Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?

[Steve Richfield]

Ben,

There is obvious confusion here. MOST mutations harm, but occasionally one
helps. By selecting for a particular difficult-to-achieve thing, like long
lifespan, we can discard the harmful mutations while selecting for the
helpful ones. However, selecting for something harmful and easy to achieve,
like the presence of genes that shorten lifespan, the selection process is
SO non-specific that it can't tell us much of anything. There are countless
mutations that kill WITHOUT conferring compensatory advantages. I could see
stressing the flies in various ways without controlling for lifespan, but
controlling for short lifespan in the absence of such stresses would seem to
be completely worthless. Of course, once stressed, you would also be seeing
genes to combat those (irrelevant) stresses.

In short, I still haven't heard words that suggest that this can go
anywhere, though it sure would be wonderful (like you and I might live twice
as long) if some workable path could be found.

I still suspect that the best path is in analyzing the DNA of long-living
people, rather than that of fruit flies. Perhaps there is some way to
combine the two approaches?

Steve

On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 8:37 PM, Ben Goertzel  wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 11:34 PM, Steve Richfield <
> steve.richfi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Ben,
>>
>> It seems COMPLETELY obvious (to me) that almost any mutation would shorten
>> lifespan, so we shouldn't expect to learn much from it.
>
>
>
> Why then do the Methuselah flies live 5x as long as normal flies?  You're
> conjecturing this is unrelated to the dramatically large number of SNPs with
> very different frequencies in the two classes of populations???
>
> ben
>
>
>
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>  | 
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Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?

[Ben Goertzel]

On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 11:34 PM, Steve Richfield  wrote:

> Ben,
>
> It seems COMPLETELY obvious (to me) that almost any mutation would shorten
> lifespan, so we shouldn't expect to learn much from it.



Why then do the Methuselah flies live 5x as long as normal flies?  You're
conjecturing this is unrelated to the dramatically large number of SNPs with
very different frequencies in the two classes of populations???

ben



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Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?

[Steve Richfield]

Ben,

It seems COMPLETELY obvious (to me) that almost any mutation would shorten
lifespan, so we shouldn't expect to learn much from it. What particular
lifespan-shortening mutations are in the human genome wouldn't be expected
to be the same, or even the same as separated human populations. Hmmm, an
interesting thought: I wonder if certain racially mixed people have shorter
lifespans because they have several disjoint sets of such mutations?!!! Any
idea where to find such data?

It has long been noticed that some racial subgroups do NOT have certain
age-related illnesses, e.g. Japanese don't have clogged arteries, but they
DO have lots of cancer. So far everyone has been blindly presuming diet, but
seeking a particular level of "genetic disaster" could also explain it.

Any thoughts?

Steve

On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 8:06 AM, Ben Goertzel  wrote:

>
> We have those fruit fly populations also, and analysis of their genetics
>>> refutes your claim ;p ...
>>>
>>
>> Where? References? The last I looked, all they had in addition to their
>> long-lived groups were uncontrolled control groups, and no groups bred only
>> from young flies.
>>
>
>
> Michael rose's UCI lab has evolved flies specifically for short lifespan,
> but the results may not be published yet...
>
>*agi* | Archives 
>  | 
> ModifyYour Subscription
> 
>



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Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?

[Ben Goertzel]

> We have those fruit fly populations also, and analysis of their genetics
>> refutes your claim ;p ...
>>
>
> Where? References? The last I looked, all they had in addition to their
> long-lived groups were uncontrolled control groups, and no groups bred only
> from young flies.
>


Michael rose's UCI lab has evolved flies specifically for short lifespan,
but the results may not be published yet...



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Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?

[Steve Richfield]

Ben,

Genescient has NOT paralleled human mating habits that would predictably
shorten life. They have only started from a point well beyond anything
achievable in the human population, and gone on from there. Hence, while
their approach may find some interesting things, it is unlikely to find the
things that are now killing our elderly population.

Continuing...

