Paul Lemke

GREAT, it doesn't say anything about your background on your profile so I don't know where you are at, please don't take any offense, I just don't know what level of math capability you are at but we'll try. I mean unlimited in the conventional definition of unlimited i.e. he has no limits to his understanding or no one can set limits to his rational faculty. He has free will which means he is free and therefore has no limits that can be placed logically on him. (except within time limits like the crow epistemology stuff: the context here is all long term anyway) Lets say that for arguments sake that Kurzweil is right that he has a function that he has put through several data points and the curve is defined by those points as an exponential function i.e. let's take Kurzweil at his word. It is not linear but exponential. There is a subset of applied mathematics that searches for r^2 deviation value. This is common in statistics (Ki square value) and data analysis fields. If you have used a trend-line in excel you know of a similar function. You can even give excel a form of an equation and it will solve for the constants for an r^2 value. The R^2 value is the standard deviation of the points to the function and a value of 1 means that the point exactly match a r^2. Almost never do you get an R^2 value of 1 so lets say Kurzweil has one of .99, which is common for good data. The function is then set. Or is it? Does this now mean that there will not be a nuclear war, an economic crisis that wipes out civilization in a conventional war or anything that would stop Kurzweil's dream of a singularity for 500 years. There has been times in history when man has stepped backward in technological progress and this is why Kurweil's functions do add up. He is claiming to predict the future very accurately. He might not have the exact curve but he has picked the family of curves and this limits him to an always improving function. The derivative of an exponential function is always positive. and this is even on his wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Kurzweil Daniel Lyons, writing in Newsweek, criticized Kurzweil for some of his predictions which turned out to be wrong; such as the economy continuing to boom from the 1998 dot-com through 2009, a US company having a market capitalization of more than $1 trillion, a supercomputer achieving 20 petaflops, speech recognition being in widespread use and cars that would drive themselves using sensors installed in highways; all by 2009[63]. Unlimited as in not limited to an output that is always positive or unlimited as in not limited to a function on a graph. You don't have to measure "unlimited" it is unlimited by definition. just like infinity can not be measured( except in terms of other infinities by deduction in set theory) See above. This is also the problem with determinism as things get more and more predictable the capability of free will drops. You have no free will because things are predictable. They are at cross purposes deductively. All of this is not to mention that inductively none of his prediction capabilities make sense. Who has a tap on what the economy and technology is going to do? Man the individual certainly but it is not Mr. Kurzweil.

I have to agree with almost everything you have just said. The only thing I might not agree with is the 10 years, by what standard i.e. how'd jou come up with dat? What would have been more impressive in the video is some capability of "close" pattern recognition e.g. they show a slightly more dark red car after the original red car, that is shaped different and the robot is capable at grasping the "abstraction" of Car. Without this robots will undoubtedly have to have massive amounts of memory storing jpgs or 3d data and processing it is going to be a resource hog. I often wonder why they don't do "slate"-"super" computing with these robots. (Slate computing or cloud computing with super computers(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablet_PC#Slates topic heading Slates, cloud computing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing) I think most of the time these robots have the computer on board. Having the computer on board is to me insane and so limiting to the computation algorithms. I also see little point to the human robot form any more. I think robots might be biped but arms legs and 5 fingers. Asimo's current design came out 10 years ago and they still have not up the ante where Sony has gone with their little QRIO. I think the reason that American engineers haven't gone after a humanoid bot is that most of this tech is pointless without a power supply that is at least a 100 times more dense. spherical actuators eat up a lot of juice.

CEO of Moller international files for bankruptcy http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stor...15/daily53.html

I worked on the spacex main stage turbopump. A turbopump is the main heart of a rocket engine. It is the pump that empties the tanks and pumps it into a nozzle block for the combustion chamber. Other main components are the nozzle, the nozzle block, gimble actuators and control, and the tanks. My role was pretty minor I completed some modifications to the main RP castings and the aft seal carrier for the turbine was my design. Small stuff but I can say that we were one of the major innovative companies to help them get off the ground. Our turbopump successfully worked and did its job on all of the missions. It was other stuff that failed. The first launch was some plumbing a tech forgot to tighten which caused a fire, the second launch was thrust gimbling control, the third was a failure of the second stage tank design and the fourth was sucessful. I think if Elon does fail it will be because of the FAA, Military or NASA.

