Gary Lutz

Excerpts
Books: 1 2 3

http://astrobiology.arc.nasa.gov/roadmap/
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Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln?
"I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say, in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."
Here's the source, for those readers who can't believe he actually said this.

The Experience Machine

The Experience Machine is a short section of Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Harvard University philosopher Robert Nozick. The text is one of the best known attempts at a refutation of ethical hedonism, based on considering a choice between everyday reality and an apparently preferable simulated reality.

Nozick asks us to imagine an experience machine that could give us whatever desirable or pleasurable experiences that we could possibly want. "Superduper neuropsychologists" have figured out a way to stimulate a person's brain in order to induce pleasurable experiences. We would not be able to tell that these experiences were not veridical. He asks us, if we were given the choice, would we choose the machine over real life?

A counter-argument to this thought-experiment was brought up by Elliott Sober. He offers an egoistic explanation for our motives: that we find the idea of the ignorant life repulsive, whereas we find the idea of the real life appealing. He believes there is a distinction between the idea of a pleasant state and the pleasant idea of a state. Even though it is the case that we would be happier in the ignorant life, at the time it would make us happier to choose the real life, which is why we choose that.

Evolution is Cool

"Bats and dolphins perfected sophisticated echo-ranging systems millions of years before human engineers gave us sonar and radar. Snakes have infrared heat-detectors for sensing prey, predating the Sidewinder missile. Two groups of fish, one in the New World and one in the Old, have independently developed the electric battery, in some cases delivering currents strong enough to stun a man, in other cases using electric fields to navigate through turbid water. Squid have jet propulsion, enabling them to break the surface at 45mph and shoot through the air. Mole crickets have the megaphone, digging a double horn in the ground to amplify their already astonishingly loud song. Beavers have the dam, flooding a private lake for their own safe conduct over water. Fungi developed the antibiotic (of course, that's where we get penicillin from). Millions of years before our agricultural revolution, ants planted, weeded and composted fungus gardens. Other ants tend and milk their own aphid cattle. Darwinian evolution has perfected the hypodermic needle (wasp sting), the valved pump (heart), the harpoon (snail mating dart), the fishing rod (angler fish), the water pistol (archer fish aim water jets to dislodge in sects from trees above), the automatic focus lens, the light meter, the thermostat, the hinge, the clock, and the calendar."

Your body consists of about 10 trillion human cells and another 100 trillion noninfectious bacterial cells, most of them in your gastrointestinal tract but others on your skin, in your mouth, and throughout the rest of your body. These bacteria have been evolving since you were born to be better optimized to the unique environments of your various body parts. (Just as amazingly, according to a theory now accepted by most biologists, your cellular power plants, called mitochondria, are descended from free-living bacteria.) To these creatures, you are a garden, an island, a universe.

MEMETICS

Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passed it on to his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and his lectures. If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain. As N.K. Humphrey neatly sums up `... memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically.(3) When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell. And this isn't just a way of talking -- the meme for, say, "belief in life after death" is actually realized physically, millions of times over, as a structure in the nervous systems of individual men the world over.'

From David Pearce: "The contrast between true and false happiness is problematic. Even if the notion is both intelligible and potentially referential, it's not clear that 'natural', selfish-DNA-sculpted minds offer a more authentic consciousness than precision-engineered euphoria. Highly selective and site-specific designer drugs (and, ultimately, genetic engineering) won't make things seem weird or alien. On the contrary, they can deliver a greater sense of realism, verisimilitude and emotional depth to raw states of biochemical bliss than today's parochial conception of Real Life. Future generations will 're-encephalise' emotion to serve us, sentient genetic vehicles, rather than selfish DNA. Our well-being will feel utterly natural; and in common with most things in the natural world, it will be. If desired, too, designer drugs can be used to trigger paroxysms of spiritual enlightenment - or at least the phenomenology thereof - transcending the ecstasies of the holiest mystic or the hyper-religiosity of a temporal-lobe epileptic... so long as neurotransmitter activation of the right sub-receptors triggers the right post-synaptic intra-cellular cascades regulated by the right alleles of the right genes in the right way indefinitely - and this is a technical problem with a technical solution - then we have paradise everlasting, at worst. If we want it, we can enjoy a liquid intensity of awareness far more compelling than our mundane existence as contemporary sleepwalking Homo sapiens. It will be vastly more enjoyable to boot."

How to Live .org: November 2006

How to Live .org: November 2006: "To be human means to be creative. Here are a few artists who have found truly unique ways to express their creativity:
Paper cutting
Rake art
Microart
Etch-a-Sketch art
Computer art"

"Our part in the universe may possibly in some distant way be analogous to that of cells in an organized body, and our personalities may be the transient but essential elements of an immortal and cosmic mind." - Francis Galton, 1883

"Science is indifferent to life; it creates both destroyers and preservers, and hence cannot guarantee value. The other lights have gone out, so value stands alone -– fragile, arbitrary, a matter of taste. Everybody knows what is good for man, and everybody knows it differently. The Inquisition was for the good of man, and the witch hunts, ancient and modern... Cruelty, murder, war, slavery -– these are with us now as always. Science has little bearing on what troubles me most... I want to know what is worth struggling for, but science is embarrassed by such a question, ignores it, or so dismantles it into sub-questions that the answers become meaningless. What I know certainly is unimportant to me; and what is important to me I cannot know certainly." – Allen Wheelis, The Seeker (1960)

'You can expect to live approximately another 24700 more days.'

"Have you really lived 10,000 or more days, or have you lived one day 10,000 or more times?"

"This is the beginning of a new day. You have been given this day to use as you will. You can waste it or use it for good. What you do today is important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it. When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever; in its place is something that you have left behind... let it be something good."

"I can't think of anyone that I'd want to permanently trade places with (in the sense of actually becoming them), but there are a lot of people I'd like to be for a day. Most of the people on my list would be friends and relatives, but I'd also include some strangers. Once such person is Terence Tao. Terence won the gold medal at the International Math Olympiad at age 13, the youngest winner ever. He got his PhD from Princeton at 20. He has won the Clay Research Award, a MacArthur Genius Award, and the Fields Medal (math's equivalent of the Nobel Prize). With technical brilliance and deep insight, he solves problems others consider intractable, problems the human brain wasn't designed to solve. (Quick example: He and Ben Green proved that there are an infinite number of arbitrarily long strings of prime numbers that are a constant distance apart.) And he's only 29, so his biggest breakthroughs are yet to come. But my reason for selecting him isn't simply because he's one of the smartest people on the planet. He has privileged access to a type of knowledge about our world that few others have. It has often been said that God is a mathematician. Of course, it's usually mathematicians who are saying this; I suppose engineers say God is an engineer, artists say God is an artist, etc. But math does seem to offer a window into an aspect of reality we don't usually see, one that's fundamental, beautiful, and timeless. I admire those who can genuinely appreciate the secrets it holds, and I especially admire those who can unlock these secrets."

- "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." Groucho Marx
- "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." Clarence Darrow
- "Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it." Moses Hadas
- "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." Winston Churchill
- "I feel so miserable without you, it's almost like having you here." Stephen Bishop
- "He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." Oscar Wilde
- "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go." Oscar Wilde
- "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." Mark Twain
- "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination." Andrew Lang
- "In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily." Charles, Count Talleyrand
- "He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others." Samuel Johnson
And my favorite...
George Bernard Shaw, in a letter to Winston Churchill: "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play, bring a friend... if you have one."
Winston Churchill's response: "Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is one."

From Paul Graham: "This is a good plan for life in general: If you have two choices, choose the harder. If you're trying to decide whether to go out running or sit home and watch TV, go running. Probably the reason this trick works so well is that when you have two choices and one is harder, the only reason you're even considering the other is laziness. You know in the back of your mind what's the right thing to do, and this trick merely forces you to acknowledge it."
I would add that the same logic is valid for procrastination: If you can do something today or tomorrow, do it today. Laziness is probably the only thing making tomorrow an option at all.