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 11:59 AM, Ben Goertzel  wrote:

>
>
>
>> I should dredge up and forward past threads with them. There are some
>> flaws in their chain of reasoning, so that it won't be all that simple to
>> sort the few relevant from the many irrelevant mutations. There is both a
>> huge amount of noise, and irrelevant adaptations to their environment and
>> their treatment.
>>
>
> They have evolved many different populations in parallel, using the same
> fitness criterion.  This provides powerful noise filtering
>

Multiple measurements improve the S/N ratio by the square root of the number
of measurements. Hence, if they were to develop 100 parallel populations,
they could expect to improve their S/N ratio by 10:1. They haven't done 100
parallel populations, and they need much better than 10:1 improvement to the
S/N ratio.

Of course, this is all aside from the fact that their signal is wrong
because of the different mating habits.

>
> Even when the relevant mutations are eventually identified, it isn't clear
>> how that will map to usable therapies for the existing population.
>>
>
> yes, that's a complex matter
>
>
>>
>> Further, most of the things that kill us operate WAY too slowly to affect
>> fruit flies, though there are some interesting dual-affecting problems.
>>
>
> Fruit flies get all the  major ailments that kill people frequently, except
> cancer.  heart disease, neurodegenerative disease, respiratory problems,
> immune problems, etc.
>

Curiously, the list of conditions that they DO exhibit appears to be the
SAME list as people with reduced body temperatures exhibit. This suggests
simply correcting elderly people's body temperatures as they crash. Then,
where do we go from there?

Note that as you get older, your risk of contracting cancer rises
dramatically - SO dramatically that the odds of you eventually contracting
it are ~100%. Meanwhile, the risks of the other diseases DECREASE as you get
older past a certain age, so if you haven't contracted them by ~80, then you
probably never will contract them.

Scientific American had an article a while back about people in Israel who
are >100 years old. At ~100, your risk of dieing during each following year
DECREASES with further advancing age!!! This strongly suggests some
early-killers, that if you somehow escape them, you can live for quite a
while. Our breeding practices would certainly invite early-killers. Of
course, only a very tiny segment of the population lives to be >100.

>
> As I have posted in the past, what we have here in the present human
>> population is about the equivalent of a fruit fly population that was bred
>> for the shortest possible lifespan.
>>
>
> Certainly not.
>

??? Not what?


> We have those fruit fly populations also, and analysis of their genetics
> refutes your claim ;p ...
>

Where? References? The last I looked, all they had in addition to their
long-lived groups were uncontrolled control groups, and no groups bred only
from young flies.

In any case, since the sociology of humans is SO much different than that of
fruit flies, and breeding practices interact so much with sociology, e.g.
the bright colorings of birds, beards (that I have commented on before),
etc. In short, I would expect LOTS of mutations from young-bread groups, but
entirely different mutations in people than in fruit flies.

I suspect that there is LOTS more information in the DNA of healthy people
>100 than there is in any population of fruit flies. Perhaps, data from
fruit flies could then be used to reduce the noise from the limited human
population who lives to be >100? Anyway, if someone has thought this whole
thing out, I sure haven't seen it. Sure there is probably lots to be learned
from genetic approaches, but Genescient's approach seems flawed by its
simplicity.

The challenge here is as always. The value of such research to us is VERY
high, yet there is no meaningful funding. If/when an early AI becomes
available to help in such efforts, there simply won't be any money available
to divert it away from "defense" (read that: offense) work.

Steve



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Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?

[Steve Richfield]

Bryan,

*I'm interested!*

Continuing...

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 11:27 AM, Bryan Bishop  wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 6:25 AM, Steve Richfield wrote:
>
>> Note my prior posting explaining my inability even to find a source of
>> "used" mice for kids to use in high-school anti-aging experiments, all while
>> university labs are now killing their vast numbers of such mice. So long as
>> things remain THIS broken, anything that isn't part of the solution simply
>> becomes a part of the very big problem, AIs included.
>
>
> You might be inerested in this- I've been putting together an
> adopt-a-lab-rat program that is actually an adoption program for lab mice.


