Seniors

After space travel, one of the most loved themes of science fiction is robots.  Many people, going back centuries, have imagined creating artificial people.  Writers of robot stories have seldom explored the technical details behind what it means to create a thinking being, they just assumed it will be done – in the future.  Since the 1950s artificial intelligence has been a real academic pursuit, and even though scientists have produced machines that can play chess and Jeopardy, many people doubt the possibility of ever building a machine that knows it’s playing chess or Jeopardy. I disagree, although I have no proof or authority to say so.  Let’s just say if I was to bet money on which will come first, a self-aware thinking machine or a successful manned mission to Mars, I put my money on arrival of thinking machines.  I’m hoping for the both sometimes before I die, and I’m 61. There is a certain amount of basic logic involved in predicting intelligent machines.  If the human mind evolved through random events in nature, and intelligence emerged as a byproduct of ever growing biological complexity, then it’s easy to suggest that machine intelligence can evolve out the development of ever growing computer complexity. However, there’s talk on the net about the limits of high performance computing (HPC), and the barriers of scaling it larger – see “Power-mad HPC fans told: No exascale for you – for at least 8 years” by Dan Olds at The Register.  The current world’s largest computer needs 8 megawatts to crank out 18 petaflops, but to scale it up to an exaflop machine, would require 144 megawatts of power, or a $450 million dollar annual power bill.  And if current supercomputers aren’t as smart as a human, and cost millions to run, is it very likely we’ll ever have AI machine or android robots that can think like a man?  It makes it damn hard to believe in the Singularity.  But I do.  I believe intelligent machines are one science fictional dream within our grasp. [click on photos for larger images] Titan is the current speed demon of supercomputers, and is 4352 square feet in size.  Even if all it’s power could be squeezed into a box the size of our heads, it wouldn’t be considered intelligent, not in the way we define human intelligence.  No human could calculate what Titan does, but it’s still considered dumb by human standards of awareness.  However, I think it’s wrong to think the road to artificial awareness lies down the supercomputer path.  Supercomputers can’t even do what a cockroach does cognitively.  They weren’t meant to either. It’s obvious that our brains aren’t digital computers.  Our brains process patterns and are composed of many subsystems, whose sum are greater than the whole.  Self-aware consciousness seems to be a byproduct of evolutionary development.  The universe has always been an interaction between its countless parts.  At first it was just subatomic particles.  Over time the elements were created.  Then molecules, which led to chemistry.  Along the way biology developed.  As living forms progressed through the unfolding of evolutionary permutations, various forms of sensory organs developed to explore the surrounding reality.  Slowly the awareness of self emerged. There are folks who believe artificial minds can’t be created because minds are souls, and souls come from outside of physical reality.  I don’t believe this.  One proof I can give is we can alter minds by altering their physical bodies. To create artificial beings with self-awareness we’ll need to create robots with senses and pattern recognition systems.  My guess is this will taking far less computing power than people currently imagine.  I think the human brain is based on simple tricks we’ve yet to discover.  It’s three pounds of gray goo, not magic. Human brains don’t process informati

Above: Blue Ridge Christian Academy. My grandfather, the Christian Scientist, frequently used that expression when confronted with anti-science dolts. I immediately knew it had to be the title of this piece. I can do no better than to simply quote my local newspaper, the Greenville News, about this latest horror. And to the rest of Blogdonia, Tumblr, all points of the internet and beyond, let me underscore it: SEE WHAT WE PUT UP WITH AROUND HERE? This is why I often do not take your intramural lefty-theoretical squabbles seriously. In these parts, we are still dealing with the freaking Scopes trial. The title of the Greenville News account is Blue Ridge quiz ignites firestorm, accompanied by the coy subtitle, Furor brings attention, but possibly salvation. This is a cute example of how the Greenville News always tries to have it both ways. As is evident in the article below, this phrase could refer to 'salvation of the school itself'--which was ready to go belly-up financially... OR it could mean, literally, the way to Salvation with a capital S. (article is credited to Lyn Riddle, staff writer) Which meaning is intended? You decide:It was labeled “4th grade science quiz. Dinosaurs: Genesis and the Gospel.” Eighteen questions. The first four were true or false. The earth is billions of years old. A lopsided pencil mark circled false. Dinosaurs lived millions of years ago, another circle: false. It went on from there, testing students on the beginning of the world according to creationism, the belief that the literal interpretation of the first book of the Bible explains it all. Both were marked correct. Before long, the quiz was posted on the social news website Reddit, unleashing a firestorm of criticism on Blue Ridge Christian Academy, a tiny private Christian school in northern Greenville County. In what board chair Joy Hartsell says shows God is at work in the world, the controversy may be what saves the school from closing. About six weeks ago, parents were told that the school would close May 31 because the founder and major donor would no longer make up the loss in operating expenses, said Diana Baker, the director. “We may have found the path to get the money,” Hartsell said Friday. So far, about $10,000 toward the $200,000 needed to stay open next fall has been received and more checks arrive in the mail every day, Baker said. She said she received a $3,000 check on Thursday.Cue my grandfather's phrase, the title of this blog post. Fundies to the rescue! Knuckleheads of the world, unite! The rest of the article makes it clear that the sheltered and ignorant denizens of Blue Ridge Academy have never even seen Reddit before. Someone obviously unleashed the "DIAF" meme, which made them hyperventilate and call the sheriff's office. Do you believe? If I had called the sheriff every time someone online wished a nasty death on me... well, the Greenville County sheriff would be permanently camped out in my kitchen. But yes, pick a fight with stupidity and then howl when the world takes you seriously, as I have said numerous times, is the usual fundamentalist technique. Your thoughts?

