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Subject: RE: Greetings for the Holidays From: "Bill Howell. Hussar. Alberta. Canada" <> Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2018 18:31:04 -0700 To: "Geoff Cowper. Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP. Vancouver. BC" Cc: Great to hear from you, Geoff! All the best of the season to Karen, Matt, Dan, Nicholas, and yourself. I didn't get to Vancouver this year. Hopefully in 2018 I'll be driving with my mother to visit her sister and family, but it's trickier now as my father isn't self-sufficient, and needs someone at their condo all the time. Last June he was diagnosed with a metastasized prostate cancer recurrence after 20 years, and I thought he would be dead in a month or two, but it is progressing very slowly. They can't aggressively treat him as he is too weak for that. My mother's getting older too - perhaps faster cognitive decline than my father, and we're all afraid of her driving. My daughters Catherine and Sarah are in Vancouver now, visiting from Auckland until later next week, when my older daughter will come to Banff with my two grandchildren Carter and Charlie-Rose for a 3-day family get-together. Younger daughter Sarah has been working occasionally in Vancouver on her film-related projects as well as working towards starting up a cosmetic business that both daughters have been planning. She now has a Spanish boyfriend (sugar daddy?) in Vancouver, and is thinking of re-locating there to re-establish her career. She had been doing well in Singapore, but broke up with her partner, so she couldn't stay. Although it's easy to understand the "yap", I don't really understand the "publics' view of AI" picture. The key hype right now isn't AI, it's CI (more below in previous emails to daughters etc). It's a strange world of business and public perception right now, almost entirely divorced from [reality, real issues, real opportunities], but I guess I'm not surprised. Why is everyone so"sci-fi dark"? Why have we learned nothing about technology and progress for >300 years? Why will you never hear of the real scientists and their breakthroughs, rather than the back-stabbers who are geniuses at becoming famous off the work of scientists they have long stabbed in the back (Geoffry Hinton at [UoT, Google] is the penultimate example in Neural Networks. Ray Kurzweil is another example, although I'm not aware of any backstabbing by either - just capture of the glory) ? Why doesn't anyone outside of the area care at all what the [concepts, mathematics, science, engineering] are, preferring to hype the politically-correct [humanities, society] crap? Anyways, the video links and emails posted below provide some context to my thinking and reactions. It's a pleasure replying to you, not the least because you wouldn't believe how well I am physically (see "The Demise of Moby Dick", and follow the directory link to photos). I'll try to call in the next couple of days. If you call me, note that by habit my cellphone audio and vibrate are always OFF, even if I've turned them on for now. It's a combination of [firefighter alarms, project work focus] that lead me to filter out continuous [spam, scam] calls.... Cheers, Bill Howell
Volunteer firefighter, Member of Hussar Lion's Club & Sundowners 1-587-707-2027 www.BillHowell.ca P.O. Box 299, Hussar, Alberta, T0J1S0 Mr. Bill Howell 1-587-707-2027 www.BillHowell.ca P.O. Box 299, Hussar, Alberta, T0J1S0 member - International Neural Network Society (INNS), IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (IEEE-CIS), IJCNN2019 Budapest, Publications and Sponsors & Exhibits Chair, https://www.ijcnn.org/organizing-committee WCCI2018 Rio de Janeiro : Publicity committee, mass emails http://www.ecomp.poli.br/~wcci2018/committees/ Retired: Science Research Manager (SE-REM-01) at Natural Resources Canada, CanmetMINING, Ottawa -------- Forwarded Message --------
Dear Bill, I assume you are still in Hussar and hope
all is well. I think of you often in the blizzard of
references to AI and neural network thinking that is going on
now. I will try to give you a call to catch up
and hope to see you in 2019. Geoff
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The Demise of "Moby Dick"
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Catherine, Sarah - For no particular reason, tired after working to 03:10 in the morning last night as a volunteer for the lion's casino, I checked up on the hippocampal prosthesis. Turns out that earlier this year, a news article about www.kernel.com popped up : https://www.wired.com/story/hippocampal-neural-prosthetic/ Although human trials were carried out, I have not yet looked at the scientific papers. "... The team worked with 22 patients awaiting surgery for epilepsy. ..." (good choice given ethics and concerned about ruining a normal person's memories). In any case the results were quite impressive on the surface. https://logancollinsblog.com/2018/01/02/global-highlights-neuroengineering-towards-whole-brain-emulation-and-mind-uploading/ Strangely, I would not have been able to predict the "telepathic rats", which was done in 2013. Was this substantial? What does it mean? Are rats firmly ahead of humans now? Ted Berger, the long-term key scientist, broke off with the company, which started with Ted as Chief Scientist, [apparently, perhaps] out of concern with the demanded pace of advancement? http://neurotechreports.com/pages/publishersletterFeb17.html My own encounters with Ted :
