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2004.04.25 : 2004.04.28

Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Blab. A Treasured Reader solicits our help.

I wonder if the Erdos dude would help me finish my epic poem about guinea pigs.  :D

Kallese

We recommend a period.

Blab. A reader is impressed with the tish of tosh on that ever so fabulous QM interpretation from yesterday.

Favorite quote: "I need to look at that PowerPoint to understand the experiment though."

Yeah. In computer "science", we're quite used to people who think entirely in PowerPoint. It is distressing to see that happen in physics. Physics is actually a science, you know.

Blab. A while ago, a reader wrote:

2001.03.31 

C-6 

Do you eat sand? 

If '8:55 AM' were a question, what question would it be? 

Reasonable questions, all.

Blab. Conversely, a reader fails the test of our patience.

The word of the day is: etiology.

Dude. The word of the day is boring. OK? Get to whatever tedious point you intend to make or give up.

Blab. As instructed, a reader keeps us informed of its activities.

Today I thought about something.

Good to know. But the question is: did you have an internal experience of the process?

Plurp. Another list of unspecified purpose. Compare and contrast.

1. helen naked pitures
2. naked zombie pictures
3. virtual helen naked pictures
4. quorn naked pictures
5. naked helen lollipops
6. arsenic poisoning pictures
7. iris chacon
8. mia
9. mouse naked pictures
10. get an elephant in a refrigerator

Plurp. Every OS Sucks.

Yak. From today's Conference Call That Would Not End.

In the second column on the right, should that be a checky mark or an unhappy face?

Yo. From Salon (via Jeff, who never sends us anything), here's some old news that we hadn't heard previously.

July 13, 2001 | WASHINGTON -- In the second White House health scare in little more than a week, doctors Wednesday night implanted a sophisticated pacemaker in President Bush's brain. The device, known as an implantable cranial defibrillator, or ICD, continuously monitors and records the president's brain waves. When Mr. Bush's brain activity becomes dangerously slow for a chief executive, the device delivers a mild electric shock, jolting the president back to a relatively active mental state. 

"I feel good," the president told reporters several hours after the operation. Bush then twitched noticeably. "I mean, I feel well," he said. 

Doctors say the implant is performing flawlessly, although they're trying to limit the number of shocks Bush receives to fewer than 100 a day. The surgery came barely a week after Vice President Dick Cheney was fitted with a device to regulate his irregular heartbeat. [...]

"You'll find no healthier duo than Dick Cheney and I," Bush said. The president hesitated, as if waiting for a signal, and when none came, broke into a toothy grin.

Tuesday, April 27, 2004

Blab. The Turing police are after us. It was only a matter of time.

Re. Zombies:  The Plurp AI authoring system seems to be attempting to recognize the truth, but it has the polarity wrong.  Quick, shut it down!  Plurp, compute pi to infinite precision!

Norman, coordinate!

Blab. A Treasured Reader gets a twofer.

Freeganism: New diet trend?

J.C. as "O.Z.: Original Zombie"

So, dumpster diving as an eco-friendly lifestyle, and The Passion of the Christ as a zombie movie. Makes sense to us!

Blab. A reader worries about our eating habits. Isn't that sweet?

fish stomach, cod liver & oatmeal? That must be some seasoning they used!

We think of British cuisine, and Scottish cuisine in particular, as an advanced form of freeganism.

Blab. A reader questions our ability to connect with reality. Understandably so.

The reading room sounds like a dream to me. :)

No, we were really there. Honest!

Blab. Our English school correspondent writes:

Wow, plurp man, you're in England, come and do a lecture on high tech nonsense at my school, from your english school correspondant 

We're back now, so we missed our chance. In any case, we seem to have precious few extra days to spend gallivanting around while in Faraway Places, no doubt much to our detriment. But there you are.

Blab. A reader baits us.

'Many Worlds' and 'Copenhagen' interpretations disproved

Hmm. A nearby blogger says her Dad is the only one who has an interpretation of quantum mechanics that is consistent with a recent experiment.

Tish tosh. Do the math.

Blab. Mistaking that little Blab box for a search facility, them who talk behind the rows write:

we behind the ears

Blab. Stephanie adds to our penguin collection.

Hi Steve, you can add this to your penguin collection.

-Stephanie

Silly us. We didn't know that we even had a penguin collection.

Blab. A reader gives us permission.

Are you really a nerd?  It's ok if you are.

Gosh, that's nice of you.

Blab. Kallese writes:

Страсть Христа - религ
иозное кино в том же самом смысле, что Дебби Делает Даллас - история любви.   Love, Kallese

Indeed.

