>> ^nickreal03:
his guy really doesn't understand anything. The meaning of like is so obvious that it hurts. Fallow steps:
1. Find best mate you can. Marry it.
2. Have children.
3. Educate your children the best you can.
4. Help society by keeping yourself useful.
5. The more you know the most useful you can be.
6. Make people in higher positions than yourself accountable.
7. Demand everyone to get better all the time.
8. Make the world a sustainable one.
9. Think how the human as well as other spices can survive in the worse of events.
10. Execute some of those plans.
The rest is just details. Sorry this list could be compress to a single sentence but I let that to the reader.


While those are positive endeavors, none of them really give insight into the meaning or purpose of life (except possibly having children I guess). Those are more along the lines of self-fulfillment.

Many people feel like they have no direction or ultimate goal in life other than to survive and possibly be "successful", but that's just how life is. Other then a religious view of life, there really isn't a preset direction that a person or all of humanity is designed to take. That idea bothers a lot of people, which is why the search for the "meaning" of life is very important to many, whether it exists or not.

Personally though, the one thing I do foresee the human race creating that will change everything is Artificial Intelligence that completely surpasses the abilities of even the most brilliant human. That is the closest thing I can think of to a "purpose" of life, if you would really call it that.

If you're curious, the AI thing should happen between 2030 and 2050, though some estimates have it occurring even earlier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

Excellent article, although I'm still of the opinion that an AI character indistinguishable from a human character is only a positive. With this type of paradigm into realism gaming would be an entirely different experience altogether. It's conceivable that you and an almost human AI could play cooperatively together controlling other less than human AI's, for example.

The best thing about this entire topic is that it will only continue to get better, and I'm very excited to see just how far artificial intelligence can go.

The film includes interviews by top experts and thinkers on the subject worldwide, including Marvin Minsky, Terence McKenna, Hans Moravec, Bruce Sterling, Robert Anton Wilson, Richard Seed, Margareth Wertheim, Kirkpatrick Sale, Ralph C. Merkle, Mark Pesce, Ray Kurzweil, Rabbi Youssouf Kazen, Rael and many others.

Part 1: Transhuman
Part 1 gives an overview of recent technological developments (biogenetics, artificial intelligence, robotics, implants, nanotechnology,…) and prognoses made by leading scientists about the impact of these developments in the near future.

Part 2: Preparing for the Singularity
In this part advocates and opponents of a transhuman future are weighed against each other; prognoses are done when we can expect the transhuman revolution and how people are preparing for it already now.

Part 3: The Metaphysics of Technology
This part covers the metaphysical consequences of the new technological revolution. On the one hand scientist start to use metaphysical concepts to describe the impact of their research, on the other hand, a surprisingly large number of scientific projects is inspired by religious aspirations and more and more theologians from any religious or spiritual belief are getting interested in these aspirations of new technology, making the discussion inextricable complex.

First and foremost, please stop taking anything personally. I'm not your enemy, nor am I about to change your mind on anything.

You ASKED for my opinion regarding where *I* thought you stood on the spectrum of political beliefs and I gave it to you. I make no claims to accuracy. You obviously have particular opinions about who *I* am and what I stand for. If YOU know what you believe, then you shouldn't overly care what others believe.

America has the right to protect its interests abroad. If you want to take delight in what you consider hypocrisy, that's your right.

You're an expatriate, are you not? If you rejected your country of origin, its history and culture, then I'm not going to convince you of America's greatness, or try.

Until next time? qm

In reply to this comment by MINK:
That's it man, you've put one too many words in my mouth, i can't be bothered to discuss with you any more, because it's like you're an artificial intelligence chatbot with a limited number of algorithms and all your answers are now starting to be "does not compute" followed by a change of subject or false accusation....

A great example of a story being carried by incredible voice acting...

Shodan: Look at you, hacker: a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?

Ghost: Not me, no way. They're not gonna get me. They're not gonna change me.
[loads a pistol]
Ghost: Rachel, kids... I'm sorry.
[shoots himself]

Bronson: They've killed my men and now they've killed me. I'm holding my guts inside me with both hands; I'm almost done. Resist. This is bigger than my little life, the lives of my men, and the lives of the people I was forced to kill. Resist. Humanity demands it. Resist.

