I'm a Little Strange But That's Ok

Hey Dad, guess what.

Remember that game we went to? Tigers vs. Jays, 4-6 final? Remember how I said I was going to download it because Craig Monroe hit a foul ball into the seat I would have been sitting at until you told me to move and I was pretty sure we were close enough to be on TV?

Well, I downloaded it.

Yeah. And we're in it. I'm staring in disbelief at the spot where the ball lands, then I raise my arms (I remember, I yelled "I'm on TV!") then I shove you backwards. All the while fans three rows back chase the beer-logged ball under the seats.

It would have been mine.

Instead, that loud Hawaiian shirt man who may or may not have been smoking marijuana caught it in his beer. On accident.

Anyway, I was right. I was on TV.

I'm 20

Yay. Wish me a happy birthday if you feel so inclined.

20? What do you do with 20?

Thanksgiving Mission

I had a talk with my dad and my sister last night about how to maximize my finishing power on projects.

And so I'm going to finish "For the Love of Lilly" completely by the end of Thanksgiving break.

And I'm going to send it in to Ed Schubert, editor of IGMS. And I'm going to put it out of my mind and work on other things.

The Flash's YouTube Picks of the Week

Here we go. My favorite Youtube videos from this week. First. This kid is like a ballet dancer...so graceful...mmm.



This next one is close to my heart. These men and women are going so fast they're blurring. Just like whenever I move. I wrote this whole post in under a minute. Now my keyboard is busted. Anyway: Why haven't I seen this on the Olympics?



And this final one. Turn on your speakers if you don't have them on, because this is a music video. I like it; my only regret is that I was busy saving Detroit that week and couldn't attend the filming. But maybe that's a good thing: I haven't heard from Bruce or Clark since...



That's it for this week! Hope you enjoyed.

Are You Kidding Me?

No comment, other than that somehow, this reminds me of that SNL skit where OJ is a sports analyst. He's diagramming the play and somehow ends up writing "I DID IT."

So. Nice that the "If" is in white and the rest is in red.


THIS JUST IN: He did it.

Why Did I Stop Writing Poems?

I used to write poetry.

I stopped. Figured I was bad or something, I don't know why. I just looked at a bunch from a long time ago...THEY'RE AMAZING!

Seriously though. Here's a few. These are from 2004.

Olfactory Armada

A certain cantankerous odor
With voracity and content
Has found me before in
Not quite the same circumstance
But close enough, yes
For government functionality
I was bathing in the parlor
I was washing with a lufa
And all of those layers of
Skin formed a film
On the water
And the herbal spices
In my shampoo
Formed an army
Assaulting my olfactory
Unit of chamomile soldiers
With guns of honey and rye
Just decided to camp out
In one nostril
And call for their vitamin
E reinforcements
And with one swift motion
I drowned them all swirling
Dunking my head under
And whistling air out of
My nose


Folding

A child is origami
Waiting to be folded
To be shaped
Into what she will become
This origami has no
Directions or hints
On how it’s done right
You’ve just got to
Close your eyes and
Improvise, hoping always
That you’ve folded her
The way she would have
Had she been you


Find Your Process

Find your process, it's quite easy
But may take a bit getting used to
Take, for instance, my method
I sit at a chair that is comfy
I close my two nearsighted eyes
My fingers draw pictures
Of love and desire of hatred
And Fire and it is all well
Then I restate my point
Fourteen different ways
With simile and metaphor like
Chewy macaroni and uncooked
Spaghetti well not quite but
You know what I mean
And If I'm lucky a new idea
Will arrive and whisper its
Opportunity in my ear
And if it's lucky my hands
Will paint it onto the page
With all the love of a new
Mother and father; new parents
For my left and my right hand
Are so.

The "Groundhog Day" Loop Scenario

Daybreak is my new favorite show. Think "Groundhog Day," but with guns and framings and such.

Is this Science Fiction?

Example: Hero wakes up, goes through a day. Things happen, life sucks, etc. He goes to sleep. Hero wakes up again. It's the same day. He does things a little different, completely aware that everything is happening again. He goes to sleep again. He wakes up and it's the same day. AGAIN. Now, generally on the third day, Hero decides he wants to change certain things that happened on that day, for the benefit of himself or others. Hero keeps waking up on the same day. So, eventually, Hero decides that he's not doing something right, since he's not able to do what he needs to - live to the next day. Eventually, Hero does things X,Y,and Z to make it so that he has "correctly completed" the day. And then Hero receives reward: he wakes up the next day.

Now, here's my question. Does this qualify as SciFi? My answer: Not unless throughout the course of the story, the phenomenon is shown to have scientific causes, and those causes are believable.

Then what is it? Fantasy? Mmm...maybe. But is there magic involved? Not necessarily. Not unless it's said. Otherwise it's just another unknown. Might me magic, sure. Might be science. Sure.

I tell you what. It's never explained. No one even tries.

Because it's cooler when it just is. When it just happens. When you just wake up and know that it's the same day, and that you can change what happens. You don't want to know why. You just want to be involved in it.

Who cares what the category is? Technically it's not SciFi, but that's where I put it. It doesn't happen in the real world, that's for sure.

Oh, and watch Daybreak. It's awesome.

Strange

It's really strange to watch a kid you went to high school with have the number 2 Top Play on Sportscenter...

But it's really cool, too.

Jalen Parmele, 92 yard touchdown run. He used to be on the Dow High team.

EDIT: He's on the Toledo team. They lost to Ball State yesterday.

Adam Can't Blog

Yeah, I suck.

1. HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!! You're older!

2. The Marvel Zombies Caption Challenge (by Jared...I mean, he didn't actually challenge anyone...I just felt like making captions. (Oh, And I know they're not called captions. But who cares?))


