Cartoon Time.

Just Finished Reading: Darwin Among the Machines by George Dyson

Charting the early development of Machine Intelligence this quite fascinating and well written book was my bedside reading for most of the summer. Dyson surprising traces back the philosophical origins of Artificial Intelligence to the 17^th Century with the publication of Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes. I must admit that when I read a few bits of Hobbes last year I was rather taken aback by the mention of thinking machines – and had actually assumed Hobbes was using metaphor to describe something quite different. Following on from Hobbes, Dyson intrigued me further by discussing the 19^th Century publication of Erewhon by Samuel Butler which talked of the dangers inherent in AI. The bulk of the book however concentrated on the post World War Two drive to produce computer systems for defence in a Nuclear Age and had the figure of John Von Neumann striding through that period like the Colossus that he was. As you can imagine from the prominent mention of the great biologist Charles Darwin in the title the evolution of both the hardware and software of present and future machines is the central focus of this work. The author draws on biological examples of increasing complexity and increasing intelligence as a way to understand technological progress with the production of both Artificial Life and Artificial Intelligence.

Of course AI has been promised as ‘just around the corner’ for sometime now yet we seem to be as far away from its realisation as ever. Machines are certainly ‘smarter’ today than ever before but I doubt if most people would regard them as exhibiting even the most basic intelligent behaviour. I think that this is because we have yet to understand the nature of intelligence itself. Without that basic understanding I think it will be very difficult indeed to create an artificial facsimile of it. Of course once we do understand how intelligent minds actually work I believe that the leap to fully functioning AI will be very rapid indeed. Whether that would be a good or a bad thing I’m still not sure. AI holds a great deal of promise but I also think that it holds some seriously dangerous threats too. Inevitably the military across the globe see AI as a future weapon – a force multiplier that needs no food, no sleep and no psychological counselling after combat. Designed in the right way AI’s could be the perfect killing machines. What is less clear is whether or not we would be able to understand our own creations and whether we could stop them if they decided that we posed a threat to them. You could easily accuse me of being paranoid and of reading far too much SF for my own good but I think that the threat is a real one and should not be underestimated. Handled in the right way AI will be a boon to future generations. Handled badly, those future generations (if there are any) will rightly curse our names.

Picture Time.

Against all the odds, the world is becoming a happier place

James Randerson for The Guardian

Wednesday August 27

Despite deepening economic gloom and impending climatic destruction the world is becoming a happier place, according to an analysis of quarter of a century of data on wellbeing from 45 countries around the globe. The finding goes against the received wisdom that a country's economic advances do not translate into increased wellbeing among its citizens. The researchers who compiled the data believe increasing levels of happiness were not picked up until now because studies have tended to focus on rich countries where increases in wealth make little difference to their citizens' satisfaction with life.

"The classic view, which we are not disputing, is that there are diminishing marginal returns to economic development," said Roberto Foa at Harvard University. "So for initial levels of economic development people are escaping subsistence poverty and people's subjective levels of happiness will increase." Once their basic needs have been fulfilled - having shelter, enough food to eat and so on - then further economic development doesn't lead to more happiness in a straightforward linear way, said Foa. Social scientists call this the "hedonic treadmill" – like the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, you keep running but don't make any progress. However, the new analysis does suggest that measurable increases in happiness have been occurring over the past 25 years. It used data from the World Values Survey and European Values Study, which conduct regular standardised questionnaire studies in a group of countries that between them contain 90% of the world's population.

The present study, which is published in Perspectives on Psychological Science and is reported in New Scientist, used data from the 52 countries with the most complete data set from 1981 to 2007. Of these, 40 showed an increase in average happiness - as measured by their "subjective wellbeing" score - while in 12 countries happiness levels dropped. The average percentage of people saying they were "very happy" rose by 7%.

The advantage of comparing data from these surveys is that in each case the questions were asked in the same way, so changes are likely to reflect real changes in happiness rather than different ways of answering a slightly different set of questions. Of the most improved countries, Ukraine, Moldova and Slovenia showed the largest hikes in average happiness while at the bottom of the table were Hungary, India and Australia. The US was firmly mid-table at 29th with Britain four places behind. However, both countries did better when it came to changes in the size of the happiest group of people. In Britain, the number of people saying they were "very happy" went up by around 13%. The equivalent figure for the US was around 8%. In Mexico, the number of people in that category went up by nearly 25%, a bigger rise than in any other country.