Care to explain why only live action? I have seen many Anime address real life issues far better than most live action films and although I have to admit I have seen some pretty bad ones as well. I do intend on animating Anthem someday and have given some thought to the capability increase in computational speed.

If you don't believe me as an eventual robot engineer. How about Rodney Brooks, one of the founders of iRobot, he started one of the only successful American robotics companies manufactures robots for a living. "I'm not worried about the singularity anytime soon.(time frame 32:27)" http://fora.tv/2009/05/30/Rodney_Brooks_Re...g_With_Robotics But maybe you have to be a neophyte in technology order to believe in things like the singularity and not a person who designs and actually builds something on an everyday basis. Is anyone else here a robotics engineer or going to become one?

GREAT, it doesn't say anything about your background on your profile so I don't know where you are at, please don't take any offense, I just don't know what level of math capability you are at but we'll try. I mean unlimited in the conventional definition of unlimited i.e. he has no limits to his understanding or no one can set limits to his rational faculty. He has free will which means he is free and therefore has no limits that can be placed logically on him. (except within time limits like the crow epistemology stuff: the context here is all long term anyway) Lets say that for arguments sake that Kurzweil is right that he has a function that he has put through several data points and the curve is defined by those points as an exponential function i.e. let's take Kurzweil at his word. It is not linear but exponential. There is a subset of applied mathematics that searches for r^2 deviation value. This is common in statistics (Ki square value) and data analysis fields. If you have used a trend-line in excel you know of a similar function. You can even give excel a form of an equation and it will solve for the constants for an r^2 value. The R^2 value is the standard deviation of the points to the function and a value of 1 means that the point exactly match a r^2. Almost never do you get an R^2 value of 1 so lets say Kurzweil has one of .99, which is common for good data. The function is then set. Or is it? Does this now mean that there will not be a nuclear war, an economic crisis that wipes out civilization in a conventional war or anything that would stop Kurzweil's dream of a singularity for 500 years. There has been times in history when man has stepped backward in technological progress and this is why Kurweil's functions do add up. He is claiming to predict the future very accurately. He might not have the exact curve but he has picked the family of curves and this limits him to an always improving function. The derivative of an exponential function is always positive. and this is even on his wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Kurzweil Daniel Lyons, writing in Newsweek, criticized Kurzweil for some of his predictions which turned out to be wrong; such as the economy continuing to boom from the 1998 dot-com through 2009, a US company having a market capitalization of more than $1 trillion, a supercomputer achieving 20 petaflops, speech recognition being in widespread use and cars that would drive themselves using sensors installed in highways; all by 2009[63]. Unlimited as in not limited to an output that is always positive or unlimited as in not limited to a function on a graph. You don't have to measure "unlimited" it is unlimited by definition. just like infinity can not be measured( except in terms of other infinities by deduction in set theory) See above. This is also the problem with determinism as things get more and more predictable the capability of free will drops. You have no free will because things are predictable. They are at cross purposes deductively. All of this is not to mention that inductively none of his prediction capabilities make sense. Who has a tap on what the economy and technology is going to do? Man the individual certainly but it is not Mr. Kurzweil.

By the way the reason that I read AOSM was because I was interested in AI and Nanotechnology in college.

I was speaking in general terms, I don't think you were purposely dropping my context so I think some clarification of my statement is necessary. Primarily look at the sentence after my AI video game statement. "It will be an idiot savant in a narrow niche but utterly retarded at dealing with abstracts across a broad "reality wide spectrum" for a long time yet." Video game AI is pretty darn advanced these days. It is not simple AI. It can adapt to many varying game situations and can even build based on player skill. If you have seen this (http://www.poptech.org/popcasts/popcasts.aspx?lang=&viewcastid=33) video (time of interest 6:40 and specifically the picture at 8:06)you will know what I mean. Will Wright(video) is funny, genius and a great presenter as well. As for the math function, when the x range is time, progress is limited, because one does not have control over the progression of time. I don't think you want to get into a mathematics rigorous definition of function and variables because I have a second bachelor's in applied math and I am pretty sure I am right there. I also know what I am talking about in AI because my first bachelor's was in mechanical engineering with a focus on robotics. I don't have my transcript on my computer but I can send you one so that you at least have an idea of my knowledge of the subject. I have wanted to be a robotics engineer since I was 10 watching transformers. I am interested in AI and what is and is not possible. I would also like to think that I have a pretty good knowledge of visual systems and visual algorithms because I, in college studied the subject. I might be a novice to a serious professional but I am far better than a layman. I am of this posting working on a power supply for robots which is one of the fields that Kurzweil seems to be out to lunch on because he defends solar power which has and will continue to be a government waste of time(but that should be discussed elsewhere maybe?).

