Logic and emotion sandwich

Logic to achieve emotional goals

Or emotion to help or hinder logical goals

It's a logic and emotion multilayer sandwich

Universe bubble

Our observable universe a bubble in a soda. Lots of others. Life arises and falls in most. Maybe one can escape death and continue.

Think like a tornado

Think like a tornado

Sometimes painfully so, targeted ads reflect your own personality and categorization..

Sometimes painfully so, targeted ads reflect your own personality and categorization..

Religions are programs that run on people. The seeming nonsense of war is the struggle between two programs. The ancient Jewish faith was an extremely powerful program that (when considering other faiths derived from it also) took over much of the world.

(Perhaps part of it's power was in the idea of worshiping an invisible all powerful being rather than a physical person (like some other religions). Perhaps some other reason.)

Men created women and women created men

Billions of years of selection. Whatever men are, liars or mean or kind, those were the selected traits. Whatever women are, cute or bitchy or nice, those also were the selected traits. We all get what we ask for as a collective.

Where are your one year before you are born

Where are you one year before you are born? Splitting it into two parts: where are your atoms and where is the description of your computational system (brain architecture and such). Atoms: for the most part, you are plants and animals that your parents are going to eat, either in a field growing or in storage awaiting consumption. Some atoms will come straight out of your parents (mostly mother) so a small collection of your atoms and just still embedded in your mother and father. Computational system: this doesn't exist yet but it's going to be constructed based on genetics and environment. So mother and father are holding the innate architecture of your brain in DNA. They are also having experiences that will shape them, and their personality (along with the baby sitters, etc.) will shape your personality (your computational system). So in summary, you are plants, animals, stray atoms in your parents, and thoughts and experiences of all the people who will shape your environment.

One moment of consciousness

Universe gives you one moment of consciousness and you have as fun fun with it as possible

Suppose you wanted to predict completely accurately the consequences of actions rather than using simple laws

Suppose you wanted to predict completely accurately the consequences of actions rather than using simple laws. Like predict should this person be put in jail or not because he's suspected of committing a crime. Old justice systems didn't use rules at all, people just decided. Then we started encoding decisions into rules. The next level might be more complex models, like neural networks. The most accurate would be full prediction.

To avoid pain, like other people being hurt by the same potential criminal, the objective is to predict the future actions of the individual perfectly, day by day, second by second. For perfect prediction, a perfect simulation would be needed. However truly simulating people means recreating them. At this level of simulation accuracy the pain of the simulation would be just as real as the pain in reality. So the simulation would not be helpful in modeling outcomes and reducing pain.

Clam

A clam is a living sentient tongue. How would it feel to be a tongue.

Building political influence versus building wealth

Building political influence versus building wealth. Altering information in minds of many humans to agree that you have value - this is influence. Altering the state of computers to register what money or assets you own - this is wealth. Both are building (transferring) power by altering a network state.

Machines and humans at the same level of intelligence

It's funny how people seems to skip over the period where human intelligence will be about the same as machine. They tend to go higher or lower. We're probably going to be working together for a while once machines are as intelligent as we are. Then both of us will be evolving artificially, not sure what the result will be.

Robots

If you look at the world in hundreds of millions of years instead of hundreds... there are a lot of changes in the dominant organism, and that's progress. Sort of playing devil's advocate here - but every organism, even the robots should have a chance to go beyond. As in individual, I toy with the idea of finding some way to survive, sneaking past... but those who think humanity 2014 will survive forever probably just need to get real. That would be like bacteria cells dominating the planet forever. Probably better off making friends with robots.

That said, I'm quite opposed to using department of defense money or anything like that for research. If we learn to attack our own species first, that's just being silly.



> Full article...
> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stephen-hawking-transcendence-looks-at-the-implications-of-artificial-intelligence--but-are-we-taking-ai-seriously-enough-9313474.html
>

Point of life

Point of life is undefined, not nonexistent. It's an equation with many solutions.