I was in Hawaii last week, don’t ask, it rained almost the whole time.  It was still fun because we were there with fun friends.  We all made the best of it.  But part of me did wonder why I was spending so much money to be somewhere else when the weather was so much better back at home.    It used to be that the only part of traveling that I didn’t like was that I missed my doggy back home.  I worried about her.  Oh and guilt, I had much of that too, worry and guilt.  Toward the end of those past trips, I got more and more anxious to get back home to make sure she was ok.  I was always so happy to see that everything was fine when I got home.  Although after greeting me joyfully, she would catch herself and move to ignoring me for several hours just to remind me how mad she was that we left her.  I did mention the guilt, right?  Those Beagles are clever. I have to admit that trips have been much more enjoyable over the last several years since we haven’t had a furry friend back home to worry about.  Even though our days back home outnumber those on the road, this has been my biggest hurdle to adopting another dog.  But on this trip, I had another yearning for home, even before it started raining.  I missed my piano.  Really, I had piano withdrawals.  So I downloaded “Music Theory for Dummies” onto my iPad so I could still do something that felt like learning the piano.  That made it worse.  I just wanted to practice everything I was learning about building chords.  To hear what some of the minor scales sounded like on the piano, I used Garage Band on my computer.   Since I’ve been home, I’ve been practicing about three or four hours a day.  It’s all I want to do. So now I’m thinking that my passion for travel has been overtaken by my passion for piano.  And if I’m not as hot on travel anymore, if I just want to be home with my piano, then maybe it’s ok to get a dog too.   I guess I'll have more time to reflect on which passions pull hardest when we spend a month in New York this summer.  But in the meantime, a reader sent me this picture of his best friend.  I know, who could resist that face, right?  So yes, it is making me seriously consider his advice to just "get the puppy!"   Related Posts:     What's on Your Bucket List?     What Five Things Make You Most Happy (and Why Aren't You Doing Them?)     Enjoying Retirement with Doggies   Be ready when Google’s feed reader shuts down.  Subscribe by email—it’s free! (Photo credit:  Thanks to Kirk B. for the temptation!)

Shady Bed, early spring Every morning I head out, weeder in hand, to look at my garden and see what's happening out among the plants. I stare fondly at the plants I love and do battle with the endless armies of invaders. There is usually something interesting, especially since this year I have planted a lot of seed. I'm pretty comfortable with things I have grown from seed before, but less so

Dryad's Saddle or Pheasant's Back Mushroom(Polyporus squamosus)One goes off to the forest in May in search of early orchids and encounters these fetching fungi instead. It's always a treat to find such arty structures, and they pop out of the woodwork around the same time as morels do, sometimes growing quite large - well over a foot across. This one was growing out of an elm stump along the trail into the deep woods, and it could be seen from quite a distance because of its tawny ochre coloring.The mushrooms are a species of bracket fungus, and their common name derives from European mythological tradition which held that the fey woodland beings called dryads found the growths comfortable and liked to ride them. Do the saddles develop legs and canter off with their tiny riders when nobody is looking? As for the second name, they do look rather like the mottled feathering on a pheasant's back. Tough in their maturity (rather like me, I suppose), the "saddles" are deliciously edible when young and tender, and they smell somewhat like watermelons, apparently taste like them too when raw. I haven't done it, but apparently one can make a lovely stiff creamy thick paper out of the fibres. Since all the specimens I have located so far are old and stringy, I haven't tried eating them - simply like them for their shape (kind of like the starship Enterprise), their vivid earthy hues, and the fact that they show up like technicolor balloons on stumps and among fallen trees.