... then it is an adopt-a-mouse program?

I don't know if you are a *Pinky and the Brain* fan, but calling your
project something like *The Pinky Project* would be catchy.

In some cases mice that are used as a control group in experiments are then
> discarded at the end of the program because, honestly, their lifetime is
> over more or less, so the idea is that some people might be interested in
> "adopting" these mice.


I had several discussions with the folks at the U of W whose job it was to
euthanize those mice. Their worries seemed to center in two areas:
1.  Financial liability, e.g. a mouse bites a kid, whose finger becomes
infected and...
2.  Social liability, e.g. some kids who are torturing them put their videos
on the Internet.

Of course, you can also just pony up the $15 and get one from Jackson Labs.


Not the last time I checked. They are very careful NOT to sell them to
exactly the same population that I intend to supply them to - high-school
kids. I expect that if I became a middleman, that they would simply stop
selling to me. Even I would have a hard time purchasing them, because they
only sell to genuine LABS.

I haven't fully launced adopt-a-lab-rat yet because I am still trying to
> figure out how to avoid ending up in a situation where I have hundreds of
> rats and rodents running around my apartment and I get the short end of the
> stick (oops).
>

*What is your present situation and projections? How big a volume could you
supply? What are their approximate ages? Do they have really good
documentation? Were they used in any way that might compromise anti-aging
experiments, e.g. raised in a nicer-than-usual-laboratory environment? Do
you have any liability concerns as discussed above?
*

Mice in the wild live ~4 years. Lab mice live ~2 years. If you take a young
lab mouse and do everything you can to extend its life, you can approach 4
years. If you take an older lab mouse and do everything you can, you double
the REMAINDER of their life, e.g. starting with a one-year-old mouse, you
could get it to live ~3 years. How much better (or worse) than this you do
is the basis for judging by the Methuselah Mouse people.

Hence, really good documentation is needed to establish when they were born,
and when they left a laboratory environment. Tattoos or tags link the mouse
to the paperwork. If I/you/we are to get kids to compete to develop better
anti-aging methods, the mice need to be documented well enough to PROVE
beyond a shadow of a doubt that they did what they claimed they did.

Steve



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Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?

[David Jones]

Bob, their are serious issues with such a suggestion.

The biggest issue, is that there is a good chance it wouldn't work because
diseases, including the common cold, have incubation times. So, you may not
have any symptoms at all, yet you can pass it on to other people.

And even if we did know who was sick, are you really going to stay home for
2 weeks every time you get sick? If I were an employer, I would rather have
you come to work when you feel up to it.

Another point I've given to germaphobes is that let's say you are successful
at avoiding as many possible germs as possible and avoid getting sick as
much as possible. That means that you are likely not immune to some common
colds and such that you should be. So, when you are old and less capable,
your immune system will not be able to fight off the infection and you will
die an early death.

Dave

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 1:51 PM, Bob Mottram  wrote:

> On 10 August 2010 18:43, Bob Mottram  wrote:
> > here.  For example, if an epidemic breaks out, why should you
> > vaccinate first?
>
>
> That should have been "who" rather than "why" :-)
>
> Just thinking a little further, in hand waving mode, If something like
> the common cold were added as a status within social networks, and
> everyone was on the network it might even be possible to eliminate
> this disease simply by getting people to avoid those who are known to
> have it for a certain period of time - a sort of internet enabled
> smart avoidance strategy.  This wouldn't be a cure, but it could
> severely hamper the disease transmission mechanism, perhaps even to
> the extent of driving it to extinction.
>
>
> ---
> agi
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Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?

