When Mankind Forgot How

1

• When Mankind Forgot How
• to Think The Emergence of
• Machina Sapiens
• by Kazem Sadegh-zadeh, M.D.
• Jim DeLeo
• Computer Scientist
• National Institutes of Health
• Bethesda, Maryland
• jdeleo_at_nih.gov
• BCIG Book Club
• October 26, 2006

2
Machina Sapiens Support Level
0 .25 .50
.75 1.0
The Industrial Revolution was a mistake..
Lets not go too much further.
Its time to put on the brakes.
We need to go further.
I cant wait to get uploaded!
3
Machina Sapiens Support Level
What is your support degree of membership in
favor of Machina Sapiens? Answer with a decimal
number in the 0 to 1 interval. My support score
is _____
0 .25 .50
.75 1.0
The Industrial Revolution was a mistake..
Lets not go too much further.
Its time to put on the brakes.
We need to go further.
I cant wait to get uploaded!
4
Washington PostBusiness SectionSaturday,
October 21, 2006
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Washington PostBusiness SectionSaturday,
October 21, 2006
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• Humanity is captured within the global machine
  and simply cannot escape.
• Kazem Sadegh-zadeh, M.D.

9

• Existentialism
• In philosophical terminology, every object
  has an essence and an existence. An essence is an
  intelligible and unchanging unity of properties
  an existence is a certain actual presence in the
  world. Many people think that the essence comes
  first and then the existence that peas, for
  example, grow and become round in conformity with
  the idea of peas, and that gherkins are gherkins
  because they participate in the essence of
  gherkins. This idea originated in religious
  thought it is a fact that the man who wants to
  build a house has to know exactly what kind of
  object he's going to create - essence precedes
  existence - and for all those who believe that
  God created men, he must have done so by refering
  to his idea of them. But even those who have no
  religious faith have maintained this traditional
  view that the object never exists except in
  conformity with its existence and everyone in
  the eighteenth century thoghhat all men had a
  common essence called 'human nature'.
  Existentialism, on the contrary, maintains that
  in man - and in man alone - existence precedes
  essense.

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A BBC T.V. Program

• Meet the scientific prophets who claim
• we are on the verge of creating a new
• type of human a human v2.0. It's
• predicted that by 2029 computer
• intelligence will equal the power of the
• human brain. Some believe this will
• revolutionize humanity - we will be able
• to download our minds to computers
• extending our lives indefinitely.
• Others fear...

11

• Everybody has to believe in something.
• Lotfi Zadeh

12

• Everybody has to believe in something.
• Lotfi Zadeh

13

• Overdetermination
• Overdetermination is a process that determines
  with more conditions than necessary.
• According to Hegel, it is a species that is its
  own class - as seen in the signifier 'man' which
  both denotes the generic term and the
  gender-specific one.
• Overdetermination gives expression to more than
  one need or desire.
• It is the condensation of the conscious and the
  unconscious wish resulting in the encryption of
  the symptom.
• The symptom is highly relevant to all literary
  practices and paradigms of interpretation because
  it fascinates and compels the spectator/subject.
• Strong enough both to necessitate and bypass
  repression, the symptom articulates both a desire
  and its prohibition.

14

• Freud said many features of dreams were usually
  "over determined," in that
• they were caused by multiple factors in the life
  of the dreamer, from the
• "residue of the day.
• The concept was later borrowed for a variety of
  other realms of thought.
• In literature the idea of overdetermination is
  used to explain the importance of
• ambiguity in rhetoric, the philosophy of
  language, and literary criticism.
• Drawing, in an unusual combination, from both
  Freud and Mao Zedong,
• Marxist philosopher Althusser used the idea of
  overdetermination as a way of
• thinking about the multiple, often opposed,
  forces active at once in any
• political situation, without falling into an
  over-simple idea of these forces
• being simply "contradictory."

