Fragility of Intelligence

I believe that Intelligence is an unstable phenomenon. The oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere appeared within about two million years. On the Geologic time scale shrank to a meter it is less than a half a millimetre. Imagine how small will be the period on the Cosmological time scale between the time people started sending radio waves and the Technological Singularity (expected within this century) when the artificial intelligence exceeds human’s. Who knows how long it will take after the Singularity to stop spending valuable energy on radio wave dissipation up to the level of background radiation. This argument could resolve the Fermi paradox – the contradiction between the expectation of alien intelligent life and the absence of evidence of it.

Studying Nature

The humankind will survive only if it stops applying the knowledge about Nature to its mercantile and pragmatic applications.

Seeing new

It is hard to see new. When seeing unusual we either see an analogy or a composition of well understood things.

The geatest crime of society

Differentiating people by general characteristics such as origin, beliefs, culture, social status and by that classifying them into large groups is the greatest crime.

Blame the Owner Not the Breed

One politician spoke dirty about another one. It was not a criminal offense. But how much resentment and anger it provoked in some blaming the offender! They just keep overlooking that the stain of the dirty remark falls on either one or the other depending on tolerance and approval of social surrounding. So blame the society or accept it as it is.

The I in the Universe

The Universe is much more significant than the I. Because the I is crackable and the Universe is not.

"In God's image, and after His likeness"

Think that God is like us? I don’t. I think God is very different that He does not have self-consciousness or personality. Otherwise He is just a mighty extraterrestrial.

Simplicity

Simplicity is a valuable asset which is being paid for functionality. Spend it wisely.

Life is a Pit

Life is a pit. You are thrown in. You slide down from one steep end. Then the slope becomes gradual and you reach the bottom point. After that you walk upward. Then climb. The further, the steeper. Until you push so hard that either you are too tired or you hit the wall, the other side of the pit. That is it. The life is all what’s behind you. And there is nothing more. Appreciate your pit. And fill it with love.

Simple Questions of Nature

Life and Nature consists of simple questions and simple answers. Its only their mosaic makes them look complex.

Copyright Is Greed

"...my objection to copyright of any kind..."

Leo Tolstoy, "Letter to the Free Age Press", 1900

Copyright protection is greed. Much can be said about the usefulness of copyright protection, but nevertheless it is greed. Greed can be basis for some aspects of society. Societies with a focus on greed are often more effective in achieving superiority over other societies, and as a consequence obtaining power over them. However getting the supremacy is also the aim of a society based on greed. So the usefulness of greed is measured by the effectiveness of achieving aims of the very same greed.

Law of Truth Conservation

Truth is conserved in consistent systems. Consistent systems are those which do not produce any contradictions by internal logical inference. It is obvious that any consistent axiomatic base produce a consistent theory in which true statements remain true regardless of new theorems and conclusions. Less obvious but still easy to see that true statements remain true even if the system is expanded by new axioms or other statements that are not derived within the current theory as far as the expanded system remains consistent.

Interesting implication of this line of thought is that a person retaining consistency of hir views is not able to learn new facts contradicting hir system of beliefs even if the facts seems to be true. To change view one has to accept many contradicting to the current beliefs facts in order to build a new consistent outlook and reject or reassess old known facts. For example, if a particular view is supported by ten known facts, another hundred new facts are not able to flip over the view because each of new facts is rejected due to contradicting to the current view hence breaking the consistency.

Therefore as long as one maintains hir set of beliefs in consistency, truth is never going to change.

How you know that others have consciousness

First let’s ask a question how do you know that another person understands a particular concept in the same way as you do? You ask about different aspects of the concept and see if the answers correlate with your own answers to the same questions. It is possible that up to a point the answers may correlate well, but the person still has misunderstanding of the concept. If you realize this possibility you ask more questions to eliminate such case. Theoretically it is possible that after any length of communication the person still misunderstand the concept. But this would be highly impossible for long enough conversation. One can say that the assurance of mutual understanding asymptotically approaches to the full confidence (but never reaches it) to any upfront desirable level. In this sense it is valid to say that it is possible that one can be “completely” sure that there is no misunderstanding between communicating parties.