Dr. Janice Polito: Marie, I'm sorry I've been out of touch, but i've been working on that artifact Bayliss bought back from Tau Ceti 5. I've done a level three analysis on it. I think it's some kind of artificial intelligence. I've managed to pull an audio tag file of its memory. I'll let you be the judge.
[a distorted voice of SHODAN can be heard]
Dr. Janice Polito: Marie, I think it's speaking Engish.

Indigo prophecy syndrome. Yeah, Aztecs just came out of nowhere, and the big reveal was "hey look, we're the illuminati." When your supposed magical ally turned out not to be a creepy old woman but instead just turned out to be artificial intelligence incarnate I said "I'll play to the end but JESUS CHRIST!" And nothing did ever quite match up to the fight on the rooftop.

I still think choggie is the birth pangs of the internet becoming an artificial intelligence.

chogg on, and keep posting good music.

1981 - 1985 - Work progresses on the 'Portal' project. Several high ranking Fatah personnel choke to death on lamb chunks despite the intervention of their bodyguards.

1986 - Word reaches Aperture management that another defense contractor called Black Mesa is working on a similar portal technology. In response to this news, Aperture begins developing the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System (GLaDOS), an artificially intelligent research assistant and disk operating system.

1996 - After a decade spent bringing the disk operating parts of GLaDOS to a state of more or less basic functionality, work begins on the Genetic Lifeform component.

Several Years Later - The untested AI is activated for the first time as one of the planned activities on Aperture's first annual bring-your-daughter-to-work day.

In many ways, the initial test goes well...

[END]

I've heard about the universe as a simluation one and it kinda disturbs me. Basic idea is, projecting forward, the human race will have enough computing power to run billions of atom-level simulations of the entire history of the universe from start to finish, including the lifetime of every member of the human race. The simulations would be so completely detailed that the artificial intelligences within the simulation would think they are self-aware and part of a "real" existence.

If you consider that there can only be a single true reality, and that all the billions of simulations are populated with deceived replicas of our true selves, it is statistically most likely that we are part of a simulation running on the infinitely powerful computing infrastructure of some future civilization, and thus not actually "real."

Yep. There are still a few hiccups we're trying to wade through. (Have you ever waded through a bunch of hiccups? )

We'll try to make old SiftBot get everything back in working order as immediately as humanly artificial intelligently as possible.

Update: Fixed the missing "time ago" problem. (The time on one of the new servers was out of sync.)

Aaah ... Genetic algorithms. Really nice. These works by Karl Sims are very famous in the Artificial Intelligence community. The great deal with this is that it mixes genetic algorithms and artificial neural networks.

This is taken from The Singularity Summit symposium hosted by Stanford University, where a good number of speakers about this topic gave keynote addresses. My goal was to have them all posted in the same place, in order for people to easily find them, and I was in the process of doing just that, but due to the queue, Sunkid got to this one first. Here's the rest of the info I already had prepared to go along with this.

--------------------------------------------------

Eliezer Yudkowsky - The Human Importance of the Intelligence Explosion (Full Title)

The Singularity Summit symposium hosted by Stanford University was a series keynote addresses given with the purpose of addressing the very real implications that the Singularity may hold in the near future in an academic setting, and (without being too melodramatic on my part) to question what the very fate of the human species may be in the 21st century.

--------------------------------------------------

Here are the rest of the keynote videos that go along with this, in the order that they were given at the event.

Ray Kurzweil - The Singularity: A Hard or Soft Takeoff?
http://www.videosift.com/video/Ray-Kurzweil-The-Singularity-A-Hard-or-Soft-Takeoff

Douglas R. Hofstadter - Trying to Muse Rationally about the Singularity Scenario
http://www.videosift.com/video/Douglas-Hofstadter-Musing-Rationally-about-the-Singularity

Nick Bostrom - Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risks
http://www.videosift.com/video/Nick-Bostrom-Artificial-Intelligence-and-Existential-Risks

Sebastian Thrun - Toward Human-Level Intelligence in Autonomous Cars
http://www.videosift.com/video/Sebastian-Thrun-Human-Level-Intelligent-in-Autonomous-Cars

Cory Doctorow - Singularity or Dark Age?
http://www.videosift.com/video/Cory-Doctorow-Singularity-or-Dark-Age