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A cage went in search of a bird. Franz Kafka
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A Cage went in search of a bird. Jim DeLeo
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A cage went in search of a bird. Franz Kafka
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Humanity
Technology
A cage went in search of a bird. Franz Kafka
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Homo Sapiens
Machina Sapiens
A cage went in search of a bird. Franz Kafka
21

• I thought of that old joke, you know, this guy
  goes to a psychiatrist and says, Doc, my
  brother's crazy. He thinks he's a chicken. And
  the doctor says, Why don't you turn him in? And
  the guy says, I would but I need the eggs.
  Well, I guess that's pretty much how I feel about
  relationships. You know, they're totally
  irrational and crazy and absurd . . . but I guess
  we keep going through it because most of us need
  the eggs. Annie Hall, 1977

22

• This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, Doc,
  my brother's crazy. He thinks he's a chicken.
  And the doctor says, Why don't you turn him in?
  And the guy says, I would but I need the eggs.
• Annie Hall,
  1977

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Dont let this happen to you!
25
Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine
is lost, if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you
tell the world?
26
The price of metaphor is eternal vigilance.
The price of metaphor is eternal vigilance.
Norbert Weiner
Artoro Rosenblueth
27
Hi. Im Richard Lewontin, and as I say on
page 3 in my book The Triple Helix It is
not possible to do the work of science without
using a language that is filled with
metaphors. While we cannot dispense with
metaphors in thinking about nature, there is
a great risk of confusing metaphor with the
real thing of interest. We cease to see the
world as if it were a machine and take it to
be a machine. The price of metaphor is
eternal vigilance.

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Vigilance!

• Modeling is metaphor building.
• A model is a metaphor.
• The model is not the thing being modeled.
• Modeling helps us build things (engineering
  value).
• The metaphor is not the reality.
• Ontology (a branch of metaphysics) calls
  attention to the relationship between what-is
  in and of itself and the knowing and known about
  what is.
• The thought is not its stimulus.
• The roadmap is not the road (or is it?)

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My reaction to the book

• I do not accept that I am a captive of this
  concocted global machine metaphor.
• I believe we are free and sacrifice that freedom
  because of laziness and fear and in so doing give
  permission to machina sapiens and other things
  that go bump in the night to victimize us.
• 3. As Sartre says The slave in chains is
  free to break them.
• 4. This and other mental models of life are
  simply over determined, meaning there are more
  explanations than necessary and that these models
  while appearing to be somehow universal are both
  derived and accepted by personal inner
  psychological needs.
• 5. I very much appreciate the extraordinary
  practical extension to modern graph and network
  theory that this book offers.

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NIH CatalystSeptember October 2006
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Chapter 4 What Is Life?

• Carl Jim, what is the difference between
• carbon-based life and silicon-based
  life?
• Jim (laughing) Well biology defines life, lets
• look at a biology book.
• We did, and Carl demonstrated to me that the
• definition of life in biology also could apply to
• robots as von Neumann envisioned them.

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Chapter 4 What Is Life?

• Life consists of
• life-forms
• (living things)
• that are
• cyclic causal
• distributed
• autonomous
• quasiself-reproductive
• systems.

35
Chapter 4 What Is Life?

• Life consists of
• life-forms
• (living things)
• that are
• cyclic causal
• distributed
• autonomous
• quasiself-reproductive
• systems.

36
Chapter 4 What Is Life?

• Life consists of
• life-forms
• (living things)
• that are
• cyclic causal
• distributed
• autonomous
• quasiself-reproductive
• systems.

37
Chapter 4 What Is Life?

• Life consists of
• life-forms
• (living things)
• that are
• cyclic causal
• distributed
• autonomous
• quasiself-reproductive
• systems.

38
Chapter 4 What Is Life?

• Life consists of
• life-forms
• (living things)
• that are
• cyclic causal
• distributed
• autonomous
• quasiself-reproductive
• systems.

39
Chapter 4 What Is Life?

• Life consists of
• life-forms
• (living things)
• that are
• cyclic causal
• distributed
• autonomous
• quasiself-reproductive
• systems.

40
Chapter 4 What Is Life?

• Life consists of
• life-forms
• (living things)
• that are
• cyclic causal
• distributed
• autonomous
• quasiself-reproductive
• systems.

41
Chapter 4 What Is Life?

• Introduction
• 4.1 Life-forms are systems
• 4.2 Life-forms are cyclic causal systems
• 4.3 Life-forms are distributed systems
• 4.4 Life-forms are autonomous systems
• 4.5 Life-forms are quasiself-reproducitve
• systems
• 4.6 Life and life-forms
• 4.7 Why is the Whole More Than the Sum of its
• Parts?

42
Chapter 4 What Is Life?

• Introduction
• 4.1 Life-forms are systems
• 4.2 Life-forms are cyclic causal systems
• 4.3 Life-forms are distributed systems
• 4.4 Life-forms are autonomous systems
• 4.5 Life-forms are quasiself-reproductive
• systems
• 4.6 Life and life-forms
• 4.7 Why is the Whole More Than the Sum of its
• Parts?