https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/devices/starkeys-ai-transforms-hearing-aid-into-smart-wearables Your grandfather's hearing is getting worse, so he shouts as he talks in A&W in the morning. He never uses his hearing aids,, because of well-known problems with them. DeLiang Wang, who I've know well since 2005 and from the INNS Board of Directors (I sat for two years), and as he is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the INNS Neural Networks journal, has progressed in his work with Deep Learning neural networks and hearing aids. He collaborates with Starkey, a leading manufacturer, but they haven't produced a commercial model. I've seen this before - I don't think they can sell hearing aids that require a wire that descends to a sub-clothing torso electric unit with the power to do that kind of processing. Strange to me that people don't want function if it interferes with their looks?!?! Mr. Bill Howell 1-587-707-2027 www.BillHowell.ca P.O. Box 299, Hussar, Alberta, T0J1S0 member - International Neural Network Society (INNS), IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (IEEE-CIS), Association of Professional Engineers and Geo-scientists of Alberta (APEGA) IJCNN2019 Budapest, Publications and Sponsors & Exhibits Chair, https://www.ijcnn.org/organizing-committee WCCI2018 Rio de Janeiro : Publicity committee, mass emails http://www.ecomp.poli.br/~wcci2018/committees/ Retired: Science Research Manager (SE-REM-01) at Natural Resources Canada, CanmetMINING, Ottawa
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Thanks for the "unlimited data" clarification, Chase. Right now, my purpose is to learn more about current MOOC systems by doing something [interesting, simple, short time commitment]. Course content isn't important, but the [function, mathematics, programming of humans] behind MOOC is. Not to build a system or to use it, just to get a feeling of its status and how radically it may change very soon. Having said that, in a weird sense of timing, I have been "keeping part of an eye" on a Chinese system, KEEP, involving a friend, Irwin King, who is now Director or something of the Engineering faculty of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Irwin's been hitting me over the head for several years about the Chinese government's interest in MOOC, but it's always hard to believe much of what a government or academic scientist says. Irwin's one of the good scientists - open minded, very energetic, enthusiastic, and fun! (Sings karaoke better than me, but that's not saying much). 05/10/18 04:27 AM I saw mention of a Dinosaur MOOC in the KEEP <> newsletter of "Award-nominated Dinosaur Course Rerunning This Month" (see https://keep.edu.hk/articles/596), instructed by well-known and I think retired Phil Currie of Alberta. I am a public member of the Tyrell Museum, so I looked at their programs (Tyrell has expanded to do more educational programs, and their "Tyrell Talks" by scientists 11:00 on Thursdays in the winter are excellent!), and emailed the Education manager (or something), but I got no response from him. Mon, 15 Oct 2018 17:03:24 -0400 (EDT) I got a "Promoting KEEP' email from the International Neural Network Society (INNS) <> (I'm a longtime member, as well of IEEE-CIS), BUT not written by INNS President Irwin King (yeah, same guy), but by my boss for IJCNN2019, Chrisina Jayne (General Chair, awesome [worker, leader, scientist]!) : Dear INNS Member,This is more the type of course I should be looking at, and I may. Take a close look at the list of topics - it's really weird that the current "hot topic, fashion-of-the-day" Deep Learning Neural Networks, isn't in the list!! Our INNS Society has top scientists in that area, but we missed the current hype cycle whereas competing societies and the rest of the world capitalized very well on it. But my research projects don't look at "old" stuff, I'm more interested in what doesn't exist, and what is wrong with essentially all the great science of the mainstream (science fashions -> cults -> religions). While its good to raise general awareness of advances, I dislike almost of the current hype, and I'm disgusted with smart men who make themselves look like asses (eg [Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, Mori-something (quantum expert)] with their yapping that misleads everyone. I'm also disgusted but not surprised by the "this is evil and we must stop it" automatic reaction by the media and scientists. Not that it matters -> 50 to 75% of the papers in the [INNS Neural Networks, IEEE-CIS TNNLS] journals, and especially papers in [very tough, complex leading edge mathematics], are Communist Chinese (including expats). With Western attitudes, we may not have much influence on the future. I frequently ask Canadian high school kids what their [interests, aspirations, mathematics backgrounds] are. I wonder if we'll have much of a role in the economies of the future, other than as "hewers of wood, and drawers of water". What really bugs me, is that after the "neural network winter" (~1967 Minsky&Pappert paper to ~1986 NN renaissance), where the AI guys shit all over Computational Intelligence (CI ~ [Evolutionary Computation, Neural Networks, Fuzzy Systems]), everything is now called "AI", even by our experts. Perhaps it's just easier to use a well-known term, but it does lead to massive funding mis-allocations on pretenders. The public also thereby misses one of my [points, perspectives] on the different approaches to imputing intelligence to machines :