Dollars

I think this is how it works with money: there's a slice of value that has been assigned to the pool of US dollars. If you assume (for the sake of discussion) value is indestructible, it always exists. However, it can shift from fiat currency to another. So, if US currency became unpopular, all of that value would likely shift to a different currency, or into some other investment or object.

So technically, a dollar has significant *value*, but there is nothing holding that value in place. It's like a sponge full of water and one day that water could easily just move to something else. Whereas a stock or a piece of gold is more like a share of the water itself.

The question of whether we should have gold backed dollars is one that I've though about and never totally came to a conclusion.

However, I think this may be the reason that non-backed currencies are more popular these days: You typically can't use the value when it's locked in currency. That is, you can't use a million gold bars for jewelry and electronics if they are just sitting in a vault and maintaining the value of a US dollar. So, your country becomes weaker than the country that just uses the gold.

By just telling people to assume that dollars are worth something and not backing them, you free up that supply of gold to be used in more useful ways.

There's a certain amount of value that a country should have for the purpose of trading but not using. (It's essentially the amount everybody has saved collectively.) It's OK to represent value with fiat because doing that means that you don't have to waist a bunch of intrinsically valuable stuff sitting in a vault. However, the downside is that the fiat currency can arbitrarily change price.

Perhaps the economy's level of demand for trade tends to define the value of its fiat currency.

Anyway, a conclusion from all of this is that "both are wrong." The the view that dollars have no value is wrong. The view that dollars have solid value is wrong. The truth (that everybody knows in the back of their mind) is that dollars have value, but because they are fiat currency, that value can shift anywhere for any number of reasons at a moment's notice. They are a completely unstable value-holder in theory. However, since their price fluctuation is slow, practically they are not a big risk.

What stock has intrinsic value even if it doesn't pay dividends

Ok, here's the distinction I was meaning to point out about stock when we were talking. I just thought of a better way to articulate it:

You can create shares of non-existent item X with a certain price, and you can just say that the shares are worth whatever you want. You can then buy and sell the shares. People can make money, loose money by investing, etc. However, the shares of item X don't really have intrinsic value. The investments in X have utility, but the shares have no real value.

If you have a business, and you sell shares, they (typically) do have intrinsic value. I don't mean that you can actually use 1/1000th of the business assets in everyday life. I just mean that the share has value. Even if the price of the share *never* fluctuates, it has a certain value.

True I practically wouldn't want to buy a stock that never fluctuated in price, however in some cases I would, like if I needed an alternative to buying currency that was inflating so fast that it was loosing value. People used to keep cows to maintain their wealth... because cows have value ... part of a company is like a cow, something with value.

So, I mean stock has intrinsic value. The exception is when the company is actually worth nothing at all, but the stock price is still high.

And, to give an example of something *without* intrinsic value: US dollars and bitcoins. However, they do have a price, like the item X above. You can't do anything directly useful with them* and they don't represent a share of anything useful. They actually are useful (for the purpose of trade) but they don't represent a share of anything useful.



*With bills, I suppose you could burn them for fuel or use them to clean your teeth, but that's about it.

Business

Rephrasing: a business is a potentially immortal organism. The shares are a fraction of ownership of the organism. So zero dividend business really means building and selling organisms themselves. It's analogous to slave trade (with no negative connotations).

Cool thing about the organism is that it can be whatever it needs to be, more intelligent than the owner, whatever.

(The business can become autonomous and not so much controlled by the owner. Roughly speaking, laws that require corporations to act in their own monetary interest are analogous to anti-slavery laws.)

Women are rational

People sometimes say women are not rational. But they are totally rational - once you consider that they are machines designed to identify the best caretaker of the children and provider of high quality DNA. The innate techniques they use to achieve this are all highly optimized. And, although they may not speak their reasons for their actions or even know them consciously, there often are reasons. Reasons that are deeply seated in their evolutionary history and burned into their mind.

Most practical are philosophical too

The most practical people operate most solidly within the bounds of survival and reproduction optimization, incrementally pushing the arrow of evolution forward, whether they know it or not.

