14 hours ago: I think there are tow aspects of maturity, first the ability to understand reality quickly and accurately, and secondly the ability to use that understanding to act responsibly regardless of the circumstances. Becoming mature is a process of trail and error (experience), you can't become a mature driver if you never drove a car, so that's it: observation, prediction, action, self-evaluation, learning, that process is what leads you to maturity.
17 hours ago: The concept of "evolutionary mistake" can't exist, evolutionary mistakes cannot happen simply because evolution has no goal at all, and without a goal the whole concept of mistake just disappears. We humans make mistakes because we have goals otherwise even the dumbest behavior wouldn't qualify as a mistake.
Eradicate richness has already been tried with no positive results, remember the USSR?... private property and richness was officially forbidden, but yet the leaders of the communist party were wealthy enough to live like millionaires, while the rest of the people lived in even more poverty than poor people in the western hemisphere.
1 day ago: Does life destroy us? yes, it does, we die to avoid competing with our children. Does evolution destroys us? yes, it does, the evolution process implies that some species have to disappear in order to allow others to flourish.
In the context of you question, evolution requires isolation and no human group is isolated anymore, migration and race mixing is taking human evolution to an stop, so unless a major disaster occurs (natural or otherwise) I see natural human evolution coming to a full stop within the next century or two, so it is more likely that human evolution will be controlled by us, but in therms strictly biological can we really call that evolution?
I find hard to believe humans will ever create computers or robots that surpass us intellectually in the near future, in any case it sounds more reasonable and sensible to blend with them, but I don't think that can be classified as evolution as we know it.
1 day ago: First of all, intelligence is the ability to solve problems, the harder the problems you can solve the more intelligent you are.
Secondly, intelligence alone is not enough to be aware, conscious or moral. Awareness is the ability to explain either internal o external facts, so in order to be aware you need senses or sensors to detect whats going on outside, and an associative memory to record what happens both inside and outside your mind in order to be able to link causes with effects, and that way be able to explain your actions.
Thirdly, awareness alone is not enough to have a proper understanding of good and evil. Consciousness is the ability to foresee or predict the consequences of your acts, so if you are intelligent and aware you just need a "prediction engine" and lots of trail an error tests (experience) in order to become conscious. If you reach the point in which you can predict with some accuracy the consequences of you actions then you can also understand concepts like: good, bad, responsibility, etc.
Finally, morality is the ability to tell what's right and what's wrong. The problem here is that the most obvious way to define morality is in therms of survival, but since you are a conscious being, who's survival is more valuable? yours of course. Morality comes in two levels, personal and collective, at the personal level your morality aims to preserve your life, health and property, at the collective level your morality aims to avoid conflicts with the people you like. I don't see a functional reason why this should be different in an artificial being, since as far as I can understand, consciousness is tightly linked to survival, so you can not suppress the desire of survival without suppressing consciousness.
If you take a close look at the Asimov's rules you would realize it is all about survival, but again the problem is that if you are conscious, then there is nothing to prevent you from questioning you own morality and even changing it.
3 days ago: Sorry if I'm misunderstanding something, but from my perspective you seem to contradict yourself.
First you say science cannot proof God's existence, which is absolutely true and of course I do fully agree. The definitions of God and science are mutually exclusionary, therefore it is impossible to proof God's existence or non existence by scientific methods. Until this point I have no problem, however then you start an argument in which you seem to try to convince your opponents you point of view is "scientifically valid", which of course sounds contradictory. I must say that I do respect your believes and your point of view and of course I would never dare to question whatever proof you have of God's existence, unless you claim (or imply) it is a scientific proof.
3 days ago: I think you question is somehow tricky, seems like you are accounting time in a rather unusual way, so I hope not to give you a naive answer.
We all know one plus one equals two, that is present time and as far as there is written records it always has been that way, and even if we push time far back into the very big bang moment, 1+1 still yields 2, the same if we go forward in time to the end of the universe, 1+1 will still be 2. This is something you cannot bend or twist, it is perhaps the most fundamental law of both mathematics and nature, you may change the name or the graphic representation of the numbers 1 and 2, but the concepts of 1 and 2 will remain unchanged, therefore 1+1 always was, is and will be 2, so anything that contradicts this, is, was and will always be impossible.
5 days ago: Great leaders don't grow on planters, never had. In my opinion the amount of the so called "great leaders" per million people has been almost constant throughout history, of course I am only guessing here, but I think it is a very reasonable assumption to make, so I think the problem is not in the quantity but in the times, we are living times in which things evolve too fast, and whether we realize it or not, leadership is a very competed area where leaders become obsolete too soon, not because of themselves but because newer generations demand immediate satisfaction and when they don't get it, they shift sides too easy.
5 days ago: We agree the key point in this whole issue is to make the transmission of knowledge affordable, in terms of monetary cost but also in therms of practicality. Both the printed book and the tablets have an inherent cost which has to be paid, however an interesting exercise would be to research the average price of a printed page where you want your project to be delivered, that would give you at least a rough idea of what way is the most likely to go. I certainly can see a higher educational value on interactive content, but I can't give you a way to measure it, perhaps comparative data on how effective it is interactive contents compared with printed contents is already available, and if it is I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to find an equation that could give you an idea of the value of each dollar invested on printed contents compared with interactive contents, that would put you on the right track, I think. On the other hand, the "one laptop per child" project is not a new, so I think there's already a mass production platform which may be taken as the base to build really inexpensive electronic books, in which you could plug in a (also inexpensive) USB memory loaded with the desired contents.
