The breaking of the MIT AI Lab does seem to be filmed in the Peter Jackson style of the Second Age flashbacks in The Fellowship of The Ring.
]]>In the countryside, I've come to think of the number of trees per person. Through some kind of folk-math dimensional analysis, the length of above-ground power lines cancels by the length of them required to reach the person. In low population density areas, the number of trees assigned to you to take out your power is high.
You would think there would be a tree-squared factor in here somewhere; I'm at the end of a branch of a branch, and the delightful (and now familiar) sound of a transformer exploding on the upstream branch gives me plenty of time to ponder whether I should be working in some kind of superlinear factor for the especially common lines. In practice, those common lines seem to get work crews assigned to them very quickly.
The biggest modeling headache I have is how to reconcile the attractive notion of a personal tree number with the physical reality that not all trees are created equal. Folk math is hard, but I expect this winter I will have some time to work on this problem.
]]>Given the population bottlenecks, the new life in the outer colonies sounds a lot like "My Own Private Easter Island", except with even weirder selection pressures. Fails over and over again. Think I'll pass. I wonder if a latent gene or meme for irrational GTFO sticks around due to catastrophe survivorship.
]]>I think you're teasing, since I'm pretty sure you know Dawkins's frame: count the genotype, not the phenotype; count propagation in populations, not individuals. Not-civilization and dumb didn't work out so hot for the genes of (pre-Neanderthal) hominid branches, as far as we know. Genes not adaptive for individuals in normal circumstances can stick around if they're what saved the survivors of a population bottleneck. Species that managed to hyperoptimize down to monocultures have an alarming tendency to drop from sight at the next climate shift.
]]>"Robin identifies with the aliens! (Not that there's anything wrong with that...)"
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/09/we-live-unequally.html#comment-518331202
]]>That's the end of "A Colder War", right?
]]>Given the ascendancy of statistical systems (it's Bayes's world now, we just live in it) the miscibility of hard AI and strong AI (generalist human-like intelligence) is out of fashion.
]]>While possibly true at the individual level, at population/species scale it sounds more iffy. Genetic diversity is an insurance policy; psychological diversity seems like it should be too. For conflicts between human populations, memetic/technological elements can alter force balance. The carrying costs may pay off for having the right freaks of nature on tap. Sure, send me your physicists/metallurgists; it'll make up for all those military theorists you've been hoarding.
@180: Just what color do you think the librarians were at Alexandria?
I misread that as "What colors were the libraries at Alexandria?
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