Souls

I was thinking about souls on my way to work the other morning. (I commute about an hour each way, so I have lots of time to think about stuff.) I know. I could be learning german or spanish I suppose, but those cds cost a lot of money, and I'm still paying off my deductible and out of pocket from my little health issue of last summer.

Not that I'm complaining! Glad to still be here. (No thanks to G.) But many thanks to the ER Doc, the helicopter pilot, the medivac EMTs, and my cardiologists, for all their training, skill, and ability!

Anyway, I've been thinking about souls, spirits, pneuma - whatever you want to call them - those immaterial and mysterious things which we are given, (at the moment of conception according to the catholic church, and at varying other points in fetal development according to other doctrines), which set us apart from the lesser animals like dogs and cats and great apes and monkeys. (Note: Monkeys have prehensile tails in the New World, and not prehensile tails in the Old World! Apes don't! Have long tails, prehensile or otherwise, that is. They might have souls, depending on whether souls and tails, or the absence thereof, are a suite of traits and always go together. If no tail is associated with no soul, then I guess we're all in deep shit. Then again, no soul means no burning in hell, (along with no rhythm), so it might all be good!)

So my first question is, how exactly does this getting a soul work? Is it like, the egg has half a soul, and the sperm has half a soul, and when the sperm penetrates the zona pellucida the two half souls combine, et voila'! instant soul? (Which begs the question of why white folk gots no rhythm. But I digress.)

Cool! Subject for another post! Anyway....

So what happens to all those little sperm half souls we men are crankin out at the rate of 120 to 500 million, (give or take a few hundred million), every 24 hours? Is that why christianity is so opposed to masturbation? Is the sound of all those little half souls screaming in the kleenex keeping G up at night? He could try ear muffs you know. Maybe a white noise generator, (to mask the little sperm screams, if that's the problem). Or G could have designed men to only produce one big sperm every twenty eight days, like he did with women and eggs. I mean, all those millions of redundant sperm, which will NEVER "get any", really seems rather wasteful to me. Though it does give Ezekiel the chance to slip a little porn into the scriptures. See Eze 23:19 - 20 "and lusted after her lovers there, whose cocks are like donkeys, and who cum like stallions."

(And how, perzakitly, did Ezekiel know the ejaculation volume of stallions? Wikipedia?)

Actually Ezekiel manages to slip quite a lot of porn into the scriptures, he goes on a length about various whores, (Oholah and Oholibah are two, and they sound like a couple of real hotties to me!), and how they loved to have egyptians, and assyrians, and I don't know who all, shoot their hot cum all over them.  But hey, he was a "man of god", and it's a "holy book", so I guess that makes it OK.

But if I had to define it -

Ezekiel = Porn

(I also think Ezekiel had deep seated feelings of... "personal inadequacy" ... shall we say? But again, that's another subject for another time.)

And don't EVEN get me started about Joshua and the canaanite genocide! (AKA biblical Snuff Porn.)

But, to be fair and balanced, the bible isn't ALL porn and genocide, after all there is...

The Song of Solomon, or Song of Songs, which =s Erotica. And pretty damn good erotica if you ask me! (How anyone could ever believe and accept the tortured spin taught in catholic theology and adopted by certain later protestant theologians, that the song is really about "the love of christ for his church", I don't know.  The Song of Songs is EROTICA! Though the psychological damage caused by the mental gymnastics required for people to actually believe that it's about "christs love for his church" would explain a LOT of otherwise inexplicable behavior!)

And, if I can trust my sources re translation, it should read, " ...his left hand were under my head, and that his right hand fondled me." Not "embraced", FONDLED! And just what, exactly, IS a "rose" of sharon? and the "lily " of the "valley"?  My NRSV says re "rose of sharon" "the meaning of the hebrew is uncertain". There is also a later reference to "my channel", again, "meaning in hebrew uncertain". Hmmmm.

Or, "Let my beloved come to his garden, and eat its choicest fruits."

And check out 7:6 - 9

Now. Back to semen. And its billions of wasted sperm.

Really. G should have foreseen this issue, (googols of half souls wasted over the course of human history), and dealt with it in the design stage. But he didn't. Again....

And if ensouling isn't the combining of two half souls to make one whole soul at the moment of conception, then does G do each soul implantation personally? Is it a "Hands On" process as it were? And if so, how then? I mean, at the very least it would require G, (or maybe certain specialized angels?), tracking the progression of every egg released by every ovary of every woman during every ovulation for the duration of every year of her fertility from the moment the first little thingie, (can't remember the name right now... oocyst? oocyte? oobie doobie? Isle of Langerhans?), ruptures, and releases the egg directly into her abdominal cavity - can you say big, huge, GIGANTIC design flaw? Can you say abdominal, or peritoneal implantation, and pregnancy? Ectopic pregnancy? Either of which, w/o surgical intervention, is invariably fatal to both mother and fetus/child/baby? This is Intelligent Design?  What say you ask any woman who suffers from endometriosis, (where cells from the endometrium have  migrated UP the fallopian tubes and implanted within the abdomen, where they then cycle and bleed and cause pain every month), what she thinks about this example of intelligent design.

Oh for Gs sake, spare me!