Of course, classical Boolean logic, math, algorithms] are the main work in real systems at least at present, with [AI, CI, other] built on top and providing what can't be done conventionally. In reality - I'm too busy in retirement to do much work on my own projects!! Mr. Bill Howell 1-587-707-2027 www.BillHowell.ca P.O. Box 299, Hussar, Alberta, T0J1S0 member - International Neural Network Society (INNS), IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (IEEE-CIS), Association of Professional Engineers and Geo-scientists of Alberta (APEGA) IJCNN2019 Budapest, Publications and Sponsors & Exhibits Chair, https://www.ijcnn.org/organizing-committee WCCI2018 Rio de Janeiro : Publicity committee, mass emails http://www.ecomp.poli.br/~wcci2018/committees/ Retired: Science Research Manager (SE-REM-01) at Natural Resources Canada, CanmetMINING, Ottawa
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I'm out of time - have to clean up and prepare for a New Zealand couple visiting your grandmother 23-28Aug2018 (starting tomorrow!). Monday and Tuesday Grandma wants to take them Banff-Lake Louise-Jasper-West Edmonton Mall-Tyrell museum. I failed to get to comments linking anything below to a film series. Perhaps another time, but hopefully a [random,scattered,diversity] of ideas might provide one or two ideas. ... Thus looks to me like a [good,interesting,engaging] basis for a multi-year TV or Netflix series. But in a sense my opinion is useless :
What interested me most was your [approach,style] used to pitch the Karma series. I haven't read through any proposals for [plays,art projects,dances,movies,TV series], and I have no idea of how diverse this can be (probably very, as it involves both creative and business types). In a way, I feel sorry for [film,music]-makers today, and sci-fi is a good example of an area that has been [carpet,cluster]-bombed with a huge diversity of really neat ideas, making it more and more difficult to be novel. Perhaps that puts much more pressure on developing broader "film attractiveness" in conventional ways :
On the dark side :
When I put some time into an email like this, I usually first post it to my blog, THEN link to the blog to the [person,group] in question. That also makes it far easier to share with a group, or different [individuals,groups]. In this case, it may have "film proposal competitiveness" implications (not likely, but possibly), so I'm just emailing (easy for anyone to pick this up, though), so I won't post for now. So let me know if I should "keep it hidden for 1-3 years, or if it doesn't matter so I should just post it now. Dad ********************** Perhaps this is an opportunity to be both dramatically novel, and far broader in concept than what has been done before. That is probably NOT and objective you have, nor are [details,basic science] good selling points for entertainment films (or most actual science films, for that matter!). While constant over-arching themes are probably essential glue to hold a film together and to keep the viewer , I assume that one doesn't have to ALWAYS limit oneself to a small number of things in a series to the degree that a single 2 hour film has to focus. Perhaps a constant bubbling of concepts throughout a series can make it mare [scientifically, thematically] alive, and fresh for the viewer? ********************** Science side - sub-theme comments somewhat related to "Karma" [random,scattered,simple,incomplete] thoughts (some simply copied from a recent "paradigm shift" email to Catherine, and the email to you of 19Jun2018) WARNING : It would be really easy for you to be [behind,less creative,less aggressive] with your themes than the reality of what science is ALREADY doing!!! I'm not suggesting that ANY of the ideas in the this section be used. This is simply provided in case they stimulate other ideas that you might be interested in using, hopefully new [insights,concepts, perspectives] of your own. Memory-specific Replacement parts for the brain (Ted Berger) - Hippocampal prothesesis : Welcome to an existing, if very immature, reality, but how far will it go? A company was founded in 2017 to pursue this, and Alzeimer's is their top target for now. Lots of BIG challenges left to solve, though. Great basis to expand on for a film series.
This is closely related to your theme, albeit involving machine hybrid. Magneto-EncephaloGram (MEG) direct brain process disruption (?Mitsou Kawato?, retired, past Neural Networks journal Co-Editorin-Chief, 2005) - Scientific work was understaken to study MEG-invoked disruption to brain process, in order to better understand causality and mechanisms (as compared to fMRI,EEG etc). No idea how this has turned out in the last 15 years. "Brain Decoding for MEG/fMRI data" (Subba Reddy Oota, Hyderabad https://www.linkedin.com/in/subba-reddy-oota-11a91254/ ) - At the IJCNN2017 Anchorage conference, memory location depending on subject Confabulation Theory of cognition (Robert Hecht-Nielson) - This is the ONLY [specific,quantitative,predictive] model of cognition (as Hecht-Nielson describes it) that I know of!!!! For "Karma", a key point not mentioned in my other write-ups is that the implicit theoretical limits to memory and cognition could by vastly increased quantitatively by machine confabulation. The reverse of the hippocampal conversion of short-to-long-term memory in the brain is not defined, but if possible that might potnetially be a key to unlocking evolutionary "locked-in, never-expressed" memory, behaviour in a sense that compliments what the character "Sarah" does.