Blab. A reader on the verge of realization writes:

If you posted more often, I'd send more links like this.

The Web is a disturbing place.

Blab. Concerned that we are spending altogether too much time doing manual calculations of the consequences of asteroid impact, a generous reader writes:

Calculator to answer all (some) of your asteroid impact questions.

Very helpful! Based on a few worrisome calculations, we are currently calibrating our free-electron laser array. We recommend the same to our readers.

Blab. Similarly:

Asteroids, DARPA, HAARP, moon, China. Monkeys!

Thank you, Treasured Reader.

Blab. A reader uncovers yet another insidious plot.

Today, I recieved spam dated 1969! Those clever spammers!

Spammers with time machines? Where will it all end?

Blab. A reader violates our sense of social distance.

how can i contact with you

You can't. We don't want to be contacted. Go away.

Blab. A reader, unfamiliar with where we keep our Stuff, asks:

Where's the stuff at?

It's here.

Blab. After an unexplained absence, the mysterious Mia appears in an unexpected place.

Mia Strikes.
Remy Zero - Villa Elaine

And we got heavy traffic on the stairs
With darlin' Sherrie over there and Sarah's back in town
Kim and Kay sit on the floor
While Zelda hides the closet doors,
Never to be found
See John smile and Mia sigh
Katie cries
Mia plays the violin.

Good-bye little world.

Plurp. A list of items, whose connection is not explained.

1. helen naked pitures
2. virtual helen naked pictures
3. mouse naked pictures
4. iris chacon
5. mia
6. imani
7. arsenic poisoning pictures
8. do aliens live among us
9. naked helen lollipops
10. nun

Plurp. From Dave, we point you to these very wonderful, non-traditional Barbies.
 

Wonderful! We are particularly appreciative of Catwoman Barbie and Hellraiser Ken. 

Yo. Imagine that you've founded your whole sense of self, the universe and everything on the existence of an Imaginary Friend in the Sky. Now imagine that someone writes a novel in which your whole system of belief is mistaken. Then imagine that the novel becomes popular. Do you:

1. Ignore it. It's fiction!
2. Switch beliefs; why prefer one fiction over another?
3. Fight back, vociferously, in public, against a piece of fiction.

If you're a Christian church, you picked (c).

Hearing that the best-selling novel "The Da Vinci Code" may be sowing doubt about basic Christian beliefs, a host of Christian churches, clergy members and Bible scholars are rushing to rebut it.

In 13 months, readers have bought more than six million copies of the book, a historical thriller that claims Christianity was founded on a cover-up — that the church has conspired for centuries to hide evidence that Jesus was a mere mortal, married Mary Magdalene and had children whose descendants live in France.

Word that the director Ron Howard is making a movie based on the book has intensified the critics' urgency. More than 10 books are being released, most in April and May, with titles that promise to break, crack, unlock or decode "The Da Vinci Code." Churches are offering pamphlets and study guides for readers who may have been prompted by the novel to question their faith. Large audiences are showing up for Da Vinci Code lectures and sermons.

"Because this book is such a direct attack against the foundation of the Christian faith, it's important that we speak out," said the Rev. Erwin W. Lutzer, author of "The Da Vinci Deception" and senior pastor of Moody Church in Chicago, an influential evangelical pulpit.

The Rev. James L. Garlow, co-author with Prof. Peter Jones of "Cracking Da Vinci's Code" and pastor of Skyline Wesleyan Church in San Diego, said: "I don't think it's just an innocent novel with a fascinating plot. I think it's out there to win people over to an incorrect and historically inaccurate view, and it's succeeding. People are buying into the notion that Jesus is not divine, he is not the son of God." 

Don't you love these personality tests?

Yo. Did that last bit strike you as absurd? Did the various protagonists impress you with their ability to take fiction as reality? It is a remarkable human trait.

A Web site meant to promote upcoming film drama "Godsend" is stirring controversy among people who oppose human cloning and want the site shut down because they think the site is real, the film's makers say. [...]

[It] promotes what purports to be a fertility clinic run by Dr. Richard Wells, who is billed as being "the top genetic engineering researcher" in the United States and a man who bears an uncanny resemblance to actor Robert De Niro, who stars in the movie.

Maybe they just oppose cloning of Robert De Niro, eh?

Yow. Would you like to have an Erdös number of 5 ?

(If you don't know what an Erdös number is, don't worry about it, but you can read about it here. An amusing formulation is here.)

If you want such an honor, you can now buy it on eBay. No kidding. A guy named William Tozier, who wrote a paper with a guy who wrote a paper with a guy who wrote a paper with a guy who wrote a paper with Erdös. And for the right price, he'll collaborate with you on a paper (for some loose definition of "collaborate"), making you a person who wrote a paper with a guy who wrote a paper with a guy who wrote a paper with a guy who wrote a paper with a guy who wrote a paper with Erdös.