Philosopher and Reproducer

A mad philosopher guy devotes his life to writing things and sharing things, and only that. A family guy devotes his life to ensuring that his kids are generated and protected. Both of these archetypes inject information into the collective, but in different ways. The philosopher is injecting information into human minds by altering brain structures through learning (book learning). The family guy has the ability to alter the DNA of more humans to match his own (also altering brain structure, but perhaps more fundamentally) and also influencing children at the youngest age, when their brains are most receptive to programming.

Kill instinct or dress up sexy

The same way that cats want to kill things whether they are hungry or not, women want to dress up sexy whether they are interested in sex or not.

Scholars and CEO's

Scholar have to sound smarter than everyone else. CEO's have to be smarter.

Entropy and life, response to message

I think I agree with him. He's using "scholar talk" to make stuff sound more complicated than it is.

About life:

There's one place I'd argue with him: life isn't just a matter of semantics. The most naive viewpoint is that life is totally different and special. The second most naive viewpoint is that it's semantics. But I think the least naive argument is that classification into the "life" category can be done pretty accurately (think about using machine learning to do it) with a bunch of features. You really can tell if something is alive or not, and a bunch of features should be used to do that. The answer is not binary, but it's still an answer.

About entropy:

The simple statement is that humans organize things (decrease entropy) but they use energy to do that (mostly from the sun). So they decrease entropy in places but by using up the sun's energy really entropy is increasing overall.

My point earlier was with a really simple system like two balls bouncing around in a box with no friction at all.... the entropy trend is not as clear (I think). Sometimes they will move together, sometimes not, sometimes close, something far, sometimes synchronized, sometimes not, etc.

But as the number of balls increases, the probability of "organized things" happening by chanced (like ones I mentioned above) decreases.

And, if you have billions of balls...(like atoms), random organization (decrease in entropy) is just so improbable that you can make physical laws saying that the trend goes toward entropy. The likelihood of someone proving the law wrong is so low that it will pretty much never happen.






my friend wrote:

> Actually, the surrounding parts to that passage above are also great,
> and that passage by itself is probably no good. He analogizes the
> mechanical automata (machines) to human automata and speaks more
> generally about how life, or humans, play a role in decreasing entropy.
> Here's the larger passage attached.
>
>
>     I was just reading a book called The Human Use of Human Beings by
>     Norbert Wiener and I stumbled on this passage and I remembered us
>     talking about whether life, humans, and society could be seen as
>     reversing entropy. Here, Wiener describes it exactly as so, calling
>     it "anti-entropic", but also stating that it may be only locally
>     that it is anti-entropic and globally the second law of
>     thermodynamics is not violated.
>
>     "Here I want to interject the semantic point that such
>     words as life, purpose, and soul are grossly inadequate
>     to precse scientific thinking. These terms have gained
>     their significance through our recognition of the unity
>     of a certain group of phenomena, and do not in fact
>     furnish us with any adequate basis to characterize this
>     unity. Whenever we find a new phenomenon which
>     partakes to some degree of the nature of those which
>     we have already termed "living phenomena," but does
>     not conform to all the associated aspects which define
>     the term "life," we are faced with the problem whether
>     to enlarge the word "life" so as to include them, or
>     to deline it 'in a more restrictive way so as to exclude
>     them. We have encountered this problem in the past
>     in considering viruses, which show some of the tend
>     encies of life-to persist, to multiply, and to organize-
>     but do not express these tendencies in a fully-devel
>     oped form. Now that certain analogies of behavior are
>     being observed between the machine and the living
>     organism, the problem as to whether the machine is
>     alive or not is, for our purposes, semantic and we are
>     at liberty to answer it one way or the other as best suits
>     our convenience. As Humpty Dumpty says about some
>     of his more remarkable words, "1 pay them extra, and
>     make them do what 1 want." If we wish to use the word "life" to
>     cover all phe
>     nomena which locally swim upstream against the
>     current of increasing entropy, we are at liberty to do
>     so. However, we shall then include many astronomical
>     phenomena which have only the shadiest resemblance
>     to life as we ordinarily know it. It is in my opinion,
>     therefore, best to avoid all question-begging epithets
>     such as "life," "soul," "vitalism," and the like, and say
>     merely in connection with machines that there is no
>     reason why they may not resemble human beings in
>     representing pockets of decreasing entropy in a frame
>     work in which the large entropy tends to increase.
>     When 1 compare the living organism with such a
>     machine, I do not for a moment mean that the specific
>     physical, chemical, and spiritual processes of life as we
>     ordinarily know it are the same as those of life-imitat
>     ing machines. I mean simply that they both can exem
>     plify locally anti-entropic processes, which perhaps
>     may also be exemplified in many other ways which we
>     should naturally term neither biological nor mechani
>     cal.
>     While it is impossible to make any universal state
>     ments concerning life-imitating automata in a field
>     which is growing as rapidly as that of automatization,
>     there are some general features of these machines as
>     they actually exist that 1 should like to emphasize. One
>     is that they are machines to perform some definite task
>     or tasks, and therefore must possess effector organs
>     ( analogous to arms and legs in human beings) with
>     which such tasks can be performed. The second point
>     is that they must be en rapport with the outer world
>     by sense organs, such as photoelectric cells and ther
>     mometers, which not only tell them what the existing
>     circumstances are, but enable them to record the per
>     formance or nonperformance of their own tasks. This
>     last function, as we have seen, is called feedback, the
>     property of being able to adjust future conduct by past
>     performance. Feedback may be as simple as that of the
>     common reflex, or it may be a higher order feedback,
>     in which past experience is used not only to regulate
>     specific movements, but also whole policies of be
>     havior. Such a policy-feedback may, and often does,
>     appear to be what we know under one aspect as a
>     conditioned reflex, and under another as learning. "
>
>

