alvisbrigis

Total Human Knowledge Increasing Exponentially?

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 22:52:06 GMT

IS TOTAL HUMAN KNOWLEDGE INCREASING EXPONENTIALLY?

I found very poignant this reply to my Convergent Exponential Curves post:

“Information includes words, phrases and new ways of describing things. To truly state that information is exponentially increasing would be to say that we are finding new facts about the universe at an exponential rate. … Is information knowledge?”

It would not surprise me to learn that we are in fact discovering new facts about the universe at an exponential rate. It is fundamentally in our interests to do so and seems to be happening automatically. If we are getting smarter and generating more and better tools then it follows that we can unlock the secrets of life and the cosmos at an accelerating rate. This seems to be happening bottom-up, in a broadly distributed manner as scientists, scholars, business folks, inventors etc. all strive to do more with less. As they reduce the amount of Matter Energy Space and Time required for a process (see Buckminster Fuller and John Smart), and essentially MEST Compress, this allows them to behave in a more complex manner, perform more operations per MEST unit, combine technologies and forms in new ways, etc. MEST Compression lets us create new tools for quantifying the universe, allows us to continue MEST Compression, and allows us to extrapolate physical laws and information by enabling complex new behavior. It seems that the compulsive human instinct to MEST Compress is a primary driver of broader accelerating change. (Check out John Smart’s Laws of Complex Systems for more on this http://www.accelerationwatch.com/laws.html.)

Is information knowledge? I think not completely. I believe that knowledge requires context and a consciousness component. Information is knowledge if it is useful to a human, organism or agent that can then apply it. Interestingly, if Comm, Tech, and IQ are also on exponential curves, then it follows that our collective human Knowledge too is evolving at an exponential rate.

As we MEANINGFULLY QUANTIFY our system at an accelerating rate, it would make sense that Knowledge is also accelerating.

(I'm also going to post this on Myspace.)

Convergent Exponentials Hypothesis

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 03:18:10 GMT

CONVERGENT EXPONENTIAL CURVES GOVERN OUR BEHAVIOR??

To better understand our collective human future it is important to identify and quantify the systems that are changing the fastest and fueling the greatest amount of change.

Four quantifiable human-related systems that are changing very rapidly are Communication (C), Human Intelligence (H), Information (I), and Technology (T). It appears that these are all increasing at exponential (or at double-exponential rates).

While it is widely accepted that technology is growing at an exponential rate, it is not so commonly believed that Communication, Human Intelligence, and Information are also changing at an exponential rate. But, for good or for ill (or somewhere in-between), contrary to popular awareness, it appears these domains are in fact changing at exponential, or faster, rates.

First off, technology:

Technology (Widely accepted): It is widely accepted that technology is increasing at an exponential rate. Scientist, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil compellingly argues that new scientific paradigms are being uncovered at a double-exponential rate (actually faster than straight-up exponential growth). Many business CEOs, scientists and scholars subscribe to this belief.

And now the other three:

Communication (Obscure, yet readily observable): The exponential rate of communication increase, particularly human-centric communication increase (and probably the general planetary rate of communication), can be glimpsed via the cascading S-curves indicating the adoption rate of Interactive Communication Technologies (ICTs). ICTs, defined as technologies that allow for dynamic human communication, include books, the telegraph, radio, television, and the world wide web. (Other ICTs may include cave paintings, chants, whistling, songs, money, and language itself.) Over time each of these ICTs is adopted by the vast majority of the worldwide human population. And each time a new ICT is born it diffuses faster than any previous ICT. In Diffusion of Innovations (most recent edition), Everett Rogers graphically plots information collected by Vijay Gurbaxani and creates a nice image of overlapping, or cascading, ICT diffusion curves. At a glance, this image indicates that we are generating and adopting faster modes of communication at an accelerating rate. To me, this chart screams “exponential increase in communication.”

Human Intelligence (Most contentious): The Flynn Effect shows that since 1900 the average human IQ has been rising steadily. Flynn himself has supposed that this may be at an exponential rate. The data corroborates. Go check it out. It will blow your mind… and make you smarter! ;)

Information (Slam dunk, quantitatively proven): Berkeley scholars Peter Lyman and Hal R. Varian have conclusively shown that the total amount of information on the planet is increasing at an exponential rate. See: http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/printable_report.pdf

While it may be premature to conclusively state that C,H,I & T are each evolving at an exponential rate, the existing data certainly seems to support the hypothesis. Personally, it makes a great deal of sense, considering the overlap of each of those areas. If one or two are evolving at lightning speed, then it logically follows that the others should be as well.

The ultimate conjecture here is that these domains are evolving autocatalytically, convergently, endogenously, or recursively (whichever term you may prefer) at exponential (or faster) rates.

Fortunately, each of these domains is quantifiable and allow for quantitative analysis.

The implications of a convergent exponential increase of Communication, Human Intelligence, Information and Technology are rather serious, indeed. If true, this new framework for understanding human-related dynamics can change the way we view the world in which we live.

Convergence of the Curves

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 16:31:06 GMT

Not only is technology evolving at an exponential rate, so is Information, Communication and Human Intelligence. This is happening autocatalytically.

* Exponential Technology Curve (Ray Kurzweil -- Doubling rate in paradigm shift. )
* Exponential IQ Increase tied to the Exponential Tech Curve (Flynn Effect -- Flynn exponential hypothesis)
* Exponential Information Curve tied to the Tech and IQ Curves (Exponential information: Lyman, Peter and Hal R. Varian ) http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/printable_report.pdf (Article: Knolwedge experiences exponential growth http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/storage/0,39020366,39117457,00.htm)
* Exponential Communication Curve tied to the T,H & I Curves (Cascading ICT curves -- Rogers, Diffusion of Innovation)
* CHIT Curves forcing a change in Environment (not exponential -- this is the ultimate trumper, when this goes exponential, we turn into a black hole): Global Warming, Species Death, Ecosystem Changes, Change in Energy Distribution, Rise of Robots (probably best measured in density and thermodynamics -- CHIT exerts a change over the physical system)

When enough is enough:

Wed, 29 Mar 2006 17:31:55 GMT

Then enough is enough.