Wouldn't that be special?
 

Monday, April 26, 2004

Blab. We have returned from that Zone of Unpredictable Connectivity, only to find ourself in the midst of yet another Attack of the Mindless Zombies!

well, actually, YOU are a zombie.  You always knew you were special, eh?

That's the thing, though: we're not! We have this fascinating, dynamic, internal experience of the world, unlike Dennett and his zombie friends. And we don't know how to explain it.

Blab. A reader reminds us of lots more interesting musings on this topic with a blind ...

[link].

This is, of course, Dave thinking about the Problems Of Consciousness, a conversation which he and we have had for years. Much good stuff there.

In the cited conversation, Dave (or his avatar) exchanges email with a zombie. Well, not a Dennett zombie, exactly, in that the zombie behaves differently than we would expect: he denies that he has any internal experience (or, at least, we think he does), whereas Dennett's zombies would swear up and down that they did, even though they didn't (in some sense).

Blab. A reader tries to get us back on track. This is not historically successful, of course, but we have to admire the attempt.

--
But that doesn't help. Your experience of me may well be perfectly explained by neuroscience. But mine is not! Nothing about synapses or cortical layers would lead me to predict the amazing internal theater that we experience every waking moment. Nothing about frequency-locking or hormonal levels would help us understand why we experience something rather than nothing.
--

It seems to me that these questions are verging on the ineffable and that you're asking things that will never have any sort of scientific answer.  On the other hand, maybe all systems that interact with their environments have "experiences".  The question is not then "why?", but "what predictions can we make about those experiences?" 

And with next to no neuroscience knowledge, I can make some predictions: if you take strong opiates you will feel great; if you take LSD your internal theatre will be taken over by amazing pictures; etc.  I suppose to be more precise, I can only predict that you will likely tell me that these are your experiences.   (You can claim as many internal theatres as you like, but I know you're really a zombie.) But any sort of prediction is some demonstration that we have a theory (if a weak one) of conscious experience.

It's a good point. Science does not explain why. It (at best) explains how, or when. And it's true that we can make useful predictions about what happens to our internal mental experience when take drugs, stay up too late, and so forth. That's a good thing; that tells us something about the nature of our particular consciousness. If you believe this lesson generalizes, then it may also tell you something about your particular consciousness.

But we're confused at what might be a more fundamental level. Physics tells us that there will be a gravitational field (with a bunch of observable consequences) whenever there is stuff around that has mass. Where is the theory that tells us when will something be conscious, i.e. will have internal mental experiences? We know that we qualify. By extension (argument omitted here) you might as well. Do all mammals? All vertebrates? All animals? All living things? All things? (Chalmers wants to say that it's just a property of the arrangement of matter, and everything is conscious to some degree.) Spacetime itself?

It would be easy to take Dennett's point of view (as we understand it, anyway): just look at the organism from the outside and explain its behavior. But we thought B.F. Skinner blew it in exactly the same way, by denying the one most overwhelming observational fact: that he is conscious.

Maybe we don't need to answer this question in order to explain the behavior of all you zombies. But there's still our own experience, and it keeps not going away.

Blab. Proving that we can get people to write about just about anything, a reader writes:

Steve,

I found the essay very wordy but also thought provoking. My first thought was of a concept I studied in Philosophy 101 in my freshman year: we are not actually physical beings, but ONLY consciousness that projects the physical around us. For over twenty years, that concept flittered through my mind when it seemed the background "filler people" were the same in every city. I would joke to myself that I had no imagination to keep using the same people over and over. On a totally different note, it seems any discourse on consciousness might mention animals. I have a cat that calmly looks at himself in the mirror every day. I know objectively that he does not think it is another cat through glass, as a neighboring cat constantly peers through our glass door and our cat wigs out when he sees him. Also, he makes eye contact with me through the mirror. Therefore, if he is looking at me in the mirror, I believe he is looking at himself in the same cool, aloof manner. I believe the answer to consciousness will eventually be found, but as all big discoveries, it will soon seem old hat (like flight, electricity, space travel, etc.) and humans will be on to other things. It seems to be the nature of the beast. Or maybe I'm imagining all of this. ;)

So much of what passes as philosophy seems to us more gainfully employed as fertilizer. What would it even mean to say that we are not physical?

