the Bush administration fits the picture of this horrible peadophile moster you make the state out to be, the same just isn't true of the Swedish government (I'm Swedish) that provided bunkers for every citizen during the Cold War etc. If you could just take a more balanced view and admit that there are SOME benefits to top-down control.."

Professional hacker Pablos Holmen on what a hacker can do with our beloved web and gadgets.

Juan Enriquez on the biological revolution.

aaaaahahahahahahahahaha

Mostly excellent talks

The current and future state of synthetic biology. The possibility of some asshole releasing a new black plague on us suddenly became a bit more real. Mentions the bioengineering toolkit at parts.mit.edu. This field is moving very quickly.

Entertaining talk on how the pace of innovation in certain branches of medicine are taking on Moores Law-features. What Kessler says it will lead to is preventive (as opposed to curative) medicine as biomarkers and DNA readings become abundant and cheap.

Web 2.0 evangelist David Weinberger debates very British internet sceptic Andrew Keen (in the 2nd half of the video). Chaired by computer legend Walt Mossberg.

Norman Podhoertz lectures on "The Case for Bombing Iran". Nauseating.

Hat tip from heaven

to Laura for finding three excellent educational video pools (Research Channel, UCTV, FORA.tv) and a Neurotherapeutics special issue on deep brain stimulation!

Kometen kommer

Interesting and eloquent talk by James Hughes on transhumanism and religion/ethics. James identifies three points where transhumanists and what he calls 'bio-conservatives' clash:

• The Self. What is that something that needs to be preserved? 'Mere' awareness which we share to some degree with other animals and computers(-to-come) or something distinctively human, something like a soul, which should not be tampered with?
• Taboos. Are there things that simply should not be tampered with? Playing God, Pandora's box, the Tower of Babel, hybris, that kind of thing.
• Risks. I think this boils down to optimism and pessimism, but please also consider the risks of not 'playing God'. Like melting of the polar icecaps, pancreatic cancer, that kind of thing.

If I get this studentship I've applied for I may just stay in Sweden till September and finally read all them classics I really should have read by now given my inclinations. Freud, B. F. Skinner, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, José Delgado, William Gibson, Milan Kundera, that sort of thing. I'm starting to think I should add some transhumanist writers to the list, like James here and Nick Bostrom. The lack of actual science is frustrating but at least they seem to be dealing with the right issues, and maybe they've got one or two electrophysiologists on their ship.

Watched (listened to) Dan Dennett talk about (his book) Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Fairly standard pro-evolution consciousness raising but you gotta love Dan. Also I'm running out of videos.

Finally, came across Kicesie's Sex Ed channel on youtube via one of her vids that's had 22.5 million views! Almost as much as the fantastic Battle at Kruger.

Anyway, enough of this day.

.

In no particular order

Ben Goertzel talking at the 2006 Immortality Institute conference and at home(?). His website, company and blog. Ben works on raising intelligent agents in virtual worlds. He also sounds like Seymour Philip Hoffman in MI3, which is a big plus.

Vincent - Tim Burton animation (6min)
An AI rice cooker (from DNI)

This MIT lecture series on the anatomy and function of the mammalian brain kicks ass. It's audio, so the frequent reference to slides will piss some people off but as somewhere valuable to rest your mind it's perfect.

Some info

The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry (Wired Magazine)

Freedomain Radio:
Standing in Blood. Strong comments on the state of Iraq and a call for a stateless society.
Excellent talk on effective public speaking.

Today's catch

An article by Verne Kopytoff on the Google job application process.
A talk by Elisabeth Lane Lawley on Googling versus social recomendation.

And from Freedomain Radio:
The Virginia Tech Shootings: An Analysis. Very good.
Funny talk on how to find and have a good relationship.
Why are women so unhappy? This one may piss a lot of women/feminists off. Try desperately to ignore the first 17 seconds macho impersonation. The rest of the talk is Stefan using an Ayn Rand (ish) intepretation of 1920s-1970s feminist politics to explain why women are not as happy as men (which apparently is the case..?). A poor and disconnected analysis compared to Howard Zinn & co, and no discussion of how to solve the problem (e.g. good, safe communal childcare) but an interesting/provocative talk nonetheless.
Why we are so different from our parents. Yea maybe but what about learning from the past and respecting our elders and stuff?
Free will. After a genial first hour he suddenly tries to solve the whole problem by doing a modified Searle/Kant, saying that free will is a presupposition of debate itself, so that as a (potential) determinist I am acting irrationally (he even refers to it as lack of integrity) if I try to debate free will with anyone. He'll try to sell you some other murky stuff like how it's impossible to love if you don't believe in free will.
Finally, here's Stefan providing an excellent critique of Ayn Rand's ethics. It's a damn shame he seems to have no qualms about the rest of her stuff, but I'm not sure, I've only just discovered this exceptionally productive talent.