Determinism as defined by the lexicon: "Determinism is the theory that everything that happens in the universe—including every thought, feeling, and action of man—is necessitated by previous factors, so that nothing could ever have happened differently from the way it did, and everything in the future is already pre-set and inevitable. Every aspect of man’s life and character, on this view, is merely a product of factors that are ultimately outside his control. Objectivism rejects this theory." I have certainly heard Kurzweil claim the "singularity is inevitable" and he claims that technology is a natural part of evolution. As just a small portion of proof look at the Kurzweil supplied graphs on the wikipedia and you will find evolution symbolism on top corner of the graphs( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Paradigm...Frr15Events.svg ) or howabout this: "Most forecasts of the future seem to ignore the revolutionary impact of the Singularity in our human destiny: the inevitable emergence of computers that match and ultimately vastly exceed the capabilities of the human brain, a development that will be no less important than the evolution of human intelligence itself some thousands of centuries ago. " Note inevitable and the context in which it is used as well as "destiny." Technology does not just happen it is not an inevitable result, anyone who actually builds something knows the effort required to improve existing technology. To imagine that it is some long chain of inevitable events is ridiculous and extremely insulting to anyone who does develop technology. What I really think the singularity theory overlooks is the effect of government on technology. I know I have heard that he is a proponent for the free market but his defense of it is as weak as the GOP party's defense. I suggest that any AI designed by a human will be like most of the AI in video games these days. It will be an idiot savant in a narrow niche but utterly retarded at dealing with abstracts across a broad "reality wide spectrum" for a long time yet. I am not saying it is impossible but I believe man can do better than exponential or linear. He is unlimited in his capacity to reason and find ways of explaining and replicating his environment. Transhumanists should have a higher respect for what is human. (And yes I know Kurzweil has developed "some" technology like the Kurzweil Reading Machine but I am not sure how much of his technology was successful in the market. Anyone with more info on this? Oh I have also read "Age of Spiritual Machines" and I have started the "Singularity is Near" but I think it is just a rewrite with a little more data on top.)

Galt was a "Industrial" engineer, he had no limit to his area of study. People who make motors have to have a good understanding of E/M fields but they also have to have a good understanding of many mechanical phenomena some of which include but are not limited to rotor dynamics, bearing design, vibration design, thermodynamics, and heat transfer. If I were to get a college degree in motor design I would be a Mechatronics engineer or a systems engieer but neither of these degrees existed in 1957 and so I would think Galt was a physicist not an engineer. Rotor dynamics is the study of slight imbalances in the shaft of a motor which can affect bearing life and sometimes lead to housing failure. All you have to do is imagine ride on a merry go round and you have experienced centrifugal force. Imagine it when you are traveling several 1000 rpm. I could go on but you get the idea. I help design electric motors at work we make DC permanent magnet motors for custom applications. I am a mechanical engineer and have been so for 8 years. I have worked in a few different fields of study, they include but are not limited to HVAC(internship), aerospace, food processing, power, medical, scientific research, nuclear power, industrial automation and cryogenics. Most of that time was spent developing custom turbomachinery which I have been doing for the past 5 years. Some of the products I have worked on are in rockets (turbopumps, a primary component of a rocket engine), fans for next generation military vehicles and power system for torpedo engines. I have also worked on pumps that are used to automate biological experiments and make 90% of all of the additives in Frito Lay products. I like product design because it is extremely interesting how people come up with products. That said I have found few people in my fields of work that have any understanding of philosophy. I have yet to meet another objectivist product design engineer.