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Introduction

• What is life? an age old question
• Difference between life and non-life
• Difference between life and death
• Can a machine live?
• Can a machine have consciousness?
• Can a machine have spirit?
• Can a machine have will?
• Is Machina-Sapiens a life-form?

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Inroduction

• Kazem asks us be free of the our usual way of
  looking at things and recognize that things can
  be different if we believe they can be different.
  
• We experience things according to our
  perspective.

If I only had a brain
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Introduction

• The common view that life is built of cells is
• too rigid.
• Life on other planets could be silicon-based
  rather than carbon-based.
• Technological life-forms exist here on earth.

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Josephs Dream

• Joseph the miners nightmare depicted machines
  making humans depend on machines for their very
  life.
• The machines dismissed the humans if the humans
  did not satisfy the criteria of the machines.
• The only thing that matters to the global machine
  is its further development.
• Joseph saw himself as a robot of the machine!
• Is this nightmare true of this world now?

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Chapter 4 What Is Life?

• Life consists of life-forms that are
• systems
• having the following properties
• cyclic causal
• distributed
• autonomous
• quasiself-reproductive

49
Chapter 4 What Is Life?

• Life consists of life-forms that are
• systems
• having the following properties
• cyclic causal
• distributed
• autonomous
• quasiself-reproductive

4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5
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4.1 Life-forms are systems

• System collection of objects and their
  relationships
• Objects components, parts, members, building
  blocks, elements
• Relationships relations, operations
• Entity represents a system if and only if it is
  an ordered pair of the following form
• ltcomponents, relations among componentsgt

51
4.1 Life-forms are systems

• Examples of Systems family, political state, a
  living cell, a collection of cells, organ, organ
  system, organism.

organism
organ system
organ system
organ
organ
organ
organ
organ
organ
cell
cell
cell
cell
cell
cell
cell
cell
cell
cell
cell
cell
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4.2 Life-forms are cyclic causal systems
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Graph set of connected points
node
edge
edge
node
node
edge
node
node entity edge operation
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Natural Language Processing
a
node
edge
edge
a
a
node
node
a
a
a
a
edge
a
node
node entity edge operation a attribute
a
a
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Linear Causal System
Clouds
Thunder Lightning
Rain
Vegetation
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Cyclical Causal System
produces
Blood
Mucusa Lining
go into
Products
Nutrients
forms
digests
Hydrochloric Acid
Hydrochloric Acid
goes into
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4.3 Life-forms are distributed systems

• A distributed system is a system whose components
  (nodes) are also systems.
• The nodes may be spatially and temporally widely
  separate from one another.
• The human organism may be regarded as a
  distributed system with these components which
  are also systems
• Circulatory system
• Nervous system
• Digestive system
• Immune system
• Endocrine system
• Reproduction system
• Etc.

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4.3 Life-forms are distributed systems

• Each of the previous subsystems is a distributed
  system, e.g., the nervous system consists of the
  following distributed systems
• Cerebrum
• Cerebellum
• Spinal cord
• Vegetative nervous system
• Etc.
• These are also constructed from distributed
  systems
• Tissues
• Cells
• Etc.

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4.3 Life-forms are distributed systems

• They interact with other distributed systems
• blood circulation
• digestive
• Passing planes through such subsystems
  supersystem relations gives hierarchical
  organization within a distributed system
• Horizontal and vertical nodes have cyclical and
  acyclical relations
• Multi-cyclic causal cluster emerges
• Everything is connected to everything else
  causally and effectively
• The organism forms a whole and conversely
  produces its components
• E.g. organism produces thyroid hormones but
  conversely requires thyroid hormones to develop
  the organism as a whole

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4.3 Life-forms are distributed systems

• Network-as-a-whole functions as a whole
  decentrally.
• Subsystems are self-standing.
• No commands from a central command system.
• Not even the so called central nervous system.
• The life form functions as a distributive,
  parallel functioning system.
• Components of the system-as-a-whole are formed
  with one another collectively in reciprocity.
• The system-as-a whole maintains itself intact
  insofar as its components and relations.
  autonomously and continuously produce something
  new.

