From: Olie Lamb (olie@vaporate.com)
Date: Thu Sep 01 2005 - 01:16:53 MDT
Greetings, fellow singularitarians.
I’m known as Ollie, with the surnames Lamb (patrilinear) vel NcLean
(matrilinear). I’m known by those handles, or Neomorphy, which derives
from the Greek for “new shape”. I’m currently writing a thesis (to
become a PhD dissertation) on our perception of time, and how and why we
experience it as “moving”. I get money from automotive research,
particularly fuel efficiency and emissions.
My relevant areas of personal interest are: the nature of Consciousness,
Time (its nature and our experience of it) and Morality (meta-ethics).
Epistemology and philosophy of science are also among my intellectual
strong points.
I have particular interests in the techy areas of iterative geometry and
physical substances (eg: nanotubes). I have absolutely no interest in
most computer tech issues such as OS, comp-language issues etc.
My interest in ethics and time have caused me to become an ardent
environmentalist. I consider environmentalism to be largely concerned
with the distribution of resources between time periods.
I’m also an amateur musician.
I’m a hardcore sceptic, so I only use the term “belief” as shorthand,
but I hold the following “beliefs” relevant to this forum:
* Consciousness is not identical to intelligence
* Consciousness as a characteristic has not only recently been acquired
by humanity. Consciousness extends to a number of organisms, not all of
whom regularly utilise language.
* Human consciousness is not at all like software
* This may be anthropomorphising, but I suspect that Consciousness is
much better “serviced” by a high degree of parallelism. Intelligence,
however has no such “correlation”.
* I also don’t believe in materialism/ physicalism. I’m not a dualist
(or an idealist, for that matter), but I wouldn’t disagree with certain
versions of Platonism.
I see no need to bug the whole group about any of these, however, I’ll
be happy to elaborate if anyone asks.
===
As is customary for newbies, a quick rundown of why I’m joining / have
recently decided to act towards the singularity: I’ve long believed that
persons will end up predominantly non-human (rudis), and that a key to
this progression will be the ability of intelligences to design better
intelligences. However, early disappointments with the failure of
history to live up to the exponential predictions of optimistic
futurists led to misgivings about the dramatic take-off of non-human
intelligences. However, recent stumblings across FAI developments (esp.
the SIAI) convinced me of just important it is to get the singularity
right, first time. Though not a programmer, my own investigations into
consciousness could be of some relevance. Hence signing up.
Looking forward to being a helpful (if quiet) part of SL4. Now I’ve got
a lot of catch-up reading to do.
Ollie
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