[Ben Goertzel]

> I should dredge up and forward past threads with them. There are some flaws
> in their chain of reasoning, so that it won't be all that simple to sort the
> few relevant from the many irrelevant mutations. There is both a huge amount
> of noise, and irrelevant adaptations to their environment and their
> treatment.
>

They have evolved many different populations in parallel, using the same
fitness criterion.  This provides powerful noise filtering



> Even when the relevant mutations are eventually identified, it isn't clear
> how that will map to usable therapies for the existing population.
>

yes, that's a complex matter


>
> Further, most of the things that kill us operate WAY too slowly to affect
> fruit flies, though there are some interesting dual-affecting problems.
>

Fruit flies get all the  major ailments that kill people frequently, except
cancer.  heart disease, neurodegenerative disease, respiratory problems,
immune problems, etc.



> As I have posted in the past, what we have here in the present human
> population is about the equivalent of a fruit fly population that was bred
> for the shortest possible lifespan.
>


Certainly not.  We have those fruit fly populations also, and analysis of
their genetics refutes your claim ;p ...



ben g



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Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?

[Bob Mottram]

On 10 August 2010 18:43, Bob Mottram  wrote:
> here.  For example, if an epidemic breaks out, why should you
> vaccinate first?


That should have been "who" rather than "why" :-)

Just thinking a little further, in hand waving mode, If something like
the common cold were added as a status within social networks, and
everyone was on the network it might even be possible to eliminate
this disease simply by getting people to avoid those who are known to
have it for a certain period of time - a sort of internet enabled
smart avoidance strategy.  This wouldn't be a cure, but it could
severely hamper the disease transmission mechanism, perhaps even to
the extent of driving it to extinction.


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Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?

[Bryan Bishop]

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 6:25 AM, Steve Richfield wrote:

> Note my prior posting explaining my inability even to find a source of
> "used" mice for kids to use in high-school anti-aging experiments, all while
> university labs are now killing their vast numbers of such mice. So long as
> things remain THIS broken, anything that isn't part of the solution simply
> becomes a part of the very big problem, AIs included.


You might be inerested in this- I've been putting together an
adopt-a-lab-rat program that is actually an adoption program for lab mice.
In some cases mice that are used as a control group in experiments are then
discarded at the end of the program because, honestly, their lifetime is
over more or less, so the idea is that some people might be interested in
"adopting" these mice. Of course, you can also just pony up the $15 and get
one from Jackson Labs. I haven't fully launced adopt-a-lab-rat yet because I
am still trying to figure out how to avoid ending up in a situation where I
have hundreds of rats and rodents running around my apartment and I get the
short end of the stick (oops).

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
1 512 203 0507



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Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?

[David Jones]

The think the biggest thing to remember here is that general AI could be
applied to many different problems in parallel by many different people.
They would help with many aspects of the problem solving process, not just a
single one and certainly not just applied to a single experiment/study.

I'm confident that Ben is aware of this


On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Bob Mottram  wrote:

> On 10 August 2010 16:44, Ben Goertzel  wrote:
> > I'm writing an article on the topic for H+ Magazine, which will appear in
> the next couple weeks ... I'll post a link to it when it appears
> >
> > I'm not advocating applying AI in the absence of new experiments of
> course.  I've been working closely with Genescient, applying AI tech to
> analyze the genomics of their long-lived superflies, so part of my message
> is about the virtuous cycle achievable via synergizing AI data analysis with
> carefully-designed experimental evolution of model organisms...
>
>
>
>
> Probably if I was going to apply AI in a medical context I'd
> prioritize those conditions which are both common and either fatal or
> have a severe impact on quality of life.  Also worthwhile would be
> using AI to try to discover drugs which have an equivalent effect to
> existing known ones but can be manufactured at a significantly lower
> cost, such that they are brought within the means of a larger fraction
> of the population.  Investigating aging is perfectly legitimate, but
> if you're trying to maximize your personal utility I'd regard it as a
> low priority compared to other more urgent medical issues which cause
> premature deaths.
>
> Also in the endeavor to extend life we need not focus entirely upon
> medical aspects.  The organizational problems of delivering known
> medications on a large scale is also a problem which AI could perhaps
> be used to optimize.  The way in which things like this are currently
> organized seems to be based upon some combination of tradition and
> intuitive hunches, so there may be low hanging fruit to be obtained
> here.  For example, if an epidemic breaks out, why should you
> vaccinate first?  If you have access to a social graph (from Facebook,
> or wherever) it's probably possible to calculate an optimal strategy.
>
>
> ---
> agi
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Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?