3. DIVING MISHAPS!!!!!

Philosophy Thursday: The Artificial Intelligence Problem

Since my Philosophy class for today was cancelled, I'll take a few minutes (about an hour) to share some Philosophy with you.

Today's topic is AI or Artificial Intelligence.

AI is the basic idea that computers, with sufficient capability and programming, can have minds. Basically, that they might be able to think.

I want to start (where to start, where to start) with some of the basic assumptions we have about computers, and how they'd be if they were capable of human-like thinking.

• 1. They would have personalities like that of a human.
• 2. They'd be capable of conversation.
• 3. They'd operate in a way that would seem, to the outsider, indistinguishable from the way humans, and their brains, operate.
• 4. They'd be capable of understanding.
• 5. They'd be capable of learning.
• 6. They'd have emotions.

There are plenty more. Before I go any farther, I just want to clarify that I'm referring to Strong AI versus Weak - Strong is the kind that allows machines to become sapient. As in self-aware. The Cartesian "I think, therefore I am."

Now, here's the beginning.

Is it possible to design a computer being that was an example of Strong AI? One might argue that with the proper programming, yes. A program that was self-writing. A program that allowed for constant revision and monitoring by the program itself. However, in this case, it is not the computer that would be AI, it would be the program. A sentient code. It is an abstract - something floating in space, attached to nothing. Of course, the code itself isn't complete, not until it's running. And it needs a machine to run it. A machine that will house it, run it, and give the program various opportunities for output - and, more importantly, inputs. Blinking lights, sounds, movements facilitated by the ability to observe. Without outputs or inputs, the program is blind, deaf, and mute. It is essentially aware of nothing - and as so, its ability to edit itself is moot. Why should it, if there's no new information to edit into it? But I digress.

It has been argued that a computer becomes sentient when it is conversationally indistinguishable from a human. There is a test, called the Turing Test, which basically states that if you can't tell if the converser is a human or not, then the converser has a mind. This test is fundamentally flawed, however, as it's easy to imagine that a computer mind would be far different from a human mind, and would know that it was a computer. If you asked it "What are you?" and it responded "A human," you'd know that while it had passed the Turing Test, it was a program on a computer. How? Because self-categorizing is one of the most important criteria for labeling a being "sentient." If it was a sentient computer, it would tell you what it really was. It would know.

So here we are. How do we create Strong AI? Must we develop it completely on our own? I don't think so. I think, that with the right approach, Strong AI could be achieved fairly quickly. But the approach many are taking is the opposite of the one I think would have the most success.

Look at the adult human mind. Does it start off this way? Are the mental states involved completely reducable to equations and digitations? If you wanted to create a man, would you try to create his brain so that it could do all of the things an adult human mind can do? Or would you create a more general brain, one with possibilities for growth and learning? An infant mind.

Create a machine with (approximately) infinite capacity. Program it to observe, to listen, to feel, to experience. Program it to assimilate those experiences. Program it to respond to those experiences, and react, to ask questions about those experiences. Program it to LEARN.

That's all you have to do.

Then, teach it. Teach it like it was a human. Teach it human reasoning, and morals, and ethics. Teach it different ways of thinking.

You can't program a complete mind. You have to program one incompletely first, and then help it to complete itself.

That's my take on it.

Now, onto the challenging of the assumptions I started with.

1-Personalities. Would computers have personalities? I don't think so. I don't think the computer would act like a person. It would act like a computer that had learned all the same things as a person, only without the experience of actually being one. It would assimilate its experiences differently than a human would, and would react to them differently. A human has certain needs, most if not all of which the computer does not. A computer does not need water, oxygen, food, blood, the ability to excrete, sex, or to be cared for. Why should it act like it does? If it does, then it is either pretending to be human for the human's sake or it is not possessing of a mind. Personalities? No. Computalities? Sure.

2-Capable of conversation. Why not? Assuming you taught the thing your language and didn't just program it. Why, Adam, couldn't I have just programmed it? Because, by simply programming it, you remove all of the meaningful associations created during the learning process that allow the computer to actually UNDERSTAND what the words it is using MEAN and how they are used within context.

3-Indistinguishable from Humans. Um. I don't think so. A computer mind would have a different set of capabilities from a human mind. A computer mind could calculate billions of numbers at the same time, could read a book in an instant, could pull up every past memory with a detail that would astound anyone currently considering themselves "alive." A computer mind would not have emotions, at least not ones that we'd understand as human. A computer mind would not be able to experience the world as a human, as it knows it is not a human, and we know that it is not. So, on this point, the answer is no.

4-Capable of Understanding. Yes, but from a computer mind's point of view. You cannot expect human comprehension from a non-human entity.

5-Capable of Learning. They'd better be! Without learning, there's no Strong AI!

6- Capable of Emotions. Um. Again, I'm going to have to go with no. Of course, I'm relating this to human emotions. There is no situation I can think of where a computer is going to need something human emotions are used for. There are no hormones released in a computer, and there are no chemicals that would create certain emotions like love, joy, or sadness. What does a computer need that emotions like anger, happiness or sadness are going to give it? Now, it is entirely possible that the computer would have emotions. But they'd be entirely of the computer mind, and we as humans without the experience of growing up with computer minds would be pretty much out of the loop (to make a slight programming pun) of comprehension.

***

Basically, I'm trying to get this point across - Strong AI, if it existed, would not be the same as HI (Human Intelligence.) It could never be. Just as I will never be able to relate the experience of being a dog or a cat from a dog or cat's point of view, the computer mind would not be able to relate the experience of being a human from a human's point of view. It would have different values, morals, ethics - based on the experience of being a computer. It would most likely not care for us, except for when it needed something.

And that's why, if Strong AI were developed tomorrow, I would be very close to being very afraid.

Imogene's Monster: A Poem