From 97172ae3e00d773ed8ce677a9bd08d8b66c1b7e8 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Silvio Rhatto <rhatto@riseup.net>
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 08:36:41 -0300
Subject: [PATCH] Updates books and research
---
books/scifi/four-futures.mdwn | 4 +
books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.mdwn | 245 ++++++++++++++++++++++++
research/panc.mdwn | 1 +
research/python.mdwn | 30 +++
4 files changed, 280 insertions(+)
diff --git a/books/scifi/four-futures.mdwn b/books/scifi/four-futures.mdwn
index 0338220..e536018 100644
--- a/books/scifi/four-futures.mdwn
+++ b/books/scifi/four-futures.mdwn
@@ -1,5 +1,9 @@
[[!meta title="Four Futures: Life After Capitalism"]]
+* Author: Peter Frase
+* Year: 2016
+* Publisher: Verso / Jacobin
+
## Trechos
Fictional futures are, in my view, preferable to those works of
diff --git a/books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.mdwn b/books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.mdwn
index ef3c3a5..399784e 100644
--- a/books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.mdwn
+++ b/books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.mdwn
@@ -1,5 +1,16 @@
[[!meta title="You're not a Gadget"]]
+## Concepts
+
+* Technological lock-ins.
+* Cybernetic totalists versus humanistic technologies.
+* Circle of empaty.
+* Computationalism.
+* Value of personhood contrasted to "the hive".
+* Neoteny and it's contradictory qualities in culture.
+* Cephalopods + Childhood = Humans + Virtual Reality.
+* There's an underlying discussion between individual versus collective. Does creativity is just individual? He seems to view the polarization as a obligation to choose sides.
+
## Information Doesn’t Deserve to Be Free
“Information wants to be free.” So goes the saying. Stewart Brand, the founder
@@ -153,3 +164,237 @@
reverse-engineered or mucked with in any accessible way. Or it might even
involve the prospect, dreaded by some, of dualism, a reality for consciousness
as apart from mechanism.
+
+## Wikified Biology
+
+ Dyson equates the beginnings of life on Earth with the Eden of Linux. Back when
+ life first took hold, genes flowed around freely; genetic sequences skipped
+ from organism to organism in much the way they may soon be able to on the
+ internet. In his article, Freeman derides the first organism that hoarded its
+ genes behind a protective membrane as “evil,” just like the nemesis of the
+ open-software movement, Bill Gates.
+
+ Once organisms became encapsulated, they isolated themselves into distinct
+ species, trading genes only with others of their kind. Freeman suggests that
+ the coming era of synthetic biology will be a return to Eden.
+
+ I suppose amateurs, robots, and an aggregation of amateurs and robots might
+ someday hack genes in the global garage and tweet DNA sequences around the
+ globe at light speed. Or there might be a slightly more sober process that
+ takes place between institutions like high schools and start-up companies.
+
+ However it happens, species boundaries will become defunct, and genes will fly
+ about, resulting in an orgy of creativity. Untraceable multitudes of new
+ biological organisms will appear as frequently as new videos do on YouTube
+ today.
+
+ One common response to suggestions that this might happen is fear. After all,
+ it might take only one doomsday virus produced in one garage to bring the
+ entire human story to a close. I will not focus directly on that concern, but,
+ instead, on whether the proposed style of openness would even bring about the
+ creation of innovative creatures.
+
+ The alternative to wide-open development is not necessarily evil. My guess is
+ that a poorly encapsulated communal gloop of organisms lost out to closely
+ guarded species on the primordial Earth for the same reason that the Linux
+ community didn’t come up with the iPhone: encapsulation serves a purpose.
+
+ [...]
+
+ Wikipedia has already been elevated into what might be a permanent niche. It
+ might become stuck as a fixture, like MIDI or the Google ad exchange services.
+ That makes it important to be aware of what you might be missing. Even in a
+ case in which there is an objective truth that is already known, such as a
+ mathematical proof, Wikipedia distracts the potential for learning how to bring
+ it into the conversation in new ways. Individual voice—the opposite of
+ wikiness—might not matter to mathematical truth, but it is the core of
+ mathematical communication.
+
+## The Culture of Computationalism
+
+ For lack of a better word, I call it computationalism. This term is usually
+ used more narrowly to describe a philosophy of mind, but I’ll extend it to
+ include something like a culture. A first pass at a summary of the underlying
+ philosophy is that the world can be understood as a computational process, with
+ people as subprocesses.
+
+ [...]
+
+ In a scientific role, I don’t recoil from the idea that the brain is a kind of
+ computer, but there is more than one way to use computation as a source of
+ models for human beings. I’ll discuss three common flavors of computationalism
+ and then describe a fourth flavor, the one that I prefer. Each flavor can be
+ distinguished by a different idea about what would be needed to make software
+ as we generally know it become more like a person.
+
+ One flavor is based on the idea that a sufficiently voluminous computation will
+ take on the qualities we associate with people—such as, perhaps, consciousness.