As in previous analyses of the data, Latin American countries come out as particularly happy – more so than you would expect based on their GDP alone. "Happiness is the gap between what you have and what you expect to have in life. If that gap is very small then you are happy, and if it is quite wide then naturally you are quite unhappy," said Foa.

To get happier you can either reduce your expectations or increase what you have. Foa believes that the strong religious and family traditions of Latin American societies have served to help people come to terms with what they have, while at the same time they have advanced steadily economically – so the happiness gap has been narrowed from both ends.

Another major finding from the survey is that personal freedoms, democracy and a tolerant society are important for a nation's overall happiness, particularly in richer societies. Happiness on a national scale correlated well with high scores in an index measuring how accepting people were of having immigrants, homosexuals and people of different races as their neighbours. "In more affluent societies, people give higher priority to free choice and self-expression, which accordingly, play an increasingly important role in shaping their wellbeing," the authors write. "People living in more tolerant societies tend to be happier, regardless of their own beliefs."

[Another uplifting story…. But don’t worry I’m sure that I can dig up a bit of gloom from somewhere.]

Poster Time.

Cartoon Time.

eBay insect fossil is new species

From the BBC

Wednesday, 20 August 2008

A scientist who bought a fossilised insect on the web auction site eBay for £20 has discovered that it belongs to a previously unknown species of aphid. Dr Richard Harrington, vice-president of the UK's Royal Entomological Society, bought the fossil from an individual in Lithuania. He then sent it off to an aphid expert in Denmark, who confirmed the insect was a new species, now extinct.

The bug has been named Mindarus harringtoni after the scientist. "I was interested to see what it was because I've worked with a team of people involved in monitoring and forecasting aphids, those of greenfly and their relatives in this country," Dr Harrington told BBC News. "I looked at it with my team and we thought we could identify it down to the level of genus, but we had no idea what the species was."

Dr Harrington sent the specimen to Professor Ole Heie, a fossil aphid expert in Denmark. "He discovered that it was something that hadn't been described before," Dr Harrington explained. The insect itself is 3-4mm long and is encased in a 40-50 million-year-old piece of amber about the size of a small pill. "I had thought it would be rather nice to call it Mindarus ebayi," said Dr Harrington. "Unfortunately, using flippant names to describe new species is rather frowned upon these days."

Instead, Professor Heie named the new species after Dr Harrington. "It's not uncommon to find insects in amber... but I'm not sure that one has turned up on eBay that has been undiscovered before. It's a rather unusual route to come by [a new species]," the researcher, based at Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire, explained. He said the insect would have fed on a tree called Pinus succinifera which is itself now long since extinct.

[This story made me laugh. Dr Harrington not only has a sense of humour – apparently something the naming organisation lacks – but has effectively gained a form of immortality for £20 through surfing eBay. I mean….. how cool is that!]

Cartoon Time.

Just Finished Reading: Sharpe’s Waterloo by Bernard Cornwell

June 1815. After a brief respite the armies of Napoleon are once again on the march. After holding the French advance at Quatre Bras the scratch British force is forced to withdraw after the retreat of their Prussian allies exposes their flank. The great General Wellington must search for a place to hold the most dangerous army in Europe. Falling back towards Brussels he halts his meagre force at a sleepy village called Waterloo. It is here that the British will face the might of the Emperors forces. Both sides are largely undefeated on the field of battle and both realise that the future of Europe will be decided on the killing fields of Belgium. If the British can hold the advance until reinforcements arrive all could still be saved. In the thick of the fighting is the newly promoted Lieutenant Colonel Richard Sharpe brought back from retirement for one last battle with his old enemy. But even Sharpe can see that the odds are terribly stacked against them. Maybe this will indeed be his last battle.

This is my 10^th Sharpe novel which equals my 10 Anita Blake books. Sharpe is a wonderful character created by the extremely talented Bernard Cornwell. His books are windows into a different time full of the grit, desperation and heroism. The Napoleonic Wars are brought to life in all their awesome horror. Massed cavalry charges cut down by cannon fire, ranks of barely educated men disfigured by musket round and sabre cut, officers without the first notion of war casually killing their men wholesale for prestige and delusions of honour. Sharpe of course, being the hero, saves the day at the appropriate moment but not before he causes mayhem behind the lines as he challenges his wife’s lover to a duel and attempts to kill his dangerously stupid superior officer. This is a great book to literally lose yourself in. I found that it took me some moments to reconnect to the real world after being immersed in Cornwell’s or rather Sharpe’s one. I couldn’t help thinking that this novel was less of a book and more of a time machine. No wonder my clothes started to smell of gunpowder…..