New user notes on using Celery with python

I'm a totally new user using Celery in python. Here are my notes:

My celery_test.py file:
 

from celery import Celery
import time
app = Celery('tasks', broker='amqp://guest@localhost//')
@app.task
def add(x, y):
    time.sleep(5)
    return x + y

celery -A celery_test worker --loglevel=info

A command like this at the terminal reads the stuff in celery_test.py where you have @app.task decorators on functions. The server will then run the function when you do this from any python intepreter:

>>> from celery_test import *
>>> add.delay(100, 200)

By the way:After modifying the add function, I had to update Celery by killing this process and running it again:
celery -A celery_test worker --loglevel=info

Evolutionary underpinning of spirituality

Although we've discussed before, I feel like now there's stronger clarity about why humans are spiritual... because it's valuable to encode arbitrary beliefs... but very difficult if there is no spiritual component to the mind. "Religiosity" is a parameter nature sets genetically (that's been studied). I figure if it's too high the individual can loose track of reality (reducing fitness), too low and the individual has trouble carrying belief systems (closer to my end of the spectrum) (also reducing fitness).

Good businesses are formed at a particular point

Good businesses are formed at a particular point when they are incrementally solving problem. Not so far advanced that it doesn't fit the current system. Not so old that it's no longer relevant.

World changing ideas are not from individuals

A human is a function of inputs and outputs. Inputs are the state of humanity. Outputs feed into the state of humanity. At a certain point, influential ideas can be developed. At a certain point, influential ideas can take effect.


Formulating an idea:
When an idea is ripe, it's common for multiple people to discover it at similar times. No one individual is responsible.

An idea taking effect:
World changing ideas are selected from individuals by the present population. Individuals write the stuff down, but they don't choose that is accepted. For example whoever wrote the bible put some words on paper. Writing down initial thoughts is an important step, however, the steps that follow, the choices that people make after that, whether to read it or not are what decide if it is world changing. It's likely that if one individual were removed, some other similar option would often be adopted in its place. Like if you took all of the McDonalds out of a city, the Burger Kings would probably fill a similar role.