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 09:50:32 GMT

"God has cursed us," he says, looking toward the sky. "Why else are we allowed to suffer for so long? What have we done wrong?"

This was spoken by a Kenyan suffering in a drought this very month.

A Thought About Complexity, Who Knows Where it Will Lead

Wed, 22 Feb 2006 09:05:09 GMT

Complexity requires context and can only exist in a physical environment that is split, not uniform.

Generational Blur

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 22:55:37 GMT

What is a human generation? Here’s a good definition I found via wikipedia:

William Strauss and Neil Howe, in their book Generations, list the generations of Anglo-America. Their definition of "generation" is given as: A cohort-group, which are all persons born in a limited span of consecutive years, whose length approximates the span of a phase of life given to be approximately 22 years, and whose boundaries are fixed by peer personality. Peer personality generational persona recognized and determined by common age, location, common beliefs and behavior, and perceived membership in a common generation.

What is a technological generation? Here’s the wikipedia definition:

A generation can also be a stage or degree in a succession of natural descent as a grandfather, a father, and the father's son comprise three generations or stages of successive improvement in the development of a technology, such as computers, automobiles, or microprocessors

What is Human Generational Blur? Here’s my stab at a theory:

Fact: As new technologies are developed and diffused at an exponentially faster rate (see Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns), the rate of human reproduction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population), while fast, is still nowhere near exponential. Now, for the first time in planetary history the doubling rate of technology has become shorter than the length of one human generation, which has remained stable for a while at around 22 years long. Generally speaking, Generation X, those born from the 1960’s to the 1980’s, marks the beginning of this transition period.

Theory: Many of the forces, structures, and environments that conspire to shape a distinct human generation, as defined by Strauss and Howe, are undergoing such rapid change that the traditional pattern of generational clusters spanning 22 years has been broken. The result, which we are now starting to witness and understand, is the break-down of the existence of traditional generations into micro-generations, or “fractured” traditional generations, and the subsequent blurring of these little generational pockets as they interact with diverse information on the web (Web 2.0, Google Earth), interact with diverse other cultures via the web (chat rooms, Second Life), and communicate more effectively with over distances via Virtual Environmets (Second Life, The Sims, Everquest). The generational blur effect occurs because large traditional generations can no longer sustain themselves and are digested by the technological environment.

Importance of Critical Periods: Because critical periods for the development of human personality remain fixed at short intervals that sometimes span less than one year, young humans born just a few years or months apart can grow up very different from one another because they experience a radically different environment during these critical learning periods. That’s why kids who grow up with TVs, VCRs, computers, and Nintendo exhibit different behavior than their parents who were raised “walking 5 miles through snow to get to school”, which my dad actually did in Latvia.

Communication and Network Effects: Because the rate of human communication and connectivity is increasing at an exponential rate directly related to the exponential technology curve, the information environment that humans exist in (which is essential to the formation of generations) is much more fluid, accessible and dynamic. This is not only forming distinct micro-generations, but also broadly blurring generations by morphing common beliefs and common behavior while allowing individuals of different ages and demographics to socialize and form unprecedented bonds.

Note: I believe Generational Blur to be inevitable, considering the skyrocketing rate of technology growth. When looked at as part of broader evolutionary process, I am inclined to think that we’re undergoing a shift to both more specialized generations and also more massive generational pockets. It feels like a period of rapid inevitable reorganization of human neural resources. … Generational Blur is an adaptation of my earlier theory of Generational Compression, which was very confusing. I think this new version will make more sense to more people.

Eucation and the Curve, U.S. Stagnating

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 01:44:31 GMT

The American public K-12 education system, while net positive, is performing well below its potential. Only two thirds of teenagers graduate form high school. Our kids are broadly falling behind in math and the sciences. Violence and hopelessness are common among our high school students. Etc. I think that most members of Generation X and subsequent generations (at least the ones that I know) would agree that the American public school system needs to be overhauled. At a basic level, I think this attitude can be attributed to the fact that the broader technological environment (including soft technologies like language, culture, information processing) has instilled in these kids an expectation of what should be possible which comes into conflict with their perception of the way things actually are being managed. Exacerbating this effect, is the exponential technology growth curve governing socio-economic development worldwide. Because we have just entered the “knee” of this curve, for the first time in world history, young humans are interacting with highly complex information during their formative psychological years that leads them to fundamentally believe that very rapid change is coming. Generations schooled prior to the curve, however, do not broadly possess this fundamental belief. (This has been called the Linear Time Bias.) Due to the nature of the technology curve, which is guaranteed to maintain it’s shape through to 2015-2020, at the least, we can very reasonably expect the chasm between “what’s possible” and “what is” to continue expanding DRAMATICALLY over the next 10-15 years.

That being said, here’s a list of US public education problems paired with hypothetical solutions that kids in general can understand. These problems are frustrating to youth because 1) they are very easily understood, and 2) because they have not been acted upon. This is no fault of the teachers or administration, but a broader systemic national problem.

Critical Learning Periods Ignored: Language is the best example. It’s been known for some 30 years that kids can pick up languages very quickly between the ages of 3-6 and that it becomes more difficult to learn languages as one ages. Yet most public schools have completely ignored this info and teach languages starting in high school, sometime middle school. This is insane. The amount of energy wasted nationally must be staggering. This same principle goes for other domains like playing an instrument and learning social behavior. Solution: Take a look at the body of work on critical learning periods and adjust the curriculum to the appropriate age groups.

