Online Cortex Thoughts on Science and Technology

‘Am I already in the shadow of the Coming Race? and will the creatures who are to transcend and finally supersede us be steely organisms, giving out the effluvia of the laboratory, and performing with infallible exactness more than everything that we have performed with a slovenly approximativeness and self-defeating inaccuracy?’
                – George Eliot,
                   The Impressions of Theophrastus Such, 1879.

The robot creation is about to happen.
- We know how to design machines that reason
- We know how to design machines that learn
- We know how to design machines that question
and more..

Could it really be that the ultimate achievement of the Human Race will be to create Life itself? 
Boldly I ask “Why Not?”

We have already reached into the Heavens and find the experience inviting.  But how much higher than the spire of the Tower of Babel can we reach?  The Moon is certainly high, and the other worlds of our Solar System higher still, yet at this very moment… right now as you read this… we are exploring these heights with the precursors to the Coming Race. (mars, saturn, sun, mercury, pluto, venus).

Reaching into the sky, while a fantasy of the Babylonians, has become commonplace to us.  But the Act of Creation is another thing altogether.

How amazing it will be when we send our first true Creations up, away, and deep into the  Heavens to travel about with God’s bacteria. 
A bold and arrogant notion?  YES!

And on that most glorious of days,
God Himself will ascend to become a Creator of Creators.

Kevin Knuth
Albany NY

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Posted under Astrobiology, Astronomy, Computation, Evolution, Exploration, Intelligent Systems, Inventions, Philosophy, Research, Robotics, Space, Technology

Today Al Gore, along with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, won the Nobel Peace Prize.  Naturally, conversation has turned to whether he will run for president.

Al Gore has risen far above such a position.  His world has become bigger than just America, and his role in the grand scheme of things is now greater than that of a president.  He is a true success story in that he has succeeded in remaking himself into something greater than what he strived for during the 2000 presidential race.  He has won, not merely in some meager contest for a job, but rather in the most difficult struggle anyone can wage—the struggle with one’s self. Rather than giving in to the powerful forces of self-pity or bitterness, he chose to grow and work for the greater good of this world.
Congratulations Mr. Gore and Thank You!

The Rude Pundit had some notably non-rude things to say on this matter.

Kevin Knuth
Albany NY

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Posted under Climate, Green

Three of us here at the University at Albany are becoming collectively known as the Albany Group: Ariel Caticha, Carlos Rodriguez and myself.  We three are exploring some relatively radical ideas about information, probability, geometry and physics, and often we find our ideas converging in unexpected ways.

One convergence that I am particularly interested in is this notion that the Laws of Physics are in reality a special application of the Laws of Inference.  The idea that is developing is that the laws of physics are not so much laws that describe the universe, but rather are laws that describe how an ideal observer, or a rational agent, could make predictions about the universe.  This sounds rather like some of the ideas about quantum mechanics with cruel observers and abused cats, but there are some critical differences.  Here I have said nothing about the necessity of an observer.  Instead, I posit that the laws of physics describe how an ideal observer would make predictions.  This distinction is crucial.

But this is a strange idea that we are taking right to the limit.  Even laws as seemingly physical as classical mechanics, such as F = ma, are not laws that describe the object being accelerated as much as they are laws about our making inferences about the object and its position or state of motion when it is interacting with another object.  (See Caticha’s MaxEnt 2007 paper)

This is not a particularly unusual idea when one considers thermodynamics, or more generally, statistical mechanics.  Here it is almost obvious that the theory is about our ability to make inferences about macrostates given that we can only measure macroscopic variables.  This is where entropy appears as a way to assign probability distributions subject to constraints, such as the total energy.  And it is here that it is most clear that entropy refers to the optimal state of knowledge of an ideal observer and not the observed system.  This becomes even more clear when one considers that a macrostate is not really a “state” at all, but rather is an equivalence class of microstates. 
(see my MaxEnt 2007 tutorial)

But this begs the question: What is a state?

My belief is that a state is a description.
State = Statement
That’s rather nice!

And in that sense, a macrostate is a statement.  Or more precisely, a macrostate is a disjunction of statements.  It is the statement that the system can be described by microstate a or microstate b or microstate c, etc; where stating that the system is in “microstate a” is a statement itself.

Statements, or descriptions, are clearly not properties of a system.  They are instead properties of observers caught in the act of describing a system.  This space of statements is the space in which physics takes place. 

In this sense, physics is all about information…
Information Physics. 

Kevin Knuth
Albany NY

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Posted under Information, Physics, Probability, Research

A quote from my father’s blog (From the Back of the Room)…

The behaviorist measures the intelligence of a laboratory rat by how quickly it can learn to manuever through the halls of a maze in order to reach some tangible reward for it’s efforts.  The reward is meant to provide for it a goal, something to work for, to entice it through the maze.  The rat that manages to learn quickly and move through the maze directly to the treasure at the end is deemed the most intelligent.  But what of the rat who ignores the reward offered by it’s human master and decides to explore instead, to linger and study and search, to discover all the possibilities that might exist in the maze.
-Rockne Knuth, 2007

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Posted under Intelligent Systems, Philosophy, Quotations

I am watching the Discovery Channel and am seeing the documentary titled Diamond Road for the fourth or fifth time.  The diamond entrepreneur Martin Rapaport impresses me every time.  He has been inspired to create a fair trade system for diamonds from war-torn Sierra Leone.  In one of his talks, he points out that if you buy your loved one a diamond and are able to say that this purchase not only results in you having a beautiful diamond, but also has made someone’s life better.  He says “You can sell the HELL outta that!”  Doing the right thing CAN work!

I am so happy to see someone who is so driven to make a difference.  With a baby on the way, I personally am not in the market for a diamond.  But if when I am again looking to buy a diamond, I will surely ask for a fair-trade diamond.  If we all do this down in the Diamond District of NYC and walk out when they say that they have no such things, maybe we can help make Rapaport’s dream come true and help the diamond diggers of Sierra Leone and elsewhere in Africa, or the world for that matter.

On a jewelry blog Rapaport is criticised for giving an interview from his $2500+ a night suite in a LasVegas resort.  Frankly, I don’t see that as hypocritical.  Yes, he did make a lot of money off of the diamond industry.  But he is now using that wealth to make things better.  Giving it all away would really do no good.  And how much better is he than all those who made all that money and didn’t do anything good with it.  This is not a valid criticism in my opinion, and in fact highlights just how important his efforts are. 

Of course, as the blog mentions, fair-trade arrangements would be difficult to police and enforce.  This is probably true, but its a step in the right direction.  The status-quo is unacceptable.

Last, I am always struck by the woman in the DeBeer’s sequence who says that she would leave her fiancee’ if he bought her a lab-grown diamond.  First, she refers to it as ‘glass’, which is inaccurate at best.  But more importantly, she says that if he loved her enough he would buy her the ‘real thing’.  Ummm… glass is real.  Its sad to see someone so clueless.  Someone who mistakes a lump of carbon for love… or a flag for one’s nation.  Symbols hold a special place in our brains; sometimes too special.

Kevin Knuth
Albany NY

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Posted under Entrepreneurship, Philosophy, Social Justice