The Zen of Technology & Scientific Discovery! (& Robots)

[Tai Do]

Jundo, you could state better what I wanted to say. Thank you.

Thank you, Getchi, for the explanation of the scientific consensus on the topic.

Gassho,
Mateus
Sat today

[Jundo]

Don't know where else to put this ... so ...

Space aliens are breeding with humans, university instructor says. Scientists say otherwise.
Outlandish claim has a secret breeding program creating alien-human hybrids who can survive climate change.

[A]n instructor at the University of Oxford in England believes [alien] abductions are real. Young-hae Chi, who teaches Korean at the university, also claims to know what the aliens have in mind. In lectures given at the university, he says they're creating alien-human hybrids as a hedge against climate change. To support his unorthodox theory, Chi notes that for several decades the number of reported alien abductions has risen. He bases this statement on the work of David Jacobs, a retired Temple University historian who has published several books on ufology and who runs the International Center for Abduction Research.

The extraterrestrials are producing hybrids that can better withstand the rigors of a toastier planet. By producing a new model of Homo sapiens, this project would eliminate the need for difficult climate accords or elaborate geoengineering projects. It would also help the aliens themselves — who are said to be living among us — by preserving the part of their DNA that's carried by the temperature-tolerant hybrids. ...

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science...ay-ncna1008971

Okay, then. Well, at least we have that going for us.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Amelia]

I like conspiracies for their "Hmm, what if?" curiosity factor... but when it comes down to it, adopting green policies seems easier than a large-scale, secret alien hybrid program... Also, if those aliens made it to space, they probably figured out their own climate issues as well...

Gassho

Sat today, lah

[Kyoshin]

This seems like something that belongs here. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...rd/?redirect=1

Gassho
Kyōshin
Satlah

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[Jundo]

This seems like something that belongs here. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...rd/?redirect=1

Gassho
Kyōshin
Satlah

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

I caution that the word "quantum" is so very often misused by lay folks (especially New Age folks like Deeprocks Chopra), and not even the scientists who specialize in quantum mechanics truly understand or agree on the significance or meaning of quantum mechanics. That said, there is much in that article that Buddhists have been saying for thousands of years, and that is really just common sense:

To wit, I experience "my" experience of the universe (e.g., a tree I see), and you experience the tree your way, and both of those experiences exist largely between our respective ears. In fact, there is really no "beautiful green tree" out there apart from some vibrating atoms in a certain configuration which emits photons or a certain wavelength (let us assume there is something "out there" however). That is neither "green" nor "beautiful" nor even "a tree" until the photons enter the eye, get turned into electro-chemical signals which make their way to the brain, where a model of very subjective reality experiences, judges, categorizes and sorts all the data into the experience of "green," the judgement of "beautiful" and the image of a "tree" which is distinct from the "rock" next to where it sits. This is basic Buddhism 101, showing how we divide the world into pieces, choose and exclude data, and impose mental judgments on all of it (and why a significant part of Buddhist practice is to reverse the process in favor of wholeness and freedom from all those judgments).

Sorry to tell folks, but they have never actually "seen" or "touched" their cute cat or beloved spouse ... only a recreation of some "outside" event of some kind, largely painted between the ears. (That does not make it less beautiful, but realize that you are watching a virtual experience in your head of something that is not really quite like that. There is no "cute cat" or "spouse" without you to help make "cute" and "cat" and "spouse" There are no "delicious red" strawberries without your eye and tongue to interpret a certain chemical configuration we call "strawberry.") We only share common notions of "cat" and "strawberry" and maybe "delicious" or "red" (although much more "eye of the beholder") because we have nearly identical brain, eye and tongue structures, thus letting us communicate and agree more or less on what is a "cat" or a "strawberry." An alien with different senses or brain structure might not see a "strawberry," let alone think it tasty or even food. (My virtual spouse has an opinion on her virtual existence, but I only know these as sound vibrations emitted from her atoms. Fortunately, the atoms of her mouth related to the atoms of my ears, and we share common brain structures, so we can share the experience of her opinion and my nodding in agreement with her, this preventing my experience between my ears of her virtual anger. )

Einstein went on to show (like Dogen pointed out in his own way) that you and I, and each object and thing, is in its own individualized "being time." In other words, time is going at a certain speed for you, and a different speed for me based on my speed of travel and distance from a large mass, and also for every thing in the universe. We don't notice this in our conventional world because the differences are to small to be perceived, but it is true. (By the way, I just finished a marvelous book on Time by the physicist mentioned in the article, Carlo Rovelli, that I can recommend to everyone, and which seems very harmonious with fluid and "timeless" Buddhist/Dogeny views of time(s)).