From David Pearce (As with anything he writes, you may want to read it two or three times. It's worth it.): "The depressive realism of the serotonin-depleted and jaded cynicism of the chronically world-weary are often justified. Yet our descendants may recognize that we are the sociopathic emotional primitives in the grip of an affective psychosis. Jealousy, envy, resentment, ridicule, hate, anger, disgust, spite, contempt, schadenfreude and a whole gamut of nameless but mean-spirited states we undergo each day are a toxic legacy of our Darwinian past. More commonly, perhaps, our genetic make-up ensures we simply feel indifference to the plight of all but a handful of significant others in our lives. Right now, for instance, one knows dimly at some level that there is frightful and preventable suffering in the world. Yet most of us feel no overpowering moral urgency to do anything about it. Idealists might vaguely entertain the second-order desire to care more deeply and give, say, a larger proportion of one's money to Third World charities dedicated to those who need the resources more urgently than we do. Yet the biological roots to sustain 'saintly' self-sacrifice just aren't there in most of us. In contrast, taking MDMA can give rise to a prodigious sense of compassion in even the otherwise morally inert. Regrettably, such compassion is usually ineffectual; it's too short-lived to do much good. If and when we understand the neurochemical basis of empathy, however, then sustaining the molecular substrates of empathetic love can turn boundless compassion into an automatic reaction to distress, not a sign of drug-induced psychiatric disorder. Intervention can go further. If we decode and opt to amplify the molecular machinery of volition too, then such heightened compassion can be translated into effective action.
Fortunately, compassion if not empathy for others may ultimately be redundant. In the long run, if biotechnology can be used to eradicate suffering from the living world, then a shared celebration of life, not sympathy for the misfortunes of others, may come to seem as natural as breathing."

An excerpt from The Robot's Rebellion Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin-- Keith E. Stanovich

We are in a period of history in which the assimilation of the insights of universal Darwinism will have many destabilizing effects on cultural life. Over the centuries, we have constructed many myths about human origins and the nature of the human mind. We have been making up stories about who we are and why we exist. Now, in a break with this historical trend, we may at last be on the threshold of a factual understanding of humankind's place within nature. However, attaining such an understanding requires first the explosion of the myths we have created, an explosion that will surely cause us some cognitive distress. This is because the only escape route from the untoward implications of Darwinism is through science itself—by adopting an unflinching view about what the theory of natural selection means. Once we adopt such an unflinching attitude, however, the major thesis of this book is heartening. It is that certain underdeveloped implications of findings in the human sciences of cognitive psychology, decision theory, and neuroscience can reveal coherent ways to reconcile the human need for meaning with the Darwinian view of life.

Why Jerry Falwell Is Right

In his book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Dennett (1995) argued that Darwin's idea of evolution by natural selection was the intellectual equivalent of a universal acid: "it eats through just about every traditional concept, and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view, with most of the old landscape still recognizable, but transformed in fundamental ways" (63). In short, the shock waves from Darwinism have only begun to be felt, and we have yet to fully absorb the destabilizing insights that evolutionary science contains.

One way to appreciate that we have insufficiently processed the implications of Darwinism is to note that people who oppose the Darwinian view most vociferously are those who most clearly recognize its status as the intellectual equivalent of universal acid. For example, the adherents of fundamentalist religions are actually correct in thinking that the idea of evolution by natural selection will destroy much that they view as sacred—that, for instance, a fully comprehended evolutionary theory will threaten the very concept of soul.

In short, it is the middle-of-the-road believers—the adherents of so-called liberal religions—who have it wrong. Those who think they know what natural selection entails but have failed to perceive its darker implications make several common misinterpretations of Darwinism. Tellingly, each of the errors has the effect of making Darwinism a more palatable doctrine by obscuring (or in some cases even reversing) its more alarming implications. For example, the general public continues to believe in the discredited notion of evolutionary progress, this despite the fact that Stephen Jay Gould (1989, 1996, 2002) has persistently tried to combat this error in his numerous and best-selling books. An important, but misguided, component of this view is the belief that humans are the inevitable pinnacle of evolution ("king of the hill ... top of the heap" as the old song goes). Despite the efforts of Gould to correct this misconception, it persists. As Gould constantly reminds us, we are a contingent fact of history, and things could have ended up otherwise—that is, some other organism could have become the dominating influence on the planet.

There is, however, another misconception about evolution that is much more focal to the theme of this book. This misconception is the notion that we have genes "in order for the species to survive" or the related idea that we have genes, basically, "so that we can reproduce ourselves." The idea in the first case is somehow that the genes are doing something for the species or, in the second, doing something for us—as individuals. Both forms of this idea have the genes serving our purposes. The time bomb in Richard Dawkins's famous book, The Selfish Gene, a time bomb that is as yet not fully exploded, is that the actual facts are just the opposite: We were constructed to serve the interests of our genes, not the reverse. The popular notion—that genes "are there to make copies of us"—is 180 degrees off. We are here so that the genes can make copies of themselves! They are primary, we (as people) are secondary. The reason we exist is because it once served their ends to create us.

In fact, a moment's thought reveals the "genes are there to make copies of us" notion to be a nonstarter. We don't make copies of ourselves at all, but genes do. Obviously, our consciousness is not replicated in our children, so there is no way we perpetuate our selfhood in that sense. We pass on half a random scramble of our genes to our children. By the fifth generation, our genetic overlap with descendants is down to one thirty-second and often undetectable at the phenotypic level. Dawkins's discussion of the misconception behind the "our genes are there to copy us" fallacy is apt. He argues that, instead, "we are built as gene machines, created to pass on our genes. But that aspect of us will be forgotten in three generations. Your child, even your grandchild, may bear a resemblance to you.…But as each generation passes, the contribution of your genes is halved. It does not take long to reach negligible proportions. Our genes may be immortal, but the collection of genes that is any of us is bound to crumble away. Elizabeth II is a direct descendant of William the Conqueror. Yet it is quite probable that she bears not a single one of the old king's genes. We should not seek immortality in reproduction" (199).

Our bodies are built by a unique confederation of genes—a confederation unlikely to come together in just that way again. This is an uplifting prospect from the standpoint of appreciating our own uniqueness, but a disappointing prospect to those who think that genes exist in order to reproduce us. We cannot assuage our feelings of mortality with the thought that somehow genes are helping us "copy ourselves." Instead, shockingly, mind-bogglingly, mortifyingly, we are here to help the genes in their copying process—we exist so that they can replicate. To use Dawkins's phrase, it is the genes who are the immortals—not us.

This is the intellectual hand grenade lobbed by Dawkins into popular culture, and the culture has not even begun to digest its implications. One reason its assimilation has been delayed is that even those who purport to believe in evolution by natural selection have underestimated how much of a conceptual revolution is entailed by a true acceptance of the implications of universal Darwinism. For example, one way that the issue is often framed in popular discussions is by contrasting science (in the guise of evolutionary theory) with religion (Raymo 1999) and then framing the issue as one of compatibility (of a scientific worldview and a religious one) versus incompatibility. Adherents of liberal religions tend to be compatibilists—they are eager to argue that science and religion can be reconciled. Fundamentalists are loath to go this far because they want the latter to trump the former.

There is an odd and ironic way in which religious fundamentalists are seeing things more clearly here. It is believers in evolution who have failed to see the dangers inherent in the notion of universal Darwinism. What are those dangers? Turning first to the seemingly obvious, the evolution of humans by processes of natural selection means that humans were not specially designed by God or any other deity. It means that there was no purpose to the emergence of humans. It means that there are no inherently "higher" or "lower" forms of life (see Gould 1989, 1996, 2002; Sterelny 2001a). Put simply, one form of life is as good as another.

Secondly, there is the issue of the frightening purposelessness of evolution caused by the fact that it is an algorithmic process (Dennett 1995). An algorithm is just a set of formal steps (i.e., a recipe) necessary for solving a particular problem. We are familiar with algorithms in the form of computer programs. Evolution is just an algorithm executing not on a computer but in nature. Following a logic as simple as the simplest of computer programs (replicate those entities that survive a selection process), natural selection algorithmically—mechanically and mindlessly—builds structures as complex as the human brain (see Dawkins 1986, 1996).

