Hey there, my name is Bryan Bishop. Here's to trying to keep up with yourself. RSS.
About
Transapient Musings of an S6 Archailect
Metacognitive trivialities over smooth topologies and Julian knots of subgeometric spaces; a.k.a mastermind Singularitarian, node of the Larger Submind and Clone of the Ineffable Original.
Bryan Bishop
http://heybryan.org/
email: kanzure@gmail.com
AIM: kanzure
ICQ: kanzure
YIM: kanzure
Skype: kanzure
Jabber/G-talk: kanzure@gmail.com
MSNM: cm007x2@yahoo.com
IRC: irc.freenode.net (#hplusroadmap)
phone: #1-512-203-0507
Archives
Wed, 11 Jun 2008
The perils of power tool amputation
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Newsweek has a fascinating article on 'body integrity identity disorder', a condition where people feel they need to have a limb amputated to become normal and often go to extreme lengths to have their arm or leg removed.
BIID, otherwise known as apotemnophilia, is often confused with amputee fetishism, where sexual gratification is linked to ideas of amputation. However, they seem quite distinct in most cases.
Although its not widely studied, the desire seems to be much more about the feeling of being comfortable in one's body rather than anything explicitly sexual.
The Newsweek article discusses the condition and looks at some of the latest scientific research on this seemingly strange desire, but suffers from some rather sloppy thinking about the mind and brain. For example:
BIID is attracting the attention of researchers who suspect that the condition may be related to other body image disorders—including anorexia, body dysmorphic disorder, and gender identity disorder—that at first glance may seem entirely psychological, but may be linked to physical differences in the brain.
All psychological changes are related to physical differences in the brain, so this is a completely bogus distinction.
Whenever you read a sentence like this translate it into the language of theories and evidence.
In other words, '[conditions] that might seem better explained by solely psychological theories now need to be updated as evidence on biological brain changes becomes available'.
The piece then goes on to repeat a common but trashy fallacy that you can describe any brain difference as something that is 'hard wired'.
Despite these disastrous misunderstandings of the fundamentals of neuroscience, the piece is actually quite good.
It's interesting that while the medical viewpoint is that BIID is linked to other body image disorders, the people who have these desires do not feel it is a disorder at all.
I was struck by the fact that a couple of people who have acquired amputations anecdotally report that they feel much better afterwards.
This is in marked contrast to people with body dysmorphic disorder who after plastic surgery to 'fix' their self-perceived distorted body part typically do not feel 'cured'. Or those with anorexia who do not feel satisfied even when they are at a near-fatal point of emaciation.
It would be fascinating to follow-up people who have BIID after they've acquired a successful amputation to see how they fare.
If their desires disappear, they do not become newly fixated on amputating another limb, or experience improved mental health and life-satisfaction as a result, how far can we go in saying its a mental illness?
I've had a search and, sadly, found no such studies.
Link to Newsweek article 'Cutting Desire'.
posted at: 11:47 | path: /transhumanism | permanent link to this entry
Mon, 02 Jun 2008
Two Paths to the Singularity
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Neil Gershenfeld, director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, sees a future in which physical reality is infused with embedded, distributed, self-organizing computation everywhere, while Ray Kurzweil sees a future with increasingly realistic, full-immersion virtual-reality computers. But Gersenfeld and Kurzweil agree that these worlds will converge in the future. The article is part of an IEEE Spectrum special issue on the Singularity. (Source: http://spectrum.ieee.org/jun08/6313)
The two paths to the singularity: virtualization or realization? Manufacturing (Gershenfeld) or intelligence (Kurzweil)? Also, it mentions David Dalrymple, so a shout out to David. :)
http://heybryan.org/fernhout/
posted at: 11:51 | path: /transhumanism | permanent link to this entry
Peter Thiel Explains How to Invest in the Singularity
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Why does Peter Thiel think that only intelligence will bring about a singularity?
posted at: 11:39 | path: /transhumanism | permanent link to this entry
Coming soon (or not)
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For those who might prefer a less dramatic discussion of The Singularity, IEEE Spectrum, is running a special report on the subject in its June edition.[link]
posted at: 11:36 | path: /transhumanism | permanent link to this entry
Fri, 09 May 2008
Prosthetic Commando [Concept Art]
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This is a Prostethetic Commando, a robot whose processor is a human brain taken from a felled soldier or police officer. Generally, the PC guards dignitaries at public functions. I didn't make that up — the artist behind this trippy bot, Keith Thompson, did. He's got an amazing gallery on his website, with each image containing enough backstory to build into your next game campaign, or your next movie.
I love Thompson's description of Pushkagrad, a floating Soviet-style island, whose deets are:
-Rotating agriculture pads with train tracked irrigation systems.
-Towering Administration Department crowned with statue of the First Idealogue.
-740mm rail gun, supplying the namesake of the city as well as granting it the capability of incapacitating and sometimes felling other floating cities in times of war.
-Industrial sector capable of churning out goods both for export as well as internal use within Pushkagrad.