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/05/the-order-of-time-by-carlo-rovelli-review

So, in a sense, you are in "your universe" and I am in "my universe" already, because your experience of things and time is not my experience of things and time, and the same for all things (especially sentient things) which are each in "their universe."

If some interpretations of quantum mechanics are true, as discussed in the article, then we actually each create our own phenomena "out there" in even more radical ways via our particular interactions with it. Yes, you really are helping to make "your tree" and "your strawberry" that is not really "my tree" and "my strawberry" because existing in different times, and with characteristics based on our interactions with it. Cool.

The article states:

One of the weirdest theoretical implications of quantum mechanics is that different observers can give different—though equally valid—accounts of the same sequence of events. As highlighted by physicist Carlo Rovelli in his relational quantum mechanics (RQM), this means that there should be no absolute, observer-independent physical quantities. All physical quantities—the whole physical universe—must be relative to the observer. The notion that we all share the same physical environment must, therefore, be an illusion. ... there may well be no objective physical world.

... What is really out there, underlying our perceptions, is constituted not by physical but by transpersonal mental states instead. Perceived physicality is merely a representation of that surrounding mental environment, brought into being by an act of observation. ...

... Over the past several years, Donald Hoffman’s group at the University of California, Irvine, has shown that our perceptual apparatus hasn’t evolved to represent the world truthfully, as it is in itself; if we saw the world as it really is, we would be swiftly driven to extinction. Instead, we see the world in a way that favors our survival, not the accuracy of our representations. In Hoffman’s analogy, the contents of perception are like icons on a computer desktop: a set of visual metaphors that facilitate one’s job by illustrating the salient properties of files and applications, but which don’t portray these files and application as they really are. ... What both of these lines of argument suggest is this: the screen of perception is much more akin to a dashboard than a window into the environment. It conveys relevant information about the environment in an indirect, encoded manner that helps us survive. The forms and colors we see, the sounds we hear, the flavors we taste are all like dials: they present to us, at a glance, information that correlates—in a manner fundamentally beyond our ability to cognize—with the mental states of the environment out there. ... The error we make is in mistaking the dials for the external environment itself.

Yes, I am not one to say that Buddhism is always in accord with science, let alone ahead of science ... but in this case, maybe.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Well, this is reported today in the news. The below link from Rice University seems to back it up. If true, it is one reason that (as I argue in the book I am currently writing entitled "Zen of the Future!") we must turn to Buddhist and similar moral values to help make sure such technologies are used for good and not for harm, or not used at all. If we can read neurons firing, can we also artificially create their firing to implant thoughts? Can we artificially implant feelings of peace, equanimity, charity and the like into a meditator's brain? Should we do so? We must be very cautious.

===============

The government is serious about creating mind-controlled weapons

https://www.livescience.com/65546-darpa-mind-controlled-weapons.html

DARPA, the Department of Defense's research arm, is paying scientists to invent ways to instantly read soldiers' minds using tools like genetic engineering of the human brain, nanotechnology and infrared beams. The end goal? Thought-controlled weapons, like swarms of drones that someone sends to the skies with a single thought or the ability to beam images from one brain to another.

This week, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) announced that six teams will receive funding under the Next-Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology (N3) program. Participants are tasked with developing technology that will provide a two-way channel for rapid and seamless communication between the human brain and machines without requiring surgery.

... The agency is interested in systems that can read and write to 16 independent locations in a chunk of brain the size of a pea with a lag of no more than 50 milliseconds within four years, said [Jacob Robinson, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice University, who is leading one of the teams], who is under no illusion about the scale of the challenge.

"When you try to capture brain activity through the skull, it's hard to know where the signals are coming from and when and where the signals are being generated," he told Live Science. "So the big challenge is, can we push the absolute limits of our resolution, both in space and time?"

... To do this, Robinson's team plans to use viruses modified to deliver genetic material into cells — called viral vectors — to insert DNA into specific neurons that will make them produce two kinds of proteins. ... The first type of protein absorbs light when a neuron is firing, which makes it possible to detect neural activity. An external headset would send out a beam of infrared light that can pass through the skull and into the brain. Detectors attached to the headset would then measure the tiny signal that is reflected from the brain tissue to create an image of the brain. Because of the protein, the targeted areas will appear darker (absorbing light) when neurons are firing, generating a read of brain activity that can be used to work out what the person is seeing, hearing or trying to do.