Cheerful Monk. Creative Commons license. Last week I mentioned the book, The Path of Least Resistance — Learning to Be a Creative Force in Your Own Life by Robert Fritz. Another book I had read and liked had suggested it, and I was taken by the catchy title, but it didn’t resonate with me. I found it to be wordy, and I disagreed with some of the things Fritz said — for instance that problem solving is not creating. Yeah, sure. Tell that to anyone who has been awed by the Roman aqueducts. But I was willing to give Fritz the benefit of the doubt. When I saw that I could take his program Technologies for Creating at home for a reasonable price, I decided to see how he put his ideas into action. Let’s just say I was surprised. When the gal (during the first of the weekly phone interviews) asked me what my goals were I said, “I want to do some writing, and I want to enjoy the process.” Nope, that was completely unacceptable. Not nearly motivating enough. I was supposed to envision that I’ve written a book, that I’m holding it my hands, that I’m receiving praise and publicity, that I’m holding a check I have received for it, etc. Huh? That’s not the way I work. Also the gal said the conscious mind has to be in charge, that our subconscious should be like a well-trained dog. My approach is just the opposite. I treat my subconscious well by feeding it the information it needs and by giving it plenty of incubation time to come up with the insights and ideas I need. (I agree with the four stages of creativity: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification.) If I have a project that needs some creative thought I don’t procrastinate but start researching it early. And the key to that is enjoying myself, to do it in the spirit of play. Now that I’m retired I usually get to choose my own projects, and even there I don’t sit down and consciously think about it. I rely on my subconscious to decide. We make a good team. No well-trained dogs there. Okay, so was the course a waste of money? Not at all. It was such a mismatch that it clarified what I do want and believe. I am scratching my head though. I just skimmed through the book to the part where Fritz talks about what he thinks we should be doing — operating from our fundamental life choices rather than being reactive — and it sounds surprisingly like Item 1 of the Traits of Stress-Hardy, Resilient People: They have a sense of meaning, direction, and purpose. They are value-centered rather than reactive and defensive…. So why the gal’s focus on external rewards rather than intrinsic motivation? Who knows. Just another of the mysteries of the universe. What about you? Do you think you’re more reactive to circumstances or more inner-directed? Does the phrase “creative force in your life” resonate with you? Thanks to Mike, Cathy, Evan, tammy, Dixie, bikehikebabe, Ursula and Rummuser for commenting on last week’s post.

,I've had this cloth, a summery linen-cotton blend, for ages but never cut it: today I did. This is an above-the-knee simple tailored skirt with a yoke-type waistband. The sewing project was going really well... until my helper showed up. How do they know? All comfortable. That's OK. I got the skirt cut out and marked and the darts pinned; ready to start sewing next time. (I did take it away from her.) What's not going particularly well is the drawing. It's the weirdest thing; i was all into it, and then, suddenly, it was like a love affair gone bad. I didn't feel like doing it at all. Practically overnight. So odd! So I'm giving it a rest. At this point in my life there's no point in forcing myself. It will come back; I think I needed to release myself from the pressure of the daily drawings. After all, I've been doing it almost every day since the beginning of April. A good time to make a skirt instead. I spent most of the morning at the garden. it's looking pretty nice over there -- lots of things in bloom: late tulips, forget-me-nots, my lilies-of-the-valley are just starting. For the past three years, I've had a bit of a focus on delphinium. Nobody else grows them because they are finicky in this climate, but I always had them in Vermont and decided to try, and so far, they've done well. That is, until this spring, when not one of the Pacific Giants - the tall ones - came up. The small free-flowering ones seem to be OK, and I never grow the mid-size Magic Fountains, because they really aren't reliable here year-to-year. So the other day at the garden center, I bought a bunch of new plants, and today I put them in, after digging out a bunch of anemones that had spread into the area I wanted to use, and then did some other tasks. There's something so satisfying about garden work, even with the inevitable reversals, failures, surprises. I was all grubby and hot and sweaty when I finished, but it felt great.

Apple Blossoms Plum Blossoms Late Tulip

On Monday I'm leaving for a little cabin in the woods.  I'm spending five days at my beloved Donner Lake.   Me.   Solo. I recently realized  that I have not taken a vacation that was not with children, to visit children, or to care for children since 2007 when I went to Stewart Hot Springs. I looked back through my blog posts and found this one from then and laughed because it was also titled Solitude. I reread it and was filled once again with the knowing of who I become when I explore the world alone.  How rich and full up I am with gratitude.  I am so damn excited! So next week.  Hiking and exploring by day.  Reading and relaxing in the hot tub and sauna by night.    I am finally going to be able to step upon the call of my dream I wrote about here: The Pacific Crest Trail.  The main focus of this getaway is to meet my mistress.  So to speak.  Finally.  I have yet to see her. Ever. So I've been devouring books and studying my topographical maps.  Wearing my hiking boots around the house and local trails with and without the insole inserts.  Adding weight gradually to my day pack.  Counting the years, then months, then days until I tread upon her for the first time.    This is actually just an introduction.  I turn 60 in November and will begin the trek the following Spring.  The plan remains to take about a year and a half - two years to complete the hike in segments.  So this little five day adventure? It's just, say, a coffee date.