| March & April |
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| 04-26-02 I think the site's been up for about a year now, it's actually a bit depressing. Speaking of a year....Around this time last year, I was experiencing or starting to experience some of the best moments of my life. I think they're still around here somewhere, I don't know. It's frustrating how I can only recall an understanding/idea of an emotion and not the emotion itself. It's not that I'm not content, rather that I am and wish I wasn't. This christmas koala (phascolarctos sinerus, I just learned that) is a bit scary. I found out that sometimes the text gets all bunched together, so from now on I'm just going to use one big text box instead of a bunch of small ones, maybe that'll fix it. Today's first question is from Ian. Ian asks "What is it that fundamentally makes humans different from AI-not being organic or such, but what quallity keeps AI just out of reach?" I don't see what the point of creating AI is. That's not your question though. First, lets try to understand what it is we're trying to recreate. What's your idea of intellifence? Is a duck intelligent, a hamster, an ant, an amoeba? I think of intelligence as being able to truthfuly and independantly think "I wonder what would happen if.......". So, what's responsible for intelligence? Not sure, perhaps its an emergent property of the complexity of our neuron arrangement. I don't know what quality keeps AI out of reach, but I think it's the fact that nobody's sure what the hell they're supposed to be designing. I say, randomly throw circuits and chips together with some simple method for them to rearrange themselves, or do a computer simulation of the preceeding, and hope that it eventually developes intelligence. There's also the additional problem of whether or not we will/can tell the difference between a program that truly is intelligent versus a program that has been programmed to act as though it were. Also, for all I know, my pen could be intelligent, yet it has no way of telling me and I have no way of finding out. Here's a link to an article I recently read, I think it might be of some relevance to your question: http://www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org/think/article.php?num=2 Ok, the next question is from Mark. "Hey smart guy, I was working hard at the office today doing a search on the lyrics "I hear the call and I will answer it" because I don't know the name of the band who does that song, and your website came up. I'm hoping since you made the reference, you know the band. The funny thing is (or maybe it's not funny at all) the band who sings "I hear the call" sounds a lot like The Call. Ok thanks. Mark." [he also included quote from the April2001 page where I mentioned te lyrics] This is one of my favorite questions asked so far. The band is The Unforgiven. If you'd like, I might be able to get you the autograph of one of their guitarists. Ok, next question is from Jesse. "Can you imagine something if you have absolutly no prior knowledge of anything like it existing, and can you know something with out first imagining it" You sure can. People imagine things of whose existence they have no prior knowledge quite frequently; that's how inventors invent or painters paint or sci.fi. movie writers create alien characters.. As for the second part; I know that France borderes Spain or that the lead singer of the band Television is named Tom Verlaine, and I didn't imagine either of these things ahead of time. Thanks for the question. And the last one for today is courtesy from Bethanie Reynolds. "I was searching yahoo for migraine and i didnt quite know how to spell it so I came upon your site. Very snazzy. Anyway, I thought of a question. Why do things that are seemingly putrid become very popular? Crappy music, crappy food, crappy this, crappy that, crap crap crap crap crap pervades the masses because of its inexplicable ability to be popular. Goodness, why can't nice things be popular. Kudos on the website, it looks absolutely marvelous, no website is quite as magnificently fabulous as yours, darling. Splendid, just splendid. -Bethanie Reynolds Mosquero, New Mexico" Well, a bucket of thanks for your compliments. This reminds me (I'm not sure why) of an old, not-too-funny joke. A girl was complaining to her friend about one of her classes, and she said "These people are so stupid, I mean about half of them scored below the median on our last exam.". Lets look at music; I just checked the billboard website, and the top five albums at the moment are one by Ashanti, one by Celine Dion, one by Sheryl Crow, "Now 9", and the "Scorpion King Soundtrack". Ok, you're right, crap is popular. I was hoping some good bands would be on top so that I wouldn't have to answer your question, but no such luck. I think the deal here is that kids have questionable taste and are highly impressionable, yet they buy most of the CDs or movie tickets out there. CDs are relatively cheap, as are movie tickets (when compared to, say, cars or even video games). So, if a kid (someone under 16) gets some money, chances are he'll buy a CD 1. because maybe that's all he can afford to buy, and 2. most other stuff is provided for by their parents. Adults, on the other hand, while also of quesitonable taste, are less impresisonable. Also, by the time you're older, you either don't have enough time to keep up with new music, or already have a certain number of bands you like and don't really care about finding new ones. Plus, music becomes a less important part of your life, since you actually have one now. So, basically, as far as music and movies are concerned, kids get to decide what's popular, and they usually decide on crap. You also mentioned food, which I don't really understand. When you say popular food, do you mean pizza or something? If so, I like pizza, so if pizza is crap, then I contribute to its infestation of society. Then there's TV. Ok, the goal of the tv companies is to make money. How do they make money, by selling ir time for advertising. When will an advertiser pay the big bucks? When it knows that it's getting its desired audience, and a large one at that. So, the job of TV is to attract said target audience, and TV shows are designed with that purpose in mind. Now, who is this target audience? Well, lets return to the advertising. What kind of audience does an advertiser want? People who are easily impressionable, people who don't think that much/hard (so they'll buy something because the commercial looked nice or a celebrity told them to), and so forth. So, what kind of programming is most likely to attract such people? Well, probably not a screening of the best of Chekhov or Behing the Mathematics etc. So, they basically make crappy shows with a 'lowest common denominator' that will attract a lot of the people the advertisers are after. Actually, again I'm part of the "problem", since I love junk TV (or any type of TV). So, the reason that 'nice' things aren't popular is because 'half the class is below the median'. It's just the way it is, bell curve and all. Just sit back and try to enjoy it, at least. Well, that's it for today, be happy. |
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