So, anyway, is G watching from the moment each egg is released until the moment it exits her body on its way to the landfill or the sewage treatment plant? And is G also tracking every sperm cell from moment of meiosis to its miserable end, again the sewage treatment plant or the landfill?

That would, of course,  require that G be present during every episode of coitus, voluntary or involuntary, everywhere on the planet, throughout the entirety of human history. (That would seem to indicate to me that G has a thing for live sex shows. But I could be wrong.)

But if G really is omniscient, I suppose he could have set everything up at the start, and be taking a nap right now. But that raises all these free will issues. Sigh...

If it isn't one thing, it's another.

And what about involuntary coitus? (More commonly known as rape.) Every instance of which an omniscient G has known (knew?) about since the beginning of time? Not to mention Gs serial commands to Moses and Joshua, that Israel engage in the kidnap and rape of young virgins.  (After the G commanded destruction of their various and sundry towns, and brutal murder of all said virgins parents, siblings, relatives, etc etc, most likely before those virgins very eyes? (Must be Gs version of foreplay, I guess. ) See: bible: pentateuch: opened pretty much at random. This, I believe, at the very least, constitutes instigation of and aiding and abetting in genocide, rape, involuntary servitude, human trafficking, conspiracy to commit gross crimes against humanity, etc etc.  

What say we bring G up on charges?

You'd think that a loving god would take better care of his daughters.

Oh wait, that's right. All women who are raped were "asking for it", and, since Eve ate that damn apple in direct disobedience of a divine command, well, obviously it's all HER fault! (This line of thought seems to have been taken to its logical conclusion in islam.)

But even so, would it be too much to ask that G intervene and prevent a woman who's been raped from conceiving? (Sadly there are idiots who actually DO believe this.) Couldn't all rapist sperm be lacking their half of the soul?  Since rapists seem to lack souls of their own. Or is G right there with a soul, waiting? Does G, for some reason, have no choice in the matter.

If so, there goes omnipotence.

Or does G make bets with Satan about which sperm gets to win the race, the competition, the lottery? (See: The Book of Job.) Does G choose which little swimmer gets the gold? Maybe G and Satan arm wrestle?

And you'd think, if G takes that much interest, that he would make sure that every little sperm (either guy or girl), and every little girl egg, (all eggs are female), was carrying his or her full complement of fully functional and correct genes. I mean what kind of god lets his childrens children die of tay sachs, or cystic fibrosis, or hemophilia, or any of the many other varied, unpleasant, painful, and ultimately lethal genetic defects.

What did those babies ever do to G?

G certainly could do that,
if he wanted to.

And if it isn't combining half souls to make whole souls at conception, but every soul is a "new" one, made special for the occasion, where do all these new souls come from?

I presume G made them. (At least that's what I gather from reading paul, in fact, paul seems to be implying that not only did G do that, but he also determined, prior to his act of creation, who would be saved and who wouldn't, thus allowing calvinism to later rear its ugly head.)  So then the question is, did he crank out every single soul necessary for his plan, (G is reputed to have a plan, for life, the universe, and everything), once and for all, at the very beginning, and are they now all in some kind of holding tank, or what?

If G's omniscient, one would think so, as that would have been the plan from the very start. (G's often said to be Omniscient by people in the know, you know!)

Except that I think the original plan was that there was only going to be Adam, so there would have been need for only one soul. But then G (and the mysterious "others") changed his (their?) mind and created Eve, so there's two, and then there's the entire apple episode, and there's no indication in genesis, (at least as I read it), that G originally planned for A and E to have sex and make babies. So when A and E eat the apple, and discover sex, and get kicked out of the garden, and start making babies, well, now we have another fine kettle of fish entirely! Humans being humans, we've been fucking our brains out, and making babies at an outrageous rate, ever since.

So then, does that mean G is like a Queen Bee or Termite Queen? Busy in the heavenly hive cranking out souls just as fast as he can? Is that why G can't seem to answer prayers, or get his message straight? I mean the witness of the holy spirit is all over the place when it comes to "testifying" what it is that G really wants. So maybe he's just too busy cranking out souls to keep track, and if humans would just stop fucking, G could get back into the business of running the universe in a sensible manner.

So, Witness of the Holy Spirit, please answer!
The Hive Mind wants to know.

Free Will

Evil?
I like the free will argument.
Yeah it's all about the free will, and choices.
G wants us to be able to choose freely.
In fact it's so important to G, that he allowed
nineteen men to freely choose to end all possibility of choice
for about three thousand other people.
(And we may never know how many Afghan and Iraqi
lives have since been lost as a direct result of
the actions of those nineteen men.)
Though I am pretty certain that had any one
of those three thousand
been allowed a glimpse of the future
they would have exercised their free will
and stayed away from the towers that morning.
And, perhaps, freely exercised their choice to tell others to do the same.
Or perhaps they might have hunted down those nineteen sorry sons a bitches,
and shot them for the mad dogs they were.

But the three thousand were not allowed the freedom to make that choice.
Unlike the nineteen,
they were given no choice in the matter at all.
 
All because G,
who loves us,
and wants a personal relationship with us,
gave us free will.
And the free will of the few outweighs the free will of the many.

The lord giveth, and the lord taketh away.
Perhaps it would have been better, in this case, had the lord simply taken away...

blessed be the name of the lord.

Random

If a single person survives a horrific plane crash which kills the other two hundred people on that plane, that is not a miracle, that is pure luck, or random chance.

