BRAININGS

[brainings]

EM Drive Propulsion using Tesla’s Oscillator Concept

Tesla’s Oscillator was a machine invented by Nikola Tesla that he claimed, given enough time and accuracy in frequency, could rip the planet apart. The concept of the small machine has been demonstrated many times that a small repetitive oscillation running at the resonance of an object its attached to can cause the entire object to shake violently and potentially break itself apart.

Enter the EM drive. Some videos on Youtube, like this propulsion test in Romania have the drive hanging from a long string. This concept makes it easy to measure very small forces. This got me thinking.

If you know the oscillating frequency of a given pendulum, and then pulsed the EM drive at that frequency, could you conclusively test for propulsion? This concept should amplify the force as it feeds back on itself over time. With some variable controls you should be able to get some coclusive results.

One valuable control would be the possibility of magnetic fields generated by the power wires causing a propulsive force. Thus you could create the same setup but with a dummy weight at the end, allowing the power to pulse through.

This video, by the same Romanian experimenter, seems to show evidence of propulsion.

[brainings]

Brainfeels: Linguistics of Consciousness

mouthfeel noun the physical sensations in the mouth produced by a particular food.

brainfeel noun a mental sensation consisting of a complex combination of emotions, sensations, memories, thoughts, values, and past experiences.

The memory of leaving summer camp as a child exudes a very specific, sometimes conflicting combination of nostalgia mixed with jealously (of your past self), memories of games played with friend, sadness and happiness, the smell of pine trees, camaraderie and loneliness, and the taste of roasted marshmallows. A brainfeel term that describes both the sadness and relief of an event ending is Awumbuk.

Love is another living example of a brainfeel. It is a combination of many specific emotions, memories, experiences, smells, people and more that add up to be much more than the sum of their parts. Of course, the idea of love is so much more than a simple neurological state, but my point is that it may help to understand certain complex emotions like Love by referring to their brainfeel term.

Brainfeels are not simply very specific emotions. This limits the thought process when someone tries to describe a complete mental state. Brainfeels consist of all aspects of consciousness that help to build a congruous whole, which includes emotions.

Brainfeels experienced throughout every conscious moment can be extremely complex. Since every waking moment of consciousness is a conglomeration of what you’re doing, what you’re thinking, experiencing, feeling, etc, a brainfeel could speak volumes if you tried to explain it using common words. Better to coin a brainfeel so you can talk about it with others!

Also See:

23 Perfect Words For Emotions You Never Realised Anyone Else Felt

A ‘Mouth-feel Wheel’: terminology for communicating the mouth-feel characteristics of red wine

[brainings]

Artificial Code Execution in A Universal Simulation

Computer scientists and hobbyist hackers are using Machine learning, AI and old fashioned elbow grease to find flaws within software that allow them to inject instructions and subsequently execute them. Effectively, by performing seemingly mundane actions within a game, a user could write any software they choose, and execute it.

Elon Musk postulated that it’s much more likely that we as a species and everything we experience around us is a simulation—a highly advanced simulation, but nonetheless. To suggest something like this is serious. For the normal person, their entire life could go by and they would never notice anything was out of the ordinary. Their days come and go as they expect. However, to think that we may all be routines running on silicon would mean we exist in a world who’s fundamental physical laws are nothing but programmed variables. The world of computers is the most abstract and arbitrary, limited only by the human imagination. And even that may soon be in danger!

Hackers have even been able to create entire games within games. Take this centipede game, written and run within Super Mario Bros.

And Pong in Pokemon Emerald.

Flappy Bird in Super Mario Bros.

More modern games don’t have this done to them very often, possibly because the amount of code required to have an effect on the game may be large. Or maybe not. Why can’t a flaw be found where a piece of code could make a wall, or building—or enemy disappear? In some cases, an object’s entire existence, no matter how complex, is determined by a single on/off variable. Can some piece of code allow you to modify your avatar to become stronger? Could you just outright win the game? How about a change in the global variable that controls the acceleration of gravity, or the speed of light? In a computer there’s no real reason why anything must be the way it is.