My Favourite TV: Kung Fu

Running for 45 episodes between 1972 and 1975 this ground breaking show successfully mixed the martial arts genre with that of the classic Western. The premise of the show had David Carradine (playing the half Chinese half American Kwai Chang Caine) on the run from a crime he committed in China whilst searching the West for his half brother who is the only surviving link to his past. Along the way he uses his skill at Kung Fu as well as large dollops of Chinese philosophy to help people he comes across on his journey.

What made this show special to me was the figure of Caine himself. I can’t remember being particular impressed with the martial arts but what did strike me rather forcefully was the way he went about things. The character exhibited an amazing reverence for all life – even that of his opponents. He was at peace in a violent place and was unafraid in a land pervaded by fear. Above all else he exhibited a deep wisdom that left all those around him profoundly moved and more often than not bemused. I think it is not too far fetched to say that the wisdom of Caine had a significant influence on my teenage persona and probably was an important component of what makes me the person I am today. I’ve just finished watching the first series on DVD and was still much impressed by Carradine’s portrayal of the kindly, knowing and wise Kwai Chang Caine. The actually episodes, viewed through the cynical eyes of a 21^st century TV viewer, are rather simplistic and to be honest rather slow in tempo but the nuggets of gold scattered throughout each episode still glitter as they did over 30 years ago. Caine's philosophy is simply breath-taking and as meaningful today as it was back then – maybe more so. I am really looking forward to watching the second series. If you missed this the first time around or where just too young to catch it I can recommend buying or borrowing the DVDs. If it is indeed your first time then I envy you because you’re in for a real treat. Enjoy.

Wild dolphins tail-walk on water

Tuesday, 19 August 2008

By Richard Black for the BBC

A wild dolphin is apparently teaching other members of her group to walk on their tails, a behaviour usually seen only after training in captivity. The tail-walking group lives along the south Australian coast near Adelaide. One of them spent a short time after illness in a dolphinarium 20 years ago and may have picked up the trick there.

Scientists studying the group say tail-walk tuition has not been seen before, and suggest the habit may emerge as a form of "culture" among this group. "We can't for the life of us work out why they do it," said Mike Bossley from the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS), one of the scientists who have been monitoring the group on the Port River estuary. "We're doing systematic observations now to determine if there's something that may trigger it, but so far we haven't found anything," he told BBC News.

In the 1980s, Billie, one of the females in the group, spent a few weeks in a local dolphinarium recovering from malnutrition and sickness, a consequence of having been trapped in a marina lock. She received no training there, but may have seen others tail-walking. Now, other females in the group have picked up the habit. It is seen rarely in the wild, and the obvious inference is that they have learned it from Billie. "This indicates that they do learn from each other, which is not a surprise really, but it does also seem that they exhibit elements of what in humans we would call 'cultural' behaviour," said Dr Bossley.

"These are things that groups develop and are passed between individuals and that come to define those groups, such as language or dancing; and it would seem that among the Port River dolphins we may have an incipient tail-walking culture." The "cultural" transmission of ideas and skills has been documented in apes, while dolphins off the coast of Western Australia are known to teach their young to use sponges as an aid when gathering food.

[I love stories like this. It helps to pop the bubble around us that makes us feel so much superior to other animals and supposedly so unique that we have to be ‘special’ or ‘different’ or some such nonsense. We ignore the fact that other animals appear to have cultural traits or distinct languages or reasoning powers because not only does it diminish our ‘special’ relationship with the rest of nature but it also calls into question how we treat our fellow creatures. It appears to be in the interests of no one to elevate the standing of any other creature to anything approaching our own. Just imagine the levels of our well deserved guilt for all of the horrible things we continue to do to them.

Anyway, this story made me smile all day and still brings a smile to my face now. Nature still has the capacity to surprise me, entertain me and enlighten me. Long may it continue.]

Pulp Fiction.

Cartoon Time.

Technophilia.

Just Finished Reading: Plato – A Very Short Introduction by Julia Annas

At a mere 91 pages this was a very short introduction indeed. Saying that, it also turned out to be a very interesting. I’ve read bits and pieces by Professor Annas before. She writes very well indeed in a style that is both accessible and illuminating. So far in my wider reading I’ve only really dipped into the works of Plato (actually reading more about him than by him) so it was good the come across another slant of his rather large body of work. I had assumed that, despite speaking through the mouths of others in his collected books, he was actually putting across a coherent if evolving philosophy of life. Not so apparently! I had also assumed that Plato’s Forms where central to his work – again not so apparently. Having that viewpoint now in my mind was alone worth reading this book for. Now its for me to decide if I agree with the author – once I’ve read enough Plato to form an opinion on the subject.

