Ask Nomaken anything

[SovaNu]

yes. do you?

[Nomaken]

What do you think of this? http://youtube.com/watch?v=15bwhVxw-Bg

It was cute and hilarious, should have called it a kitty dancing machine.  Although I think I would prefer to keep my cat dirty.  That way he will not murder me in my sleep.

Nomaken, i agree about speed being good for soul searching, i used to take Dextroamphetamine and i used the energy to find answers to my spiritual questions.

then i got tired of the thinking and stopped, and that was good, but now i just feel energyless and stuck, too scattered to focus. i'm thinking maybe i should go back on the meds but getting them in a new country might be hard.

anyway since this is ask nomaken thread, what should i do?

In general it is better to use self discipline than using a medication because it is healthier(effectively you feel normal without the chemical).

However, you can self medicate with a normal dosage of cough supressant.  Usually that isn't tough to get ahold of(at least in america) as long as you don't get it with pseudoephederine in it.  Just take the normal dose, or twice the dose.  It will produce a noticable effect, and wont kill you or destroy your brain no matter how long you do it(as long as you only take the dose once per 24 hours).

On the other hand, it is possible to get perscription medication from drug connections, however I advise against this unless you have a connection you trust.

But the best method of motivating yourself to focus, I believe, is actually wanting what you are trying to focus on.  Trying to get yourself to do things you don't truely want, is like pulling teeth, because whether or not you realize it, you are probabally actively working against yourself.

[Peter]

Do you think that psychopathy is a natural outcome of AI creation, and that special design considerations would be necessary to create non-psychopathic AI?  How difficult do you think it would be to create a non-psychopathic AI compared with the difficulty in creating a psychopathic one?

[Nomaken]

I don't think that psychopathy is a natural outcome of AI creation, but I think it is likely that a lot of early AI's may seem to be slightly psychopathic.

A lot of engineers who are trying to design AI are thinking about the skills they think humans are so good at.  Our ability to coordinate our actions, our ability to track moving objects, essentially problem solving abilities.

And if you make an AI that is composed of nothing but problem solving skills, it is likely that, however unintentionally, the AI will appear to be psychopathic at times.

This, sort of amusingly, I think comes from the fact that humans are not designed primarily to understand themselves, they are designed to do.  And in trying to create AI, we're applying our problem solving ability(part of the do), and seeing only skills we have that allow us to figure shit out.

So I don't think it will be more difficult for us to create AI's which never show any psychopathy because it is somehow inherently more difficult to build a machine like that, but because of our own lack of ability to understand ourselves.

I am personally really going out of my way to try to think of how to not make a psychopathic AI.  But I am sure I am going to miss something that will only become obvious when the machine does something psychopathic(actually I am not, I think I can actually pull it off, but i must admit the possibility i'll miss something).

But I don't think that AI, even with the biggest fuckup from an enginner, will produce killing machines unless that is specifically part of its design.  In the case that some engineer forgets to consider a situation, and it happens, the AI will only appear to be careless.

There is this scene in Ghost in the Shell when a tachikoma is looking for a dog with a girl, and it picks up the dog very ungently, and asks the girl if this one was it.  When she said no, the tachikoma tossed it away, and the girl got angry at it for being so rough to the dog.  The tachikoma didn't understand why, as it was the wrong dog.  The tachikoma wasn't maliceful, it just never considered that it was important to be gentle to the dog.  The tachikoma's designer never designed the tachikoma's to consider the feelings of others.

Now it is possible to do this.  It isn't something magical, but there is a lot of room to make an honest mistake and miss something.

I actually think it will be pretty easy to make a system that ensures an AI behaves non-psychopathically, but I think plenty of the first real AI's will not have these measures just because most engineers think all these is to AI is problem solving, and they will try to correct just by putting limiters on the AI's behavior, rather than actually giving it the ability to understand feelings and values and ethics.  And there is gonna be a situation they didn't think of a limiter for, and the AI is gonna do something careless.

[McGiver]

Nomaken, would you kiss this pussy on the lips?

[Nomaken]

A small peck, because he is just so cute.  I sometimes kiss my kitty on the nose, and it is so cute because he immediately licks his nose.

[SovaNu]

i would kiss it too.

[McGiver]

why is this guys hand on his crotch?




do you put your hand on your croth when you pet your pussy?

[Nomaken]

Probably because the artist couldnt easily figure out how to draw his hand doing much else.

And no, my kitty is sitting in my lap most times I pet him.

[Peter]

http://galleries.brandydidder.com/fg/030/index.php




































Where is your hand now?

[Nomaken]

Before I started typing, one was on my mouse and the other was kind of lazily slacked across my lap.  With my pants on.  Which is not to say there wasn't a small erection forming.

[El]

I don't know how to say this, but I... I think I may be falling for you.  I think about you all the time.  Last night I had an erotic dream about you.  To read about it in more detail, please Go here.

I don't even dare ask the obvious question...

[Nomaken]

Was that supposed to be an april fools gag(as opposed to a gag in general)?  I don't keep track of time well.  Nor do I know when holidays are.  I only guessed that it was april fools cause, that day, google was offering a method for free broad band service through the toilet, and they used the term commode.

As a side note... I don't know how you'd actually say that, but part of the reason I am smitten with you is because you don't talk or behave like that at all.

[Calandale]

Your views on suicide seem not too different from my own,
assuming that it is safe to state them here, would you expound
upon them briefly?

[Nomaken]

I don't really have ethical or moral beliefs in suicide itself.  What i believe about suicide is just conclusions based on how I understand the universe, and my motives.

First of all, I believe that beliefs are the foundation of thought and knowledge.  They are the only method we have to make decisions and think.  True we have what you'd call physcial evidence, but we must believe in the evidence for it to have any power.  And as uncertain as that may leave us, it may just be an unfortunate reality that that is the only certainty we can have.

Based on that, I think that life has no reliably knowable meaning or purpose.  If life has a meaning or purpose, we can only speculate on it, or coincidentally know it.  But we can never be sure we're right.

Personally life has been for me a big inconvenience.  Not terrible, not wonderful, just inconvenient, annoying.

I am not really into philosophy.  I figured out a while ago that studying philosophy wont lead me to answers, only more questions.  Intellectually I can not be certain of anything, intellectually I have no way to make decisions since I can not be sure of the validity of anything.  So to avoid sitting still unable to decide if any action is preferable to any other action, I let my "ID" run the show.  Or perhaps my "ID" always ran the show otherwise i'd have no incentive to stop sitting still and never being able to know anything.

My "ID" uses my superego to its own devices.  What motivates me is simple.  I pursue pleasure, satisfaction, and happiness, and I avoid unhappiness, pain, and other negative stimulation.

Now here is a big assumption:  Death is like unconsciousness, it is simply a lack of experience.  Now that is a big assumption.  It is equally likely that god exists, heaven and hell exist, and that suicide is a mortal sin.  However the more inactive a brain, the less experience is reported.  Such as during resting sleep. 

So assuming that death is the end of experience, that life has no knowable meaning or purpose or value for that matter, death doesn't either, and life is a huge inconvenience, suicide is the logical conclusion.

However I have what some would call a sense of self preservation.  It isn't an intellectual thing.  And as much as an inconvenience as life has been for me, cumulatively the sense of self preservation, the pleasure I experience, and the desire to avoid the pain of death, I do not as of yet have enough incentive to try something different(death).

And for myself and other people there are many factors I did not mention which makes life more or less valuable and changes the validity of suicide.

Now this doesn't really answer whether or not suicide is the right idea.  But I think that given these things, people cannot be called stupid or ignorant or weak when they decide to take the gamble.