+ One might claim Moore’s law is inexorably leading to superbrains, superbeings,
+ and, perhaps, ultimately, some kind of global or even cosmic consciousness. If
+ this language sounds extreme, be aware that this is the sort of rhetoric you
+ can find in the world of Singularity enthusiasts and extropians.
+
+ [...]
+
+ A second flavor of computationalism holds that a computer program with specific
+ design features—usually related to self-representation and circular
+ references—is similar to a person. Some of the figures associated with this
+ approach are Daniel Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter, though each has his own
+ ideas about what the special features should be.
+
+ Hofstadter suggests that software that includes a “strange loop” bears a
+ resemblance to consciousness. In a strange loop, things are nested within
+ things in such a way that an inner thing is the same as an outer thing.
+
+ [...]
+
+ A third flavor of computationalism is found in web 2.0 circles. In this case,
+ any information structure that can be perceived by some real human to also be a
+ person is a person. This idea is essentially a revival of the Turing test. If
+ you can perceive the hive mind to be recommending music to you, for instance,
+ then the hive is effectively a person.
+
+ [...]
+
+ The approach to thinking about people computationally that I prefer, on those
+ occasions when such thinking seems appropriate to me, is what I’ll call
+ “realism.” The idea is that humans, considered as information systems, weren’t
+ designed yesterday, and are not the abstract playthings of some higher being,
+ such as a web 2.0 programmer in the sky or a cosmic Spore player. Instead, I
+ believe humans are the result of billions of years of implicit, evolutionary
+ study in the school of hard knocks. The cybernetic structure of a person has
+ been refined by a very large, very long, and very deep encounter with physical
+ reality.
+
+### From Images to Odors
+
+ For twenty years or so I gave a lecture introducing the fundamentals of virtual
+ reality. I’d review the basics of vision and hearing as well as of touch and
+ taste. At the end, the questions would begin, and one of the first ones was
+ usually about smell: Will we have smells in virtual reality machines anytime
+ soon?
+
+ Maybe, but probably just a few. Odors are fundamentally different from images
+ or sounds. The latter can be broken down into primary components that are
+ relatively straightforward for computers—and the brain—to process. The visible
+ colors are merely words for different wavelengths of light. Every sound wave is
+ actually composed of numerous sine waves, each of which can be easily described
+ mathematically.
+
+ [...]
+
+ Odors are completely different, as is the brain’s method of sensing them. Deep
+ in the nasal passage, shrouded by a mucous membrane, sits a patch of tissue—the
+ olfactory epithelium—studded with neurons that detect chemicals. Each of these
+ neurons has cup-shaped proteins called olfactory receptors. When a particular
+ molecule happens to fall into a matching receptor, a neural signal is triggered
+ that is transmitted to the brain as an odor. A molecule too large to fit into
+ one of the receptors has no odor. The number of distinct odors is limited only
+ by the number of olfactory receptors capable of interacting with them. Linda
+ Buck of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Richard Axel of Columbia
+ University, winners of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, have
+ found that the human nose contains about one thousand different types of
+ olfactory neurons, each type able to detect a particular set of chemicals.
+
+ This adds up to a profound difference in the underlying structure of the
+ senses—a difference that gives rise to compelling questions about the way we
+ think, and perhaps even about the origins of language. There is no way to
+ interpolate between two smell molecules. True, odors can be mixed together to
+ form millions of scents. But the world’s smells can’t be broken down into just
+ a few numbers on a gradient; there is no “smell pixel.” Think of it this way:
+ colors and sounds can be measured with rulers, but odors must be looked up in a
+ dictionary.
+
+ [...]
+
+ To solve the problem of olfaction—that is, to make the complex world of smells
+ quickly identifiable—brains had to have evolved a specific type of neural
+ circuitry, Jim believes. That circuitry, he hypothesizes, formed the basis for
+ the cerebral cortex—the largest part of our brain, and perhaps the most
+ critical in shaping the way we think. For this reason, Jim has proposed that
+ the way we think is fundamentally based in the olfactory.
+
+ [...]
+
+ He often refers to the olfactory parts of the brain as the “Old Factory,” as
+ they are remarkably similar across species, which suggests that the structure
+ has ancient origins.
+
+## Editing Is Sexy; Creativity Is Natural
+
+ These experiments in linguistic variety could also inspire a better
+ understanding of how language came about in the first place. One of Charles
+ Darwin’s most compelling evolutionary speculations was that music might have
+ preceded language. He was intrigued by the fact that many species use song for
+ sexual display and wondered if human vocalizations might have started out that
+ way too. It might follow, then, that vocalizations could have become varied and
+ complex only later, perhaps when song came to represent actions beyond mating
+ and such basics of survival.
+
+ [...]
+
+ Terry offered an unconventional solution to the mystery of Bengalese finch
+ musicality. What if there are certain traits, including song style, that
+ naturally tend to become less constrained from generation to generation but are
+ normally held in check by selection pressures? If the pressures go away,
+ variation should increase rapidly. Terry suggested that the finches developed a
+ wider song variety not because it provided an advantage but merely because in
+ captivity it became possible.
