alexandertolley

Recent Actions

• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  Indeed - didn't some US naval officer show how to destroy a nuclear carrier with loads of little boats and homemade "torpedoes". The icebreaker vs wooden naval ship analogy sounds too much like a classic naval battle. Why would the...
• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  7 years from start to finish - I admire your stamina. I hate to think how close you may have come to giving up during this episode....
• Commented on Books I've written
  What I would be interested in is how view view your books now and how you might have changed them in retrospect. Perhaps you can weave some of that into your blog comments about the background and process at the...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  The argument is not totally clear as to whether you mean total nuclear disarmament, or just British disarmament. If the latter, however rational your argument, you lay yourself open to the argument that Britain would then be free-riding on US...
• Commented on Press Release: Stross Uncloaks Secret Media Project
  I think Charlie was filching from the first X-Files movie....
• Commented on Press Release: Stross Uncloaks Secret Media Project
  What, no unicorns this time? Enjoy your vacation!...
• Commented on Mitochondrial Singularity
  Thanks Joan. One bad meme killed. Since you mentioned false ideas vs true ideas, I do have a nightmare that our increasingly proliferating memes will result in our civilization failing due to escalating noise (untruths) vs signal (truths). If I...
• Commented on Mitochondrial Singularity
  Since Margulis is now firmly in the conversation, does anyone have any references as to whether her last idea that organisms that metamorphose are in fact merged genomes from different organisms? I keep an eye out for genomic studies that...
• Commented on Mitochondrial Singularity
  It isn't clear to me that the mitochondrial analogy is correct, especially with regard to machines being the equivalent of the cell. I see the cell in our terms as the super organism of human society. So the ant analogy...
• Commented on The permanent revolution
  Things change. Technology accelerates it. The only thing up for debate is the timing. I think it depends on what you include as "things". Scientific knowledge probably won't stall out, although the big picture of physics may. But other areas...
• Commented on "We're going to need book covers. Lots of book covers!"
  I concur with a number of other comments. 1. The US Neptune's Brood is much better than the cheesy Saturn's Children was. It is still a little coy with the strategically placed fig leaf...er "seaweed". 2. I like the US...
• Commented on Wow
  I wonder if an explosion that large (assuming it happened) could have caused some axial tilt? In adition, wouldn't there be evidence of a lot of local bombardment at rock fell back to Mars? Certainly there are some interesting implications....
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  Collective intelligence (sometimes stupidity) is very important in human societies due to specialization. Our early ancestors may have had high general intelligence (controversial) but it was not just poorly used (no education) but very similarly used for all members. Once...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  I'm a little suspicious of the anecdotal evidence of different peoples' intelligence. Recognizing different plants? There's an app for that (LeafSnap). We always are amazed at knowledge we don't have, and, more importantly don't understand how it can be acquired....
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  The other fun question, really, is how small an animal can be and still make a fire using muscular effort? They don't need to. They can get fire from a naturally created one, then maintain it by keeping hot coals...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  And so the robots evolve to make that decision ever harder. P K Dick's Second Variety....
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  Trying to dig back into the source material for this article. So far it is NOT clear that Hawks interpretation of the data is correct. (Note he is not a doing primary research in the area, just interpreting studies. But...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  So, the number of “cross-connections” is important – what a surprise NOT. Which suggests that not only genetics, but nutrition between conception & 3 years’ old is vitally important, does it not? Connections also require the requisite stimulation (learning). Which...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  I see the study is looking at myelination. An analogy is the quality of insulation of wires. Unfortunately Thompson's measure of IQ is not specified in the PR piece, so we have to assume it is an IQ test of...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  The neurons are the surface gray matter. Thus it is the area of this layer that is important. The area of gray matter is increased by folding. Humans have much more folded gray matter than lower mammals. If much of...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  Arguing about the evolution of math ability is absurd. Math (not arithmetic) is a cultural artifact that started to flower when people civilization allowed specialization. And like any specialization, it was developed with time, effort, social interaction to spread ideas,...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  If we relax the human level language constraint and include animal communication within social animals, then I think we have some natural experiments to test the hypothesis. If the hypothesis is correct, then social species which can cooperate and even...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  And a logical corollary of this hypothesis is that we are only just smart enough, on average, to be capable of horizontal transfer of memes. Once language and culture arrived (note specialized usage of term 'culture'), we didn't need to...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  our inability to get *this* idea is evidence of our minimal intelligence, then doesn't that imply that we aren't even smart enough to transmit memes? Memetics just required replication. So we should be able to transmit ideas by just parroting...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  The evolutionary pressure selecting for general intelligence (to the extent that general intelligence exists) breaks once a species develops language. While I think your reformulation clarifies your idea, I don't believe that my thoughts differ. Your argument is that language...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  If cultural toolkits are the main advantage to survival, then a higher intelligence (however you measure that) without these toolkits will be out competed by a species with lower intelligence and the toolkit. In essence, it is arguable that that...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  Which would be true if the ability to construct analogies is intelligence, as Hofstadter and others posit. So if memes transmit information, it is the ability to abstract them and reuse them in different situations that is intelligence (or at...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  I dunno. We could be the Ogrons to the galactic Daleks :)...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  Let me re-formulate that hypothesis: The evolutionary pressure selecting for general intelligence (to the extent that general intelligence exists) breaks once a species develops language. Let me correct my own statement regarding OGH's premise. His premise may in fact be...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  This leads to an alternative hypothesis; "general intelligence becomes less important once the knowledge base gets too large and specialisation is required". Let's extend that. Perhaps the ability to cooperate and coordinate becomes more important when human units are...