Comments for Lifeboat News: The Blog

Comment on Top AI Scientist Unifies Wolfram, Leibniz, & Consciousness | William Hahn by Grant Castillou

Grant Castillou — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 18:58:24 +0000

It’s becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman’s Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with only primary consciousness will probably have to come first.

What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990’s and 2000’s. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I’ve encountered is anywhere near as convincing.

I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there’s lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.

My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar’s lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman’s roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461

Comment on Quantum Entanglement and the Connected Mind: Unraveling the Neural Web by Lance

Lance — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 03:18:00 +0000

I prefer my thoughts staying inside my skull, but there sure is a lot of talk about the technology to access peoples thoughts using BCI’s implanted or placed on a persons skull. Imagine how people’s minds could be hacked!

Comment on What a wonderful thing to be enhanced in mind and body by Lance

Lance — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 02:57:12 +0000

You go ahead, I’ll not be participating in your profane activities.

Comment on Sam Altman “MILLIONS of Software Engineering Agents” and “AGI in sight” by Lance

Lance — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 19:05:43 +0000

Watched your report as usual. I don't agree with what is going on due to the invasion and takeover of body and mind using all the innovative highly advanced technologies associated with AI and its agents. Have watched some of the video's that have been created using various "models" and a majority of them are insanely weird, dark, ominous, and even demonic. Nothing good about this. That's the way I see it.

Comment on Scientists Found The Driving Force Behind Your Darkest Impulses by Costillo

Costillo — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 11:49:34 +0000

This could also help explain sexual fetishes. Like how some people like being cuffed or tied up (BDSM), wearing diapers and possibly pretending to be babies and toddlers (Adult Baby Diaper Lovers and regressive age play), etc.

Comment on Strange Worlds, Even Stranger Life: How Life Might Evolve on Distant Exoplanets by Aristocratic Jack

Aristocratic Jack — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 11:16:05 +0000

Certain environmental factors would work together to determine what forms complex organisms would take on an exoplanet or moon. On a high gravity world, the standard animal body plan could call for six limbs rather than the four limbs that are standard on Earth, and or the legs might be thicker (think the legs of elephants and rhinos). Alternatively, the majority of animals could be serpentine, with no legs at all because slithering could be an easier form of locomotive than walking. The high gravity could place a hard limit (or at least a delay) on.how advanced an extraterrestrial race evolving on such a planet could get in terms of technology, like for instance, space travel might be almost impossible for those beings, meaning no satellite communication or any of the other technologies edged on by space exploration.

On a tidally-locked “eyeball earth”, creatures that spend the majority of their time if not all their time on the permanent night side of the planet could have eyes that see in infrared or some other part of the non-visible light spectrum. Even those living on the permanent starlit side of the planet might have partial infrared vision, as habitable tidally locked planets would orbit faintest of red dwarves. Plants on such a world wouldn’t be green, they’d likely be dark purple, dark blue or even black to absorb all the sunlight they can.

And all this is but the beginning.

Comment on NASA and General Atomics test nuclear fuel for future moon and Mars missions by Aristocratic Jack

Aristocratic Jack — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 10:51:46 +0000

This is very reminiscent of Project Orion that promised nuclear powered launches before the advent of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

Comment on Researchers Discover Simple Solution To Break Down “Forever” Chemicals by Aristocratic Jack

Aristocratic Jack — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 10:47:39 +0000

We’re not giving up single use plastics anytime soon, so we’d better figure out ways to recycle it and break it down. The continent sized Pacific Garbage Patch is an embarrassment to the entire species!

Comment on Breakthrough in Physics : Top Quarks Created for the First Time at CERN by Costillo

Costillo — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 10:43:58 +0000

This is bound to provoke paradoxes.According to the laws of physics as we currently know them, reverse time travel violates causality.

Comment on Several Psychiatric Disorders Share The Same Root Cause, Study Reveals by Aristocratic Jack

Aristocratic Jack — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 10:37:09 +0000

Whatever the cause s of mental illness, society as a whole is highly ill equipped to deal with it. Especially in the United States of America, mental health crises are almost always a police matter. The mentally ill commonly commit petty crimes like disorderly conduct and petit shoplifting (behaviors that tend to be symptoms that are manifestations of certain mental disorders, especially the behaviours that are
covered under the laws against disorderly conduct) and thus often end up in the revolving door that is the Prison Industrial Complex, as county and state correctional institutions have replaced psychiatric hospitals for the most part. While residential mentalhealth institutions still exist, treatment in certain countries is priced so high that it’s typically only availible to the wealthy or those with.extremely generous insurance plans.We clearly need to do better.