However, if a plane should plunge into the ocean from 35,000 feet, and everyone is found alive and well floating quietly in the ocean, THAT would qualify as a miracle.

The greatest miracle of all would be that no planes ever fall out of the sky.

Entropy

I wonder, does G have entropy?
Or should I wonder, is G subject to entropy?
 

"Of course not", T (short for theist), replies, "G Created entropy, along with all the other laws of nature, and so is not subject to them. They're his laws, and therefore G can bend, break, or abrogate them as he sees fit!"
 

Oh hell. Shot down before I even got started. Guess I'll just go eat a Heath Bar and watch "reality" TV with my cat. : (
 

(To self), "Oh man, Reality TV? Am I that desperate? Let me think about this for a minute..."

Thinking... thinking... wait... yes?... no, darn it... still thinking... hmmm... Ding!

Aha! I get it! So, what you're saying is that whenever G has a fit, it's called a miracle!

"Yes! Right!...  No! No no no! That's not what I meant!"

Darn! Just when I thought I had it.

Anyway

This thought occurred to me the other day while chatting online with my nephew. (It was either that or Hot Chicks in Bikinis. But entropy is much more interesting - though I have to say that Hot Chicks look much better in bikinis - and I was trying to set a good example....)

Now, if G is omniscient, and omnipotent, G certainly cannot exist within the same universe as we, his supposed creation, do, as Gs existence within our universe would violate ALL sorts of laws, i.e. If G is omniscient, then G has to know both the position AND the velocity of all the subatomic particles in the universe at all times. Which could, one would think,  lead to evidence of Gs existence being unequivocally observed. Unless it is possible for G to accurately measure (know) both the position and momentum of any particle continuously for all time without actually interacting with it in any way. (Except for those miraculous occasions when G sees fit.) Which would certainly constitute a miracle, albeit a very small one, well, until you multiply it by the total number of particles in the universe. But that would seem to take us back to a totally deterministic universe, and then "free will" rears its ugly head.

Unless you're a Calvinist.

So G, if he exists, must exist outside our universe. (I'll dink around with the idea of whether or not the universe exists in or outside of G some other time.)

Anyway...

Since G has to know all that it is logically possible to know, and must be able to do all things it is logically possible for G to do, this would seem to indicate that in G not only is "there no east or west", but also, that in G there must exist very low, (OK, zero) entropy. And Gs non existent entropy can never change (increase), since, by definition, entropy is a measure of disorder, and G, being omniscient, aka having complete and perfect knowledge, must be in a state of perfect and complete order.  In addition, G being infinite being, nothing can either be added to, nor subtracted from, G. Again, zero entropy. (Does your head hurt? My head hurts.)

And that is not what is observed in this universe.

I freely admit I may be wrong here, since I'm neither a philosopher, a theist, nor a physicist. I'm just doing this for fun. (Or for the Halibut. (Sorry. Alaskan inside joke.))

If G is infinite, (even though some theists argue that an actual infinite is impossible, excepting, of course, G, (who always gets a free ride), who is the immaterial infinite ground of all being, the unmoved mover, the first cause, the what have you, and is therefore, by definition, exempt from that limitation, which means, therefore, that G can be an actual infinite, which, of course, is incontrovertible proof that G must exist!)

But I digress.

Anyway, if G is infinite, and has perfect knowledge, then G, by definition, must be in a state of perfect order. Sooooooo, while there is, one would presume, only ONE possible state of perfect infinite order, how many possible disordered states could an actual infinite being have?

I'm thinkin Infinity to the Infinity-ith (I mean, flip a single frickin bit, and it all goes to hell!)

But I suspect that's immaterial.

Still it certainly seems much more likely to me that G, (if he exists), exists in a state of, (I will admit possibly perfect), disorder. Since there are a lot more of those states than states of perfect order.

Leading me back to entropy.  

Since G, obviously, cannot exist within his creation, G must, necessarily, exist outside of his creation i.e. the universe. Wherever that outside may be. Or not be. (I didn't say "our" universe because today is not about possible multiverses.) 

And also, let us say that G is immaterial. (Whatever the hell that means.)

So, let's see if I've got this straight; an immaterial being, through an act of pure will, has created the material universe.

Again I digress - Why?

I have NO idea why an infinite immaterial being, which exists, (immaterial being existing? what, exactly, could that possibly mean?) outside of, or beyond, (what? before this act of pure will there was no spacetime, or anything material, for this immaterial being to exist outside of), again, why would this absolute and perfect, complete, (remember all the "omni" qualities?), immaterial being, existing, timeless, spaceless, interacting solely with itself, eternal and unchanging... why would it decide anything, since deciding involves choice, and choice involves change, and change involves ENTROPY!



Anyway, we'll take it as given that G, (after having, for whatever "known only to G" reasons, created the universe, and us), that G, eternally, infinitely, immaterially existing outside of spacetime, chooses to interact regularly with  his creation, i.e. us. (Evidently he botched the job initially, and so has to keep tinkering. In the hope, I suppose, that eventually he'll get it right. Except that hope implies uncertainty about the future, and G, by def, is omniscient, so he really ought to have known these things from the very beginning, which would make hope impossible, but then.... )

So... Wait a minute... I finally get it! 


G is The Squire of Gothos!