[Bob Mottram]

On 10 August 2010 16:44, Ben Goertzel  wrote:
> I'm writing an article on the topic for H+ Magazine, which will appear in the 
> next couple weeks ... I'll post a link to it when it appears
>
> I'm not advocating applying AI in the absence of new experiments of course.  
> I've been working closely with Genescient, applying AI tech to analyze the 
> genomics of their long-lived superflies, so part of my message is about the 
> virtuous cycle achievable via synergizing AI data analysis with 
> carefully-designed experimental evolution of model organisms...




Probably if I was going to apply AI in a medical context I'd
prioritize those conditions which are both common and either fatal or
have a severe impact on quality of life.  Also worthwhile would be
using AI to try to discover drugs which have an equivalent effect to
existing known ones but can be manufactured at a significantly lower
cost, such that they are brought within the means of a larger fraction
of the population.  Investigating aging is perfectly legitimate, but
if you're trying to maximize your personal utility I'd regard it as a
low priority compared to other more urgent medical issues which cause
premature deaths.

Also in the endeavor to extend life we need not focus entirely upon
medical aspects.  The organizational problems of delivering known
medications on a large scale is also a problem which AI could perhaps
be used to optimize.  The way in which things like this are currently
organized seems to be based upon some combination of tradition and
intuitive hunches, so there may be low hanging fruit to be obtained
here.  For example, if an epidemic breaks out, why should you
vaccinate first?  If you have access to a social graph (from Facebook,
or wherever) it's probably possible to calculate an optimal strategy.


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Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?

[Steve Richfield]

Ben,

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 8:44 AM, Ben Goertzel  wrote:

>
> I'm writing an article on the topic for H+ Magazine, which will appear in
> the next couple weeks ... I'll post a link to it when it appears
>
> I'm not advocating applying AI in the absence of new experiments of
> course.  I've been working closely with Genescient, applying AI tech to
> analyze the genomics of their long-lived superflies, so part of my message
> is about the virtuous cycle achievable via synergizing AI data analysis with
> carefully-designed experimental evolution of model organisms...
>

I should dredge up and forward past threads with them. There are some flaws
in their chain of reasoning, so that it won't be all that simple to sort the
few relevant from the many irrelevant mutations. There is both a huge amount
of noise, and irrelevant adaptations to their environment and their
treatment. Even when the relevant mutations are eventually identified, it
isn't clear how that will map to usable therapies for the existing
population.

Perhaps you remember the old Star Trek episode about the long-lived
population that was still locked in a war after hundreds of years? The
episode devolved into a dispute over the potential value of this discovery -
was there something valuable in the environment, or did they just evolve to
live longer? Here, the long-lived population isn't even human.

Further, most of the things that kill us operate WAY too slowly to affect
fruit flies, though there are some interesting dual-affecting problems.
Unfortunately, it isn't as practical to autopsy fruit flies as it is to
autopsy people to see what killed them.

As I have posted in the past, what we have here in the present human
population is about the equivalent of a fruit fly population that was bred
for the shortest possible lifespan. Our social practices could hardly do
worse. Our present challenge is to get to where fruit flies were before Rose
first bred them for long life.

I strongly suspect that we have some early-killer mutations, e.g. to people
off as quickly as possible after they pass child-bearing age, which itself
is probably being shortened through our bizarre social habits of mating
like-aged people. Genescient's approach holds no promise of identifying
THOSE genes, and identifying the other genes won't help at all until those
killer genes are first silenced.

In short, there are some really serious challenges to Genescient's approach.
I expect success for several other quarters long before Genescient bears
real-world usable fruit. I suspect that these challenges, along with the
ubiquitous shortage of funding will keep Genescient out of producing
real-world usable results pretty much forever.

Future AGI output: "Fund aging research."