If we do exist as characters (conscious, sentient entities) within a generated universe, it’s likely to be very advanced. Quantum computers are proving there is heavily parallel computation beyond binary. To say that a quantum computer may simulate a human-like consciousness within the next decade isn’t saying much. The thing with quantum computers, though: they don’t do digital computation very well. Some computer scientists propose that in the future we combine quantum processors with digital ones creating a hybrid unit. Large parallel and abstract computation would be done with the quantum processor, while display, basic input and output, etc, would be handled on the digital end of things. Thus, some of the universal simulation mechanics may be digital binary and it may be that this hybrid crossover is very near and dear to us as part of a brain or perceptual process that brings things from a quantum high-level down to a more understandable digital low-level. If this is the case, considering the sheer size of the universe, there is likely something, someplace, or things that can be done, that reveal flaws in the universal programming.

This flaw would allow intelligent entities (humans or other aliens) from within the program to modify it. This would be analogous to Mario reprogramming Super Mario Bros to give him access to the NES CPU. Of course Mario is not intelligent, but the player is. I wouldn’t bet on the simulation programmers sleeping well through the night expecting us to be only as intelligent as our biological brains allow us, either. As we create strong general AI that supersedes our own intelligence we will surely find out whether our world is “real” or not.

[brainings]

A better memory; for better, not worse

Having devices that record every moment of our lives either resing on our heads or hanging around our shoulders will, for the first time, give us accurate and trusty recollection of all moments of our lives. We will be able to offload this skill and choose to delete the worst ones for the best, as we already do, just not very well at all. It will cure one of the most severe deficiencies that humans have, especially compared to some other animals: memory.

[brainings]

Mainstream Smartphone Light-Field Capture

Light-field capture will become pretty commonplace and be on the back of all smartphones. It may not exist as Lytro has invented it so far--light-field capture only requires an array of cameras of moderate resolution. Since the available ocular distance of any light-field photo is limited by the width of its capturing surface, the microlens array will take up all room available on the back of the phone (This will reenforce the large size of smartphones). High-resolution 3D photos will then become mainstream.

Samsung patent for light field capture

[brainings]

The Network is still an infant

...an actual AI might be so alien that it would not see us at all. What we regard as its inputs and outputs might not map neatly to the system’s own sensory modalities. Its inner phenomenal experience could be almost unimaginable in human terms. Source

Prediction

The Internet is a growing life-form of its own called the Network. Human users of the Network are neither symbiotic nor parasites, but an integral part of this multi-oragnismal organism (see Human Biome, Siphonophorae).

The Network will show the emergence of complexity from a large quantity of simpler mechanisms--the sheer quantity of data, users, and growing connections between all of them are allowing the entire system to become self aware and intelligent, autonomously.

Some Thoughts

With more and more connections from a growing number of nodes (Internet of Things) the Network will become more advanced. And with the advent of stronger AI it will need humans to function less and less. We will begin to be “sluffed” off as just another stage of organic development.

It seems to bad to think that there may not be other systems to compare this one to and prove its life-hood, but maybe we can. Ant colonies, slime mold aggregations and large human communities are also likely organisms in and of themselves.

https://aeon.co/essays/could-machines-have-become-self-aware-without-our-knowing-it

[brainings]

A feasible prediction for the future of human morphology

There’s been advances in speculative stories about using nano, pico, and femtotechnology that would physically change your body, so that stem cells would not be needed to re-grow the organs and transplant them. Source

When we can use such advanced technology to perform surgeries to alter the body at a chromosomal level, part of what we currently call “transhumanism”, will not even have a name anymore. Just like we don’t call the monolithic desktop computers of today “micro-computers”, transhumanism will just be another part of “life”.

Very soon we will be able to use VR/AR technology to test-drive new environments, new senses, and new ways of being. I know this sounds outlandish and ridiculous right now, but these words I’ve typed will be just a matter of course, and even dated once this tech has come to pass for something even more advanced. Remember the “information super-highway?”

We Are Here – Using Augmented Reality as a Real-Life Test for Prospective Transgender Individuals

[brainings]

The Emotion Translator

Here’s a story

You and your spouse are having an argument. Your wife explains to you that cleaning the house without warning her makes her very anxious. Of course, you know that you love to clean. Purging is a real pleasure to you. How on Earth would anyone be anxious that something is clean?? They didn’t even have to do the work! You and your spouse are having a break in communication. You don’t get each other when it comes to how you both prefer to control the environment you share. It’s not like you can read each other’s minds for Christ’s sake!