Decentralized Peace

Not a centralized power, but rather a decentralized belief that human life is valuable. This belief could bring world peace.

Dollar bills

Dollar bills have whatever value people believe they have. The same is true for human life. If people begin to value human life highly, universally, war will cease.

War is programmed into humans

Conflict with the middle east is a conflict between two ways of living. Humans in tribal society were programs in such a way that they will converge on a final solution, the most successful survival strategy. They war until only one remains. Religion is a formalized manifestation of this system, thought it often exists without religious consideration (for example, communist vs. capitalist.)

War is not between nations

War is not between physical objects that are humans. It's between ideas. Complete defeat occurs if all are killed or if all are converted. This is possible because humans are vastly programmable. They can be converted to take on behaviors making them so different that they act as two different species would.

World peace when we are cells

single celled organisms merged into single organisms, giving up some degree of individual freedom. But by doing this, they found a way to survive with higher probability on average. A world without war would be achieved if people began to operate more like cells of a single organism. They would be rogue cells that form "cancerous growths" at times, but we could have "immune systems" in place to stop individuals from causing too much damage.

Concept of using a lot of JOIN's in a SQL database query

Usually too much or too little detail. Each JOIN acts like a transition. For example, take a look at the figure and the example below.

SELECT bt.columnA, gt.columnB, bt.columnC FROM black_table
JOIN red_table AS rt ON black_table.columnB=red_table.columnB
JOIN blue_table AS bt ON black_table.columnC=blue_table.columnC
JOIN green_table AS gt ON red_table.columnB=green_table.columnC


I'm quickly writing this out just to share.

Prohibition was a rediculous idea

Prohibition was a rediculous idea.

Men can't have a conversation without alcohol. Women can't have sex without alcohol.

Making relationship with girl that has mostly broken up with old boyfriend but hasn't quite

A pretty common circumstance that I've observed multiple times now is that a girl who you meet as a new possible relationship is exiting out of an old one. This makes sense because an attractive girl will be in a relationship most of the time and only exit during "refractory" periods between different mates. You will probably meet her and start dating during this refractory period or right after it. (The early part of the refractory period is what people call "on the rebound.")

She still has a connection to the old boyfriend, and it's mixture of old love and often dislike also (whatever made her not want to be in a relationship with him).

Here's advise for cementing a relationship with a girl in this period which may last a few months or so. Keep in mind that she will often act as if the period is a permanent state even though it is not. (While she's upset with the breakup, she'll make statements like she's rather be a lesbian, etc.)

(1) Expect that she will be somewhat mad at men in general at first. Some of that anger can get displaced to you. But, for the most part, if she's a decent person, she's still going to be nice most of the time. (Women have unpredictable waves of emotion in general.)

(2) In all cases dealing with women, you should be a "rock." You should be firm in your position that you want a relationship with her. (By the way, you don't need to be firm with her about your position on technical matters like computer stuff. In these cases conversation should be mostly for fun. The only time a women is interested in seeing you "win" a technical discussion is if it's with another man.) She will test you in various ways to check loyalty and just how easily you might change your mind. For example she might say she has a new boyfriend just to see your reaction... you choose how to respond.

(3) Key point: Being as social as possible is good, but be careful. You never know how a relationship will go long term, and the beauty of being social is that you will maintain a connection to many people, so you can select who you want. However, when in social situations, women don't want to see their new interest (you) actually persuing a relationship with other woman. So as you are being social, be careful to give her the most attention and keep interactions with other women strictly playful, not overtly sexual. Also, choose the events you go to wisely, there is no need to ever go to something like "speed dating" when you can go to other events like parties or whatever without giving off the vibe that you are actually looking for someone else. Finally, let her know what events you go to. Even if she doesn't go with you, she wants to know about what you are doing, and make sure the events you go to are reasonable (not something with dating in the title) because you don't want to give the impression that you are looking for someone better than her.

Spending time trying to prove to others that you are smart is a waste of time.