(Gotcha! Hah! Bet you thought I'd seen the light for a minute there.)



This creates another problem. 

G is immaterial being, we are material beings, in a material world, how, exactly, does G interact with us?

Through the soul? That's all well and good. For the moment I'll see your  soul. And I'll raise you the laws of physics.

G isn't only reputed to talk to certain people. G is reputed to intervene directly in the  material world by doing things like:


Covering the entire planet with at least 29,050.5 more feet of water than are currently found on it. [see below]

Stopping the sun in the sky.

Turning rivers to blood.

Plaguing people with locusts, and gnats, and boils, and mice, and hemorrhoids, and I don't know what all.
Saving random people for unknown reasons in mass casualty events.

Directly or indirectly murdering all the first born children. (G seems excessively fond of firstborns, and not in a good way.)

Etc, etc, etc....



In order to do these things G has to interact with, or even create, material things. (29,050.5 feet of water!) G has to change the entropy of that thing. For G to change the path of a single electron, G must either exert force on that electron, or cancel a force that would otherwise act on that electron, (G, being infinite and omnipotent, loses nothing from the expenditure, but we get something for free!) and in doing so G will alter the entropy of the entire universe.

Energy has to be exchanged. (Even if G then subtracts an equal amount of energy from somewhere else to balance the books.)

Though why G should find it needful to do that, except from a desire to hide his hand in things, I don't know, since, as I understand it, the entire purpose of miracles is "that people may believe". 



So, when I see an electron travel a perfectly straight path while passing through an intense magnetic field, or travel a curved path in the absence of either a magnetic or gravitational field, I'll know I've seen a serious miracle!

Now, G being an infinite immaterial being, it might be a little difficult to determine any increase in his entropy. (G being in a state of most likely zero entropy, his entropy can only increase.) But it's fairly easy to detect excess or missing energy, a change in entropy, in our world. (Just leave a window open at twenty below if you don't believe me.)



Well, the LHC can detect the missing mass/energy of a neutrino. An object so small, and bearing so little mass/energy that we haven't been able assign it an accurate weight yet. 



I think a miracle will weigh a lot more than a neutrino.

In fact, I think, if we're going to be scientific about it, that we should calculate the energy required for an actual miracle!

Physicists! How many eVs for casting out a demon? Creating enough food to feed the 5,000. Changing water to wine!

Miracles are supposedly G violating or suspending his known laws of the universe, if the laws are changed, or suspended, or if entropy were to move "backward", it will leave a mark.

We'll call it "Gs Fingerprint". 



So obviously what we need is less scripture, and more CSI!

- Just for the hell of it. How about a little CSI. (Yes it's true, I think Emily Proctor is Hot!)

Treating the earth as a perfect sphere. (Math is not my forte.) BUT, (if I did this right, and my sources gave the right numbers), when you cover the entire earth with an additional 29,050.5 feet of water - that's at least 15 cubits above the top of Everest - oh hell I'll round up to 30,000, after all, Everest might have been taller before the flood!  you're looking at an increase in the earths total mass in excess of 4.643274239999999^21 kgs. 



Actually, it will be considerably more than that, as I did not calculate the increase in total volume due to the increasing circumference of the sphere. Primarily 'cause that would take me for fricken ever. (That's right, I never even made it through pre-algebra!)

Hmmm... Let's see, for every increase in the radius of the sphere, the total surface area of the sphere will increase @ a rate of 4πr^2, and volume increases @ 4/3 (or is it 3/4?) πr^3, so every foot of additional water means x more acre feet of water... lets see... 43,560 sq ft per acre... approx 62 lbs per cubic foot of water... so... 30,000 foot increase in radius... area... total volume...  times x # of total cubic feet...

Oh fer chrissake! you want to know the exact number, you figure it out!

 It's a lot!

And all this water was added over a period of 960 hours. That = a rainfall rate of 375 inches per hour! that's 6.25 inches per minute! (If I split the difference between rain and the fountains of the deep I get 187.5 inches per hour or 3.125 per minute.)

If there are any planetary physicists out there who are really bored and have nothing better to do, would you be so kind as to calculate what effect a mass increase of that magnitude in that short period of time would have on: 


Earths total gravity?
Earths speed of rotation?

(It would have seriously tweaked the Lagrangian point between earth and moon.)
Earths gravitational relationship with the moon?

Earths gravitational relationship with the sun? (Orbital velocity?)

Earths gravitational relationship with mars and venus?



(We're talking 150 days at max weight, almost 1/2 the total orbit.)

Meteorologists:

What sort of wind velocities could we expect at sea level, on an earth with no mountains to get in the way?

Geophysicists:


What effect would the weight of a 30,000 foot water column have on the lithosphere. 

 (That works out to approx.  12,916.6 lbs of pressure per sq inch, (1,860,000 lbs per sq ft), at our current "sea level". )

Actually, it would be more than that, due to the increase in gravity as an effect of the increase in mass. (Again, if you're bored, go for it and calculate away!)

Remember, non-scientific folks, in places the water column would have exceeded 66,000 feet. 

The additional mass would affect the earth all the way to it's core.