I have certainly developed a fondness for the Ancient philosophers of both Greece and Rome over the last year. Not only do many of them seem strangely modern but they also seem to be saying many of the right things that we need to relearn in the modern world. Despite the gap of thousands of years I believe that these ancient scholars can still speak directly to the minds of people today and I think that we would be wise to listen to them.

Cartoon Time.

Lord Carey backs call for an end to the blasphemy law

From Ekklesia

25 Nov 2007

Replying to questions on a BBC TV programme today, Lord Carey of Clifton, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has publicly agreed with the Christian think-tank Ekklesia that it is time for Britain's archaic blasphemy law to be abolished. Lord Carey, who is an outspoken conservative evangelical within the Church of England, was responding to comments by Ekklesia co-director Jonathan Bartley on a discussion about blasphemy on BBC1's Sunday morning current affairs and religion programme, 'The Big Questions'.

The ex-Archbishop protested against what he said was an increase in "offensive" material about Christianity in the public domain, including 'Jerry Springer - The Opera', over which Stephen Green of Christian Voice is trying to arraign the BBC in a private prosecution. But Lord Carey said that Christ told his followers to put away their swords and did not seek to defend faith by force. Bartley said that a blasphemy law was itself blasphemous from a theological viewpoint, because it suggested that the transcendent God somehow needed human laws for protection.

Ekklesia has also pointed out that Christ faced an accusation of blasphemy at the trial that led to his death, and a Christian dramatist on the show said that many of Jesus' stories and comments caused great offence in his day. Blasphemy as a legal offence was backed by Tory MP Anne Widdecombe, a convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism, "so long as there is an Established Church in this country". Other supporters of blasphemy couched it in terms of a Christendom (church-state alliance) or theocratic approach. Ekklesia has argued that such views undermine a gospel of radical equality and humility rooted in the life of Christ.

Author and scientist Richard Dawkins, a campaigning atheist, said that free speech was indivisible, and that charges of blasphemy leading to a fatwa for Salman Rushdie was obscene and had affected his life deeply. Doctor Who and Torchwood star John Barrowman, who was offered a part in the Jerry Springer musical, also backed free speech on religion, and called for acceptance of gay people by the churches. Author Mark Vernon, an Anglican turned agnostic whose latest book is 'After Atheism', talked on the TV show about the bizarre and traumatic experience of being investigated by the police for blasphemy over a controversial poem some years ago.

[The whole idea of a blasphemy law seems totally bizarre to me. If we have free speech in this country we should be able to say things that might offend some people. If God exists He certainly doesn’t need human laws to defend Him. It’s about time that we ditched this archaic and frankly farcical idea.]

Even Cowgirls get the Blues.

Just Finished Reading: Aliens Vs Predator – Prey by Steve Perry & Stephani Perry

Machiko Noguchi is a low ranking official in a huge interstellar corporation. Based on the backward ranching colony on Ryushi she is considering her future and hopes for more interesting times ahead. She should have been careful what she wished for as that destiny is already on route to her. For Ryushi is a Predator training planet where young warriors are put through their paces against the Hard Meat – very sleek, very deadly and very black aliens bread for the hunt. Unfortunately for the colonists caught in the middle they’re going to have to choose between being prey, hosts or warriors. Machiko gets her wish and her fight for survival begins. But first she needs to decide who her enemies are and who can help her stay alive in circumstances she never believed possible in her wildest dreams.

I don’t normally read tie-in books because I often find them inferior to the original idea. But thought I’d give this a go – partially on the recommendation of my online gaming partner Ali_P and partly as something ‘different’ from my normal fare. This actually turned out to be a highly enjoyable novel. Whilst not exactly great literature (which I wasn’t honestly expecting) it was competently written, didn’t push the AvP genre beyond what I expected of it and was honestly gripping. Reasonable characterisation, fairly good plot and lots of heart thumping, gut ripping, acid spraying action. If you want a simple, brain in neutral alien on alien gore fest – with some distinctly disturbing moments – this is definitely the book for you. Pure entertainment!

Cartoon Time.