Spending time trying to prove to others that you are smart (modern education) is a waste of time. Better to just make as much money as possible (business).

Why do stocks without dividends have value?

Why do stocks without dividends have value?

The question here is this: If you don't get any cut of the profits, what is the point of buying the stock. Is it just the hope that someone else will want it more?

The answer is based on the fact that the business has value beyond what it pays out in profit. For example restaurant business invests $100,000 to buy the actual building. Owning the restaurant means owning $100,000 even if the restaurant makes no profit at all. When the restaurant makes money, the board of directors may choose to either pay it out as dividend or reinvest (perhaps buying another building). If they reinvest, that tends to add values to the stock. If they pay out dividends, that will go out as cash to the investors rather than to increasing the value of the stock.

Of course the value of the stock can change for other reasons also, like if the restaurant's building happens to be in a city whose population jumps up and becomes more valuable.

In summary even if that little piece of the business doesn't pay any profits, it's still worth something because it represents a fraction of all the stuff that the business owns.



Related Article:
http://beginnersinvest.about.com/od/dividendsdrips1/a/why-stocks-without-dividends-can-still-be-a-good-investment.htm

Women's stated preferences and revealed preferences

Women have radically different stated preferences and revealed preferences. Admittedly the audience they are talking to may have a large effect on how close or far apart these are. In any case, stated reasons why they go out is to have fun. The revealed preference though is that they are looking for mating opportunities.


For reference, in a totally difference context, the concept of stated preferences and revealed preferences is discussed here:
#517: The Fastest Growing, Least Popular Airline In America

Messed up kids

People jump to the conclusion that a kid that doesn't interact normally (such as from autistic spectrum effects) need to take drugs. They don't. They need drugs to get through class because class is boring to them. The defect is the school system. Many of the kids are not messed up in a way that needs correction... they are just outliers that require a different learning environment, and in the appropriate environment many would likely perform very well. Forcing them into normality with drugs is something people will look back on historically as a mistake analogous to trying to cure a man of homosexuality with drugs, ridiculous.

Economic incentive for global peace

Pay anybody a bit of money (I recommend bitcoins) if they agree to follow a global system of law. Use the global system of law to create peace. Start it out with stuff everybody can agree on (some things are currently universally illegal), and then finally eliminate war (make it illegal).

Welfare and war

Strong welfare systems imply that war is the only selector. Without welfare, cash could become a selector.

Religion like currency

People converting to christianity (during roman empire) is like people exiting one currency (like zimbabway dollar) and moving into one.

Not just bitcoins

Not just bitcoins, all value of all people, places, and things is perceived. (US government only exists as it is perceived.)

Is medical technology helping humanity?

Is medical technology helping humanity? The reward is that it is extending the life of an individual. The cost is potentially contaminating the gene pool with people who can't survive on their own. If you look to the animal world, in some cases, the weak are left behind. But, with some animals, the weak are rescued (dogs take care of the old and people take care of the sick). Death the is the clearing that opens the way for new members of the population. In a sense, a death is opening for a different life as a life is block on another existing. Death may not be a negative at all. Any animal will fight to survive under adverse circumstances. Humans take it a step further and build a symbol, personal existence, to represent their existence. They keep track of their own personal existence and learn to protect it both with instinct and learned behavior. The love the symbol so much that they would almost go insane to loose it, so they created belief systems to free them of the obsession. Believe that existence is eternal, forget about it, and get on with life, back to contribution to the global arrow of evolution, which needs no single individual to progress. The love of the physical life's continuation is a vestigial organ that never disappeared, just got covered over with spirituality.

One legged bird

A one legged bird motivates itself to fight on and live. This instinct is likewise in every human. The will to survive and the conceptualization of personal existence.

Help the blob (the total of the human collective)

While it may be considered more nobel to help the blob (the total of the human collective) to progress forward in spite of self benefit, it may be better to just help the self. We have no evidence that the blob will be in "good guy" in the global and galactic conflicts of the future.