Many people who think that they believe in evolution fail to think through the implications of a process that is algorithmic—mechanical, mindless, and purposeless. But George Bernard Shaw perceived these implications in 1921 when he wrote: "It seems simple, because you do not at first realize all that it involves. But when its whole significance dawns on you, your heart sinks into a heap of sand within you. There is a hideous fatalism about it, a ghastly and damnable reduction of beauty and intelligence, of strength and purpose, of honor and aspiration" (xl). I am not saying that Shaw is right in his conclusion—only that he correctly perceives a threat to his worldview in Darwinism. Indeed, I do not think that beauty and intelligence are reduced in the Darwinian view, and I will explain why in chapter 8. The important thing here though is the part that Shaw gets right. He correctly sees the algorithmic nature of evolution. An algorithmic process could be characterized as fatalistic, and, because this algorithm concerned life, Shaw found it hideous.

I believe that Shaw is wrong to draw this conclusion, but for reasons that he could never have foreseen. There is an escape from the "hideous fatalism" that he sees (read on to see what I view as the escape hatch and the cognitive science concepts necessary to activate the escape hatch). However, Shaw is at least generically right that full acceptance of Darwin's insights will necessitate revisions in the classical view of personhood, individuality, self, meaning, human significance, and soul. These concepts will not necessarily be reduced in the manner Shaw suggests, but radical restructuring will be required—a reconstruction I will at least begin to sketch in this book.

We have—living as we do in a scientific society—no choice but to accept Darwin's insights because there is no way we can enjoy the products of science without accepting the destabilizing views of humans in the universe that science brings in its wake. There is no sign that society will ever consider giving up the former—we continue to gobble up the DVDs, cheap food, MRI machines, computers, mobile phones, designer vegetables, Goretex clothing, and jumbo jets that science provides. Thus, it is inevitable that concepts of meaning, personhood, and soul will continue to be destabilized by the knock-on effects of what science reveals about the nature of life, the brain, consciousness, and other aspects of the world that form the context for our assumptions about the nature of human existence. The conceptual insights of Darwinism travel on the back of a scientific technology that people want, and some of the insights that ride along with the technologies are deeply disturbing.

The mistake that moderate religious believers in evolution make (as do many people holding nonreligious worldviews as well) is that they assume that science is only going to take half a loaf—leaving all our transcendental values untouched. Universal Darwinism, however, will not stop at half the loaf—a fact that religious fundamentalists sense better than moderates. Darwinism is indeed the universal acid—notions of natural selection as an algorithmic process will dissolve every concept of purpose, meaning, and human significance if not trumped by other concepts of equal potency. But concepts of equal potency must, in the twenty-first century, be grounded in science, not the religious mythology of a vanished prescientific age. I think that such concepts do exist and will spend most of this book articulating them. But the first step is to let the universal acid work its destructive course. We must see what the bedrock is that science has left us to build on once the acid has removed all of the superficial and ephemeral structures.

The Replicators and the Vehicles

In order to cut through the obfuscation that surrounds evolutionary theory and to let the universal acid do its work, I will make use of the evocative language that Dawkins used in The Selfish Gene—language for which he was criticized, but language that will help to jolt us into the new worldview that results from a full appreciation of the implications of our evolutionary origins. What we specifically need from Dawkins is his terminology, his conceptual distinction between the replicators and the vehicles, and his way of explicating the logic of evolution. The technical details of the evolutionary model used are irrelevant for our purposes here. Dawkins's popular summary will do, and I will rely on it here. No dispute about the details of the process has any bearing on any of the conceptual arguments in this book.

The story goes something like this. Although evolutionary theorists still argue about the details, all agree that at some point in the history of the primeval soup of chemical components that existed on Earth, there emerged the stable molecules that Dawkins called the replicators—molecules that made copies of themselves. Replicators became numerous to the extent that they displayed copying-fidelity, fecundity, and longevity—that is, copied themselves accurately, made a lot of copies, and were stable. Proto-carnivores then developed that broke up rival molecules and used their components to copy themselves. Other replicators developed protective coatings of protein to ward off "attacks" from such carnivores. Still other replicators survived and propagated because they developed more elaborate containers in which to house themselves.

Dawkins called the more elaborate containers in which replicators housed themselves vehicles. It is these vehicles that interact with the environment, and the differential success of the vehicles in interacting with the environment determines the success of the replicators that they house. Of course it must be stressed that success for a replicator means nothing more than increasing its proportion among competitor replicators. In short, replicators are entities that pass on their structure relatively intact after copying. Vehicles are entities that interact with the environment and whose differential success in dealing with the environment leads to differential copying success among the replicators they house.

This is why Dawkins calls vehicles "survival machines" for the replicators, and then drops his bombshell by telling us that:

survival machines got bigger and more elaborate, and the process was cumulative and progressive.…What weird engines of self-preservation would the millennia bring forth? Four thousand million years on, what was to be the fate of the ancient replicators? They did not die out, for they are past masters of the survival arts. But do not look for them floating loose in the sea; they gave up their freedom long ago. Now they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and in me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have come a long way those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines. (1976, 19-20)

Our genes are replicators. We are their vehicles. This is why—as I stressed earlier—a critical insight from modern evolutionary theory is that humans exist because they made good vehicles for copying genes. To think the reverse—that genes exist in order to make copies of us—is, as Dawkins notes, "an error of great profundity" (237). But in fact most people tend to make just this error when thinking about evolution. Even among biologists, it can become a default mode of thinking in unreflective moments because "the individual organism came first in the biologist's consciousness, while the replicators—now known as genes—were seen as part of the machinery used by individual organisms. It requires a deliberate mental effort to turn biology the right way up again, and remind ourselves that the replicators come first, in importance as well as in history" (265).

In short, the ultimate purpose of humans in nature is to serve as complicated survival machines for the current replicators—the genes. At this, we rightly recoil in horror.

But to say that in some sense this is the ultimate reason that humans exist does not mean that we must continue to play the role of survival machines. There is an escape hatch. The lumbering robots that are humans can escape the clutches of the selfish replicators. And when you truly understand the implications of this imagery you certainly will want an escape hatch. Dawkins admits to being mind-boggled himself about what an extraordinary insight evolution by natural selection is from the gene's-eye view: "We are survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment. Though I have known it for years, I never seem to get fully used to it. One of my hopes is that I may have some success in astonishing others" (v). And it does indeed astonish. Conjure, if you will, "independent DNA replicators, skipping like chamois, free and untrammeled down the generations, temporarily brought together in throwaway survival machines, immortal coils shuffling off an endless succession of mortal ones. ... A body doesn't look like the product of a loose and temporary federation of warring genetic agents who hardly have time to get acquainted before embarking in sperm or egg for the next leg of the great genetic diaspora" (234).

So that, in short, is the horror: We are survival machines built by mindless replicators—the result of an algorithm called natural selection. And we will not escape the horror by looking away from it, by turning our heads, by hoping the monster will go away like little children. We will only escape the horror—or find a way to mitigate it—by inquiring of cognitive science and neuroscience just what kind of survival machine a human is.

Of course, terms like robot are used to trigger associations that cut against the ingrained intuitions in our folk psychologies—for example, the assumption that the genes are there in service of the goals of people. Instead, we need to get clear that humans are here because constructing vehicles (of which there are thousands of different types in the plant and animal worlds—humans are just one type) served the reproductive goals of the replicators.

In this book I have deliberately chosen to employ the provocative terms used by Dawkins (e.g., vehicle, survival machine) because I do not want to take the edge off the evolutionary insights that the language evokes. Only if we are able to hold on to these alternative insights and appreciate how disturbing they are will we be motivated to undertake the cognitive reform efforts that I advocate in this book. For example, biological philosopher David Hull and others prefer the term interactor to the term vehicle because the latter connotes passivity and seems to minimize the causal agency of the organism itself (compared with the replicators). The term interactor is thought to better convey the active agency and autonomy of organisms. I completely agree that the term interactor is more apt in this strict sense, but I will continue to use the term vehicle here because it conveys the disturbing logic by which evolutionary theory inverts our view of the world by deflating the special position of humans within it. More importantly for my purposes, the term vehicle more clearly conveys the challenges facing humans as they more fully recognize the implications of their biological origins. One of the themes of this book is that humans are at risk of being passive conduits for the interests and goals of their genes if they do not recognize the logic of their origins as vehicles for mindless replicators. The term vehicle, with its pejorative connotations when used in the context of humans, throws down the challenge that I feel is necessary to motivate efforts at cognitive reform.