Competitive Economic Behavior Not Taught: Due to the LCD effects of lawsuits all over the nation, the nation’s schools have become very sensitive to feelings. Looked at through the lens of development this is both a good thing, and a bad thing. It’s good for obvious moral reasons. It’s bad because it prevents kids from learning core economic behaviors during their critical learning periods. Our public education system fails to teach group-work principles, collaboration across different ages, public speaking, public presenting, competitive behavior (except through sports), how to deal with unfairness, etc. Solution: Teach these behaviors at much younger ages. A kid who must speak publicly once per quarter and work in small teams beginning at the age of 5 will grow-up with a higher business IQ.

Long-term Planning Not Encouraged: Most kids in American public schools get a new advisor every year, and generally don’t get to spend much time with an advisor. Therefore they aren’t held accountable by the system over long periods of time and don’t learn to regulate their long-term behavior. Many of the behavioral consequences imposed are very short-term and don’t make sense from a behavioral perspective. Solution: Develop new software that will keep track of a child’s development and train advisors to use this so that multiple parties can work together on all kids’ long-term behavior.

Lack of Behavioral Cause and Effect: 99.99% of the schoolwork done by US kids is thrown into the garbage. In other words, accomplishing a task results in a letter grade, but no further effect on the environment is witnessed unless an article is published or a photograph wins a contest and is displayed in a glass case. That seems like a colossal waste of energy to me and indicates a missed opportunity to educate kids about the economy and persistence. Solution: Encourage kids to get external feedback for their ideas. Encourage kids to market their ideas and creations. Provide kids examples of their work generating value. Get them hooked on economics at a young age and the nation will benefit!

No Clear Broad Goal: Humans are fundamentally game players and intuitively seek to satisfy goals or behavioral targets. As humans age, they develop a complex understanding of the cause and effect relationship between energy put into and value derived from a game process. Unfortunately, the public school system fails to provide a compelling overarching fun and understandable goal. Back during the Cold War when the space race was heating up Americans had a broader sense of purpose and could see the connection between public school curriculum and the broader goals of the nation. No such clear overarching goal exists today. Solution: Create a database of innovation contests open to all American kids that will actually have an visible impact on the US economy. There needs to be a clear link between cause and effect in kids’ brains.

The Tech Curve Ignored: Systems Theory is not taught during K-12. There’s a whole new science of Evolution and Development (Evo-Devo) that much more accurately describes the world we live in than either Intelligent Design or Darwinism (it’s evolved from Darwinism), but it has yet to diffuse. Both Systems Theory and Evo/Devo Biology are essential to attaining a clearer view of the world that we live in. To a person who has come into contact with both fields, the notion of an Exponential Technology Curve isn’t a foreign and frightening concept, it’s simply another rule that we live by. Understanding exponential technology growth is required in a more complex and competitive economic environment, yet it ain’t happening. In fact, most college grads probably aren’t aware of the Exponential Technology Curve and its broad social, economic, physical, and philosophical implications. Solution: Teach kids systems theory and evolutionary/developmental biology at younger ages by using 3-D and 4-D simulations. These can be set up at minimal cost using new, relatively cheap virtual environments that allow scripting (i.e. Second Life & Multiverse).

Conclusion: These problems are not superficial, but have deep structural roots. The U.S. public education system has evolved into a slow-moving bureaucratic behemoth thanks to national politics, state politics, teaching unions, the conservative American masses born prior to the Gen X cut-off, media stagnation, and the lack of an great external motivator. I don’t see it adapting quickly to the change projected to come thanks to the Exponential technology Curve. Therefore, it my guess that we can expect a migration of young brains to private educational institutions that will better demonstrate the value of their curriculum to both the kids and their parents. I expect this issue to balloon until it becomes a huge issue for the 2008 Presidential Election.

4-D Idea Markets: The Next Processing Revolution

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 02:04:16 GMT

Thesis: As virtual worlds proliferate and evolve, 4-D Idea Markets will emerge as powerful new social structures because of the ginormous value that can be saved and generated by coordinating human processing activity (a.k.a. brains & thought) according to a timeline.

What is an Idea Market? Idea markets have been around for some time now. Technically, the very first idea market was launched whenever organisms first developed the ability to act on stored behavior scripts and competed for life (probably anaerobic bacteria, unless behavioral scripts can be stored at some other physical level). But nowadays the common definition of an Idea Market is far more human-centric, and goes something like this: a system in which many humans individually ascribe value to certain ideas in order to better estimate the value of those ideas, generally for some socio-economic purpose.

Examples of Idea Markets: Voting is one of the oldest and simplest forms of an Idea Market, a process that allows a large group of people to collectively make a binary decision. Ben Franklin was known to brainstorm with a council of advisors, called a Hunta (sp.?), and attributed much creativity to this process. The government, especially the Pentagon and other intelligence agencies, has been known to rely on internal Idea Markets to help identify terrorist targets, identify other threats, and to compute what to do with resources. The Stock Market is an Idea Market that allows human to very accuratley estimate the value of corporations. The Wikipedia, a highly accurate encyclopedia compiled by the poeple of the world, is an open access Idea Market. The Hollywood Stock Exchange lets hundreds of thousands of users buy and sell "movie stocks" to have fun, then uses their predictions to compute highly accurate box office predictions. The Google search engine is in part a highly complex behavior and Idea Market that allows people to find the information that others have searched for. * For more information, a great Harvard business School article by Ajit Kambil and about the demonstrated power of Idea Markets, with some good examples of internal corporate idea markets, can be found at http://hbswk.hbs.edu/pubitem.jhtml?id=3808&t=innovation.