As for the electricity I don't think of that as a major problem, remember William Kamkuamba?... also the other day I saw a TED talk in which someone made a hydroelectric turbine that has enough power to charge all the cellular phones of a community with just a 19 liters bucket and a Toyota alternator (Sorry I can't give you the exact reference, some time has passed and I just recall parts of it)... So electricity is not a constraint, there are hundreds of interesting homemade wind projects to generate electricity inexpensively in YouTube.
May be your project, if delivered electronically should include a "build your own wind turbine" tutorial, perhaps in a 2 or 3 pages printed instructive.
Jun 11 2013: I do appreciate you remark, I will take that into account for any further discussion, however you forgot to rephrase my idea in the proper therms. Since you are meaning correcting me, I think to rephrase my idea with the correct words it is the polite thing to do in these cases.
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A comment on Conversation: Would you share your definition of maturity and the processes to become mature?
A comment on Conversation: Evolutionary Mistakes, Human Predicament and Reverse Approach to Global Challenges
Eradicate richness has already been tried with no positive results, remember the USSR?... private property and richness was officially forbidden, but yet the leaders of the communist party were wealthy enough to live like millionaires, while the rest of the people lived in even more poverty than poor people in the western hemisphere.
A comment on Conversation: Does evolution destroy us?
In the context of you question, evolution requires isolation and no human group is isolated anymore, migration and race mixing is taking human evolution to an stop, so unless a major disaster occurs (natural or otherwise) I see natural human evolution coming to a full stop within the next century or two, so it is more likely that human evolution will be controlled by us, but in therms strictly biological can we really call that evolution?
I find hard to believe humans will ever create computers or robots that surpass us intellectually in the near future, in any case it sounds more reasonable and sensible to blend with them, but I don't think that can be classified as evolution as we know it.
A comment on Conversation: What is "intelligence?"
Secondly, intelligence alone is not enough to be aware, conscious or moral. Awareness is the ability to explain either internal o external facts, so in order to be aware you need senses or sensors to detect whats going on outside, and an associative memory to record what happens both inside and outside your mind in order to be able to link causes with effects, and that way be able to explain your actions.
Thirdly, awareness alone is not enough to have a proper understanding of good and evil. Consciousness is the ability to foresee or predict the consequences of your acts, so if you are intelligent and aware you just need a "prediction engine" and lots of trail an error tests (experience) in order to become conscious. If you reach the point in which you can predict with some accuracy the consequences of you actions then you can also understand concepts like: good, bad, responsibility, etc.
Finally, morality is the ability to tell what's right and what's wrong. The problem here is that the most obvious way to define morality is in therms of survival, but since you are a conscious being, who's survival is more valuable? yours of course. Morality comes in two levels, personal and collective, at the personal level your morality aims to preserve your life, health and property, at the collective level your morality aims to avoid conflicts with the people you like. I don't see a functional reason why this should be different in an artificial being, since as far as I can understand, consciousness is tightly linked to survival, so you can not suppress the desire of survival without suppressing consciousness.
If you take a close look at the Asimov's rules you would realize it is all about survival, but again the problem is that if you are conscious, then there is nothing to prevent you from questioning you own morality and even changing it.
A reply on Conversation: The Existence of God
A reply on Conversation: The Existence of God
First you say science cannot proof God's existence, which is absolutely true and of course I do fully agree. The definitions of God and science are mutually exclusionary, therefore it is impossible to proof God's existence or non existence by scientific methods. Until this point I have no problem, however then you start an argument in which you seem to try to convince your opponents you point of view is "scientifically valid", which of course sounds contradictory. I must say that I do respect your believes and your point of view and of course I would never dare to question whatever proof you have of God's existence, unless you claim (or imply) it is a scientific proof.
A comment on Conversation: A deceptively simple question: What is, was, and will always be impossible to occur?
We all know one plus one equals two, that is present time and as far as there is written records it always has been that way, and even if we push time far back into the very big bang moment, 1+1 still yields 2, the same if we go forward in time to the end of the universe, 1+1 will still be 2. This is something you cannot bend or twist, it is perhaps the most fundamental law of both mathematics and nature, you may change the name or the graphic representation of the numbers 1 and 2, but the concepts of 1 and 2 will remain unchanged, therefore 1+1 always was, is and will be 2, so anything that contradicts this, is, was and will always be impossible.
A comment on Conversation: Why is there a shortage of great leaders in the world today?
A reply on Conversation: Use the internet to create a school in a box and have it printed in high volume by the nearest newspaper or paperback publisher.
As for the electricity I don't think of that as a major problem, remember William Kamkuamba?... also the other day I saw a TED talk in which someone made a hydroelectric turbine that has enough power to charge all the cellular phones of a community with just a 19 liters bucket and a Toyota alternator (Sorry I can't give you the exact reference, some time has passed and I just recall parts of it)... So electricity is not a constraint, there are hundreds of interesting homemade wind projects to generate electricity inexpensively in YouTube.
May be your project, if delivered electronically should include a "build your own wind turbine" tutorial, perhaps in a 2 or 3 pages printed instructive.
A reply on Conversation: How likely is it that DNA was created by nature?