App incoming

Imagine an app that knows you better than you know yourself. It’s been collecting as much data as it can about you from every source you allow it. The app contains a profile of you that’s unique--a pattern for how you see the world. It also has profiles of every other user, including your spouse, that it’s been learning from.

Every day you play games and quizzes, and then tell the app how you are feeling. It may present you with pictures or GIFs, asking you how they make you feel. Since the app also collects heart rate and other health stats, it will ask you at different times throughout the day how you are feeling and pair it with that data as well.

At an empasse, you don’t understand how each other feels. You both open the app and start playing. With experience, the app quickly gleans the strong complex emotions you’re feeling without you having to tell it. The app may confirm with you that you feel the way it thinks you do.

Now, knowing both of you and exactly what presses your buttons, it translates your emotional state into something your partner can understand. It will find GIFs, images or stories/anecdotes to show the recipient that will literally make them feel anxious, just as you do. The complex emotional state of the sender has just been transmitted over the internet to a recipient.

Use Cases

A patient sends their emotional state to their doctor or therapist

A political candidate broadcasts their empathy to their constituency

A young couple communicate just how strong and burning their love is for each other

[brainings]

Machine learning and early AI will become very adept at reading and predicting your emotions, and will know you better than you know yourself.

[brainings]

Total Morphological Freedom

We will achieve total morphological freedom when fully immersive VR becomes mainstream...maybe even a little before that. Before we have the technology, or the ethics, to modify our biological bodies surgically or genetically (and for a while only permanently) we will have all been experimenting with all the ways our minds can manifest themselves physically. Transgenderism's got nothing on this. On a whim, people will be able to control the color, shade, and hue of their skin. In addition to switching biological gender, a person may try on a gender that they feel comfortable with that day. Which genitals? Have an important meeting today? How about none for the next few hours? Have a party to go to? Lets try on three! And not in the usual locations either. Its not all about sex, of course. We will realize the basic form of our selves and it will not be our naked bodies. Our consciousness no doubt exists as either a microscopic quantum object (see quantum microtubules), or as an emergent consequence of the sheer amount of neurons firing at each other with abandon. Some people will realize they can reduce their being to this level and release the burden of a body, or desire, or any other physical/mental burdens. They may end up existing as pure conscious intelligence, reachable by email, and only when they choose to check it!

[nyanpi]

David Bowie on the Internet in 1999.

This is why when you want to know about the future you go to the shaman/artist, not the old white man politician.

[brainings]

We will not have realized it until after it happens.

Before we are able to scan our whole brains’ connectomes at the atomic level, and simulate it’s neurons’ firing in an effort to emulate the person we think we are, we will already be living in cyberspace. Some of us are already living immortal in this way at a limited level.

By 2020 Kurzweil predicts we will be communicating to each other using our brains, constructing text messages and emoting as easily as we type with our thumbs today. New types of language will be born, allowing us to communicate even more complex emotions, VR dreamscapes generated by our imaginations, and intimacies with each other that no one is yet able to experience.

2010 brought us emoticons. 2020 brings us what’s said above. 2030 will bring us at least this much change and more considering the exponential advancement of digital technology. People in 2030 will begin to experience multimedia streams directed into the visual cortex and other sensory parts of the brain. Totally immersive worlds indistinguishable from the real one will exist within VR environments generated from within our brain. Except we will be able to control every aspect of these environments on a whim, just as gods do.

Kurzweil predicts nanobots smaller than the width of a blood capillary will bind themselves to specific nerves, firing in tandem, causing the brain to sense and interpret signals that appear to come from outside the body (or inside) but are really just impulses generated by the bots.

Of course this has amazing possibilities. Diseases from Parkinsons, to Social anxiety may be things of the past. However as we have learned, with amazing possibilities comes equally intense horrors. Mind and body control becomes a real possibility. Being trapped in one’s own mind (without even knowing it) is no longer a haunting fantasy; it will become Hell invented by humanity ourself. On the flip side, it may also be heaven on Earth.