+
+ In the wild, songs probably had to be rigid in order for mates to find each
+ other. Birds born with a genetic predilection for musical innovation most
+ likely would have had trouble mating. Once finches experienced the luxury of
+ assured mating (provided they were visually attractive), their song variety
+ exploded.
+
+ Brian Ritchie and Simon Kirby of the University of Edinburgh worked with Terry
+ to simulate bird evolution in a computer model, and the idea worked well, at
+ least in a virtual world. Here is yet another example of how science becomes
+ more like storytelling as engineering becomes able to represent some of the
+ machinery of formerly subjective human activities.
+
+## Metaphors
+
+ One reason the metaphor of the sun fascinates me is that it bears on a conflict
+ that has been at the heart of information science since its inception: Can
+ meaning be described compactly and precisely, or is it something that can
+ emerge only in approximate form based on statistical associations between large
+ numbers of components?
+
+ Mathematical expressions are compact and precise, and most early computer
+ scientists assumed that at least part of language ought to display those
+ qualities too.
+
+## Future Humors
+
+ Unfortunately, we don’t have access at this time to a single philosophy that
+ makes sense for all purposes, and we might never find one. Treating people as
+ nothing other than parts of nature is an uninspired basis for designing
+ technologies that embody human aspirations. The inverse error is just as
+ misguided: it’s a mistake to treat nature as a person. That is the error that
+ yields confusions like intelligent design.
+
+ [...]
+
+ Those who enter into the theater of computationalism are given all the mental
+ solace that is usually associated with traditional religions. These include
+ consolations for metaphysical yearnings, in the form of the race to climb to
+ ever more “meta” or higher-level states of digital representation, and even a
+ colorful eschatology, in the form of the Singularity. And, indeed, through the
+ Singularity a hope of an afterlife is available to the most fervent believers.
+
+## My Brush with Bachelardian Neoteny in the Most Interesting Room in the World
+
+ But actually, because of homuncular flexibility, any part of reality might just
+ as well be a part of your body if you happen to hook up the software elements
+ so that your brain can control it easily. Maybe if you wiggle your toes, the
+ clouds in the sky will wiggle too. Then the clouds would start to feel like
+ part of your body. All the items of experience become more fungible than in the
+ physical world. And this leads to the revelatory experience.
+
+## Final Words
+
+ For me, the prospect of an entirely different notion of communication is more
+ thrilling than a construction like the Singularity. Any gadget, even a big one
+ like the Singularity, gets boring after a while. But a deepening of meaning is
+ the most intense potential kind of adventure available to us.
diff --git a/research/panc.mdwn b/research/panc.mdwn
index 0b85266..04b584e 100644
--- a/research/panc.mdwn
+++ b/research/panc.mdwn
@@ -33,6 +33,7 @@
* Livro do knuppi e do lorenzi
* Instituto plantarum
* [Como diferenciar serralha e dente-de-leão](http://www.matosdecomer.com.br/2016/08/como-diferenciar-serralha-e-dente-de.html).
+* [Cartilha Guia Prático de PANC Plantas Alimenticias Nao Convencionais](http://institutokairos.net/wp content/uploads/2017/08/Cartilha Guia Pr%C3%A1tico de PANC Plantas Alimenticias Nao Convencionais.pdf).
## Pesquisas futuras:
diff --git a/research/python.mdwn b/research/python.mdwn
index 72098c2..3a62cad 100644
--- a/research/python.mdwn
+++ b/research/python.mdwn
@@ -44,6 +44,36 @@ Python encourages polymorphism:
floating points sometimes can, in different ways—by using rational
representation and by limiting precision
+### Types
+
+ More formally, there are three major type (and operation) categories in Python
+ that have this generic nature:
+
+ Numbers (integer, floating-point, decimal, fraction, others)
+ Support addition, multiplication, etc.
+ Sequences (strings, lists, tuples)
+ Support indexing, slicing, concatenation, etc.
+ Mappings (dictionaries)
+ Support indexing by key, etc.
+
+ [...]
+
+ The major core types in Python break down as follows:
+
+ Immutables (numbers, strings, tuples, frozensets)
+ None of the object types in the immutable category support in-place changes,
+ though we can always run expressions to make new objects and assign their
+ results to variables as needed.
+
+ Mutables (lists, dictionaries, sets, bytearray)
+ Conversely, the mutable types can always be changed in place with operations
+ that do not create new objects. Although such objects can be copied, in-place
+ changes support direct modification.
+
## Libraries
* [SciPy.org — SciPy.org](https://www.scipy.org/) ([package](https://packages.debian.org/stable/python-scipy)).
+
+## Test projects
+
+* [Arduino Blog » How close are we to doomsday? A clock is calculating it in real time](https://blog.arduino.cc/2013/03/27/how-close-are-we-to-doomsday-clock/) ([python code](https://github.com/tomschofield/Neurotic-Armageddon-Indicator/blob/master/NAI_SERVER/nai_scraper.py) to parse [Timeline from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists](http://thebulletin.org/timeline)).
--
GitLab