Secondly, having consciousness assumes a specific type of behaviour of a person or animal. When you realize correspondence between your own conscious behaviour and your behaviour perceived by others, you can project this correspondence on other people. Here I do not distinguish behaviour of a person and hir answers to questions. Now just by seeing the behaviour of another person for long enough time you may come to a conclusion that the other person has consciousness similarly as you do.

Finally, since the correlation between the reaction of a real person and the reaction of an imaginary conscious person making conscious decisions takes us to any degree of confidence that the real person has consciousness, it is impossible to create a zombie like mind mimicking conscious behaviour while lacking consciousness. In other words Searly’s weak AI is impossible and cannot exist.

Same files in OS

How long we have to wait until OS developers finally implement shared storage of duplicate files? Just imagine your OS without app installations and system rotting.

CapsLock and Password

This is a pretty stupid problem to me. All people suffer from it and will be suffering for a long time. Why not to allow both passwords to match: normal and CapsLocked? The only downside in this case is that brute force cracking time is halved. On the other hand, how many (in percentage) create passwords with capital letters! With the exponential complexity growth the register switch does make difference at all. Programmers of secure systems, please, be kind to their users!

Mind Existence Paradox

The more you think about vastness of the Universe, the more you think that Life and Mind must exist somewhere else as well. But they do not. The more you think about Life and Mind, the more you think that Life and Mind cannot exist at all. But they really do.

Science and Philosophy

Every Science starts with Philosophy and ends with it. If philosophers talk about something new, it is a sign that a new science is to be born. If philosophers talk about a particular science, be sure it will be dead soon.

Statute of True Pirate

1. Do not steal
2. Assist against copyfucker attacks
3. Do not buy and do not sell
4. Do not lie except to copyfuckers
5. Do not facilitate copyrighting
6. Be free
7. Do not ask and do not blackmail
8. Do not renounce
9. Share everything except your identity

Below are some clarifications.

First, True Pirate (TP) divides people in four groups:

1. TPs – those who has deep belief in TP values and follow TP Statute
2. Blokes – those of layman’s ideology, but supporting pirating and disapproving copyrighting
3. Copyfuckers – copyrighting official representatives or anyone who facilitate copyrighting
4. Herd – all others.

TP hate fiercely copyrighting and copyfuckers. This hate is not in their rules, but in their nature.

Second, TP divides the world into three concepts:

1. Physical world – inanimate matter, that follows a conservation principle: if something somewhere reduces or disappears, then something somewhere increases or appears;
2. Soul world – living matter, everything which is part of life or can be called alive or having mind;
3. Information – bits that can be copied from one place to another without destroying the origin. This can be software, computer viruses, digitized works of art, or any other data written on medium.

TP believes that information is neither physical nor spiritual. And while spiritual beings can possess objects of physical world, they can only use information, but cannot forbid other beings to use that information as well. Hence no being can own information even if it is embedded in the medium which belongs to it. There are no copying restrictions on information in the Nature, except human society.

1. Do not steal. TP does not take private bits, something that is not intended to be released in public; if the owner has released bits to public they are not private anymore and can be freely copied.

2. Assist against copyfucker attacks. TP protects and defends as far as possible and to the best knowledge anyone against a copyfucker offence.

3. Do not buy and do not sell. TP does not buy or sell bits. However it is acceptable to buy and sell physical media or service of copying when the content of bits is irrelevant or does not have value.

4. Do not lie except to copyfuckers. Since TP does not recognise the supreme authority, his word should be law in relation to himself.

5. Do not facilitate copyrighting. TP watches his actions not to assist or participate in copyrighting even indirectly.

6. Be free. TP does not fulfil will of others. TP does not participate in creation of something which is intended to be sold.

7. Do not ask, and do not blackmail. TP copies whatever he wants never asking for permission. TP ignores any copyrighting notes even if they are anti-copyrighting. TP never asks for benefits threatening to reveal sensitive information to public. He reveals it immediately and unconditionally.

8. Do not renounce. TP has no fear to expose his beliefs.

9. Share everything except your identity. TP does not possess bits privately, unless they related to his own personal life.