Update on studying more of Burzynski's papers: His is not a "cancer cure" at
all. What he is doing is removing gene-silencing methylization from the DNA,
and letting nature take its course, e.g. having their immune systems kill
the cancer via aptosis. In short, it is a real-world anti-aging approach
that has snuck in "under the radar". OF COURSE any real-world working
anti-aging approach would kill cancer! How good is his present product? Who
knows? It sure looks to me like this is a valid approach, and I suspect that
any bugs will get worked out in time. WATCH THIS. This looks to me like it
will work in the real-world long before any other of the present popular
approaches stand a chance of working. After all, it sure seems to be working
on some people with really extreme gene silencing - called cancer.

Steve



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Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?

[David Jones]

Steve,

Capable and effective AI systems would be very helpful at every step of the
research process. Basic research is a major area I think that AGI will be
applied to. In fact, that's exactly where I plan to apply it first.

Dave

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 7:25 AM, Steve Richfield
wrote:

> Ben,
>
> On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 1:07 PM, Ben Goertzel  wrote:
>
>>
>> I'm speaking there, on Ai applied to life extension; and participating in
>> a panel discussion on narrow vs. general AI...
>>
>> Having some interest, expertise, and experience in both areas, I find it
> hard to imagine much interplay at all.
>
> The present challenge is wrapped up in a lack of basic information,
> resulting from insufficient funds to do the needed experiments.
> Extrapolations have already gone WAY beyond the data, and new methods to
> push extrapolations even further wouldn't be worth nearly as much as just a
> little more hard data.
>
> Just look at Aubrey's long list of aging mechanisms. We don't now even know
> which predominate, or which cause others. Further, there are new candidates
> arising every year, e.g. Burzynski's theory that most aging is secondary to
> methylation of DNA receptor sites, or my theory that Aubrey's entire list
> could be explained by people dropping their body temperatures later in life.
> There are LOTS of other theories, and without experimental results, there is
> absolutely no way, AI or not, to sort the wheat from the chaff.
>
> Note that one of the front runners, the cosmic ray theory, could easily be
> tested by simply raising some mice in deep tunnels. This is high-school
> level stuff, yet with NO significant funding for aging research, it remains
> undone.
>
> Note my prior posting explaining my inability even to find a source of
> "used" mice for kids to use in high-school anti-aging experiments, all while
> university labs are now killing their vast numbers of such mice. So long as
> things remain THIS broken, anything that isn't part of the solution simply
> becomes a part of the very big problem, AIs included.
>
> The best that an AI could seemingly do is to pronounce "Fund and facilitate
> basic aging research" and then suspend execution pending an interrupt
> indicating that the needed experiments have been done.
>
> Could you provide some hint as to where you are going with this?
>
> Steve
>
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>  | 
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Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?

[Ben Goertzel]

I'm writing an article on the topic for H+ Magazine, which will appear in
the next couple weeks ... I'll post a link to it when it appears

I'm not advocating applying AI in the absence of new experiments of course.
I've been working closely with Genescient, applying AI tech to analyze the
genomics of their long-lived superflies, so part of my message is about the
virtuous cycle achievable via synergizing AI data analysis with
carefully-designed experimental evolution of model organisms...

-- Ben

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 7:25 AM, Steve Richfield
wrote:

> Ben,
>
> On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 1:07 PM, Ben Goertzel  wrote:
>
>>
>> I'm speaking there, on Ai applied to life extension; and participating in
>> a panel discussion on narrow vs. general AI...
>>
>> Having some interest, expertise, and experience in both areas, I find it
> hard to imagine much interplay at all.
>
> The present challenge is wrapped up in a lack of basic information,
> resulting from insufficient funds to do the needed experiments.
> Extrapolations have already gone WAY beyond the data, and new methods to
> push extrapolations even further wouldn't be worth nearly as much as just a
> little more hard data.
>
> Just look at Aubrey's long list of aging mechanisms. We don't now even know
> which predominate, or which cause others. Further, there are new candidates
> arising every year, e.g. Burzynski's theory that most aging is secondary to
> methylation of DNA receptor sites, or my theory that Aubrey's entire list
> could be explained by people dropping their body temperatures later in life.
> There are LOTS of other theories, and without experimental results, there is
> absolutely no way, AI or not, to sort the wheat from the chaff.
>
> Note that one of the front runners, the cosmic ray theory, could easily be
> tested by simply raising some mice in deep tunnels. This is high-school
> level stuff, yet with NO significant funding for aging research, it remains
> undone.
>
> Note my prior posting explaining my inability even to find a source of
> "used" mice for kids to use in high-school anti-aging experiments, all while
> university labs are now killing their vast numbers of such mice. So long as
> things remain THIS broken, anything that isn't part of the solution simply
> becomes a part of the very big problem, AIs included.
>
> The best that an AI could seemingly do is to pronounce "Fund and facilitate
> basic aging research" and then suspend execution pending an interrupt
> indicating that the needed experiments have been done.
>
> Could you provide some hint as to where you are going with this?
>
> Steve
>
>*agi* | Archives 
>  | 
> ModifyYour Subscription
> 
>



-- 
Ben Goertzel, PhD
CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC
CTO, Genescient Corp
Vice Chairman, Humanity+
Advisor, Singularity University and Singularity Institute
External Research Professor, Xiamen University, China
b...@goertzel.org

"I admit that two times two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are
to give everything its due, two times two makes five is sometimes a very
charming thing too." -- Fyodor Dostoevsky



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Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?

[Steve Richfield]

Ben,

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 1:07 PM, Ben Goertzel  wrote:

>
> I'm speaking there, on Ai applied to life extension; and participating in a
> panel discussion on narrow vs. general AI...
>
> Having some interest, expertise, and experience in both areas, I find it
hard to imagine much interplay at all.

The present challenge is wrapped up in a lack of basic information,
resulting from insufficient funds to do the needed experiments.
Extrapolations have already gone WAY beyond the data, and new methods to
push extrapolations even further wouldn't be worth nearly as much as just a
little more hard data.

Just look at Aubrey's long list of aging mechanisms. We don't now even know
which predominate, or which cause others. Further, there are new candidates
arising every year, e.g. Burzynski's theory that most aging is secondary to
methylation of DNA receptor sites, or my theory that Aubrey's entire list
could be explained by people dropping their body temperatures later in life.
There are LOTS of other theories, and without experimental results, there is
absolutely no way, AI or not, to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Note that one of the front runners, the cosmic ray theory, could easily be
tested by simply raising some mice in deep tunnels. This is high-school
level stuff, yet with NO significant funding for aging research, it remains
undone.

Note my prior posting explaining my inability even to find a source of
"used" mice for kids to use in high-school anti-aging experiments, all while
university labs are now killing their vast numbers of such mice. So long as
things remain THIS broken, anything that isn't part of the solution simply
becomes a part of the very big problem, AIs included.

The best that an AI could seemingly do is to pronounce "Fund and facilitate
basic aging research" and then suspend execution pending an interrupt
indicating that the needed experiments have been done.

Could you provide some hint as to where you are going with this?

Steve



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Re: [agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?

[Ben Goertzel]

I'm speaking there, on Ai applied to life extension; and participating in a
panel discussion on narrow vs. general AI...

ben g

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 4:01 PM, David Jones  wrote:

> I've decided to go. I was wondering if anyone else here is.
>
> Dave
>*agi* | Archives 
>  | 
> ModifyYour Subscription
> 
>



-- 
Ben Goertzel, PhD
CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC
CTO, Genescient Corp
Vice Chairman, Humanity+
Advisor, Singularity University and Singularity Institute
External Research Professor, Xiamen University, China
b...@goertzel.org

"I admit that two times two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are
to give everything its due, two times two makes five is sometimes a very
charming thing too." -- Fyodor Dostoevsky



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[agi] Anyone going to the Singularity Summit?

[David Jones]

I've decided to go. I was wondering if anyone else here is.

Dave



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