It is likewise with the use of the terms survival machine and robot. They are also used deliberately and provocatively to spawn disturbing intuitions—intuitions that we will seek to escape. To the extent that these disturbing intuitions prod us into necessary cognitive reforms, then such terms are useful because they help us sustain these disturbing intuitions. For example, in a famous phrase, Dawkins noted that humans are the only vehicles that could rebel against the dictates of the selfish replicators. If humans can be conceptualized as survival machines—lumbering robots built by replicators and evolved via natural selection—they are the only such survival machine to have ever contemplated fomenting a rebellion against the replicators. In the tradition of Dawkins, I will use the term "robot's rebellion" to refer to the package of evolutionary insights and cognitive reforms that will lead humans to transcend the limited interests of the replicators and define their own autonomous goals.

"It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows great enthusiasms, great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

If you are in passionate love and want to celebrate your passion, read poetry. If your ardor has calmed and you want to understand your evolving relationship, read psychology. But if you have just ended a relationship and would like to believe you are better off without love, read philosophy.
--Jonathan Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis

- By default, we don't live as urgently as we should.
- Once you have enough money to live comfortably, it's usually a bad choice to trade time for money, and it's usually a good choice to trade money for time.
- The difference between living as if you have one year left and living as if you have fifty years left is one of magnitude, not kind.
- Fear of death, fear of dying, fear of pain, and fear of not having lived or of having wasted your life are four very different fears that are often mixed together.
- If you live every day the same way, then in one important respect you're already dead.
- People consistently regret the things they didn't do more than the things they did do.
- Act as if you have only one year to live, and count down the days starting today, and see how it makes you feel and act differently.- Make a list of the things you want to accomplish in your life and then trying to accomplish them in the next 365 days (to the extent that it's practical).

Zero-sum (Game theory)

In game theory and economic theory, zero-sum describes a situation in which a participant's gain or loss is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the other participant(s). If the total gains of the participants are added up, and the total losses are subtracted, they will sum to zero. Zero-sum can be thought of more generally as constant sum where the benefits and losses to all players sum to the same value of money and pride and dignity. Cutting a cake is zero- or constant-sum because taking a larger piece reduces the amount of cake available for others. In contrast, non-zero-sum describes a situation in which the interacting parties' aggregate gains and losses is either less than or more than zero. Zero sum games are also called strictly competitive.
The zero-sum property (if one gains, another loses) means that any result of a zero-sum situation is Pareto optimal (generally, any game where all strategies are Pareto optimal is called a conflict game)

It has been theorized by Robert Wright in his book Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, that society becomes increasingly non-zero-sum as it becomes more complex, specialized, and interdependent. As former US President Bill Clinton states:

The more complex societies get and the more complex the networks of interdependence within and beyond community and national borders get, the more people are forced in their own interests to find non-zero-sum solutions. That is, win–win solutions instead of win–lose solutions.... Because we find as our interdependence increases that, on the whole, we do better when other people do better as well — so we have to find ways that we can all win, we have to accommodate each other....

Utilarianism

“

"If I have seen that from an ethical point of view I am just one person among the many in my society, and my interests are no more important, from the point of view of the whole, than the similar interests of others within my society, I am ready to see that, from a still larger point of view, my society is just one among other societies, and the interests of members of my society are no more important, from that larger perspective, than the similar interests of members of other societies… Taking the impartial element in ethical reasoning to its logical conclusion means, first, accepting that we ought to have equal concern for all human beings."

”

This conclusion – that everybody's interests should be considered equally when making decisions – is a core tenet of utilitarianism.

Karl Marx, in Das Kapital, writes:

“

Not even excepting our philosopher, Christian Wolff, in no time and in no country has the most homespun commonplace ever strutted about in so self-satisfied a way. The principle of utility was no discovery of Bentham. He simply reproduced in his dull way what Helvétius and other Frenchmen had said with esprit in the 18th century. To know what is useful for a dog, one must study dog-nature. This nature itself is not to be deduced from the principle of utility. Applying this to man, he that would criticise all human acts, movements, relations, etc., by the principle of utility, must first deal with human nature in general, and then with human nature as modified in each historical epoch. Bentham makes short work of it. With the driest naiveté he takes the modern shopkeeper, especially the English shopkeeper, as the normal man. Whatever is useful to this queer normal man, and to his world, is absolutely useful. This yard-measure, then, he applies to past, present, and future. The Christian religion, e.g., is "useful," "because it forbids in the name of religion the same faults that the penal code condemns in the name of the law." Artistic criticism is "harmful," because it disturbs worthy people in their enjoyment of Martin Tupper, etc. With such rubbish has the brave fellow, with his motto, "nulla dies sine line!," piled up mountains of books.[10]

”

Marx's accusation is twofold. In the first place, he says that the theory of utility is true by definition and thus does not really add anything meaningful. For Marx, a productive inquiry would have to investigate what sorts of things are good for people; that is, what our nature (which he believes is alienated under capitalism) really is. Second, he says that Bentham fails to take account of the changing character of people, and hence the changing character of what is good for them. This criticism is especially important for Marx, because he believed that all important statements were contingent upon particular historical conditions. Marx argues that human nature is dynamic, so the concept of a single utility for all humans is one-dimensional and not useful. When he decries Bentham's application of the 'yard measure' of now to 'the past, present and future', he decries the implication that society, and people, have always been, and will always be, as they are now; that is, he criticizes essentialism. As he sees it, this implication is conservatively used to reinforce institutions he regarded as reactionary. Just because in this moment religion has some positive consequences, says Marx, doesn't mean that viewed historically it isn't a regressive institution that should be abolished.

Utilitarianism is the idea that the moral worth of an action is determined solely by its contribution to overall utility: that is, its contribution to happiness or pleasure as summed among all persons. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome: put simply, the ends justify the means. Utility, the good to be maximised, has been defined by various thinkers as happiness or pleasure (versus sadness or pain), although preference utilitarians like Peter Singer define it as the satisfaction of preferences. It may be described as a life stance, with happiness or pleasure being of ultimate importance.

Originally described by the phrase "the greatest good for the greatest number", its advocates eventually dropped "the greatest number".^[1] Utilitarianism can thus be characterised as a quantitative and reductionist approach to ethics. It can be contrasted with deontological ethics (which do not regard the consequences of an act as the sole determinant of its moral worth) and virtue ethics (which focuses on character), as well as with other varieties of consequentialism. Adherents of these opposing views have extensively criticised the utilitarian view, but utilitarians have been similarly critical of other schools of thought.

In general, the term utilitarian refers to a somewhat narrow economic or pragmatic viewpoint. Philosophical utilitarianism, however, is much broader: most approaches, for example, consider non-humans in addition to people.

GUDUK! :)

Lap of Life

I wonder
if life is like a puff of smoke
arising out of nowhere and going nowhere
all I can do is rise with it and rise as high as I can and disappear.

Pi Day- March 14

A day in honor of Pi, one of the oldest and most mysterious mathematical constants known to man. A day in celebration of the works of dozens of great mathematicians and scholars. A day to revel in the glory and power of Pi. For those of you that live in the USA and use the MM/DD date representation format, the reason should be clear enough: March 14th, 2008 == 3.14.

Pi isn't just a number that you can use to calculate circle-related mathematics, it's a symbol of something by far greater. Pi is one of many "magic" numbers that are found everywhere - if you know where to look. These magic numbers can't be explained, they just are. And if you use them right, they make it a lot easier to do a lot of really complicated things... In a way, they're a testimony to technology and computers (or vice-versa, depending on how you look at it).

Pi, i, e, and Phi are just some of the numbers that have an almost-magical role in furthering scientific and mathematical studies and observations in our daily lives. It doesn't matter where they came from or what they actually mean; the one thing that truly counts is what you can make them do for you.

No one knows can know what Pi stands for - it's a transcedental number that never terminates. While it's commonly shortened as 3.14 or 3.14159; but in reality, it never ends:

3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679
8214808651328230664709384460955058223172535940812848111745028410270193852110555964462294895493038196
4428810975665933446128475648233786783165271201909145648566923460348610454326648213393607260249141273
7245870066063155881748815209209628292540917153643678925903600113305305488204665213841469...

