carapace – Not your father's america

Great minds can sometimes guess the truth before they have either the evidence or arguments for it (Diderot called it having the “esprit de divination”). What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it

http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_print.html

MARTIN REES
Cosmologist, Cambridge University; UK Astronomer Royal; Author, Our Final Hour

I believe that intelligent life may presently be unique to our Earth, but that, even so, it has the potential to spread through the galaxy and beyond—indeed, the emergence of complexity could still be near its beginning. If SETI searches fail, that would not render life a cosmic sideshow Indeed, it would be a boost to our cosmic self-esteem: terrestrial life, and its fate, would become a matter of cosmic significance. Even if intelligence is now unique to Earth, there’s enough time lying ahead for it to spread through the entire Galaxy, evolving into a teeming complexity far beyond what we can even conceive.

There’s an unthinking tendency to imagine that humans will be around in 6 billion years, watching the Sun flare up and die. But the forms of life and intelligence that have by then emerged would surely be as different from us as we are from a bacterium. That conclusion would follow even if future evolution proceeded at the rate at which new species have emerged over the 3 or 4 billion years of the geological past. But post-human evolution (whether of organic species or of artefacts) will proceed far faster than the changes that led to emergence, because it will be intelligently directed rather than being—like pre-human evolution—the gradual outcome of Darwinian natural selection. Changes will drastically accelerate in the present century—through intentional genetic modifications, targeted drugs, perhaps even silicon implants in to the brain. Humanity may not persist as a single species for more than a few centuries—especially if communities have by then become established away from the earth.

But a few centuries is still just a millionth of the Sun’s future lifetime—and the entire universe probably has a longer future still. The remote future is squarely in the realm of science fiction. Advanced intelligences billions of years hence might even create new universes. Perhaps they’ll be able to choose what physical laws prevail in their creations. Perhaps these beings could achieve the computational capability to simulate a universe as complex as the one we perceive ourselves to be in.

My belief may remain unprovable for billions of years. It could be falsified sooner—for instance, we (or our immediate post-human descendents) may develop theories that reveal inherent limits to complexity. But it’s a substitute for religious belief, and I hope it’s true.

By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | January 29, 2005

With a record of 19 wins, 22 losses, and four ties, it’s been a pretty disappointing season thus far for the Boston Bruins. But there’s a bright side — none of the team members are playing hurt. After all, electrons don’t bleed.

The only Bruins on the ice this hockey season are the electronic sort. With the National Hockey League shut down by a management lockout, the players are out of work and the fans are out of luck — except for those willing to accept a digital substitute for their usual quota of icy thrills, courtesy of a cable television network called G4techTV.

Once the lockout began, G4techTV began to fill in the gap with a full roster of virtual hockey games. Using a Microsoft Xbox game console and a copy of NHL 2005 hockey gaming software from Electronic Arts Inc., the game buffs at G4 are playing out every single game on the league schedule — all 1,230 of them — and posting the results on their website (G4techTV.com). It’s a fascinating experiment in virtual entertainment, a chance to test the public appetite for amusements utterly devoid of anything human.

But that’s not what the folks at Comcast-owned G4 had in mind. The hockey lockout offered a grand opportunity to scare up some publicity for their cable channel, which targets digital technology buffs and computer gamers.

”The morning that the NHL announced the lockout, we were sitting in a meeting and [G4 founder and CEO] Charles Hirschhorn brought up the idea of simulating the season,” said Peter Green, the network’s senior vice president of programming.

The idea wasn’t newborn. ”When they were threatening the baseball lockout two or three seasons ago,” said Green, ”we were putting together a plan to do the exact same thing.” But Major League Baseball settled its labor troubles that year, so the idea was shelved. This time, the hockey league came through. G4 had the work stoppage it needed to give its virtual hockey league a try.

Playing hundreds of NHL games isn’t too difficult if your arena is located inside a microchip. There’s no need for human gamers to spend weeks twitching and clutching at game controllers. The NHL 2005 software, like most sports games, has a setting that lets the machine have all the fun. Both teams are controlled by the computer, with no human intervention. The software contains the complete statistical history of every player in the league; each simulated player will perform at a similar skill level. The gamer just picks two teams and presses the start button. Multiply by 1,230 and you’ve got yourself a hockey season.