So, what's a 4-D Idea Market?  A 4-D idea market is any idea market in which the data being scored/valued is plotted on a timeline.  In other words, it is an idea market with a formal timeline component that allows extrapolation into the future (prediction) or the past (revision). The Hollywood Stock Exchange is an example of a Predictive Idea Market, but it can only forecast near-term events. Stock market Puts and Calls allow people to place bets on the future performance of a given stock. Even a family discussing budgeting over a given period of time can be considered a 4-D idea market because they compare individual extrapolations to arrive at a consensus best guess on the best course of behavior.  So long as it involves brains and predictive activity, it's probably a 4-D Idea Market.

The Impact of VW's on 4-D Idea Markets: Since biology started churning out 4-D Idea Markets, they’ve been limited by the laws of physics and the types of physical structures that make up our environment. However, the system we live in constantly reorganizes itself via autocatalytic evolution and development and spits out new structures (organisms, technology or combinations thereof) that allow for increased speed of communication of ideas/information. (This happens at various systems levels and contributes to John Smart's computational MEST compression.)  In human history, the primary drivers/substrates of/for increased communication are Interactive Communication Technologies (ICTs). ICT's have included gesturing, words/memes, language, the volume amplification cone, drawing, writing, books/moveable type, the telegraph, the telephone, movies, broadcast TV, the internet, and dynamic websites. Presently, we are witnessing the birth of the latest ICT: Virtual Worlds.

Typically, Virtual Worlds are massive virtual environments that look just like video games, but that allow users far more control over the enviornment and with the ability to communicate. Some popular virtual worlds include Second Life (the break-out leader right now), Multiverse (created by the founders of Netscape, up and coming fast), and The Sims 2 (still more a game, but getting really close).  Fundamentally, virtual worlds allow for a market of creation, behavior and communication to develop in a 3-D interactive setting. Already, the efficiency benefits of virtual worlds are becoming very evident as humans all over the globe are pumping a great deal of capital into them, while also using them as a platform to earn up to $150,000 per year.

An interesting recent development is that Virtual worlds are being used as 3-D wikis, a type of collaborative software, and it's become obvious that Google Earth has the potential to become the biggest 3-D wiki of them all. A good friend and former Hollywood roommate, Jerry Paffendorf, discusses the benefits of a merger between wikipedia and Google Earth and advances the concept of the 3-D wiki in this blog post. (Paffendorf also helps run Democracy Island, an innovative educational venture launched in Second Life that is begining to explore the potential of 3-D wikis.)

Being that Virtual Worlds are now exploding onto the worldwide scene (Second Life growth forecast, book by Castronova on business and VWs), I think it's high-time to start thinking about the dynamic 4-D Idea Markets that can be created inside Virtual Worlds because 1) dropping computing costs, and 2) increasing wi-fi connectivity are about to allow for some robust and crazy sh*t.

What's the benefit of 4-D vs. 3-D? 4-D idea markets help predict the future and revise the past. They can be used to forecast events and clarify what already occured. They already exist. Hollywood Stock Exchange is a good example of a 4-D idea market. But they are nowhere near their potential. Just imagine the value that could be generated if hundreds of thousands, or millions of users decided to collaboratively predict something other than box office revenues. For instance, what if the government, a corporation or non-profit foundation set up an online futures market for natural disasters, disease epidemics, innovations, or some other high-value human domain. Wouldn't that information be very useful in building a better world?

Possible New 4-D Idea Market Structures: Over the next few years we can expect to witness the explosive development of 4-D Idea Markets because of the broad system efficiencies they represent (lower redundancy of thought processes / human computing, increased foresight, increased awareness of the nature of the system). As we increase the communication quality of the web via increased processing, better software and more human participants, it is inevitable that these structures (just like families, bands, tribes, cities, corporations, armies, etc.) will emerge and play a significant role in human decision making at all levels.

Some 4-D Idea Markets likely to pop-up in the near term Include:

Open-Source Tunnel of Time: Imagine a website similar to the Hollywood Stock Exchange where people go to cast predictions and see how accurate they are.   (A number of sites already attempt to do this, most notably The Long Bets Foundation, but none are anywhere close to establishing the value and consistent contribution/revision behavior of Wikipedia.) What's different about this portal is that everyone must choose from a bank of predictions (like movie stocks on HSX, or stocks in the RL market) and then place them on a timeline. This way, the values can be cross-referenced easily across the board. This will allow for a variety of valuable data: individual prediction scores, individual prediction scores by domain, individual prediction scores by time-frame, individual prediction scores by domain and by time-frame, group prediction scores by category/time-frame/demographic, etc.  Best of all, both the individual and aggregate time lines can be plotted first in 3-D (the files can be placed in any desired array in a 3-D virtual setting, in a cluster) and then in the 4-D (the 3-D file clusters can then be arranged sequentially, so that one can view them in order by flying through or scrolling). Basically this allows the creation of an ultimate reference tool, a literal tunnel of ideas fixed to a timeline. One could literally walk forward or backward in time and view eith what occured or what most people think is going to occur, or what some specific people think is going to occur. I believe that such public 4-D Idea Markets will represent the best structure for harness the largest number of brains the most efficiently. (I believe that the Earth is already one of these markets, but that's going a bit too deep too early -- a discussion to be enjoyed in the future.) This may seem vague, but just try to visualize the tunnel and I'm sure you'll see bazillions of uses for this new technology.