Nowadays, when you say "Pi" you're not just referring to the endless number, but also indirectly referencing the cult-like following it has gathered over the years. Pi is everywhere, and not just in mathematics and nature alone. Websites, T-Shirts, software, and pop-culture have all irrationally-converged over the Pi concept (pun intended!).

March 14th isn't the only day that Pi is celebrated - a number of other days including July 22nd (22/7 ≈ Pi), November 9th on Leap Years, and November 10th otherwise (the 314th days of their respective years) are also recognized as "Pi Approximation Days" in their own right. And in China, December 10th at 1:13 PM is also considered to be yet another Pi Approximation (December 10th is the 355th day of the year, and 355/113 ≈ Pi).

Looking at the abundance of "magic numbers" tucked-into corners of everyday life, hiding in flower petals, ancient architectures, the layout and design of the universe, and belly-button ratios make one wonder: What other miracle numbers are out there, waiting to be discovered and their secrets unveiled; bringing order to chaos and providing an explanation for phenomenon where there once was none?

Some "magic numbers" trivia:

• Albert Einstein was born on Pi Day, 1879; as-is befitting of a scientist of his rank! (Sidebar: Mahmoud Al-Qudsi, the founder of NeoSmart Technologies was born on Nov. 9th, or Pi Approximation Day as well).

• Many scientists lost their minds trying to figure out Pi! The "circle-squaring disease" (from "squaring the circle" or the attempt to find a square with the same area as a circle in a finite number of steps) is known as Morbus Cyclometricus.

• The length from your toes to your belly-button divided by the length from your head to your belly-button is equal to Phi.

• James Smith wrote several books "proving" that Pi is equal to 25/8 -- which is wrong, of course.

• Most people classify Pi as being just another "irrational number," but that's actually not true, because if Pi were simply irrational, dealing with it would be so much easier (and "squaring the circle" would be possible). In reality, Pi is a transcendental irrational number, i.e. it's not the solution to any polynomial linear system with rational coefficients.

Political Philosophies

CENTRIST

Centrists espouse a "middle ground" regarding government control of the economy and personal behavior. Depending on the issue, they sometimes favor government intervention and sometimes support individual freedom of choice. Centrists pride themselves on keeping an open mind, tend to oppose "political extremes," and emphasize what they describe as "practical" solutions to problems.

LEFT (Liberal)

Liberals usually embrace freedom of choice in personal matters, but tend to support significant government control of the economy. They generally support a government-funded "safety net" to help the disadvantaged, and advocate strict regulation of business. Liberals tend to favor environmental regulations, defend civil liberties and free expression, support government action to promote equality, and tolerate diverse lifestyles.

RIGHT (Conservative)

Conservatives tend to favor economic freedom, but frequently support laws to restrict personal behavior that violates "traditional values." They oppose excessive government control of business, while endorsing government action to defend morality and the traditional family structure. Conservatives usually support a strong military, oppose bureaucracy and high taxes, favor a free-market economy, and endorse strong law enforcement.

STATIST (Big Government)

Statists want government to have a great deal of power over the economy and individual behavior. They frequently doubt whether economic liberty and individual freedom are practical options in today's world. Statists tend to distrust the free market, support high taxes and centralized planning of the economy, oppose diverse lifestyles, and question the importance of civil liberties.

LIBERTARIAN

Libertarians support maximum liberty in both personal and economic matters. They advocate a much smaller government; one that is limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence. Libertarians tend to embrace individual responsibility, oppose government bureaucracy and taxes, promote private charity, tolerate diverse lifestyles, support the free market, and defend civil liberties.

How long can humans stay awake?

J. Christian Gillin, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, conducts research on sleep, chronobiology and mood disorders. He supplies the following answer.

The easy experimental answer to this question is 264 hours (about 11 days). In 1965, Randy Gardner, a 17-year-old high school student, set this apparent world-record for a science fair. Several other normal research subjects have remained awake for eight to 10 days in carefully monitored experiments. None of these individuals experienced serious medical, neurological, physiological or psychiatric problems. On the other hand, all of them showed progressive and significant deficits in concentration, motivation, perception and other higher mental processes as the duration of sleep deprivation increased. Nevertheless, all experimental subjects recovered to relative normality within one or two nights of recovery sleep. Other anecdotal reports describe soldiers staying awake for four days in battle, or unmedicated patients with mania going without sleep for three to four days.

The more difficult answer to this question revolves around the definition of "awake." As mentioned above, prolonged sleep deprivation in normal subjects induces altered states of consciousness (often described as "microsleep"), numerous brief episodes of overwhelming sleep, and loss of cognitive and motor functions. We all know about the dangerous, drowsy driver, and we have heard about sleep-deprived British pilots who crashed their planes (having fallen asleep) while flying home from the war zone during World War II. Randy Gardner was "awake" but basically cognitively dysfunctional at the end of his ordeal.

In the case of rats, however, continuous sleep deprivation for about two weeks or more inevitably caused death in experiments conducted in Allan Rechtschaffen�s sleep laboratory at the University of Chicago. Two animals lived on a rotating disc over a pool of water, separated by a fixed wall. Brainwaves were recorded continuously into a computer program that almost instantaneously recognized the onset of sleep. When the experimental rat fell asleep, the disc was rotated to keep it awake by bumping it against the wall and threatening to push the animal into the water. Control rats could sleep when the experimental rat was awake but were moved equally whenever the experimental rat started to sleep. The cause of death was not proven but was associated with whole body hypermetabolism.

In certain rare human medical disorders, the question of how long people can remain awake raises other surprising answers, and more questions. Morvan�s fibrillary chorea or Morvan�s syndrome is characterized by muscle twitching, pain, excessive sweating, weight loss, periodic hallucinations, and severe loss of sleep (agrypnia). Michel Jouvet and his colleagues in Lyon, France, studied a 27-year-old man with this disorder and found he had virtually no sleep over a period of several months. During that time he did not feel sleepy or tired and did not show any disorders of mood, memory, or anxiety. Nevertheless, nearly every night between 9:00 and 11:00 p.m., he experienced a 20 to 60-minute period of auditory, visual, olfactory, and somesthetic (sense of touch) hallucinations, as well as pain and vasoconstriction in his fingers and toes. In recent investigations, Morvan�s Syndrome has been attributed to serum antibodies directed against specific potassium (K⁺) channels in cell and nerve membranes.

Another rare disorder, Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI), is an autosomal dominate disease that is invariably fatal after about six to 30 months without sleep. FFI is probably misnamed because death results from multiple organ failure rather than sleep deprivation. The pathological processes include degeneration of the thalamus and other brain areas, over-activity of the sympathetic nervous system, hypertension, fever, tremors, stupor, weight loss, and disruption of the body's endocrine systems. FFI belongs to a class of infectious prion diseases that include Mad Cow Disease. To return to the original question, "How long can humans stay awake?" the ultimate answer remains unclear. Despite the rat studies in Chicago, I am unaware of any reports that sleep deprivation per se has killed any human (excluding accidents and so forth). Indeed, the U.S. Department of Defense has offered research funding for the goal of sustaining a fully awake, fully functional "24/7" soldier, sailor, or airman. Future warriors will face intense, around-the-clock fighting for weeks at a time. Will bioengineering eventually produce genetically-cloned soldiers and citizens with a variant of Morvan�s syndrome who need no sleep but remain effective and happy? I hope not. A good night�s sleep is one of life�s blessings. As Coleridge wrote years ago, "Oh sleep! It is a gentle thing, beloved from pole to pole," and Wilse Webb, a prominent sleep researcher, more recently called sleep the gentle tyrant: It can be delayed but not defeated.

zara kar jor seene par ki teer-e-pursitam nikle

jo wo nikle to dil nikle, jo dil nikle to dam nikle


KHuda ke waaste parda na kaabe se uThaa zaalim

kaheeN 'eisa na ho yaaN bhee wohee kaafir sanam nikle


kahaaN maiKHaane ka darwaaza 'GHalib' aur kahaaN waaiz

par itana jaante haiN kal wo jaata tha ke ham nikle


GHair firta hai liye yooN tere KHat ko ki agar

koee pooche ki yeh kya hai ? to chipaaye na bane


is nazaakat ka bura ho, woh bhale haiN to kya

haaNth aaye to unhaiN haaNth lagaaye na bane

Cryptomnesia

Cryptomnesia, or inadvertent plagiarism, is a memory bias whereby a person falsely recalls generating a thought, an idea, a song, or a joke, when the thought was actually generated by someone else. In these cases, the person is not deliberately engaging in plagiarism, but is rather experiencing a memory as if it were a new inspiration.