"MindCode : Given that computer code is used to program the computer, then MindCode ..." - This is my "priority project that I never work on since the late 1990's" (http://www.billhowell.ca/Neural%20nets/Howell%20150225%20-%20MindCode%20Manifesto.odt) - see my email to you 19Jun2018. Obviously I'm biased on this long-term project of mine, of which I see traces in some current research (self-delusion?). A good way to keep this in perspective is my catchy phrase : "... Everything we learn, our education, experiences, amount to only a thin layer of peach fuzz on top of an enormously powerful, complex, and beautiful "machine that has been predefined by the evolution of our species and its predecessors. ..." What mainstream computer science does are the [simple,easy] computations (such as physics, chemistry, database management, etc) to which we assign the highest level of intelligence, but Computational intelligence is only starting to do modestly hard stuff, like tying your shoe-laces which we consider to be "dumb". One hypothesis of schizophrenia (Wolfgang Maas ~2007?) - Disrupted gamma rythms? Quickly - a mismatch in timing of perception and "thinking" giving a confusing mismatch and misunderstanding of reality. Paranoia might be expected!!! Unsupervised learning and glial cells (Harold Szu, 20016 or 2017) - Beautiful idea, no time to describe. It could be useful for "Karma". Traditional thinking versus science - This is an area that IS of active interest to me. I slowly collect items here and there, even though most examples are lost or not recorded. This is driven by my own gradual realisation of the failures and limitations of science and scientists. It could be a very fruitful area for conflicts and growth individually for each of "Sarah" (more traditional) and "Abigail" as well as for the relationships between them and others. The whole challenge of communicating one's perspective, and for gradually appreciating the strengths and weaknesses of belief systmes and interactions between belief systems might be very interesting. Having the courage (foolishness?) of pointing out the catastrophic failures that are characteristic of ALL areas of science could make your series unique, or at least make it a contrast to occasional commentaries on the "almost perpetual roll-over" of limitations and failures of science and scientific thinkers. Science as an outcome of religious thinking and institutions - Science IS an ecosystem of (non-theological) religions - These are kind of obvious from history, albeit not complete explanations. My thinkimg uses, but often disagrees with Lucio Russo's "How science began 300 BC, and why it had to be reinvented" No time to elaborate... Science-religion antagonism - Perhaps originally, and to a much more limited extent today, religions have been antagonistic towards science, but I feel that the criticisms of religion have been largely [dishonest,Quixotic] on the part of scientists (Richard Dawkins being a modern example). It's odd to me that so many scientists are rabidly anti-religious, given that many (if not most) the great strides in thinking were often developed in religions (Western science itself can be seen as having formal origins in religious communities, and the oft-portrayed religious antagonism to science is oft-untrue. Don Quixote approach to argumentation and self-promotion - Perhaps more often than not, argumentation in general and social change in particular are promoted by "creating a monster" (a little fire, far more smoke), attacking and killing it, then making onself out to be the hero. The problem is that the "evil dragon" is usually GOOD [people,systems,organisations], with or without issues, who are dishonestly painted the wrong cover, and who suffer tremendously. The hero, on closer inspection, is a liar and a moron, but most often with good intentions. Lies, damned lies, and scientists (http://www.billhowell.ca/Climate%20-%20Kyoto%20Premise%20fraud/Howell%20150331%20Lies,%20Damned%20Lies,%20and%20Scientists%20-%20Summary%20&%20context.pdf) - My own project, long-term back-burner, to study dysfunctional thinking by scientists. Apart from drawing parallels between science, my own focus is on SPECIFIC, REPEATABLE, PREPETUAL failures of [science, scientists]. Although I do liken science to religion, the basis of the analysis is pure science itself. If "Abigail" is like essentially all [government,academic] scientists, she will NEVER be able to understand failures, becasue she will be COGNITIVELY INCAPABLE of deviating from her "programmed" belief systems. "All theories are wrong, but some are useful" (American geologist in 50's? - probably others going back to the ancients) "... but the most successful theories, which have passed from [fashion -> cult -> religion], ultimately become our greatest impediments to progress, as they stifle thinking, and are fiercely defended by their scientist-disciples, who destroy the personal lives and careers of those who dare challenge the beliefs." (Howell) - To me, there are huge commonalities between modern scientists and traditional religious fanatics (example - jihadists, crusaders, Catholic inquisition - although there are strong reasons for that). Multiple Conflicting Hypothesis - A key them of mine, I had to throw it in somewhere. Perhaps in a film perspective it could be useful - one doesn't always have to have an answer, and may be better without one - questions and multiple conflicting hypothesis may be far more powerful. Post-[rational,logical,scientific] thinking - We take [rational,logical,scientific] thinking as being "the true way", and the "target to strive for] if other people weren't so stupid. It is great (and often provably optimal) for classical problems in [technical,engineering,scientific] areas, and will continue to be a part of more advanced thinking, but it is inadequate for even modestly complex systems, and ignores that other "thinking" processes are essential for [solving real