Put meditation in the primary school curriculum!

I keep coming back to this, but the naive optimism with which people try to skirt the mind-body problem really frustrates me. This lecture by physicist/Buddhist B. Alan Wallace is yet another example. The talk contains some very interesting information on Asian contemplative science and an enthusiastic call for rigorous introspective methods to be integrated with contemporary psychology and neuroscience. A much needed call, and I love Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, but it's a call that comes with some really troubling eliminations and contradictions that Wallace tries to skirt with some ugly old Cartesian footwork.

To Wallace, all is fine and well with the idea that brain processes cause mental processes, but he vehemently rejects the idea that brain processes are identical with mental processes. He quotes Christof Koch: "The characters of brain states and of phenomenal states appear too different to be completely reducible to each other" and says "Look at brain states - they don't have any mental qualities at all. Observe mental states - they don't have any physical properties." I disagree. Study an aspect of cognitive neuroscience for long enough and eventually you can feel it working in your head when you see, hear, smell, taste, recognize a face, structure a sentence, move or make a choice. Acquire an appreciation for the neurobiology of monoamines for example and you start to see how your evaluations and moods could be quantified. This does not mean we shouldn't use introspection in neuroscience, I think we should use it more often and practise the awesome introspective techniques Wallace mentions daily - put meditation in the primary school curriculum! Absolutely. But to say that the mental and the physical cannot be one and the same is rubbish and repression. They can, and if they are, then there are errors and lies at the core of the Western social and existential conception of what it means, and should mean, to be human.

Sometimes I think the iPlant is my way of calling attention to all this: an attempt to make people aware of their real reaction to the possibility that mind and brain are one and the same; a way of making them pay attention to what the consequences of that would be. But the iPlant only brings out a fraction of the preconceptions about the human condition that we would have to reject as completely and utterly false.

Wikia Search

It's here :D

alpha.search.wikia.com

Yes yes I know it's not as good as Google, but cmo - it's hardly come out of it's shell yet. Use it, help it grow. About Wikia Search.

People doing things

Bill Gates confirms his intention to step down as Microsoft chairman in his 12th and last CES keynote. Legend. Wish the speech was available online.

Peter Redgrave is out shooting at the reward prediction error intepretation of phasic dopamine signalling again.

Finally, Barack Obama, speaking here at Google, is kicking ass in the run for US presidency. Yes yes, finally! Go for it!

Online talks and lectures

Sunday. I'm going back to the lab tomorrow so I've scouted out new pools of lectures to keep my dopamine flowing while I'm doing manual work.

• The audio/video section of MIT's OpenCourseWare site
  
• The UC Berkeley youtube site
  
• Princeton University WebMedia and their youtube site UChannel
  

Let me know if you find more of these, or an aggregator, or an umbrella term, anything. Instant access to good, complex, long, entertaining online talks and lectures is the best thing since sliced bread.

Pause

Lying in a comfy bed in a white little room on the top of a hill in Brighton. Glad to be out of the various hotels I've had to stay in lately. The honeymoon's definitely coming to an end though, only two more months in the snail lab now, two months in this bed. Gotta find a PhD, a job, a life and a big helping of follow-through. The first PhD deadline, 1100 words to go on the personal statement, is thursday.

The web is like crack for someone with ADD, I'll tell you that

-Seth Godin (on Gapingvoid)

Some links

The Wikia Search engine is going public next week (alpha release)

Internet Evolution, a web 2.0-and-beyond resource (check out the video section)

io9, sci-fi culture site

A call for greater political recognition of the problems associated with really taking equality into relationships (in Swedish)

Intel pulls out of the One Laptop Per Child project. Really really hope they pull through.