Watch for the abacus. Good stuff. Full tutorial on the arm’s design here. Thanks, Lally!

From NYT: Monkey’s Thoughts Propel Robot, a Step That May Help Humans “It’s walking!” Dr. Nicolelis said. “That’s one small step for a robot and one giant leap for a primate.” This is the same guy who got a monkey to control a robot arm with its thoughts alone back in ’03.

Mech Warrior One Step Closer to Reality Thanks dc.

link thx dc

Happy New Year

From What is it like to be a Thermostat? by David Chalmers. What Lloyd’s approach brings out is that when we try to isolate the kind of processing that is required for conscious experience, the requirements are remarkably hard to pin down, and a careful analysis does not throw up processing criteria that are more than minimal. What are some reasonable-seeming functional criteria for conscious experience? One traditional criterion is reportability, but this is far too strong to be an across-the-board requirement. It seems reasonable to suppose that dogs and cats have conscious experience, even in the absence of an ability to report. If we seriously discussing panpsychism, why should we think that ‘reportability’ should be a strong requirement? To me, reportability seems very weak. My cat Gus lets me know he wants to go outside by knocking things off my desk. Gus is letting me know about his current internal state. If it is reasonable to suppose that Gus is having conscience experiences, then ‘wanting to go outside’ is a very likely candidate for an internal state that is associated with a phenomenological experience. So Gus exhibits exactly the sort of behavior we are looking for in an ability to report. If conscious states, as Chalmers assumes, are functionally independent of linguistic behavior, then there is no reason to assume that reportability as a criteria of consciousness rests on an ability to use language. Gus reports his internal states all the time, in a variety of ways, most of which annoy the shit out of me, and none of which are linguistic, but can very easily be taken as a evidence of an internal conscious state. Only when reportability is a weak requirement does the possibility of panpsychism become a live option, because its very easy to exhibit behavior […]

From Norms, Networks, and Trails by Adrian Cussins If the ‘rules’ don’t pre-empt what is properly possible in the ‘game’, then the ‘rules’ become part of what is negotiated by the ‘players’. If the ‘rules’ become part of what is negotiated by the ‘players’, then we end up with the comical but also absurd activity of “Calvinball” from the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strip. Counter-examples: 1) The US Constitution contains provisions for revising and amending the constitution. 2) Wikipedia encourages active discussion of its policies and guidelines. Perhaps these processes are comical and absurd, but I don’t think they undermine the normative structure of the game as such. Am I wrong?

We are quite close to having internet everywhere. I am always please to see people walking around with cell phones in hand or fussing with an iPod, because it shows just how accustomed we have become to having small portable connected devices around us at all times. These devices don’t just make calls or play music, they keep us connected and facilitate social networking, which is the lifeblood of the net. I am occasionally tickled at the phenomena of text messaging, which by all outward appearances is a technological step backwards, something like the equivalent of going from cell phones back to pagers, but bitches like textin. But the internet is dynamic and complicated in a way that doesn’t translate well to small portable devices, so having the internet everywhere is a really tough problem that has yet to see a real good solution. My PDA works in a pinch, but the technology is now about 4 years old and can only provide a stripped down, slow internet that is visually unappealing and functionally unsatisfying. I am told that iPhones are decent, but I haven’t had much experience with them so I can’t say for sure. It is probably the closest we’ve come yet, but Apple products strike me as more like a fashion accessory than a useful tool. I want an internet leatherman, not a katana. I’d like to get my hands on a Nokia N810 (attn christmas shoppers) since I don’t really care about having a phone as much as I need the internet. The N810 runs linux, and it looks like you can dig in and customize it as you see fit (once the software gets written, that is), and that seems to make it well suited to the needs of the net. At the other end […]

A representation of a mammalian neocortical column, the basic building block of the cortex. The representation shows the complexity of this part of the brain, which has now been modeled using a supercomputer. |link| Thanks Steve