problem, decision-making,beliefs,etc] even when it is applied. Non-[rational,logical,scientific] thinking includes [random or biased search,pattern recognition, .... ????. "Butterflies in the clouds, and the Milancovich wandering of greener pastures and glaciers : Towards a quasi-predictive model of civilisations" : 08Aug07 Mega Life, Mega Death, and the invisible hand of the sun: Towards a quasi-predictive model for the rise and fall of civilisations. This is an update of our document first posted ~05May07, still in early draft, incomplete stage but lots of fun stuff! The underlying theme in "poetry form" is "Butterflies in the clouds, and the Milankovic wandering of greener pastures and glaciers" Forget that little butterfly in Indonesia that destabilized the thinking of a whole generation of scientists merely by flapping its wings :-), and find out about the real "Monster buttlerfly of solar chaos" and other chaotic processes that compliment more regular, predictable astronomical processes. Mythology isn't a myth (David Talbot and others) - https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/ and https://www.facebook.com/groups/mythsarehistory/ Mythologist have really made fools of scientists since at least the 1950's, notably in [physics,astronomy,geology,climate] Creativity and novelty - Systems evolve in [competition,collaboration,other] to a point where [problems,challenges] drive a level of [proficiency or understanding (these are NOT the same!)] such that what appears as [random,statistical,mysterious] to less [evolved,effective] agents becomes [identifiable,model-able,predictable,controllable]. It changes the entire perspective. It changes the QUESTIONS. In your prospectus, "Sarah" undergoes something like this with her "supernatural powers". (Ali Minal, Uof ?Ohio? Cincinnati, INNS Past President) ... out of time Extra-Sensory Perception (or perception via unrecognised perceptual and actioning systems?) I am EXTREMELY weak in this subject area!! Here are a couple that intruiged me (mostly the Paranormal thing) Human Bioelectricity and the EU Model (Eileen McKusick, EU2017) - Electric Universe theory shows us that the Universe we inhabit is electrical in nature. But what about us as humans? Medical science has been entrenched in the chemical/mechanical nature of the human body, yet we too are electrical in nature. In this talk, we will consider research on the bioelectric body and see how that fits in with the EU model. Paranormal (Dean Radin, "Men Who Stare at Photons" at EU2017 conference in Albuquerque) ( http://www.noetic.org/ https://noetic.org/profile/dean-radin)- By its discernment of connectedness within every domain of the physical world and of life itself, the Electric Universe progressively pushes the boundaries between normal and the so-called paranormal. Now it calls for consideration of phenomena that have been rigorously investigated for over a century, along the way developing many of the gold-standard scientific methodologies commonly used today in conventional disciplines. Those phenomena include experiments involving direct interactions between minds, and between minds and matter. Emotions, Decision-Making, human failures, Brain structures Rich Clubs of the Brain (Olaf Sporns) - High degree of short-range connectednes, and more sparse long-range commenctions maximizes complexity of a system. In an IJCNN2013 Dallas Plenary talk, Sporns described ?23? centers of high-connectedness in the brain (mesoscale) and discussed the significance. But what about organisations, societies, multi-agent machine systems ...? Chaos theory as a fundamental principle of brain operation at the meso-scale (Walter Freeman, Robert Kozma, Quian Quiroga, Stuart Kaufmann) - (meso- is between micro (neuron) and macro (brain regions) scales) This is extemely interesting, but I've no time to eloborate at this time. [Rational,logical,scientific] versus [non-rational,non-logical,non-scientific] thinking (Artificial Intelligence) versus (Computational Intelligence), both in contrast to [Emotional, Intuitive] thinking The [big,new,powerful] stuff is CI, not AI. So what about all ouf our current mis-perceptions and basis for [philosophy,problem solving, understanding the failures of how we are doing things]? "Anti-Murphy's Law and Anti-Engineeering" - It seems to me that scientists and engineers work directly with the brain, the normal rules are irrelevant. The brain itself (monkey or man) makes things work. [Astronomical, Astrological] influences on [emotional,physical,mental] human processes Neurotransmitter hypothesis (Kenji Doya) - Dopamine, acetocholine, nor-adrenaline, serotonin . No time to elaborate, but the really fantastic insight (unproven) was the critical role of randomness (serotonin). Reminiscent of Chaos theory as a basis for brain function (above). Parasite-driven behaviour modification - For some time this has been studied in science. With relation to humans, I've long wondered if hyper-sexual activity is a product of this (microbe, bacteria more that parasites, but who knows?). Toolsets of science in the area of Computational Intelligence -
Influencing capabilities, vision, and leadership - The character Sarah is portrayed as a lone, exceptional individual. But ultimately, even exceptional individuals are vastly more powerful when the [found,organise,manage,develop] following and organisation that can attract individuals. I find that Hollywood mostly fails to [understand,portray] leadership in anything but the most [simplistic,mis-leading] ways, even when films about great leaders are produced (eg recent film on Churchill, but modern portrayals of J. Edgar Hoover, General George Patton (which actually did a pretty good job), Margaret Thatcher, etc). Portrayals have far more to do with the unbalanced and, to me, childish political bent of Hollywood than reality. I guess one can say that all perspectives are valid, but when the are almost uniformly one-sided politically, that is a major failure and sickness.