The second protein tethers to magnetic nanoparticles, so the neurons can be magnetically stimulated to fire when the headset generates a magnetic field. This could be used to stimulate neurons so as to induce an image or sound in the patient's mind. As a proof of concept, the group plans to use the system to transmit images from' the visual cortex of one person to that of another.

"Being able to decode or encode sensory experiences is something we understand relatively well," Robinson said. "At the bleeding edge of science, I think we are there if we had the technology to do it."

Rice University neuroengineers are leading an ambitious DARPA-funded project to develop MOANA, a nonsurgical device capable of both decoding neural activity in one person’s visual cortex and recreating it in another’s in less than one twentieth of a second. (Image courtesy of J. Robinson/Rice University)

Rice’s “magnetic, optical and acoustic neural access” (MOANA) device will test techniques that use light (bottom panel) to read brain activity and electromagnetic energy to write that activity into another person’s brain in less than 50 milliseconds

More serious technical information (not from FoxNews) here ...

http://news.rice.edu/2019/05/20/feds-fund-creation-of-headset-for-high-speed-brain-link-2/

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Came across this today when i happened to read a separate story about how the most unique appendage of the human body is not the hand (with our opposable thumb ... but the foot. it arch structure rivals Notre Dame, with the ability to support our shifting upright moves from several directions. Michael Jordan would be nothing without his feet.

Then i saw this crazy story. Although an amazing and unlikely chain of events, even if it were not just like this ... well, it was some other equally amazing chain. Think about this the next time you get up from sitting:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


As human ancestors went from swinging through trees to walking on two legs, they may have received a boost from an unlikely source: ancient supernovas.

These powerful stellar explosions may have showered Earth with enough energy to shift the planet's climate, bathing Earth in electrons and sparking powerful, lightning-filled storms, according to a new hypothesis.

Lightning then could have kindled raging wildfires that scorched African landscapes. As savanna replaced the forest habitat, early humans that lived there may have been pushed to walk on two legs, the new study suggests. ... However, don't go jumping to conclusions just yet. Many factors likely contributed to the evolution of bipedalism, a process that began many millions of years before these stellar explosions took place, one expert told Live Science.

Clues to the ancient supernovas were found in traces of iron-60 in Earth's crust. This radioactive isotope, or version of iron, originates in stars nearing the ends of their lives; it's thought to have arrived on Earth after the violent explosion of supernovas in our cosmic neighborhood millions of years ago, scientists wrote in the new study.

... oday, most wildfires are caused by human actions; before that, "lightning was the single biggest cause of wildfires," Melott explained. Forests scorched by wildfires would give way to grasslands; more open savanna meant more walking from tree to tree, which would then put evolutionary pressure on human relatives to spend more time on two legs.

Yet hominins were already becoming upright walkers long before the supernova activity peaked, William Harcourt-Smith, an assistant professor of paleoanthropology with Lehman College at The City University of New York, told Live Science in an email.

The first evidence for bipedalism in ancient humans dates to approximately 7 million years ago, and the transition to full bipedalism was well underway by around 4.4 million years ago, said Harcourt-Smith, who was not involved in the study.

"By 3.6 million years ago, we have proficient bipeds, like 'Lucy,' and by 1.6 million years ago, [we have] obligate bipeds very similar to us," he explained.

Bipedalism was energy efficient, freed up hands for carrying, and offered improved visibility of faraway predators or resources. The shift to fully upright walking "most certainly relates to the opening up of grassland habitats and adapting to this kind of environment," Harcourt-Smith said. Yet the study does not provide compelling geologic evidence of wildfires as the main cause for those dramatic changes in Africa's ancient habitats, he said.

https://www.livescience.com/65579-supernovas-upright-walking.html

Gassho, J

SatToday(then walked)Lah

[Seibu]

If we can read neurons firing, can we also artificially create their firing to implant thoughts? Can we artificially implant feelings of peace, equanimity, charity and the like into a meditator's brain? Should we do so? We must be very cautious.


Gassho, J

STLah

Once the line is crossed it's hard to go back. Too many things can go wrong with such technologies, and ethically it seems unacceptable because of all the things that can be done with it. I'd be fiercely opposed to the application of such a practice. It reminds me of the idea that some people proposed to pass a law that says that every person is automatically an organ donor when they pass away unless they objected in a formal manner before they died. Have you ever read Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go?