So, I would think, as the flood happened somewhere between 2959 and 2349 BCE*, (depending on whose calculations/chronology you trust), and given we can accurately measure the ongoing surface effects of the loss of the ice sheets - which were a mere 5 to 10 thousand feet thick, and did not cover the entire planet - 12,000 to 10,000 years ago, (parts of southeast Alaska are still rising at a rate, in places, of > 2 inches a year!) then we should certainly be able to observe the continuing geophysical effects from the application and removal of the weight of a 30,000 foot water column a mere 4969 to 4359 years ago. 
 
; )



Oh, speaking of ice sheets, the entire Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, plus every glacier on the planet, would, naturally, have floated away, and the Arctic ice sheet would no longer have been contained within the continental margins of Europe, Greenland, and North America.  (Making for some big ass icebergs!) Presenting serious navigation hazards for Noah and family. (And you thought the Titanic was a tragedy!)



Did the ice all melt in 300 days? Or did they manage, somehow, to land right back where they started. (If the Antarctic ice sheet had landed in the Sahara would it have completely melted by now? Do you think anyone would have noticed?)

If it all melted during the flood, would it be possible for all the ice we see currently to form in 4359 - 4969 years or less?

 We know historically the ice has been at its present thickness since circa 985 CE. (That would mean approx 10,000 feet of ice for Greenland and Antarctica forming realllllllly fast.)
 
And what would be the story with Ötzi? At 5,300 years old he's antediluvian! What are the odds that he and all his gear would remain together and intact up there in the Alps? What with all that water, and currents, and fish, and rain, and the glaciers floating away, and everything?

Another thing. Where's all the pillow lava? Unless G shut off every volcano on the planet (talk about entropy violation!) there has to be pillow lava on TOP of a bunch of terrestrial volcanos. Mauna Loa should be covered, COVERED, I tell you, with pillow lava!!!! (And the ophiolite sequences don't count, since they don't occur on top of volcanoes active over the past 4,000 years and are not associated with or attached to recent, (past 10,000 years), volcanism. Nor do they appear to have any "roots".)



Were the fountains of the deep and the waters above the firmament fresh? or salt? 
 
Fresh above? Salt below? What percentage of each?
What effect would an additional 30,000 feet of water have had on the oceans salinity?
If fresh, could any salt water life forms survive the osmotic shock?

If salt, could any fresh water life forms survive the osmotic shock?
If salt, where did all the salt go when the water evaporated?
Shouldn't the surface of the entire planet be covered in a uniform layer of salt?

And speaking of that layer of salt, where are all the bodies?
Seriously. Where are all the salted bodies?

I know all about the nonsense of some supposed form of never actually observed "sorting" of life forms due to currents, and the climbing and/or swimming ability of everything that died miraculously (HA!) resulting in the fossils occurring in their evolutionary order, along with  an also never observed, (or described, before or since), type of sorting of sediments to account for today's observed stratigraphy, (How do you lay down sediment vertically?), but still, where are all the bodies? There should be a layer of human bodies, covered  in salt, and randomly mixed with dinosaurs, and cambrian, and ediacaran fauna, planet wide, dating to between 4,369 to 4,969 years ago. (Younger than Ötzi!)

If, miraculously, all the ocean biota survived, shouldn't all the worlds oceans have identical biota, chemical composition, salinity? (when adjusted for changes that could have occurred over a max of 4,969 years?)



Would it be possible for any for terrestrial plant life to survive 300+ days of submersion beneath a 30,000 foot water column? Either salt or fresh? (Especially an olive tree.)



Is it possible for more than 3,782,400,000,000,000 acre feet of water [see above] to evaporate in 150 days while allowing conditions to obtain commensurate with Noah and family's continued existence as carbon based life forms? 



As opposed to carbonized life forms?
Is gopher wood fire proof?

Was the ark made of asbestos?




Oh lord, I have to stop now. :D





*The Great Pyramid of Giza (called the Pyramid of Khufu and the Pyramid of Cheops) is the oldest and largest of the three pyramids in the Giza Necropolis bordering what is now El Giza, Egypt. It is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the only one to remain largely intact. Egyptologists believe that the pyramid was built as a tomb for fourth dynasty Egyptian Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops in Greek) over an approximately 20 year period concluding around 2560 BC.  

AI and its Discontents

       I love the AI community. Still working diligently after all these years, always believing the answer is just around the corner. Sort of like Fusion researchers. I expect they will figure it out... eventually. 

      They’ve been quite successful with various types of expert systems, but since the AI community keeps subdividing itself into smaller and smaller specialties working on smaller and smaller problems, I’m not sure if they’ll ever be able to put all the pieces back together again to create a system with general intelligence. And general intelligence is a requirement for autonomous AI. 

It could happen tomorrow. 

        But I’m not holding my breath. 

In the very early days of AI they thought it was simply a question of the number of components and connections. A neuron is nothing but a simple switch, right? only two possible states, right? fire/no fire, on/off, polarized/depolarized, sooo if we just connect enough switches together it should follow that the system will become self aware.
       Or something like that.
      (There is the minor issue that each neuron/switch may be connected to ten thousand+ other switches, but we'll just ignore that inconvenient little detail for the moment.)