Research has distinguished between two kinds of cryptomnesia, though they are often studied together. The distinction between these two types of plagiarism is in the underlying memory bias responsible — specifically, is it the thought that is forgotten, or the thinker? The first type of bias is one of familiarity. The plagiarizer regenerates an idea that was presented earlier, but believes the idea to be an original creation. The idea that is reproduced could be another’s idea, or one’s own from a previous time. B. F. Skinner describes his own experience of self-plagiarism;

“One of the most disheartening experiences of old age is discovering that a point you just made — so significant, so beautifully expressed — was made by you in something you published long ago.”

Self-plagiarism is not as costly as plagiarizing the work of others. In a famous case, George Harrison was sued over royalties for his first solo song My Sweet Lord, a song that sounded just a little too much like the Chiffons’ He’s so Fine. Harrison lost the case when a judge said he “subconsciously plagiarized,” and was ordered to pay $587,000 to Bright Tunes Music, who owned the copyright. Plagiarism of this sort is a kind of sleeper effect whereby old ideas come to feel new.

The second type of cryptamnesia results from an error of authorship whereby the ideas of others are remembered as one’s own. In this case, the plagiarizer correctly recognizes that the idea is from an earlier time, but falsely remembers having been the origin for the idea. Various terms have been coined to distinguish these two forms of plagiarism — occurrence forgetting vs. source forgetting and generation errors vs. recognition errors. The two types of cryptamnesia appear to be independent: no relationship has been found between error rates and the two types are precipitated by different causes .

Wild and Crazy Nobel Guys

Science is boring? Not during nobel week, when the recipients of the highest honors in chemistry, medicine and physics are announced. The 2006 winners were named last week, continuing a tradition begun in 1901, five years after Swedish dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel died, leaving $9 million and instructions to start annual prizes to honor achievements in those three scientific fields as well as in literature and peace. (Recipients of those awards will be announced this week, along with the winner in economics, a prize created in 1969.) The stories behind this year's science winners are particularly compelling. It was a banner year for the Americans, and there were family ties as well as years-old feuds. Here's the scoop.

U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

Maybe the color of the Nobel Prize medal should be changed from gold to red, white and blue. U.S. researchers swept the science awards for the first time since 1983. But the joy came with a warning from many in the U.S. scientific community: the kind of basic research that won Nobels is no longer getting adequate funding. Without more funds, they argue, U.S. scientific dominance won't last, as other nations become more competitive in these cutting-edge fields.

RNA! RNA!

A big winner this year was research on RNA--the genetic "messenger" that transcribes DNA code so it can be made into proteins. Work in this area earned the chemistry prize for Stanford University's Roger Kornberg and the medicine prize for Andrew Fire, also of Stanford, and the University of Massachusetts' Craig Mello. Studying RNA is important because a full understanding of its functions could lead to therapies and cures for diseases linked to defective genes.

NICE GENES

For Kornberg, the prize meant living up to his father's example: Arthur Kornberg won a Nobel for medicine in 1959. The Kornbergs are in good company--seven other sets of parents and children have won science's highest honor. The most famous was also the most prodigious: Marie and Pierre Curie won in 1903 (Marie won another on her own in 1911); then daughter Irène Joliot-Curie, along with her husband Frédéric Joliot, won in 1935. Who wouldn't pay to get a piece of those genes?

BATTLIN' BRAINIACS

Physics winners George Smoot of U.C.-Berkeley and John Mather of NASA have long feuded over discoveries they made while both were at NASA trying to prove the Big Bang theory. Mather was infuriated when Smoot, in 1992, announced some results of their collaborative research in what Mather alleged was a grab for solo glory. But after they won the prize last week, the pair seemed buddy-buddy again. Nothing brings people together like shiny gold medals and a check for $1.4 million.

A Graduate Student Tale :D

The Fox and Rabbit - a Graduate Student Tale

---

In a forest a fox bumps into a little rabbit, and says, "Hi, junior, what
are you up to?"

"I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes," said the rabbit.

"Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible!"

"Well, follow me and I'll show you."

They both go into the rabbit's dwelling and after a while the rabbit emerges
with a satisfied expression on his face.


Along comes a wolf. "Hello, what are we doing these days?"

"I'm writing the second chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits devour wolves."

"Are you crazy? Where is your academic honesty?"

"Come with me and I'll show you." ......

As before, the rabbit comes out with a satisfied look on his face
and this time he has a diploma in his paw.

The camera pans back and into the rabbit's cave and, as everybody should
have guessed by now, we see an enourmous mean-looking lion sitting next
to the bloody and furry remains of the wolf and the fox.

The moral of this story is:

It's not the contents of your thesis that are important --
it's your PhD advisor that counts.

In-joke

An in-joke (also known as an in joke or inside joke) is a joke whose humor is clear only to those people who are "inside" a social group or occupation. They may be colloquially referred to as "You had to have been there to think it's funny" moments. It is only humorous to those who know the situation behind it. Inside jokes may exist within a small social clique, such as a group of high school friends, or they may extend to an entire profession (e.g., inside jokes in the film industry).

Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off NOW!

When i drive, there are TWO types of pedestrians- the quick and the dead :-/

A Q U A R I A N S

A tendency to human love and understanding is decidedly Aquarian. Aquarians are people who care about the sorrows and poverty of others. Aquarians are Samaritans who lie awake nights worrying about starvation and drought. Aquarians wish they might do something about the miseries of their fellow men. Aquarians care.

As Aquarians dream of reaching out to help and are thus crusaders for the good of mankind, they don't always have a tremendous amount of time to spend at home. Aquarians are worldly and other-oriented. Sometimes, their families come last. In their zeal to save the world Aquarians often forget to buy the dog food.

Aquarians are cool customers. Before committing any act or making any major decision, Aquarians think things through. They prefer peace to conflict. It's not that they don't have strong opinions or shrink before confrontation. It's just that Aquarians like to remain detached and aloof from banalities. For that reason, they prefer not to get involved in terrestrial "nonsense" such as petty arguments or domestic tumult.

Aquarians need no one. You will often find them living alone or as an aloof partner in marriages where their mate travels a lot. It is easy for Aquarians to have a few parallel lives, as they never let one hand know what the other is doing. They are pleasant people and usually very honest-in their own way. They can, however, be considered selfish, as they like to behave according to their personal style. They don't enjoy being told what to do. Aquarians are not dictatorial. But they like power. Yet they won't use force to achieve their goals. Aquarians are clever and elusive characters to whom stratagem is second nature.

They surround themselves with friends and are usually liked by all. But, in a strange way, Aquarians are not really connected to terrestrial matters. They tend to hover about three feet over their own heads all the time and seem to be observing life from a silent helicopter position. It is said that Aquarius is the sign of madness or great power. More United States presidents were born in Aquarius than in any other sign.

You can be the intimate friend of an Aquarian and expect to see him once a year. Aquarius won't require too much of their mates. Aquarians are really very eccentric. If you love an Aquarian, don't hang on him or her. Don't pry into her private life, and above all, when your Aquarian shows up after a two-month absence from your life, don't ask questions. Just "Hello. How are you?" Aquarians detest rendering accounts.

'He who flatters you more than you desire either has deceived you or wishes to deceive'-Rober Arnold

Word/Logic Bank to Help Build 'Thinking' Machines

Information scientists announced an agreement last month on a "concept bank" programmers could use to build thinking machines that reason about complex problems at the frontiers of knowledge—from advanced manufacturing to biomedicine.

The agreement by ontologists—experts in word meanings and in using appropriate words to build actionable machine commands—outlined the critical functions of such a bank. It was reached at a two-day Ontology Summit held during NIST's Interoperability Week in Gaithersburg, Md. The decision to create a unique Internet facility called the Open Ontology Repository (OOR) culminated more than three months of Internet discussion.