Production & Development Structures: It's not much of a stretch to venture that media outlets like MTV, G4 and Current.tv will look to efficiently harness the growing amount of content in the world as well as the growing amount of content sorters. So what will their business structures look like?  They'll be 4-D Idea markets, me thinks. Why? 1. Virtual worlds will soon allow all media (text, docs, images, audio, video, websites, flash, 3-D images, etc.) to be mixed together in new ways. This will result in efficent new sorting and creating mechanisms. 2. A virtual structure will allow these companies to cast the broadest possible net. 3. By plotting anticipated developments on a timeline, these companies will have a more-accuarate-than-ever programming tool forecasting what content will be available and how popular it will be. 4. A virtual market will allow for better programs to rise to the top, enabling better moreinformed selection of what goes on air. 5. These markets will be able to compete with similar bottom-up structures better than the current business models employed by these companies. 6. Once st up, these structures will automatically generate users, content and content sorters. This will represent a new commerce/info/content relationship.

Closed / Internal Forecasting Models: This is the same idea as the Tunnel of Time, just a smaller closed system. corporations, families, sports teams, clubs, political parties, non-profits, any groups at all will be able to harness 4-D Idea markets, much as they utilize internal blogs and wikis nowadays, as they seek to better negotiate their environment.

Implications for Society: I believe that 4-D Idea Markets will allow for massive increases in group intelligence, forecasting. They will help change the decision making process for businesses, governments, families, all groups. 4-D Idea Markets will help avert new disasters.   4-D Idea Markets will help fuel new crime.   4-D Idea Markets will helpt ot better quantify the current system.   4-D Idea Markets will help reduce the energy wasted on millions of people making the same predictions in the same domain areas and will allow the species to push our collective vision father into the future and past.   4-D Idea Markets will help us better understand human nature and psychology.   4-D Idea Markets will help us better identify human value/resources. Essentially, I believe that 4-D Idea Markets are an amplification of existing computational processes and will prove very important to humanity as we approach a convergence in information/technology.

A Call for Dialogue: If 4-D Idea markets are interesting to you, then please drop me a line to either shoot the sh*t or just to let me know what you're up to. I'd like to see things come into existence for the sake of humanity, and because the concept fascinates me. I want to walk thorugh a tunnel of time (not just in my own brain) at some point in my life, and hopefully that will come sooner than later. It's only a matter of time and MEST compression until these things pervade our system. I hope that I am not wrong in believing that they will benefit the evolution and development of the system and our species.

Comm Technology Putting a Strain on US Sovereignty, Worse to Come

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 00:12:38 GMT

Now that the news about Google going along with Chinese censorship policies is out, it seems other major corporate playaz are also GUILTY!! of the same crimes. To me this looks like comm tech wreaking havoc among entenched sovereign regions. Uh-oh, this conflict is only going to get way more pronounced as 3-D virtual environments and 4-D idea markets really chip away at central societal control structures.

Here's the relevant article:

http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/01/news/international/pluggedin_fortune/index.htm?cnn=yes

Sundance Movie: The Foot Fist Way

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 04:21:50 GMT

Word to Jody Hill. I just got back from Sundance where I had the opportunity to see the world premiere of Jody's new Tae Kwon Do comedy The Foot Fist Way. Very funny. Very dark. Very very human. Look out America, because this one succesfully pushes the dark humor envelope and gets away with it.

Google, Nation States and Positivism

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 04:13:07 GMT

So Google is fighting a US govt effort to mine its data, yet has acquiesced to China's web search censorship demands. Google has also stated its intention to "do no evil." Combine this with Google's mission to "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" and what emerges is pro-social, broadly positive sum behavior, me thinks.

Now, one might ask, "Isn't censorship of content wrong?" Sure, but imagine what google means to the broad Chinese population: it's their best chance to evolve their socio-economic system to the point where this type of censorship finally doesn't exist. On might also ask, "Isn't it wrong to withold info from the US government that may implicate people into child pornography?" Of course, but at the cost of undermining Google's goal to organize the world's information, because much of that information is generated by the interaction of TRUSTING users with the Google system. In other words, it would diminish Google's collective intelligence goals/philosophy. This company does not want to be associated with US gov surveillance for good reason. (Of course, it could all just be PR and the gov may have another means of accessing Google's info anyway.)

What does this all mean to me? The facts support the notion that Google wants to 1) support the world, not just the US, 2) is savvy enough to make the right moves in the right systems, and 3) is looking to MAINTAIN THE TRUST OF HUMAN USERS. This appears to be a company thinking very systematically about the broader good and MAX SUM BEHAVIOR.

Education and the Curve

Sat, 21 Jan 2006 05:08:29 GMT

The American education system needs to get savvy to the curve, lest it become irrelevant in its purpose to teach economic and social behavior. I think we can already expect a migration of young brains (children to be continued... Off to Sundance.

Re-Inventing the Wheel: Innovation Attribution Error

Thu, 19 Jan 2006 02:15:46 GMT

In our current phase of planetary existence (pre-human-comm-singularity), it seems that one problem that needs to be solved, and is being solved, is the broad human agent Innovation Attribution Error (similar to the Fundamental attribution Error, but concerned with new ideas). As we develop clearer, more accessible, more interactive systems for the representation of information, it is inevitable that we begin to create more accurate records of where Innovative ideas were first externalized. This allows people to more easily recognize highly redundant innovation behavior. Once people are able to see that a concept has emerged and has been tested by an idea market, then those people can safely avoid re-inventing the wheel or whatever the innovation may be.

Effect on Individuals: This process will radically quantify how human networked innovation markets operate and will pinpoint 1. who is doing the innovating, 2. who is not doing the innovating, 3. what conditions (environment, other humans, technology) increase the rate of innovation, 4. whether group dynamics are key to innovation, 5. the frequency and significance of innovation behavior (basically a dynamic innovation score).