-Heavily patrolled and armed docks for trading and overall market access.
And below is another one of Thompson's bots — this one is a nanobot fashioned from proteins called "Cherubim." It's basically a fancy drug delivery system, entering your bloodstream to deliver its payload of medicine or poison, only to be absorbed by your body and leave no trace.
Check out Keith Thompson's Gallery. (Thanks, dosido!)
posted at: 01:53 | path: /transhumanism | permanent link to this entry
SIAI Research Fellow Eliezer Yudkowsky was featured as a Nifty Guest at Penguicon, a Science Fiction and Open-Source Software Convention, appearing alongside Vernor Vinge, who originated the technological singularity concept. It’s nice to see our ideas reach Penguicon’s large audience.
posted at: 01:42 | path: /transhumanism | permanent link to this entry
'Technology Is at the Center'
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Bill Joy's recommendation that we relinquish artificial intelligence, biotech, and nanotechnology because they're just too dangerous for human beings to handle, is "so far off the mark that it is not even wrong," says entrepreneur and philanthropist Peter Thiel. It would "actually lead to the future he fears. If the virtuous people relinquish these things, it means that they will be developed by the evil people, and that seems to me to be a recipe for these technologies going wrong. "The only way for something like Joy's approach to work would be basically a totalitarian world-state in which we control the technologies worldwide. It is incredibly arrogant to say that the only smart people in the world exist in the United States and that if you can stop it in the U.S., you'll stop it everywhere. Maybe it's going to be developed by the Chinese military. Maybe it'll be developed by people working for Islamic terrorist groups. "The anti-Joy view that I would articulate is that what we need to be doing is to be pushing the accelerator further and harder." (Source: http://reason.com/news/show/125469.html)
posted at: 01:31 | path: /transhumanism | permanent link to this entry
Accelerating Future on Attack of the Show
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Andres Colon of Thoughtware.tv just wrote to inform me that this blog was covered on Tele-Vision, specifically G4.TV’s Attack of the Show. I didn’t catch it, so use this thread as a place to post your information or reactions if you did.
First TV coverage ever! Yay!
Here it is:
Brief mention, but still. TeeVee! Can you spot the images from my blog integrated into the starting collage? Can you? My images are there! You see them!
I love how it plays the rock-y music as it zooms in on my boring-ass header. (I kinda like it that way, to scare away people just looking for entertainment.) “Intellectual” site — hm, that’s interesting. Aerogel is not a metal, lol. It’s practically the physical opposite of a metal — setting records for low density and its insulation ability. Maybe he meant material.
The coolest thing in the clip is the collage at the beginning where it shows the mecha I posted. Did anyone else just laugh at this? TV is so funny, the way the announcer enunciates things he says in that standard television manner, with all the pseudo-relevant stock footage running in the background, zooming in-and-out effects, blah blah blah. (I get zero channels on my television, its only purpose is for playing the occasional RPG or fighting game.)
No mention of transhumanism. 
Oh well, my long-running strategy of posting interesting futurist material to lure people to read about H+ has already worked well, anyway.
~~~
Your blog has appeared on G4.TV.
+300,000 event points
+5000 traffic
+1000 geek cred
+10 incoming links
2 levels up
You received a clip on Thoughtware.tv
Michael learned Mock Television
*commence repetitive rejoice sequence*
~~~
Now might be a good time to link my popular posts from 2008 thus far:
10 Futuristic Materials
Five Ways You Can Help Transhumanism Now
Five Futuristic Forms of Air Travel
Feasibility Arguments for Molecular Nanotechnology
A Challenger Appears!
Interview with Future Blogger
Transhumanist Blogs
Negative Utilitarianism
Seven Influential Transhumanists
Is Star Trek a Fascist Society?
Brain-Computer Interfaces for Manipulating Dreams
Boston Dynamics Big Dog
Gimme Some of That Flying Car Shit
Top 10 Excuses for Dying
Cognitive Enhancement Strategies
Vatican Takes Official Anti-Transhumanist Stance
Response to Amor Mundi on Transhumanism
Nuclear Terrorism
High Cost of Force Protection
Annalee Newitz’s Vitriolic Anti-Transhumanism
Taking Global Risk and WWIII Seriously
Human Arrogance
Look to Inner, not Outer Space
The Religion of Science
Temperature Engineering
Stephen Omohundro’s “Basic AI Drives”
The Danger of Powerful Computing
posted at: 01:27 | path: /transhumanism | permanent link to this entry
Now this is what transhumanism is about! Meeting people and chatting them up!
The shot is of the h+ club at the University of Arizona in Tucson on club day. Click the image for a slightly larger version. From the left: Sybil De Clark, William Andregg, Richard Leis, Simone Syed. Here is a shot taken right after. Here is a picture of me with Simone from Center for Responsible Nanotechnology’s conference in Tucson last year, where I took over 40 pages of notes. All images taken from the h+ club Facebook group.
posted at: 01:26 | path: /transhumanism | permanent link to this entry