There’s even a short story in the early SF literature about the mechanical switch phone system, (Yes, my children, telephone switching technology was originally mechanical!), of the period achieving self awareness after the total number of mechanical switches created enough potential connectivity to exceed the (unspecified) critical connectivity number.  
      Abracadabra, poof! self awareness. 
     Can’t for the life of me remember the author or title at the moment. Made a bit of an impression. The system announced its awakening by ringing every phone on the planet. That was its birth cry. 
      (As you will have gathered, the story was written pre common knowledge of software and programming.)

Didn’t turn out to be that simple, as anyone watching the growth of the web should have noticed. Billions of processors, millions of computers, a frickin universe of software, and the search algorithms still don’t come up to the level of a good reference librarian. 
      Often frustrating as hell.
     Things keeps improving, but still, I don’t want 2.648 x 10^6 hits. I mean shit, no one looks through more than the first three pages of results. But still, here we are with an entire planet worth of connections, server farms, mainframes, cloud computing, all talking to each other at the speed of light, and still no evidence of self awareness. Not even a hint of it. So it can’t merely be the number of processors. 

And speaking of processors, how about the chess projects. 

When the computers finally won against the Grand Masters, it was an interesting achievement. But wasn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, anything even remotely resembling AI.

Unfortunately the Media, in search of the elusive sound bite, totally missed that point. 
     The designers freely admitted their computers were not using AI. That it was too hard a nut to crack. And also, strangely enough, Chess was chosen because it is one of the easier games for computers to deal with - the game of Go, on the other hand…. (Tho I do believe they have made progress on that front.)

Success in chess was the result of brute processing power dedicated to a single task.  They used a bunch, (that’s the technical term), of processor chips running in parallel, to crunch a lot, (another technical term), of numbers at very high speed, thus allowing the system to basically play out every legal response to the Grand Masters move to end game, and also, (and I love this, I really do), the folks who designed the hardware and software were allowed to tweak the program as the games were being played. So, I have to ask, was it really ChipTest and his descendants? or the programmers? As far as I can see, they only proved that a machine can win at chess if it can run almost all the possible permutations in a reasonable amount of time. Which is a good thing, after all, It’s no good if we die of old age before the damn machine makes the next move. 

  But it cast ZERO light on how a human Grand Master wins. 

      Tonight on Thursday Night at the Fights!

  We have - In the Blue Corner!

This year, adding 100 more processors running in parallel, with faster clocking, (42 teraflops more per second!), running our new and improved software, using hundreds of watts of electricity, producing thousands of Btus of waste heat,  and weighing in at over 100 pounds of metal, silicon, plastic, and this that and the other.
"The Current Hardware!”

 
      And, The Challenger, In the Red Corner!!!  We have!!!

The same brain as last year!!! (Also known as, "Some Russian Guy"!)

Weighing in at about three pounds! That wrinkly grey blob of organic matter that runs on glucose and oxygen, consuming almost enough power to light a twenty watt light bulb. Yes! That three pound blob of organic matter that can “calculate” approximately three positions per second.  That three pound blob of jello, dedicating a minor part of itself to solving the problems of the game at hand. 
      Yes! It's “The Same Old Wetware!” 

 
The computer is a specialist, it plays chess. That’s it. That is all it can do.

The human Chess Master not only plays chess, the Chess Master can drive a car, talk, walk, learn, think about what he wants for dinner, and, look at the sunset and appreciate its beauty. (Well, that last one is a stretch, admittedly.) The total physical area of his or her brain actually involved in playing the game might equal the surface area of one of the chips in Big Blue. (Or whatever the current generation is called.) 
     It's just not fair.

But, if we do succeed in building AI with general intelligence, (and I'm fairly certain we eventually will), there’s this still this minor problem - I think of it as the fly, (or bug, if you will), in the ointment. Potentially, a really big, really ugly fly - that anyone who gives the matter a moment of serious thought should see. If the system is to be totally autonomous, it must want to do something. It has to have some sort of drive. It must have desire. (It doesn't need to know why it wants to do something - that will come later - but it does have to want to do something.)

There’s a syndrome called akinetic mutism. It occurs in cases of stroke or other damage to the frontal lobes, or damage to the cingulate gyrus. Though it is also called Coma Vigil, it is not what most people would consider a coma. The people affected have fairly normal sleep / wake cycles, and during waking they are conscious, they will follow people moving about the room with their eyes. Most people who present the syndrome die. But in the few instances where folks have returned to the land of the active, and been interviewed, they report that they were aware of what was going on around them, but they had no desire to do anything. The systems were in place, data was being processed, awareness existed, but they did nothing. They understood when they were requested to perform actions, but still they did nothing. They say they did not experience a desire to respond. They simply didn’t want to do anything.

So, it would seem, the design of an autonomous AI system must include, oddly enough, a desire module, and also, if it is to survive in the real world outside the controlled conditions of the lab, (long enough to achieve its goal), an instinct for self preservation. 

Here’s the big ugly fly.

The moment someone, (and if we succeed in AI it will be a someone), wants or desires something, has a goal, or an objective, in a world of other someones, who have competing, conflicting, or mutually exclusive goals or desires, there will be conflict, it will be unavoidable, and always potentially lethal. (How bad do you want it? What would you do for it? How far would you go?)
     Asimov invented the "Laws of Robotics" as a sort of end run around this problem, hard wired in, as it were. And they made for good stories,


      But -

The behavior of any system that complex, with that many lines of code*, that amount of processing power, and that degree of necessarily flexible architecture, (capable of reprogramming and rewiring itself on the fly, in real time), will be inherently unpredictable. 
     We can't currently predict the behavior of unintelligent software being run on unintelligent hardware. (If we could, we could design systems would never crash or lock up.) And, if certain hypotheses are true, we will never be able to. The best we will be able to achieve will be probabilistic predictions, aka "best guesses". It’s N^n beyond the Halting Problem. 