We agree that cats are conscious. Such malicious pestiness cannot be merely mechanical. We're willing to extend the mantle of consciousness pretty far down, at least as far as fish, for instance, which are really pretty dumb when you get right down to it. We do so, of course, on basically the same grounds that we use to extend this blessing upon our fellow humans: given how much their behavior is recognizable in our own, it's hard to imagine that they're not conscious. It's not a very strong argument, though!

Filler people, by the way, are the same everywhere. Our friend Randy counted them up. There are about 3,000, give or take. Just too expensive to make more, we suppose.

Blab. A skeptic asks:

Why should I trust Plurp's claim to be conscious?  My grandmother claims to feel the loving presence of Jesus!  John Allegro proved Jesus was a hoax; what shall I make of your claims to 'consciousness'?

The cutaneous "rabbit" experiment suggests consciousness doesn't exist at all.   Your claim, that consciousness is "*the* very most immediate, undeniable fact about the universe" makes about as much sense as claims by the ancients that Dionysos *somewhere* was in the wine."

You shouldn't trust our claim. That's pretty much Dennett's point. But we trust our claim, which is pretty much our point.

As to experiments like the cutaneous rabbit, they are very interesting! A series of irregularly-spaced taps on the arm is experienced as (a larger number of) evenly-spaced taps, as a small animal running up the arm. It is possible to determine when a person is about to push a button, while the person may not perceive herself as having made that decision yet. Stuff like that.

Is Our Experience a Construction of the Apparatus of our Brain?, asks the article? Of course it is! Our experience of the world is entirely a construct of our brain (albeit one that is strongly influenced by external events), which is why we get it wrong sometimes.

This does not seem to address the existence of our internal experience, though it does tell us some fascinating stuff about how it works.

Blab. A disciple of Chalmers writes:

The apple does experience things. Listen for the scream when you bite.

But internal experience is not the only theory to explain a screaming apple. It could, after all, be a zombie apple that screams when bitten, but that has no conscious experience.

What are we saying?

Blab. A zombie with a watchdog timer writes:

Consciousness can be viewed is a mental "watchdog timer".  Just as a watchdog timer resets a microprocessor if the microprocessor is locked in an infinite loop, so consciousness allows us to examine our overall state, and break out of infinite loops and futile efforts.   As such, it carries a high positive evolutionary selection factor, and almost certainly is a property of most mammals.

We won't deny your own experience. We will say that our own internal experience is quite a bit more technicolored than that of a mere watchdog timer.

Blab. A reader who might not be a zombie writes:

Subj: Dennett 

I just finished his book "Consciousness Explained". An interesting read. The title is a bit optimistic though as I can't decide if you are a zombie or a cron script.

Dorian, the cartesian theatre owner

Yeah, we thought it was quite a baited switch. Dennett promises to explain consciousness and ends up saying that no explanation is needed (beyond neurophysiology that we don't yet understand well enough).

Blab. A reader ...

*wonders along blue dogs neuronal pathways*

Neurons in a bitmap? Maybe Chalmers is onto something!

Blab. All this philosophizing has made the readership hungry.

Must eat brains.... 

We recommend the spicy ones.

Yak.

Helen: What are we going to do for our 25th anniversary?

Steve: Hyperventilate?

Yo. Here's a weird idea. A little pixellated city, built entirely by random volunteers, without rhyme, reason or zoning commissions apparent. We rather like that, in an odd, what's-the-point-of-it-all kind of way. (/usr/bin/girl)

Yo. Speaking of weird, what the heck happened in North Korea, anyhow? An electrical line sparked an explosion of carloads of fertilizer? A carload of oil mixed with a carload of fertilizer? A train carrying gasoline collided with one carrying LNG? Was it a train carrying industrial explosives for mining use? The theories abound, but none explain the evidence.

The train exploded Thursday afternoon, hitting Ryongchon, a manufacturing center, with the force of a small nuclear bomb, raining debris over a 10-mile radius and sending acrid smoke over the nearby border with China.

Similarly:

Eyewitnesses describes the explosion as a fireball like a nuclear bomb, which sent up a black mushroom-shaped cloud, flattened dozens of buildings, scattered debris for miles around, and left a crater 50ft deep. A Red Cross worker said the railway station and immediate surroundings were "obliterated" and hundreds of buildings up to three miles away were destroyed.

That's some fertilizer!

Meanwhile, CNN is showing photos of the railway cars, the alleged source of the explosion. Are they "flattened"? "Obliterated"? No, they are not. They are split open, true, but hardly by an explosion of that magnitude.

And, all this time, North Korea is incredibly tight-lipped. They appear even to have carted off the bodies of the dead before anyone was allowed in.

We're betting on Shoggoths here.
 

Sunday, April 25, 2004

Plurp. Updates. Don't get used to it.

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