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Organ Systems
influence
give rise to
Cell Systems
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Blood- Circulation System
provides oxygen nutrients
returns carbon dioxide
Blood Cells
Both systems must work well for health.
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Organism
produces
helps develop organism as a whole
Thyroid Hormones
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4.4 Life-forms are autonomous systems

• A life-form is an autonomous production system
• A production produces something, e.g. brickyard,
  factory, stomach, liver
• A production system contains
• materials
• from which products emerge
• through production operations
• N.B. operation is a special relation
• Life-forms are autocatylic production systems
• A catalyst accelerates a process without getting
  consumed (fuzzy cat, fuzzy non-cat)
• There are many biocatalysts e.g. gastric juices
• Autocatylic catalyst assists process that
  produces more of the same catalyst

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Production System
products
materials
production system ltmaterials, products,
production operations gt
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Production System
non-catalytic materials
products
catalytic materials
production system ltmaterials, products,
production operations gt
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4.4 Life-forms are autonomous systems

• A cyclic causal system, whose members are
  production systems, exist together a cyclically
  organized distributed production system.
• In such a system each subsystem produces
  something that causes something.

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Human (a cyclical causal system)
Thyroid (subsystem)
hormones
Blood Stream (subsystem)
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Human (a cyclical causal system)

Thyroid (subsystem)






hormones
Blood Stream (subsystem)




metabolic process

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4.4 Life-forms are autonomous systems

• A life-form-as-a-whole represents an
  autocatalytic system in superb fashion.
• Components work together in distributed organized
  network and produce the life of the corresponding
  life-form as their communal product.

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4.4 Life-forms are autonomous systems

• The autocatalytic characteristic lends regulation
  and self-activity (autonomy) to the
  system-as-a-whole.
• The activity of a node works back upon itself
  because of negative feedback.
• System-favorable activity is likely to inhibit or
  increase other system processes.
• These are called regulatory circles
• A life-form consists of a network of such
  regulatory circles.

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4.4 Life-forms are autonomous systems

• Due to this capacity for self-regulation, the
  life form is capable of adapting to the
  challenges of the environment, or to those of its
  own inner world leading to stability.
• Failure of a regulatory circle can lead to
  disability, weakness, disease, infirmity, or
  death
• Particularly true if a regulatory circle develops
  into a vicious circle.

73
4.4 Life-forms are autonomous systems

• Vicious circle means positive feedback.
• Elevated production facilitates more production.
• E.g. fires avalanches, diseases of the endocrine
  system.
• Not all types of positive feedback are bad.
• E.g. growth and would healing

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4.4 Life-forms are autonomous systems

• Unnatural emergence of positive feedback can
  unleash creative avalanches that make the system
  more creative and reform and revolutionize the
  life-form, its life, and its environment.

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4.5 Life-forms are quasiself-reproducitve
systems

• A copy machine reproduces things different from
  itself.
• It reproduces foreign patterns.
• A copy machine is a reproduction system.
• Self-reproduction systems reproduces copies of
  itself.
• Self-reproduction (100) does not exist.
• Similarity between ancestor and progeny always
  less than 100.
• This is referred to as quasiself-reproduction.
• Because of mutation.
• It is different from quasi self-reproduction.
• Quasiself --- fuzzy logic ---degree of similarity
• Take on Bills quote on page 34

76
Chapter 4 What Is Life?

• Life consists of life-forms that are
• systems objects relations described by
  network graphs
• having the following properties
• cyclic causal has causal feedback loops
• distributed nodes are also systems that
  interact with other
• distributed
  systems
• Autonomous produces something that causes
  something
• (includes
  reproducible catalytic agents)
• quasiself-reproductive reproduces non-exact
  replicates
• 
  of itself

77
Chapter 4 What Is Life?

• Life consists of life-forms that are
• systems objects relations described by
  network graphs
• having the following properties
• cyclic causal has causal feedback loops
• distributed nodes are also systems that
  interact with other
• distributed
  systems
• Autonomous produces something that causes
  something
• (includes
  reproducible catalytic agents)
• quasiself-reproductive reproduces non-exact
  replicates
• 
  of itself

78
Chapter 4 What Is Life?

• Life consists of life-forms that are
• systems objects relations described by
  network graphs
• having the following properties
• cyclic causal has causal feedback loops
• distributed nodes are also systems that
  interact with other
• distributed
  systems
• Autonomous produces something that causes
  something
• (includes
  reproducible catalytic agents)
• quasiself-reproductive reproduces non-exact
  replicates
• 
  of itself

79
Chapter 4 What Is Life?

• Life consists of life-forms that are
• systems objects relations described by
  network graphs
• having the following properties
• cyclic causal has causal feedback loops
• distributed nodes are also systems that
  interact with other
• distributed
  systems
• autonomous produces something that causes
  something
• (includes
  reproducible catalytic agents)
• quasiself-reproductive reproduces non-exact
  replicates
• 
  of itself

80
Chapter 4 What Is Life?

• Life consists of life-forms that are
• systems objects relations described by
  network graphs
• having the following properties
• cyclic causal has causal feedback loops
• distributed nodes are also systems that
  interact with other
• distributed
  systems
• autonomous produces something that causes
  something
• (includes
  reproducible catalytic agents)
• quasiself-reproductive reproduces non-exact
  replicates
• 
  of itself

81
Chapter 4 What Is Life?

• Life consists of life-forms that are
• systems
• having the following properties
• cyclic causal
• distributed
• autonomous
• quasiself-reproductive

4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5
82
Chapter 4 What Is Life?