The ontology wordsmiths envision an electronic OOR in which diverse collections of concepts (ontologies) such as dictionaries, compendiums of medical terminology, and classifications of products, could be stored, retrieved, and connected to various bodies of information. OOR users, tasked with creating a computer program for manufacturing machines, for example, would be able to search multiple computer languages and formats for the unambiguous words and action commands. Plans call for OOR's inventory to support the most advanced logic systems such as Resource Description Framework, Web Ontology Language and Common Logic, as well as standard Internet languages such as Extensible Markup Language (XML).

Steve Ray, NIST manufacturing systems integration chief who hosted the meeting, says, "The Ontology Summit established the critical set of requirements and ground rules needed before we can begin serious construction of the repository. It will save enormous amounts of time and money and facilitate new, complex systems in all sectors for manufacturing control, supply chain management, and even biomedical management systems."

Key elements of the agreement include a review of the current state of the art in ontology repositories; the quality and gate-keeping criteria for registering and distributing the ontology material; and an infrastructure that allows reviews of diverse ontologies (an ontology of ontologies). The researchers pledged to continue work on the project via the Internet and expect to review their progress at next year's NIST Interoperability Week conference.

For further information see the Ontology Summit Communique, at http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2008_Communique

'The infinite possibility each day holds should stagger the mind. The sheer number of experiences I could have is uncountable, breathtaking. And I am sitting here refreshing my page.We live trapped in loops. Reliving a few days over and over, and we envision only a handful of paths laid out ahead of us. We see the same things each day, we respond the same way, we think the same thoughts, each day a slight variation on the last, every moment smoothly following the gentle curves of societal norms. We act like if we just get through today, tomorrow our dreams will come back to us.

And no, I don't have all the answers. I don't know how to jolt myself into seeing what each moment could become. But I do know one thing: the solution doesn't involve watering down my every little idea and creative impulse for the sake of someday easing my fit into a mold. It doesn't involve tempering my life to better fit someone's expectations. It doesn't involve constantly holding back for the fear of shaking things up.'

Helium

1 Although helium is the second-most-plentiful element in the cosmos — it's synthesized in stars by nuclear fusion — Earth is running short of the noble gas. Extracted from natural gas, our supply accumulated in the planet's crust over billions of years — the result of radioactive decay. One-third of that stash lies in the Texas panhandle, and if it continues to be consumed at the current rate, it'll be gone in nine years.

2 Macy's is rumored to be the second-largest helium customer in the world — Curse you, Red Baron! — but the element is used for more than just floating things. Two quick examples: It's perfect for pressurizing space shuttle fuel tanks (only helium remains a gas at the frigid temperature of liquid-hydrogen rocket fuel) and for cooling the superconducting electromagnets in MRI devices (helium boasts the coldest liquid state of any element).

3 Inhaling helium lets you croon like Alvin & Co. because the gas is only one-seventh as dense as air. When helium is streaming out of your lungs as you yodel, the sound waves produced by your vocal cords travel much faster, which alters the tone quality of your voice. The result: that endlessly funny squeak

Cloning

Little Bo Peep
Has lost her sheep
And doesn't know where to find them.

Leave them to roam,
They can be cloned,
We've kept some genes behind, Ma'am.

Murphy's technology laws

Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition.Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not understand.If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.The opulence of the front office decor varies inversely with the fundamental solvency of the firm.The attention span of a computer is only as long as it electrical cord.An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch to be sure. great discoveries are made by mistake.Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.All's well that ends.A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost.The first myth of management is that it exists.A failure will not appear till a unit has passed final inspection.New systems generate new problems.To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.We don't know one millionth of one percent about anything.Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Arthur C. ClarkA computer makes as many mistakes in two seconds as 20 men working 20 years make.Nothing motivates a man more than to see his boss putting in an honest day's work.Some people manage by the book, even though they don't know who wrote the book or even what book.The primary function of the design engineer is to make things difficult for the fabricator and impossible for the serviceman.To spot the expert, pick the one who predicts the job will take the longest and cost the most.After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done.Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is obsolete, two parts which are unobtainable and three parts which are still under development.A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.If mathematically you end up with the incorrect answer, try multiplying by the page number.Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable. Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable..Give all orders verbally. Never write anything down that might go into a "Pearl Harbor File."Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables the organism will do as it damn well pleases.If you can't understand it, it is intuitively obvious.The more cordial the buyer's secretary, the greater the odds that the competition already has the order.In designing any type of construction, no overall dimension can be totaled correctly after 4:30 p.m. on Friday. The correct total will become self-evident at 8:15 a.m. on Monday.Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. And scratch where it itches.All things are possible except skiing through a revolving door.The only perfect science is hind-sight.Work smarder and not harder and be careful of yor speling.If it's not in the computer, it doesn't exist.If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.When all else fails, read the instructions.If there is a possibility of several things going wrong the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.Everything that goes up must come down.
Corollary: Not always
The corollary was sent by the Dark TemplarAny instrument when dropped will roll into the least accessible corner.Any simple theory will be worded in the most complicated way.Build a system that even a fool can use and only a fool will want to use it.The degree of technical competence is inversely proportional to the level of management.A difficult task will be halted near completion by one tiny, previously insignificant detail.There is never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.The remaining work to finish in order to reach your goal increases as the deadline approaches.If there is ever the possibility of several things to go wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
Sent by - Anthony JohnsonIf something breaks, and it stops you from doing something, it will be fixed when you: no longer need itare in the middle of something elsedon't want it to be fixed, because you really don't want to do what you were supposed to do Each profession talks to itself in it's own language, apparently there is no Rosetta StoneThe more urgent the need for a decision to be made, less apparent become the identity of the decision maker
The last two laws were sent by - Foes ArvinIt is never wise to let a piece of electronic equipment know that you are in a hurry.
Sent by - Charles L. MaysDon't fix something that ain't broke, 'cause you'll break it and you still can't fix itYou can never tell which way the train went by looking at the track.
Chong Kwong Sheng addition:
Only by the splatter of the blood stains
The last two laws were sent by Chong Kwong ShengDobie's Dogma:
If you are not thoroughly confused, you have not been thoroughly informed.
Sent by Richard BobbittA screw will never fit a nut.Standard parts are not.
The last two laws were sent by Kent BergWhen working on a motor vehicle engine, any tool dropped will land directly under the center of the engine.
Sent by king EdInterchangeable tapes won't.
Sent by Jeff WebbNever trust modern technology. Trust it only when it is old technology.
Sent by The High RabbitThe bolt that is in the most awkward place will always be the one with the tightest thread.
Sent by Stan GajdaThe most ominous phrase in science: "_Uh_-oh . . ."
Sent by Yael DragwylaThe 2nd worst thing you can hear the tech say is "Oops!" The worst thing you can hear the tech say is "oh s**t!"Any example of hardware/software can be made fool-proof. It cannot, however, be made damn-fool-proof.
The last two laws were sent by Guy DunnThe Rossemblat Graphic Insult Theory:
When any technological change is made, we have a graphic insult curve. No mater how high the insult curve climb, the important thing is how long it goes.
Sent by Leon RossemblatBahaman's Law:
for any given software, the moment you manage to master it, a new version of that software appears.
Sent by Bahaman.
Yakko's addition:
The new version always manages to change the one feature you need most.
Sent by YakkoIn today's fast-moving tech environment, it is a requirement that we forget more than we learn.
Sent by Beverly HarrisIt is simple to make something complex, and complex to make it simple.
Sent by Fred ButerbaughMeasurements will be quoted in the least practical unit; velocity, for example, will be measured in 'furlongs-per-fortnight'.
Sent by Keith HipkinsIn electronics repair the part with the highest failure rate will always be located in the least accessible area of the equipment.
Sent by RichardMulti-million pound technology is worthless in the hands of morons.
Sent by DannyThe rule of Protection:
If you install a 50¢ fuse to protect a 100$ component, the 100$ component will blow to protect the 50¢ fuse.
Sent by Bob HoldenerKarl Imhoff was a German engineer who developed sewage treatment systems in the early 1900's. His biggest contribution was the Imhoff Tank, which allows sewage to settle. The Imhoff Law relates to bosses everywhere. The law goes as follows:
The largest chunks always rise to the top.
Sent by P R SuhrHigh tech man-year = 730 people trying to finish a project before lunch.
Sent by EricAn expert will always state the obvious.
Sent by LawmanThe boss is always right.
Corollary: If the boss is wrong, refer back to the rule.
Sent by RC On a cruise ship, the one, most important part you don't have in stock always breaks on a Friday evening, just when you left harbor and the next time you will be in harbor is a Sunday or Christmas eve.
Sent by Jouni Sironen - a long time sound & light technician on cruise ships.The chance a copy machine will brake down is proportional to the importance of the material that needs to be copied and inversely proportional to the amount of time till the material will be needed.
Sent by Timothy BoilardMaintenance department neglect customer's complains till it starts installations in customer's new projects.
Sent by KhaledMurphy's Law on HVAC systems:
An HVAC (Heating Ventilating and Air Conditioning) engineering firm, will invariably lease office space in a building with a lousy HVAC system.
Sent by Michael W. Murphy who has worked in 6 HVAC firm offices and can back this law up.
All the engineers can do is shiver or sweat and moan about it, and say how they would fix it if the building owner actually gave a damn.The probability any machine breaks down increases with the importance of expected visit.
Sent by Asier Zabarteif it works in theory, it won't work in practice.
if it works in practice it won't work in theory.
Sent by KevinResearch Law:
No matter how clever and complete your research is, there is always someone who knows more.
Sent by J. Lawrence KatzSomers' Law of Repair:
No part ever fails where you can reach it, or where there is enough light to see how to replace it.
Sent by John SomersAny tool dropped will fall where it can cause the most damage.Any wire cut to length will be too short.Equivalent replacement parts aren't.
The last three laws were sent by Bill SeloverWhen you finally update to a new technology, is when everyone stop supporting it.Interchangeable parts aren't
Sent by trekker508The proposed size of any project is inversely proportional to the size the project will eventually become.
Corollary: Any project that can consume more resources before reaching it's final state will do so.
This will happen faster than you think.
Also, the investors will not be happy.
Sent by Jon ProeselThe less intelligent the idea, and the person stating it, the more likely it will be funded.
Sent by Brad GochnauerA man with one watch is certain about time. A man with two watches isn't.The more knowledge you gained, the less certain you are of it.If you think you understand science (or computers or women), you're clearly not an expertTechnicians are the only ones that don't trust technology
The last four laws were sent by Jan WenallAll impossible failures, will happen at the test site.
Corollary: All impossible failures will happen on the clients desktop
Corollary sent by Dino PriceThe more you want to contact someone over an instant messenger is inversely proportional to the chances that they will be on-line.The more important your email is, the worse your email client will screw it up.
The last two laws were sent by PadmeThe degree to which a device will function is directly proportional to the number of times it has been bashed and inversely to its cost.A device having an indestructible component or is user serviceable is deemed unsafe until it's replaced by an expensive, unobtainable, inefficient component which needs constant servicing.
The last two laws were sent by Takura RazembaAssaf's Laws of Replacement Parts A failed 25¢ part cannot be replaced by a new 25¢ part, but by a sub-assembly whose cost is equal to or greater than that of the device in need of the partThe cost and availability of a replacement part are in inverse proportion to the cost of the whole system: a $1500 device will fail because of the burnout of a 25¢ capacitor. But the 25¢ capacitor is either no longer manufacturedmanufactured only by a company in Outer Mongolia with an 18-month backlogavailable only as part of a $1450 sub-assembly Sent by Francis AssafAll things mechanical/electrical will catastrophically fail after the guarantee has expired, unless an extended guarantee has been purchased.
Sent by Blair MurrayThe Harvard Principle:
Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of temperature, humidity, pressure, etc., the organism will do as it damn well pleases.First Law of Linear Equations:
Given any system n linear equations, there will be n+1 unknowns
The last two laws were sent by Bill PramikThe disappearance of a nagging error in a system is explicable only in terms of insignificant contribution of the source to that system
Sent by Manjunatha M, an application engineerThe repairman will have never seen a model quite like yours before
Sent by ChristaLaw of Repairmen:
The repairman fixes your machine to break down the next day and charges for a new machine.
Sent by Eddy CosmaWhile technology progresses at the speed of light it's implementation is filtered through the speed of bureaucracy
Sent by Moses Avalon - mosesavalon.com