Effect on Groups: 1. Copyright Law will change, affecting many groups with vested content interests. 2. Groups will harness the new info by regulating their idea flow and turning more toward idea market structures. 3. More small and economic partnerships will pop up as fact tells them how to create viable innovation engines. (These groups will be the legos of the new economy.) etc.

Basically, the point of identifying the the IAE is to propagate a meme that will lead to broader innovation and less redundancy. Reducing redundancy of information and information processing in a quick manner will be an important behavioral model for many organizations in the very near future, it already is for some. Word up. Don't be redundant!

My Revised Inner Memetic Trailer Park Includes...

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 22:04:21 GMT

∑ The Interplay Between Environment and Behavior and Technology
∑ Total Behavior Quantification State/Potential Computation
∑ Exponential IQ Increase, Effect on Generations
∑ Increasing Connectivity of Humans to Virtual Space, Increasing Connectivity of Virtual Space to Humans and Physical Space
∑ The Catalyzing Importance of 3DUI - SL being the first, merging with google Earth as the software becomes swappable.
∑ Open-Source Structures Dramatically Increasing in Value – New Era of Public Works that clearly remain in the public domain. Idea Parks.
∑ Idea markets Harnessed by Groups of humans each Acting as a Corporation
∑ 3-D Business structures: Environmental Behavior Conditioning Models (FLOW Networks)
∑ Change of Social Dynamics: More Connections, Virtual Reality, Distance Labor, Open Source Structures – Youth as Primary Drivers of the New Economy – They are the most adaptable. New augmented reality events. A life array enriched by technology. (We’re adapting our vision, literal and figurative, of the world in addition to all other capabilities.)
∑ New ideologies driven by the young because of their closer relationship to new technology.
∑ Changing Behavior of Sovereign Units, new Unions, New Rapidly Assembling / Dissembling Groupings, Part-Time Labor – Restructuring of Sovereign Definitions and Behavior
∑ Role of Reality TV & Virtual Environments– Entertainment / Technology Dynamic -- This will condition an entire new generation of humans.
∑ Necessity of More deliberate and complex Story Structures tied into Social/Business Structures
∑ Simulation as the Basis of cognition
∑ 3DUI first, then eventually 3-D Overlay over Everything – The Matrix Growing Around us, Literally Changing the Way We See the World
∑ Game theory nature of Evolution – Gaming embedded in the genetic code, agent behavior largely determined by “junk” DNA.
∑ Language effects on cognitive an automati c processing of information.
∑ Social Software Writing (Templates) as big Part of the Economy

SL is Hyper-Space for Biological Computation

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 21:57:03 GMT

When agents inside systems pockets reach their limits as far as resources and space, they must then strive to generate complexity and build on that in order to figure out a better way to control their system pocket to fulfill their agent desires and potantially expand, escape or exceed the system. (This fits in with Chaos Theory / life-escaping, as well as the Socio-Political pendulum that John Smart has written about.) I see this recursive / autocatalytic process, involving the externalization of technology and co-evolution with other species, occurring in Second Life. Second Lifers have or are about to hit a spatial wall, and must now generate complexity in the system pocket in order to fulfill their individual needs (to control system, have fun, learn, engage in certain compulsive behavior, etc.). This process seems to be a mimicry of biological behavior, without the same biological constraints. Hence, accomplishing computation in a virtual pocket while relying on human agents (designed by biology) seems to be some sort of Super-Computation space, because it requires less energy (consistent with John Smart's MEST compression theory) and utilizes less of the environment to do computation, while at the same time allowing more agents to meaningfully interact. So SL is MEST Compression enabled Computation Hyper-Space, to lean on your terminology.

Can any scientifically valid parallels between this computational space and already explored/defined biological or systems computational spaces can be drawn? If so, then there are pre-existing metrics, power laws, or trends that can be applied to the co-evolution of virtual worlds and biological systems / agency structures. It may end up being very important to conclusively link virtual space and biological growth patterns.

More Support for Tunnel of Time Theory of Cognition

Sun, 25 Dec 2005 21:24:53 GMT

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/12/051224095748.htm

Researchers Know What You Were About To Say; fMRI Used To Detect Memory Storage And Retrieval

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University have provided evidence that the act of recalling a memory is a bit like mental time travel. Their study, presented in the Dec. 23 edition of the journal Science, demonstrates that the same areas of the brain that are active during an event are activated when a person attempts to recall that event -- seconds before the memory surfaces.

Related News Stories

Researchers Trace Roots Of Vivid Memories (September 26, 2000) -- Researchers have found that calling up vivid memories--the face of a loved one or the chords of a favorite song--activates regions of the brain responsible for processing sensory experiences. When a ... > full story

Storage Limits On Our Visual Hard Drive (April 15, 2004) -- The amount of information we can remember from a visual scene is extremely limited and the source of that limit may lie in the posterior parietal cortex, a region of the brain involved in visual ... > full story

The 'Been There, Done That' Memory Response (September 6, 2005) -- One of the neural oddities of "declarative" memory -- the recall of past things and events -- is that some experiments have shown that recognizing a familiar object is accompanied by a ... > full story

Brain-scanning Life's Memories Yields New Insights (September 30, 2004) -- Neuroscientists at Duke University have figured out how to study with rigorous experimental control how the brain recalls autobiographical memories -- the memories of a person's past experiences. ... > full story

> more related stories
Related sections:

Mind & Brain
Matter & Energy
Advertisement

"This study shows that, as you search for memories of a particular event, your brain state progressively comes to resemble the state it was in when you initially experienced the event," said Sean Polyn, a post-doctoral fellow at the Computational Memory Lab in Penn's Department of Psychology. "It is all part of the brain's ability to cross-reference memories, pulling together separate pieces of information from an elaborate network of stored representations to recreate an event."

The inability to recall something is a common frustration.