Gassho,
Jack
Sattoday/lah

[Jundo]

Forget Moore's Law — Quantum Computers Are Improving According to a Spooky 'Doubly Exponential Rate'

The era of quantum supremacy is nigh.

Quantum computers, which make calculations with entangled particles, or qubits, are poised to overtake their conventional counterparts very, very fast.

And it's all captured by a new law of computing, known as Neven's Law, according to a fascinating new article in Quanta Magazine.

So, what exactly is Neven's Law? Named after Hartmut Neven, the director of the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab at Google who first noticed the phenomenon, the law dictates how quickly quantum processors are improving, or getting faster at processing calculations, relative to regular computers.

And it turns out, they're gaining on ordinary computers at a spookily fast, "doubly exponential rate." That means that processing power grows by a factor of 2^2^1 (4), then 2^2^2 (16), then 2^2^3 (256), then 2^2^4 (65,536), and so on. You can see that the numbers get mind-bogglingly huge very, very fast. Doubly-exponential growth is so huge, it's hard to find anything that grows so quickly in the natural world, according to Quanta.

"It looks like nothing is happening, nothing is happening, and then whoops, suddenly you're in a different world," Neven told Quanta's Kevin Hartnett. "That's what we're experiencing here."

https://www.livescience.com/65651-qu...cary-fast.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Tairin]

Regarding quantum computing.... https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/...mmercial-value. There is a lot of hype. I keep an eye on this topic because of my computer science background. I think that (big) if quantum computers take off it will be a massive game changer. We’ll see.


Tairin
Sat today and lah

[Jundo]

Scientists are searching for a mirror universe. It could be sitting right in front of you.
If the "mirrorverse" exists, upcoming experiments involving subatomic particles could reveal it.

At Oak Ridge National Laboratory in eastern Tennessee, physicist Leah Broussard is trying to open a portal to a parallel universe.

She calls it an “oscillation” that would lead her to “mirror matter,” but the idea is fundamentally the same. In a series of experiments she plans to run at Oak Ridge this summer, Broussard will send a beam of subatomic particles down a 50-foot tunnel, past a ring of powerful magnets and into an impenetrable wall. If the setup is just right — and if the universe cooperates — some of those particles will transform into mirror-image versions of themselves, allowing them to tunnel right through the wall. And if that happens, Broussard will have uncovered the first evidence of a mirror world right alongside our own.

“It’s pretty wacky,” Broussard says of her mind-bending exploration.

The mirror world, assuming it exists, would have its own laws of mirror-physics and its own mirror-history. You wouldn’t find a mirror version of yourself there (and no evil Mister Spock with a goatee — sorry "Star Trek" fans). But current theory allows that you might find mirror atoms and mirror rocks, maybe even mirror planets and stars. Collectively, they could form an entire shadow world, just as real as our own but almost completely cut off from us.

... Running the experiment will take about one day. Collecting the data and weeding out every possible source of error might then take a few weeks more. Broussard is looking for any telltale neutrons that managed to get past the barrier by turning into mirror neutrons, then turning back. “It all comes down to: Are we able to shine neutrons through a wall?” she says. “We should see no neutrons” according to conventional physics theory. If some of them show up anyway, that would suggest that conventional physics is wrong, and the mirror world is real.

... Zurab Berezhiani, a physicist at the University of L’Aquila in Italy who has conducted his own mirror neutron searches, offers an intriguing explanation: Dark matter has been hard to find because it is hidden away in the mirror world. In this view, dark matter and mirror matter are one and the same.

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science...ht-ncna1023206

Gassho, J

STLah

[Amelia]

Oh man, that is something!

Gassho,

Sat today, lah

[Jundo]

Oh man, that is something!

Gassho,

Sat today, lah

You know, I should have given you the Dharma name "Geeka" instead of "Geaka".

And I need to apologize to Jakuden too. She was right, Star Trek Discovery, Season 2, was better than I expected.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jakuden]

You know, I should have given you the Dharma name "Geeka" instead of "Geaka".

And I need to apologize to Jakuden too. She was right, Star Trek Discovery, Season 2, was better than I expected.

Gassho, J

STLah

“Geeka” [emoji23] That’s awesome.

No thanks to me, it was my daughter Rose that got me to hang in there with it. Passing along the nerdiness to the Next Generation ( pun intended) [emoji868]

Gassho
Jakuden
SatToday/LAH


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[Amelia]

I will gladly allow the misspelling of "Geeka" because it is true.

I did not get into Discovery... hmm... I tried... I may try again. I was all about "Chernobyl" a few weeks ago.

Gassho

Sat today, lah