Game theory - AlphaGo beat top Go player (Alphabet Inc (Google) Deep Mind, 2015?) - This is STILL huge news, and surprising. Moreover, apparently that's it for traditional board games, and the focus has turned to competitive, real-time, 2D-or-3D [interactive,competitive,tactical,strategic] video games (I would also unfairly dump military strategy training systems, flight simulator training, etc into this). No time to elaborate .... Reincarnation - see my email to you 19Jun2018 Aging : "We may be the last generation to die" (presenter in early-mid 2000s) - I did a survey on that, but never wrote up the results and comments. Pity. Very interesting potential impacts on [iIndividuals, economics, societies]. This theme may change dramatically, or not? It seems to be a tough biological nut to crack. ********************** Science side - Machine-Robot sub-themes AGAIN : [random,scattered,simple,incomplete] thoughts (some simply copied from a recent "paradigm shift" email to Catherine, and the email to you of 19Jun2018) My own thinking is relatively limited in the direct line of the "Karma", themes, and I naturally migrate or change the subject to familiar-to-me themes, which relate much more to machine intelligence and robots. I don't spend much time on robots per se - just the Computational Intelligence basic tools that are applied to robots. So here it goes, no matter how irrelevant... Machine Consciousness - [human,machine,hybrid,emergent,collective,systemic] (John Taylor's theory based on Paul Werbos' control concept & the brain, as well as psychology) Like Robert Hecht-Nielson's Confabulation Theory above, in spite of HUGE literature on the subject, John Taylors' work (deceased in 2016 or 2017) is the ONLY [specific,quantitative,predictive] model of Consciousness that I know of!!!! Although very interesting, I am NOT so impressed with other concepts I have read through. Who am I? Why am I here? - Defining one's own reason for being is perhaps one of our greatest challenges, done perhaps most often by default "following whichever way the wind blows" (including university program choices?). But this is also a key NECESSITY of advanced systems. I don't think I described this in one of my Social Media reports done while at NRCan (see the point immediately below). Social media and consciousness (Howell paper) Quantitative limits to human memory and cognition, and the implications of [community,machine] ultra-large capacity
Machines versus evolved humans versus symbiotic hybrids - One thing I like is that your proposal is NOT just another sci-fi "... the machines will evolve and destroy us ..." film. On the other had, maybe the reason this is always presented this way is because that is what sells many sci-fi films? Big area and history - no time to elaborate Fight the near-uniformity of "anti-robot racism"! - Evolution - It strikes me when reading your description of the future, that it seems to be going down a somewhat conventional path of thinking on the subject, especially as it relates to films. It is curious, as processes of [biological, computational] evolution are vastly more [creative,powerful] than human thought, and NO ONE describes evolutionary process well. If you wanted to be a bit different and innovative, you could go deeper into the unpredictable nature of evolution, and it shear power (>> human!). Here are some sub-sub-themes on evolution : "Temporal flexibility of evolution and variability of phenotypes depending on functional criticality" (some source or other I've forgotten, embellished by my own extensions and BS). The key point here is that brain function, :
Future effects - trivial deterministic [actions,thoughts] versus giant [creative,powerful,non-predictive] realistic changes Much of Hollywood necessarily focuses on fast changes in a breakthrough [concept,science], but the beauty and richness of time and effort are far more substantial. I think this has created gross misunderstandings in the scientific community, not to mention the public. Lamarckian heredity versus Mendellian heredity - This another really fun subject
Evolving Connectionist Systems (ECOS, Nik Kasabov, Auckland, NZ) - Nik is a giant in the area (Plamen Angelov is the younger leader), but I've no time to explain. Hyper-evolution -
********************** Science side - Genetics and sub-themes While I have spent a significant amount of time looking into this (MindCode, for example), I just haven't been able to keep it up. I am also out of time to work on this email, so I'll leave it to the side for now. Epigenetic switches and childhood [mental,behavioural] dysfunction caused by home environment (Michael Healy, McGillU) - Early stage, how will this progress? Getting back to parenting again.... ??? Are we all damaged? Is damage caused by modern parenting theory? Programmable genetic phages for medical treatments (?Israeli paper ~2002?) - They emphasized on cancer, but the concept is very broad in application potential (if it can be done). It could be [related to,combined with] to the huge problem of getting past the "small-molecule" limitations of medications, because only they can easily get across the membranes. Large molecules could be vastly more powerful, effective, limited in side effects. So how can one deliver macromolecules. "Our objective is to destroy the central dogma of all biology : Genetics" (John Mattick & colleagues, ~2002?) see also MindCode above ... ********************** [Sci-Fi,Psyc] Films that come to mind Sci-Fi - with Some relevance to "Karma" proposal Most films listed below are heavy on the robot side of things. Ready Player One - Easter Egg, gamers (few hot shots, but everybody wants to be one?), love story, evil company, revolt Near the end of the film, a BIG hint : Parcival : "Is Halliday dead?" Halliday : "Yes" Parcival : "Are you an Avatar?" Halliday : "No." Ex Machina - Strong conceptual basis and questions (albeit classical Artificial Intelligence more than modern Computational Intelligence), sexy robot, a bit [stale,tinny,slow] like Kubrick films Galatica (prelude to Battlestar Galactica series, which I've never watched) (no so much Caprica) - Interesting and nicely done Minority Report (Tom Cruise) - "Pre-cludes" [mind,situation,prediction] theme Selfless (Ryan Renolds, ?Ian? Kingsley) - Tycoon takes body of another, but the original mind resurfaces Kill Command - great portrayal of machine evolution (but again anti-robot racism) Player of games (author?) - Sci-fi BOOK (no film yet that I'm aware of). Really interesting perspective on society, game theory, etc Psychic The Sixth Sense - with Bruce Willis. Somewhat distantly related to your theme (on the Sarah side). Mythology/Fantasy These probably shouldn't be listed, but they are great films and the way they were put together may help provoke ideas. Lord of the Rings, Hobbit - Very powerful series for me, having read the books decades ago. Beowulf - Fun for me because of the traditional [teutonic?, viking] mythology base Labyrinth (David Bowie music and acting) - children's film, beatiful music (dance scene) Pathfinder - Viking-in_North-America plus indigenous theme, dark mood but well done Legend of the Naga Pearls - Plot is a bit [crummy simple], but well put together, and with a mythology-style theme. Great Wall (Matt Damon & ?French actor?) - fascinates me, probably because it refers to ancient legends about the wall, and I have no idea if there is any real [myth,legend] for a periodic natural "invasion" from the North (likely herbervoire migrations, rather than carnivore?). However, Mongols on horses, especially if they had vastly superior "breakthrough" war horses, would be easily believable. Kind of a human-animal hybrid of terror. Not so much : - Not related so much to "Karma", but I mention anyways Warcraft - superbly done animation film, great theme action, challenges. but not much [mind,memory] stuff. Predator, Total Recall (Swarzenegger version, but recent is good too) - Something haunting, attractive about them Tales of Riddick (vin Diesel in Crematoria) - Richly done sci-fi film Guardians of the Galaxy - great music, animation, story. Witty and hilarious at the right places. Blade Runner (original and recent) - does deal with robot [equality,rights] Matrix - powerful film! fun Extermination (recent Netflix) - Earth-reclamation invasion by humans against a terrified android population Oblivion (Tom Cruise) - Cloned humans fighting terrorists, unknowingly on behalf of aliens who have already conquered Earth Dune - The film itself is a bit tinny, but the book had really fired up the imagination. I have a DVD I am Legend (Will Smith) - Plague story nicely done, with zombie [learning,evolution,leadership] iRobot (Will Smith) - not warm to Asimov's 3 principals, but film well done. I don't put it under "sci-fi with relevance to Karma" as I don't see it that way. Loopers (Bruce Willis, ???) - Time travel, love story Code ?47?, Max Headroom - just the yapping head, not the film itself Dislike : [Marvel,DC] comic book stuff - but they almost all dominate now Sci-fi horror (eg ??) - You know me, (I think I stated this elsewhere), - I'm the worst guy to go to a horror film as I usually hate them. Given the [stupid,cowardly,myopic] characters, I usually end up cheering for the monster... Chick Flicks ********************** Small editorial things - that caught me on first reading Random, scattered, incorrect comments - normally you addressed the points below at a later stage of the document. Initially, it seemed to me that there was a contradiction : p3h0.65 statement "... Their paths cross when the scientist’s brilliant brother falls into a mysterious coma. ..." p6h0.65 contradiction "... Soon after, however, he falls into a mysterious coma. ..." However, on closer look there is no contradiction, it just seemed like that because both twins are neuroscientists, and I mixed up roles. p3h0.75 change to "... an equally terrifying and beautiful world and, ..." p7h0.7 currently "... Abigail contacts Sarah, a schizophrenic psychic healer who can travel to past lives, ..." Is Sarah a schizophrenic psychic healer, or a psychic healer of schizophrenics? The first case, as written, is probably more interesting. p8h1.0 answers this : "... maybe this journey will be the key to uncovering the foreign voice in her head... ..." p14h0.9 also "... These hyper-realistic journeys trigger her schizophrenia to new levels, ..." A BIG question for me, is how will you [interpret,portray,use] schizophrenia in the series. The diversity of ideas is huge, even if convention says otherwise. Question : Do you really intend "paranoid schizophrenia", or psychopathic paranoid schizophrenia? p15h0.8 answers "... Despite her new found success, it hasn't always been easy for Sarah. She was diagnosed schizophrenic and suicidal at a young age and put in and out of institutions. Today, she is still afflicted by this voice, the one she has always heard. ..." p8h0.55 "... all the while trying to level their mistrust in one another. ..." A bit [cloudy,ambiguous], but perhaps that is intended. The reader's initial assumption is that they started with trust (Abigail hired Sarah), but perhaps intervening scenes will develop suspicions. p8h0.7 "... which she now sees as an opportunity to author and overpower her brother. ..." What do you mean by "author" - she already "authors" as a neuro-scientist. Perhaps what you mean is to be seen as the [originator,inventor] of the concept, and the one who made it work and displace earlier scientific ideas? Presumably it's too early for Abigail to know her brother is "doing things" while in a comma? One does not have to "overpower" someone in a comma! p16h0.7 "... hunger for celebrity as her twin brother ..." p18h0.9 "... manipulate the arrow of time and tap into memories that stretch far before this life... and future ones? ..." I would change the last part which to me is awkward - maybe somethin like "... and after it into future lives? ..." p19h0.95 Owen's character profile : "... His secret is that he