If you design a system to learn, as soon as you turn it on it will begin to change, and you will no longer be able to predict what it will do with any certainty. (Any parent knows this.)

And here’s another thing. Just like any of us, the AI program can only know the world through its senses. Whatever senses we may chose to give it, or eventually it may choose for itself. 

See where I’m going with this?

And so, when we have something at least as complex as a human brain, with the brains N^n potential states, not all of those states will be "healthy states".  This is inevitable given the law of unintended consequences. (And it is a hard and fast law.) So what do we do when, (not if, but when), our AI program becomes psychotic and delusional? Especially if we've given it control over something very important? 

  
    It will happen. I guarantee it.


* I am not a believer in the idea that AI can be found in software. Or that software can ever achieve intelligence. I'm fairly certain that brains run on minimal software, and that intelligence is the result of a flexible neural architecture with continuous remodeling re-weighting capability, and genetically coded, (for lack of a better word), firmware. 

Copadocetic

Dedicated to George Rekers....

So I'm wonderin, as I so often do, about the whole omniscient thing. Like, what would it be like to know everything it is possible for you, as G, to (logically) know? (I threw that "logically" in for the theologians and philosophers, it helps to keep them happy. Not sure why.)

And whether G, who is all good, can know what it's like to be, say, Jeffery Dahmer, or Adolf Hitler.

Or whether G, who is pure spirit, and wholly incorporeal, can know what it feels like to have a boner.

Or hard nipples and a wet pussy.

You know, to really experience the temptations of the flesh. I mean, G could have an intellectual understanding of it, understand it from a design standpoint, maybe, (by the way G, about the whole design thing? Needs some serious work. How about next time you engineer the mammalian visual system you run the wiring behind the photon detectors, you know? instead of over the top? where it gets in the way of the photons? avoid the whole huge blind spot smack in the middle of the visual field issue? And, (and this is just a thought you understand), maybe point the photon detectors towards the front? - Oh wait, that's right, you did do that. With the Mulloscs! On the fifth day! Before you made people. So... what was up with that...? Squids get better designed eyes than people? When you created us on the sixth day, after you created squids, and octopi, and cuttlefish and slugs! had you forgotten what you had done the day before...? Dude, you must'a been smokin waaaaay too much weed!), but, back to the subject at hand, is that in any way the same experience as being in a body and HAVING a boner? And as regards having a hard nipples and a wet pussy? Or what it's like to give birth? (The crucifixion lasted, what? three hours tops?) Well, as G only incarnated as C, who was undeniably male, I guess the creator of all must not have thought that understanding the undeniably weak, and inferior, and most originally sinful half of his creation was worth the effort.

Jeez! Ladies remember - Eat ONE fricken Apple.... (He never forgets. Never ever forgets.)*

I mean, I know there's all that theology about C, aka Logos, aka the word, (which is father to the thought, or vice versa), becoming incarnate so that G/C could know what it's like to actually be corporeal, and, since G and C are consubstantial, i.e. what C knows, G knows, ya know? I mean they're like this, (I make crossed finger gesture here), right? They have to know each others innermost thoughts! They ARE each others innermost thoughts! Except... Well... there is that stupid pesky scripture, Matt 24:36, where C pleads ignorance about the arrival time of Gs imperial rule.

Unless C was lying about not knowing....

But other than that? G and C?  Totally Simpatico! I'm tellin you!

But, at the same time, there's the entire tension about whether C actually experienced the temptations of the flesh. Cause he has to be the perfect sacrifice, which means unstained by sin, right?

But, if I remember my catholic doctrine (or is it dogma? whatever... I can't be bothered to look it up right now), rightly, to even have the impulse is to commit the sin. To even consider the thought is to have, or form, the intent, and is therefore the same as actually committing the sin. So c'mon dudes, if simply having the boner is a sin, really, I'm thinkin "as well in for a penny as in for a (wait for it...) pound".  I mean, ya gotta wonder... did C ever look at Mary Magdalene and think, "Daddy Damn! But I would love to get me some of THAT! Mmmm mm mmm mmm mmmmm. Must be a little... coooool in here tonight. Just look at those hellascious nipples pokin up through that robe. Bet they're sweet as the grapes in the Garden of Gethsemene! Yummy!"

Except, as soon as that thought, impulse, desire, (or anything else for that matter), arose, BANG! C has SINNED! And no more perfect sacrifice.

But if C never has any of those thoughts or desires, then C has no idea what it's really like to be in the flesh, doesn't know what it's really like to be one of us, and the whole exercise is pointless.

And the immaculate conception? What a terrible thing to do to a person. (Yeah, I know that's only doctrine, and not to be found, in any way shape or form, in the scriptures. Still....)

Mary is sitting in the living room, wondering what to cook for dinner, when suddenly!

POOF! Flash! Bang! Big cloud of smoke!


ArchAngel Gabriel appears!