”We’ve already played the whole season,” said Green. ”It’s done.” But don’t ask him who won the Stanley Cup. Results are released in accordance with the NHL schedule.

G4 execs were so pleased with the concept that they applied it to other sports. Inspired by the constant moaning about the need for a playoff system in college football, the network last month created one of its own, featuring the best teams in the land. ”We played it out over a week,” Green said. The first round was a battle of the undefeateds — USC versus Harvard. Ivy League teams don’t play against Pac-10 schools in the real world. Good thing, too. ”USC beat Harvard, I think 58 to nothing,” Green said. ”It was for fun, and it was a what-if.” USC won the tournament and was crowned national champion, just like in the real world, except that the Trojans pummeled Auburn instead of Oklahoma in the decisive game.

But while the college football playoffs featured matchups that would never happen in the real world, the virtual hockey league features digital reenactments of the very games that avid fans long to see. Would they scour the G4 website for the latest statistics and rankings? Would they tune in G4techTV for a nightly highlight show featuring videos of the games and commentary from Los Angeles Kings player Luc Robitaille?

Apparently not. The message boards at the G4 website witnessed a spike in visitors during the league launch in October, but interest quickly lagged. In hockey-addled Buffalo, the local paper has carried the virtual hockey league scores, but most news outlets have ignored them. As for G4′s own nightly highlight show, the network bagged it in early November.

”It seemed like the heat was sort of dying down after the first month,” Green admitted. He thinks part of the problem is the choice of sport. Except for in cities like Boston, most Americans don’t much care about hockey. ”I think it would have been better if the NBA had been locked out instead of the NHL,” Green said.

Maybe. But even avid hockey fans like Joshua Trupin, a 36-year-old magazine editor from Bay Shore, N.Y., don’t see much point. Trupin checked out the G4 league when it started up but quickly lost interest, preferring to spend his time managing his 10-year-old son’s hockey team. ”I’ve put in a real commitment that has helped 16 kids develop a love of the game,” said Trupin. ”Who needs a game simulator?”

© Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2005/01/29/despite_nhl_lockout_network_has_season_covered____digitally?pg=full

From an artistic point of view, the world famous brilliant forerunner of surrealism was, in his day, unique and radically different. Hiëronymus (Jeroen for schort) Bosch was born during the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, in the Duchy of Brabant. Bosch places visionary images in a hostile world full of mysticism, with the conviction that the human being, due to its own stupidity and sinfulness has become prey to the devil himself. He holds a mirror to the world with his cerebral irony and magical symbolism, sparing no one. He aims his mocking arrows equally well at the hypocrisy of the clergy as the extravagance of the nobility and the immorality of the people. Hiëronymus Bosch’s style arises from the tradition of the book illuminations (manuscript illustrations from the Middle Ages). The caricatural representation of evil tones down its terrifying implications, but also serves as a defiant warning with a theological basis.

http://www.3d-mouseion.com/engels/bosch_eng.htm

http://birg.epfl.ch/

The School of Computer and Communication Sciences at the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology is “one of the major European centers of
teaching and research in information technology.” This website describes the
research of the Biologically Inspired Research Group. Its research focuses on
the intersection between computational neuroscience, robotics, nonlinear
dynamical systems, and adaptive algorithms. Inspired by biological
systems and trained in the fields of modeling, optimization, and control, the
researchers are working “to produce novel types of robots with adaptive
locomotion and sensorimotor coordination abilities, and in using the
robots to investigate hypotheses of how central nervous systems implement
these abilities in animals.” The Research section describes some of the
group’s work in numerical simulations of locomotion and movement control,
sensorimotor coordination, dynamic simulators of articulated rigid
bodies, statistical learning algorithms, evolutionary algorithms, nonlinear
dynamical systems, humanoid robotics, amphibious articulated robotics,
and modular robotics. Some sections are still under construction. Journal
publications, as well as descriptions of student projects and videos
demonstrating their accomplishments, are posted online.

From: http://scout.wisc.edu/

“It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.”