he knows about Vincent's experimental research, and will use it to succeed... at all cost. ..." You have almost no choice in how you portray business leaders, as this sad commentary is the overwhelming "knowledge" of our whole society, and Hollywood in particular. It is also one of the greatest failures of Western thinking, especially while combined with the "[money,greed] is the basis of all evil". A look at the greatest evils says almost the opposite. p20 - -------- Forwarded Message --------
Ouch! I started on this after your 23Jul2018 phone call, jotted down brain-farts, got buried in my physics project till 04Aug, jotted more paradigms, got into www.ijcnn.org work for a week or so, and got back to paradigms today. This email started to become a monster in spite of not having all ideas that popped to mind. There are a huge number of great paradigm shifts and revolutionary thoughts. However, I find these percolate to the surface only slowly as I try to remember, and only rarely do I remember those that struck me several decades ago. The first problem is to define "paradigm shift", as I'm sure that Thomas Kuhn's definition has been [expanded, contorted] over the years (see my comment towards the end below, that I strangely avoid formal reading of Khun). Perhaps a safe, conservative definition would be restricted to abrupt changes to the overwhelming, mainstream science beliefs (theories, concepts). But that conflicts much broader popular usage today. And to me, the paradigmatic problems in scientific thinking are no different than we see across [societies,history,subjects]. I prefer at this stage to include :
Unrecognized paradigm shifts are as bad as unanticipated paradigm shifts - very hard to deal with. And, by the way, if you cherish and follow popular paradigms, then you aren't a paradigmatic thinker, you're a follower. Make your own paradigms. Anyways, I had better stop here for now. In any case, there is no way to make the lists or explanations complete within a "practically finite" amount of time. Dad ******************* Paradigm Shift examples - [past,present,future] Self-development, self-image
("cart" is the Cartesian array operator than each element from each array)
Family
Health, Food, Environment
We are still improving hospital hygiene. But this really raises the question of other health cahllenges - which are hindered by "what we know" today? What about real causes for cancer, mental illness, etc, etc, and while work has been pursued frenetically in the areas of [genetics,epigentics], how is this hindered by current scientific religions? Energy, Materials
Management, Jobs, Markets
History, War, Politics
Religion, Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Mathematics
"... The field of Artificial Intelligence, or AI, attempts to build intelligence systems on the basis of more familiar rule-based operations and symbolism. I like to say that it tries to attain machine intelligence by mimicking human [rational, logical, and scientific] reasoning. It's best successes were probably expert systems and case-based reasoning, but these proved to be unable to tackle tougher challenges. Nobody's getting this message from the current hype, nor its implications for Western philosophy. ********************** Precedents & Beyond paradigms Thomas Khun "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" One cannot avoid constant reference to, and quotations from, Khun given my interst if the failures of scientific thinking. And I've long been convinced that it is folly to NOT read the original work, and to only rely on the oft-rubbish interpretations of others. In spite of that, for years I've intentionally avoided reading Khun. The reason is that it is important for me to develop my own thinking as independently as possible. At least two important outcomes are : Malcolm Gladwell's "Tipping Point" Gladwell's books are interesting to me, initially because he created hype and fashion from ancient ideas with new terminology (how? and why are people so excited), and then as I read some interesting substance in his "Tiiping Point", that none who I talked to retained from his book. There's a message there, and not just the normal politically-correct message. It's like the phrase "paradigm"... Lucio Russo "How science began in 300BC, and why it had to be reinvented" Most ancient science was lost, and I assume the same for their paradigms!!! Do we really have many new, significant paradigms, that one could have learned from the ancients? Even in science on must be careful. For example, Signmund Freud clearly credited some of his key ideas to the ancient Greeks. Were these really ancients Greek ideas, or did they merely transcribe even more ancient sources? Illustrative paradigmatic fiascos of modern science : "The bigger they are, the harder they fall"
What was the fraud : the science or our scientist-reactionaries?
Karl Popper - falsifiable hypothesis. Lazy and out of time, I'll just quote : "... Popper’s early work attempts to solve the problem of demarcation and offer a clear criterion that distinguishes scientific theories from metaphysical or mythological claims. Popper’s falsificationist methodology holds that scientific theories are characterized by entailing predictions that future observations might reveal to be false. When theories are falsified by such observations, scientists can respond by revising the theory, or by rejecting the theory in favor of a rival or by maintaining the theory as is and changing an auxiliary hypothesis. In either case, however, this process must aim at the production of new, falsifiable predictions ..." https://www.iep.utm.edu/pop-sci/ Sir William of Occam - "Occam's razor" or "Keep it simple, stupid" (KISS) Tomas Aquino, "A good question is worth a thousand good answers" - although these can get you [unemployed,outcast,killed]. **************************************************************** http://www.billhowell.ca/Howell%20-%20videos.html
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