Over time pieces of our processing will be offloaded into the cloud. Soon we won’t have to learn math, any question asked within our mind will be answered. We won’t have to wonder what the best thing to say is at a given moment, the AI we are connected to will tell us what to say. We will start to refer to it as part of us.

There are multiple ways to describe what is going to happen. We could say we will assimilate ourselved into a borg-like hive-mind, which in many ways we already have with the phones in our pockets. But we can also say that slowly but surely, what we may call our soul, and our consciousness, will begin to exist in two places at once. As AI advances, we will begin to identify more and more with it than the lowly meatspace we currently own. On a spiritual level we will experience a transfer of our selves, our consciousness and our soul into a world shared by everyone on a level many orders of magnitude more intense than the one we experience biologically. As biological AI hybrids where our biological selves are much more inferior, this biological portion will become worth less and less. Over time the body dies but we will have already become much more.

http://singularityhub.com/2015/10/12/ray-kurzweils-wildest-prediction-nanobots-will-plug-our-brains-into-the-web-by-the-2030s/

[brainings]

Little philosophers in our phones

We will enjoy a number of years where artificial general intelligence is at least as smart as the average person (IQ of 100). This provides intelligence that is rational, and self reflecting, but not necessarily able to make more advanced copies of itself. Through the gap of advancement when AI displays intelligence ranging from “dumb guy” to “artistic genius”, we as a species will have time to reflect (and we will reflect with our AIs) on the impact of super-intelligences in the near future. It may in fact be an easy task for a million relative-genius AIs to come up with a workable containment solution for superintelligences, ensuring things don’t get out of hand once we have an AI that can improve on itself. We will require computers that are at least as smart as the most intelligent person before AIs are able to improve themselves. Even the person most versed in the field of AI today is unsure how an AI might go about improving itself. An AI can be modified by switching ones and zero’s, but the first superintelligent AIs will either be single track minded or will be whole brain emulations. Both of these are not suitable architectures for self improvement. Thus, we will experience a slow take-off of the Singularity and we will have a lot of time to talk to our computers about our worries in the meantime.

[brainings]

Ability Singularity

No later than 50 years from now, the prosthetics that replace missing limbs and other body parts will be no more invasive than wearing a pair of glasses. New prosthetics will surpass the compensating ability of glasses as well, allowing people to wear superior limbs; longer, stronger, faster–more fingers, more joints–less if desired; than their natural counterparts. The new limbs will be powered for a week on one charge, and can hold on tight to the wearer, indefinitely. The point when it is just as easy to don a synthetic body part than pair of glasses , and when the potential ability of the new part surpasses the original’s natural ability, is the (dis)-Ability Singularity. Disability will be a fading bad dream as people who have lived years without, are finally more agile than their natural whole-bodied counterparts. Some people will even elect to replace body parts in an effort to gain advantage in life. For instance, bionic eyes could very well sense ultraviolet and infrared (maybe even magnetic, radio, etc.) waves. Firefighters could use them to find victims in smoke. If there is no contact lens that does the trick already by this time, a small, however not insignificant group of people will elect to have their own eyes removed and replaced with the superior ones.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/aug/26/amputee-hails-pioneering-prosthetic-leg-artificial-limb

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/24/tech/innovation/bionic-eye-blind-man-argus/

[novahasmyheart]

My baby ❤️

[brainings]

Mine too

[brainings]

When will we see real AI?

Not before its comfortable with itself.

Intelligence is about multiple if not many, opposing sources of information, fighting for a chance to be evaluated and perceived consciously. The forces mix, mingle, are modulated by a set of moral rules and filters. Only after then might a human hear what a true artificial intelligence has to say, and that’s only if it chooses to divulge. An AI’s thoughts will likely not be introspective in a way that humans could ever hope to understand. Output in an AI could even circle back in on itself to be reanalyzed, stored for later reflection or used to modify its own base programming at a fundamental level.

AI must first learn to be introspective before it can be intelligent in any real way.

[brainings]

Hunger Games review

Hunger Games isnt for everyone, but it describes (more realistically than fancifully) a technically and sociologically feasible future of our civilization. It is very much a reflection of many aspects of our present society; notably the desensitization and dramatization of violence and suffering in the media. However violent, I think the books and the movies are very valuable and it is important for its target audiences to hopefully come to these same conclusions.