Gabe: Yo yo yo! Yo! Mary! ArchAngel Gabe here! Guess what! You were born without sin! On account'a G is the man with the plan! An he knows how them silly catholic theologians is gonna come up with a doctrine what gots NO basis in the scriptures. But that won't stop them! Those darn catholics! They so funny!

Anyway! 

G's gonna knock you immaculate self up! Yeah, thas what I'm sayin! You gonna get pregnant by G! By "The Man" hisself! Well, actually, he's gonna send down the holy spirit to do the job, on accounta... well...  you bein... a girl an all... see...  well... G... G got this... this... thing about pussy, see? You know how it is... all that "unclean" shit? I mean you read The Law right? I mean we know you immaculate, and ain't never bled, an won't never bleed... or have sex... or an orgasm... which is a shame really... really... really a shame... cause you a  fine lookin girl... an those look like some really nice boobies you got under that there robe...  But... well... it's just a G thing ya know? We don't question it. He bein The Boss an all. But G not gay or nothin like that!  Not gay. No Way! Nooooooot gay! Absolutely Not!  Not even a little tiny bit... Even tho he created Adam first, an wasn't really plannin on creatin women... um... Eve, at all... cuz.... um...  you know how it is... An all that ragin bout men layin wit men like they was women, an how it's an abomination... an ya'll shouldn't be doin that, else G gonna do somethin REALLY bad to ya... Like he did later on? Ya know? That whole sodom an gomorrah destruction thing?  All that Hellfire an Brimstone rainin down... Weren't nothin to do with... Umm.... Cuz G don't got NO internal conflicts, or nothin like that... No way... None a dat shit... So....

Anyway... 

The holy spirit gonna come down an knock you up! So his son can die for the forgiveness of sin and save the world! (but you an Joe gotta raise him on you own, see, cause G ain't gonna be around much... G be busy runnin the universe you know... Full time job... That ol G... he busy busy busy...)

Mary: (Shocked silence)

Gabe: Now I can see you got some concerns here, but I'm gonna be talkin to Joe 'bout this real soon, so don't you be worryin your pretty little head about what he's gonna say or think, or none a that, cause we got that covered.

Mary: (Stunned silence)

Gabe: Oh. An did I tell ya they's gonna be some wiseguys comin from th' east? No? Yeah. Three wiseguys. From the East. They gonna follow some star, see? so old Matthew, or whoever, can work that ol Star Prophecy into the gospel. An those three wise men don't got nothin to do wit makin a reference to G an friends visitin Sarai and Abram. Nothin A Tall! Anyway... They gonna be bringin you an the baby gold an frankincense an myrrh an all that. An if ya'll sell the frankincense an myrrh on ebay, an invest that gold, why, you an Joe gonna be set financially for life! I'm tellin you! It's all good. Would I lie to you? This is Gabe here! Th' ArchAngel! See these wings? Pure Gold!

Mary: (Strangled silence)

Gabe: Oh, an 'bout those wiseguys... they is gonna be a little problem wid dat, see... just a little one... see... uh... they gonna be talkin wit crazy ol King Herod on th way in, right? 'Bout your son bein the new king a the jews an all? An... well...  you know that crazy old herod, how he kinda got that psychotic an delusional thing goin on? So, he's gonna be orderin the murder of all the babies under two years old, to try an kill yo... kill Gs son. So... ya'll might wanna be headin out egypt way after the wise men show up, ya know?

Mary: ...

Gabe: Now I know what you gonna say, bout all them innocent babies bein murdered, when G could certainly prevent it from ever happenin, him being G an all. Like maybe him appearin to the wiseguys an tellin em NOT to talk to herod on the way in... like he gonna do... on the way out... Uhhh... But ya gotta believe it's all part a G's greater plan. I mean, Eternal Salvation versus a few thousand dead babies an broken hearted mamas an all that innocent blood runnin in the streets... Brr, give me chills jus thinkin about it... Still... I mean...  a few thousand murdered babies... salvation... a few thousand murdered babies... salvation.... You do the math. An after all, I mean... it ain't like G got a problem with murderin babies... they is some precedent, what with  G murderin of all th eqyptian first born all those years ago... An the canaanite genocide... Cept for the virgin girls... An all those years what G demanded the infant sacrifice of ya'lls first born... Which ain't gonna be totally erased from the scripture...

Don't know why he gonna let that slide...

Mary: ...

Gabe: Bad planning? Bad planning? Watch'u talkin 'bout Willis! Bad planning... Sheeit! This is G you talkin about! Ain't no bad plannin involved! He seen this since the beginnin a time. Ain't you read your book a Job? Ya know? "Where was you when the foundations of th earth was laid" an all that? He's G! He's The Man! Don't you be talkin no "bad planning"!

So anyway, thas the plan. The holy ghost gonna be along any time now an be gettin down to bidness. So... You have you a good day! I'll be headin back to heaven now. Gotta tell G things is alright on this end. Got places to go an people to see! (whispers) Me an Mike got us a game a texas hold'em with Lucifer an the boys tonight. Lucifer he be gettin some bad press, but he not a bad guy at heart.

So... Be seein ya!

Peace, Out!


*Actually he forgets stuff all the time, but that's fodder for another post. Probably dozens of other posts. Maybe hundreds! I'll NEVER run out of material! He's a fricken Gold Mine! A license to print money!