"An every-day strategy for getting at lost memories involves using a part of a memory to pull out the entire thought, much like when you try remember where you put your keys last night," Polyn said. "If you recall that you were washing dishes, that might trigger associated memories, leading you to remember that your keys are next to the sink. We refer to this phenomenon as 'bootstrapping.'"

According to Polyn, this "bootstrapping" effect occurs as a brain area called the hippocampus helps sort through the storage bins of memory, returning the brain to its state at the time of the initial experience. Polyn believes that the knowledge of how the brain uses its memories could be applied to designing more detailed models of memory, which could help treat brain disorders such as Alzheimer's disease and epilepsy. This knowledge could also guide creation of more self-sufficient artificial neural networks and robots.

The study also broke new ground in how fMRI could be used to study how brain activity changes from second to second. Polyn and his Princeton colleagues gave participants 90 things to remember -- divided among celebrity faces, common objects and famous locations -- using the fMRI to detect which parts of the brain were involved in the learning process for each category. They developed a technique that could track the brain activity corresponding to each of these categories as participants retrieved memories. As they remembered, the technique provided a second-by-second readout of how the brain searched for information.

So participants would not feel compelled to "cram" the 90 items, the researchers presented them in the form of a series of judgments, for example, asking whether or not the subject liked or disliked a labeled photograph of comedian Carrot Top. These judgments were designed to make participants think more deeply about the items, allowing them to form stronger memories. These judgments were interspersed with simple arithmetic questions to keep the participants from simply memorizing the items. The subjects were then asked to freely recall the 90 items, in whatever order they could remember them.

As the research team reviewed the data, they could see how the portions of the brain that stored memories of faces, for example, would activate several seconds before the participant began to name the celebrities. According to Polyn, objects, faces and locations are all stored differently in the brain. When the participants moved from one category to another, the researchers noted a corresponding shift in brain activity.

"The results of this experiment suggest that when we think back to the past, each detail we remember triggers another, until the memory returns completely," Polyn said. "In that sense, memory retrieval is like revisiting the past; brain patterns that are long gone can be revived by the memory system."

Tunnels of Time as Basis of Cognition

Sun, 25 Dec 2005 20:41:51 GMT

THE ZONE: A great basketball player can remember the exact state of the arena at the moment they hit a game winning shot, a super-accurate simulation of their environment as they are in it.

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT: Two people stare at each other and through subtle eye-contact and facial communication attain a deep understanding of what the other perceives. It's like lining up mirrors, info-wise.

CUNNING HUNTERS: A caveman has the sudden realization that birds are stupid and begins killing them with rocks as they fly by using the same route each morning.

MURDEROUS ROAD-GLARE: A pair of drivers look at one another and don't break eye contact immediately. This prompts them to make rash decisions as they co-navigate the 101.

Each of the above phenomena are very real, but are not understood very well by humans. My own hypothesis is that in each case a 4-D simulation, meta tagged with information, is central to understanding what the fuck is happening. The Zone occurs when a 4-D simulation overlaps so closely with RL that magic seems possible. Love ast First Sight Occurs when two people allow one another to go deep into on another's 4-D simulations, which include a representation of the other. A caveman realizes he can take advantage of flock behavior only when he can sufficiently simulate it in his mind. Road-glares occur when two humans break unwritten rules governing what they should or should not simulate while on the road. It just goes on an on. There is so much general "wisdom" out there that points to 4-D simulations (Tunnels of Time) as the basis of human opertations, and also explains humans' relative operational superiority over other species.

Now check out this world-science.net article http://www.world-science.net/othernews/051222_mentaltravelfrm.htm

“Mind-reading” study finds memories are like mental time travel

Dec. 22, 2005
Courtesy Science
and World Science staff

Humans may dredge up memories by recreating the pattern of brain activity that occurred when a remembered event first happened, some scientists believe. The psychologist Endel Tulving has called the process “mental time travel.”

Now, researchers have found that we do much of this time traveling before the memory actually “resurfaces” to parts of the brain in which we can talk about it.

Sean Polyn of Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Penn., and colleagues analyzed brain scans from people who looked at pictures of celebrities such as Bruce Lee and Halle Berry, famous places like the Taj Mahal and everyday objects such as tweezers. The participants were later asked to recall as many of the photos as possible.

The researchers found that brain activity patterns associated with each picture reinstated themselves seconds before the people talked about them.

The scientists were even able to do a little “mind-reading,” they added, by guessing whether the people were going to remember a celebrity, place or object from the reestablished brain pattern.

The findings are published in the Dec. 23 edition of the research journal Science. The authors wrote that their technique is “...a powerful new tool that researchers can use to test and refine theories of how people mine the recesses of the past.”

The mind-reading capabilities of brain scanning technologies have been improving, scientists say. A study published last April found that when people were shown simple patterns of stripes tilted in different directions, a computer could analyze their brain activity to figure out which pattern they were looking at.

A Poem About Amusing Agent Behavior

Sun, 25 Dec 2005 20:19:11 GMT

A shivering man sews seeds wherever he can,
Into every crevice of the land.
After a not-too-long span, just as as he planned,
bread abounds in the land, but man is still man...

The Feasibility of Exponential IQ Increase

Wed, 21 Dec 2005 19:33:37 GMT

What is intelligence? There is no concrete definition, but most attempts at a definition agree that it has something to do with the capacity to acquire knowledge and use that knowledge to better negotiate the system. This means that intelligence is dependent on information and connectivity, and that it arises out of a dynamic between environment and agent.

Why is there no concrete definition? Because agent behavior can be drastically different in different environments. Because what appears desirable in one situation might not at all be desirable in another situation. Because access to information can drastically change from one moment to the next.

What is IQ? IQ is a statistical score correlated with higher/lower performance in our system. While not a flawless metric, it still has its uses.

