News — At The Edge — 7/8

This week there are four articles.

The thought-provoking article points to the emergence of artificial intelligence as independent of our human centered ideas about intelligence. If so, claims saying we do not know how to create an artificial intelligence smarter than us are dead wrong.

There are two interesting science articles about new developments — spray-on-battery technology and genetic vaccines as an alternative to existing ones.

Finally, an article that speaks to the reality of American exceptionalism rather than the misleading myths we delude ourselves with and like to sell.

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Thought Provoking Issue –

Substrate-Independence -

“[Seems] waves, computations and conscious experiences… all share an intriguing ability to take on a life of their own that’s rather independent of their physical substrate….

Alan Turing famously proved that computations are substrate-independent…[and] implies that artificial intelligence…doesn’t require flesh, blood or carbon atoms. This example illustrates three important points.

1. substrate-independence doesn’t mean that a substrate is unnecessary, but that most details of it don’t matter….
2. the substrate-independent phenomenon takes on a life of its own, independent of its substrate….
3. it’s often only the substrate-independent aspect that we’re interested in….

[We’ve] wondered how tangible physical stuff such as flesh and blood can give rise to something that feels as intangible, abstract and ethereal as intelligence and consciousness. We’ve now arrived at the answer: these phenomena feel so non-physical because they’re substrate-independent, taking on a life of their own that doesn’t depend on or reflect the physical details….

But what about consciousness [as]…’subjective experience’?….[Appears] consciousness is the way information feels when being processed in certain complex ways.

This leads to a radical idea….If consciousness is the way that information feels when it’s processed in certain ways, then it must be substrate-independent; it’s only the structure of the information processing that matters, not the structure of the matter doing the information processing. In other words, consciousness is substrate-independent twice over!….

If the information processing itself obeys certain principles, it can give rise to the higher level substrate-independent phenomenon that we call consciousness. This places your conscious experience not one but two levels up from the matter. No wonder your mind feels non-physical!

We don’t yet know what principles information processing needs to obey to be conscious, but concrete proposals have been made…to test experimentally….[Thus] we should reject carbon-chauvinism and the common view that our intelligent machines will always be our unconscious slaves.

Computation, intelligence and consciousness are patterns in the space-time arrangement of particles that take on a life of their own, and it’s not the particles but the patterns that really matter! Matter doesn’t matter.” https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27126

Technology & Medical Issues –

Spray them, fly them, shoot them — batteries are about to get wonderfully weird -

“[Imagine] you could turn anything into a battery, just by spraying it…graffiti style to…your clothes, your car, even an airplane…[and] was also washing-machine-proof and flame-proof — even bullet proof….

[Researchers] managed to take the elements of a lithium-ion battery — electrodes, metal, polymer — and turn them into sprayable liquids…[and] airbrushed the batteries onto various surfaces, layer by layer, and successfully transformed them into viable energy sources. ‘All you need is two connectors and you’re plugged in’….

The implications are immense…[in] healthcare, for instance…with wearable monitors and biometric patches…military applications…that can withstand gunfire…[and] flame-proof polymer batteries….

There’s also the ‘structural’ battery, a material so mechanically strong it could be put to use as a car part or airplane wing. Planes could fly longer without refueling, electric cars could go farther without needing to recharge….[All] within the next five years.” https://medium.com/world-economic-forum/spray-them-fly-them-shoot-them-batteries-are-about-to-get-wonderfully-weird-b1e31a393688

Genomic Vaccines Fight Disease in Ways Not Possible Before -

“Standard vaccines to prevent infectious diseases [and cancer] consist of killed or weakened pathogens or proteins from those microorganisms…[but] new kind of vaccine…consists of genes…[and] offer many advantages, including fast manufacture when a virus…suddenly becomes more virulent or widespread [with]…[dozens] now entered clinical trials.

Most vaccines work by teaching the immune system to recognize a foe…[with] bits of protein, called antigens, on the surface of the pathogen are foreign and prepares to pounce the next time it encounters them….

Genomic vaccines take the form of DNA or RNA that encodes desired proteins. On injection, the genes enter cells, which then churn out the selected proteins. Compared with manufacturing proteins…producing the genetic material should be simpler and less expensive.

Further, a single vaccine can include the coding sequences for multiple proteins, and it can be changed readily if a pathogen mutates or properties need to be added. Public health experts, for instance, revise the flu vaccine annually, but sometimes the vaccine they choose does not match the viral strains that circulate when flu season comes. In the future…[could] produce a better-matched vaccine in weeks.

Genomics also enables a new twist on a vaccination approach known as passive immune transfer, in which antibodies are delivered instead of antigens…that will induce a person’s cells to produce those antibodies….

[Tests] under way, including for avian influenza, Ebola, hepatitis C, HIV, and breast, lung, prostate, pancreatic and other cancers….Oral delivery…is not likely to be feasible anytime soon, but nasal administration is being studied as an alternative and is under study.” https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/genomic-vaccines/

Political Issue –

The Making of a Non-Patriot -

“[Starts with]

• patriotic symbols…flag, the president, the military…[and] triumphal progress of the nation’s history…
• [Claims] Vietnam as a…vindication of our democracy…
• [Has] reverence for the Declaration of Independence [suppressing]…chilling description of…the merciless Indian [attacks]…[and] how Oklahoma went from ‘Indian Territory’…[to] 46th state in 1907, owing to the discovery of vast petroleum deposits….
• [Next] Transcontinental Railway, completed in 1869…[with] 30,000 Chinese ‘coolies’ who actually built the western half…[then] denied citizenship by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882…
• [Woodrow] Wilson endorsed D.W. Griffith’s ‘The Birth of a Nation’ with a White House screening that personally invited…Ku Klux Klan back into American life…[and] re-segregated the federal Civil Service…to abide by ‘separate and equal’….
• [F.D.R.’s] administration excluded African-Americans from the two most important progressive victories of the New Deal — Social Security and the Wagner Act, the latter of which protected unionization from strikebreakers…[so] ‘ Domestics’ were excluded from Social Security for the next 20 years. Along with agricultural workers….
• Earl Warren who demanded the Supreme Court endorse concentration camps for Japanese-American citizens in the Korematsu decision of 1944, never overturned to this day…[and] let Southern state governments off the hook with the requirement that desegregation be completed ‘with all deliberate speed’….
• After extolling for years the genius of the United States Constitution, begin to point out the impediments to democratic government that it has imposed upon the American nation itself, and…soiled with the stain of slavery…[and] as an inexact copy of George III’s regime…[so] the only way the country could have abolished slavery was by a civil war that took a million lives….Every other nation…managed to abolish slavery without a war…
• [How] constitution intentionally designed, as the Federalist Papers reveal, to make effective government difficult…[and] condemned the nation to a Senate in which 10 percent of the population of his country controls 40 percent of seats…[as] Madison designed the Senate to do: ‘protect the minority of the opulent against the majority’….
• [How] the Constitution explicitly made the equal representation of each state uniquely unamendable…[so] one citizen of Wyoming has about 65 times the representation in the Senate as every Californian…
• [How] in 1824 and 1876, the popular vote for president was thwarted by the…Electoral College…[and] in two of the first five elections of the 21st century….
• [Finally] appreciate why all fully developed nations have given up on the American Constitution as model…[and] long ago revealed its defects, anachronisms, hostility to democracy and unsuitability to life after the 18th century….

Every nation bears the healed scars and the still-open wounds of its history….American exceptionalism is at best an innocent mistake that uninformed patriotism makes difficult to surrender.” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/03/opinion/the-making-of-a-non-patriot.html?ref=opinion

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Doc Huston