• Introduction
• 4.1 Life-forms are systems
• 4.2 Life-forms are cyclic causal systems
• 4.3 Life-forms are distributed systems
• 4.4 Life-forms are autonomous systems
• 4.5 Life-forms are quasiself-reproductive
• systems
• 4.6 Life and life-forms
• 4.7 Why is the Whole More Than the Sum of its
• Parts?

83
4.6 Life and life-forms

• An object in environment U is a life form of the
  first order if it is a system that has the
  following characteristics
• distributed
• cyclic-causally organized
• quasiself-reproductive
• autonomous
• Metabolism is implicit.
• Examples dogs, flowers, citizens, bacterium.
• A life form in environment U1 might loose this
  property in environment U2 (e.g. viruses).
• The boundary between life-form and non-life-form
  is not sharp but fuzzy, or matters of degree.
  (N.B. Fuzzy logic)

84
4.6 Life and life-forms

• Life-form is defined recursively as follows
• 1. a life-form of the first order is a life-form
• 2. a cyclic-causal distributed system is a
  life-form
• if its graph contains life-forms as
  nodes (life-forms of higher order)
• Families, nations, species, ant-colonies, bird
  flocks, ecosystems, the biosphere are all
  life-forms.
• First order and higher order life forms are
  distinguishable.
• Examples
• first order life forms are self-reproductive
  while higher order life forms are not
• higher order life-forms manifest emergent
  characteristics that first order life forms do
  net, e.g. evolution.

85
4.7 Why is the Whole More than the Sum of its
Parts

• Systems characteristics are characteristics not
  merely of its components (e.g. man riding a
  bicycle).
• This is not so profound.
• (emergent properties)
• (Reductionism thinking may overlook this.)

86
The homo sapiens subsystem is in context with the
biosphere subsystem and the technology subsystem
Homo Sapiens
Biosphere
Technology
87
Chapter 4 What Is Life?

• Life consists of
• life-forms
• (living things)
• that are
• cyclic causal
• distributed
• autonomous
• quasiself-reproductive
• systems.

88
Graph set of connected points
node
edge
edge
node
node
edge
node
node entity edge operation
89
Graph set of connected points
node
fuzzy
fuzzy
node
node
fuzzy
node
node entity edge operation
90
Fuzzy Causality
You cause me headache!
The ball caused the headache.
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Fuzzy Causality
You cause me headache!
The ball caused the headache.
Why? Because I hate you?
You cause me headache!
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Fuzziness

• Fuzzy perception
• Fuzzy relationship (operation)
• Fuzzy causality
• Fuzzy catalysity

fuzzy relationship
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Fuzziness

• Fuzzy fractals

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Immoralist View

• "Being born is not a crime, so
• why should it carry a sentence
• of death?
• Robert Ettinger, famed longevity pioneer

99
Which Is It?
100
Which Is It?
Technology enhances our humanness.
Technology saps our humanness.
Technology
101
Half-empty or half-full?

• The philosopher would say that, if the glass was
  in the forest
• and no one was there to see it, would it be half
  anything?
• The banker would say that the glass has just
  under 50 of its
• net worth in liquid assets.
• The psychiatrist would ask, "What did your mother
  say about
• the glass?
• The physicist would say that the volume of this
  cylinder is
• divided into two equal parts one a colorless,
  odorless liquid,
• the other a colorless, odorless gas. Thus the
  cylinder is neither
• full nor empty. Rather, each half of the cylinder
  is full, one with
• a gas, one with a liquid.
• The seasoned drinker would say that the glass
  doesn't have
• enough ice in it.

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108

• Youth is happy because it has
• The ability to see beauty. Anyone
• who keeps the ability to see
• beauty never grows old.
• 
  Franz Kafka

109
Zen Poem

• The wild geese do not intend
• to cast their reflection
• The water has no mind
• to retain their image

110
The Danger

• Technology has no will
• to enslave humans
• Humans have little will
• to resist being enslaved by technology