What is the Exponential Increase in IQ? The Flynn Effect shows that since 1900 the average human IQ has been rising constantly. Flynn himself has ventures the supposition that this may be an exponential increase. The data corroborates.

Come on, is Exponential IQ Increase realistic? You’ve got to be kidding. Yes, it’s realistic and totally probable. But it is counter-intuitive to think it possible because of the Linear Time Bias. Because all humans have lived in a time in which IQ rises so slowly they discount the notion that we could be heading into a period of exponential increase in which people who are just a little younger will grow up much, much smarter. Only very recently in history have children been vastly more intelligent in relation to the system (just think VCRs). This analogy is about to pale in comparison to subsequent generations.

It’s totally probable that IQ is increasing exponentially because1) Connectivity is increasing exponentially, 2) Technology is increasing Exponentially, 3) advances in cognitive modeling are occurring, 4) an exponential increase in computer processing is making us all smarter by increasing the speed at which the system can transmit , store and simulate information.

So, are you saying that IQ is directly tied to technological development? Absolutely. IQ, as genrally defined, is directly related to technology. In other word, our agency behavior changes in direct relationship to technology.

Kurzweil predicts a technological singularity at sometime around 2030. If I’m reading you correctly, that’s quite a rabbit hole? Fo sho. I expect the average IQ (minus inflation J, if we’re not rescaling every year) to increase by several orders of magnitude by then, to say 731.

What the fuck? Are you serious? Yes, I’m serious. It’s just literally inconceivable at this point (just getting conceivable). And I expect it’s all related to network effects. Word up.

So IQ is forced to grow exponentially by connectivity to others and to the environment and broader information? Exactamundo.

Individual vs. Group/System as the Meaningful Metric

Wed, 21 Dec 2005 09:20:32 GMT

As society is pushed up through the hierarchy of needs our agency behavior changes.

As our connectivity to the system increases, ascribing individual value becomes muddled.

The value is in the group behavior. Just as elements form molecules, individual human agents form human molecules. Humans can reconfigure their social roles/behaviors to allow for more dynamic combination and recombination than elements.

As we strive to maximize human capital, we must focus more on the group behavior than ever before. Now, while this is nothing new to organizational behaviorists and high-level HR peeps, it is a philosophy and measure of analysis that is diffusing to the masses, being helped along by advances in organizational metrics (Will Wright's behavior mapping, Valdis Krebs social software), powerful demonstrations of bottom-up phenomena (wikipedia, second life, blogosphere), and new platforms designed to harness bottom-up informational processing (Google Earth, Second Life, Croquet).

It's a due social paradigm shift to think about maximizing group behavior, a more complex way of looking at humans, rather than focusing so heavily on the individual.

Now we're starting to see why the transhumanists who imagine a future in which individual human agents transcend the system, exceed their limits, and realize "magic" need to start thinking more about humans as inextricably linked to the system. This exponential technology increase is a systemic development, carefully regulated by the broader biological/info system as it goes through a phase change. It is a new computational development, yes, but not something exclusively "created" by humans. It is a one-way autocatalytic development contingent on interplay between Energy, Physics, our Biological Environment, our Technological Environemnt, System Resources, etc. The conditions for this phase changed, which is catalyzed by humans, were set up carefully via planetary/biological development.

Blah-ba-di-blah-bla-blah-bla...

-- As we goe up through the hierarchy of needs, we afford ourselves the luxury of developing new metrics for system behavior.

3-D Hierarchy of Needs -- Simulation and Edumacation

Sun, 04 Dec 2005 00:43:37 GMT

Imagine Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in the 3-D, as a tiered pyramid. 3-D simulations representing each stage are inserted into each of the layers. This is just another example of 3-D simulations that can speed up the education process because they are more intuitive for children and transmit for data and data linkages in a shorter amount of time.

In an accelerating economy, the pace of education most correspondingly accelerate.

Eye Contact and Iintelligence

Sun, 04 Dec 2005 00:38:04 GMT

Thesis: The more eye contact an animal makes, the more intelligent it is, in general. This cascades down the species hierarchy.

No Me and You, Well Technically

Sun, 04 Dec 2005 00:36:31 GMT

Scientifically, it is wrong to view the self and the system as absolutely closed from one another. There is no such thing as the self, because there is no such a thing as a closed system. There are concentrations and array patterns of entropy, particularly in computation-rich areas, but these are all integrated into a whole. This is why no one can create an absolutely accurate IQ test; because the thing to be measured, the intelligence of a brain, is not a closed system and behaves differently in different environments.

Systems always bleed into one another at some level. There are always barriers, they have shape, but they are never absolute blockers. The very matter they consist of changes on a second-to-second basis.

The Network is the Brain
The Total Network Behavior is Intelligent?

Point of View & Intelligence Correlation

Thu, 10 Nov 2005 08:43:06 GMT

Point of View & Intelligence

Simulation of Perspective is directly linked to Intelligence, je s’pose.

Building on a web of Perspectives

Songs allow similar emotion, which triggers convergence of perspectives. That is why music works socially, not independent of society. The same goes for art. This is why certain personalities like certain triggers.

Art imitates life. It’s about quantification of systems, that means illuminating coordination, multiple POV’s, in addition to the physical.

The smartest people can simulate the most Points of View the most quickly.

Young kids are smarter because they critically developed their brains during a phase in time when there were more POV’s available and therefore are able to process more complex social and physical simulations. They are used to many more input signals than older humans.

-fly meme fly

Can Point of View be quantified in game theory? It’ll be much easier to simulate and compute in 3-D Virtual Worlds. That’ll herald a new era of social cognition, both meanings.

Starting to see back and forth swings of quantification of systems. Crunching waves of numbers.