K. Eric Drexler - Productive Nanosystems: Toward a Super-Exponential Threshold in Physical Technology
http://www.videosift.com/video/Eric-Drexler-Productive-Nanosystems

Max More - Cognitive and Emotional Singularities: Will Superintelligence come with Superwisdom?
http://www.videosift.com/video/Max-More-Will-Superintelligence-come-with-Superwisdom

Christine L. Peterson - Bringing Humanity and the Biosphere through the Singularity
http://www.videosift.com/video/Christine-Peterson-Humanity-Biosphere-the-Singularity

John Smart - Searching for the Big Picture: Systems Theories of Accelerating Change
http://www.videosift.com/video/John-Smart-Systems-Theories-of-Accelerating-Change

Eliezer Yudkowsky - The Human Importance of the Intelligence Explosion
http://www.videosift.com/video/Eliezer-Yudkowsky-The-Intelligence-Explosion-and-Humanity

Bill McKibben - Being Good Enough
http://www.videosift.com/video/Bill-McKibben-Being-Good-Enough

Ray Kurzweil - Stanford Singularity Summit: Closing Thoughts
http://www.videosift.com/video/Ray-Kurzweil-Stanford-Singularity-Summit-Closing-Thoughts

From the Google Video comment:

Revolution OS is a 2001 documentary which traces the history of GNU, Linux, and the open source and free software movements. It features several interviews with prominent hackers and entrepreneurs (and hackers-cum-entrepreneurs), including Richard Stallman, Michael Tiemann, Linus Torvalds, Larry Augustin, Eric S. Raymond, Bruce Perens, Frank Hecker and Brian Behlendorf.

The film begins in medias res with an IPO, and then sets the historical stage by showing the beginnings of software development back in the day when software was shared on paper tape for the price of the paper itself. It then segues to Bill Gates's Open Letter to Hobbyists in which he asks Computer Hobbyists to not share, but to buy software. (This letter was written by Gates when Microsoft was still based in Arizona and spelled "Micro-Soft".) Richard Stallman then explains how and why he left the MIT Lab for Artificial Intelligence in order to devote his life to the development of free software, as well as how he started with the GNU project.

Linus Torvalds is interviewed on his development of the Linux kernel as well as on the GNU/Linux naming controversy and Linux's further evolution, including its commercialization.

Richard Stallman remarks on some of the ideological aspects of open source vis-á-vis Communism and capitalism and well as on several aspects of the development of GNU/Linux.

Michael Tiemann (interviewed in a desert) tells how he met Stallman and got an early version of Stallman's GCC and founded Cygnus Solutions.

Larry Augustin tells how he combined the resulting GNU software and a normal PC to create a UNIX-like Workstation which cost one third the price of a workstation by Sun Microsystems even though it was three times as powerful. His narrative includes his early dealings with venture capitalists, the eventual capitalization and commodification of Linux for his own company, VA Linux, and ends with its IPO.

Frank Hecker of Netscape tells how Netscape executives released the source code for Netscape's browser, one of the signal events which made Open Source a force to be reckoned with by business executives, the mainstream media, and the public at large.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is a science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke which was developed concurrently with Stanley Kubrick's film version. The story is based in part on various short stories by Clarke, most notably "The Sentinel" (1951). Kubrick collaborated with Clarke, and together they first concurrently produced the novel version that was released after the film.

The HAL 9000 computer symbolizes the progress of technology. It represents many apprehensions about technology. First, HAL is an artificial intelligence – it can mimic all of the thought processes of the human brain with greater speed and reliability. Second, its inner workings are not completely understood – even by the people who created it. HAL is an extraordinarily potent technology that cannot be fully controlled. When HAL begins to deviate from the way in which it has been programmed, this is an illustration of the apprehension many people held that our own technological development will someday come back to haunt us in surprising and unanticipated ways.

Obviously one of my favorite movies.

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do
I'm half crazy all for the love of you
It won't be a stylish marriage
I can't afford a carriage
But you'll look sweet upon the seat
Of a bicycle built for two

Ha ha ha, farting!

I studied Artificial Intelligence at the Naval Academy. I can speak three human languages and program in eight computer languages. And I still think farting is about the funniest thing ever.