Interesting Science Quotes

They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence ... they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.

- Richard Dawkins (English biologist,1941-)in The Selfish Gene (1976)



"The species of whale known as the black right whale has four kilos of brains and 1,000 kilos of testicles. If it thinks at all, we know what it is thinking about."
Jon Lien, "Whale Professor" at St. John's University, Newfoundland, speaking to the Norwegian Telegram Agency (spring 1995).


"If excessive smoking actually plays a role in the production of lung cancer, it seems to be a minor one."
- Dr. W.C. Heuper of the National Cancer Institute, as quoted in the New York Times on April 14, 1954.


"For the majority of People, smoking has a beneficial effect."

- Dr. Ian G. Macdonald, Los Angeles surgeon, quoted in "Newsweek", Nov.18th 1963.

Quotations by Pierre-Simon Laplace

What we know is not much. What we do not know is immense.
(Allegedly his last words.)
Quoted in A De Morgan Budget of Paradoxes.

[His last words, according to De Morgan:]
Man follows only phantoms.
Quoted in A De Morgan Budget of Paradoxes.

Nature laughs at the difficulties of integration.
Quoted in I Gordon and S Sorkin, The Armchair Science Reader (New York 1959).

Read Euler: he is our master in everything.
Quoted in G Simmons Calculus Gems (New York 1992).

Such is the advantage of a well constructed language that its simplified notation often becomes the source of profound theories.
Quoted in N Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims (Raleigh N C 1988).

Napoleon: You have written this huge book on the system of the world without once mentioning the author of the universe.
Laplace: Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis.
Later when told by Napoleon about the incident, Lagrange commented: Ah, but that is a fine hypothesis. It explains so many things.
Quoted in A De Morgan Budget of Paradoxes.

[said about Napier's logarithms:]
...by shortening the labours doubled the life of the astronomer.
Quoted in H Eves In Mathematical Circles (Boston 1969).

It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit. But its very simplicity and the great ease which it has lent to computations put our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions; and we shall appreciate the grandeur of the achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest men produced by antiquity.
Quoted in H Eves Return to Mathematical Circles (Boston 1988).

It is interesting thus to follow the intellectual truths of analysis in the phenomena of nature. This correspondence, of which the system of the world will offer us numerous examples, makes one of the greatest charms attached to mathematicall speculations.
Exposition du système du monde (1799)

The theory of probabilities is at bottom nothing but common sense reduced to calculus; it enables us to appreciate with exactness that which accurate minds feel with a sort of instinct for which ofttimes they are unable to account.
Introduction to Théorie Analytique des Probabilitiés

It is remarkable that a science which began with the consideration of games of chance should have become the most important object of human knowledge.
Théorie Analytique des Probabilitiés (1812).

All the effects of Nature are only the mathematical consequences of a small number of immutable laws.

With a pile of 300 résumés on his desk and a need to pick someone quickly, my boss told me to make calls on the bottom 50 and toss the rest.
"Throw away 250 résumés?"
I asked, shocked. "What if the best candidates are in there?"
"You have a point," he said.
" But then again, I don't need people with bad luck here ."

Biomimetics

Bioinspired Design and Processing of Materials
How biological organisms produce materials with controlled structure, chemistry and hierarchy to attain physical properties far superior to traditional engineering materials. Fundamental biological building materials, their synthesis, and their self-assembly with emphasis on examples of soft and hard tissues.

Heuristic

A heuristic is a method to help to solve a problem, commonly informal. It is particularly used for a method that often rapidly leads to a solution that is usually reasonably close to the best possible answer. Heuristics are "rules of thumb", educated guesses, intuitive judgments or simply common sense.

In more precise terms, heuristics stand for strategies using readily accessible, though loosely applicable, information to control problem-solving in human beings and machines.

Here are a few commonly used heuristics, from Polya's classic How to Solve It:

• Look to the unknown.^{[dubious – discuss]}
• If you are having difficulty understanding a problem, try drawing a picture.
• If you can't find a solution, try assuming that you have a solution and seeing what you can derive from that ("working backward").
• If the problem is abstract, try examining a concrete example.
• Try solving a more general problem first (the "inventor's paradox": the more ambitious plan may have more chances of success).