Month: October 2008 | Bad Blogger

October 31, 2008

Fun with Science

enjoy the reaction of his wife (or significant other) at the end of the video

October 30, 2008

Scientists “define” evil

To be truly evil, someone must have sought to do harm by planning to commit some morally wrong action with no prompting from others (whether this person successfully executes his or her plan is beside the point). The evil person must have tried to carry out this plan with the hope of “causing considerable harm to others,” Bringsjord says. Finally, “and most importantly,” he adds, if this evil person were willing to analyze his or her reasons for wanting to commit this morally wrong action, these reasons would either prove to be incoherent, or they would reveal that the evil person knew he or she was doing something wrong and regarded the harm caused as a good thing.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=defining-evil

“I wouldn’t release E or anything like it, even in purely virtual environments, without engineered safeguards,” Bringsjord says. These safeguards would be a set of ethics written into the software, something akin to author Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics” that prevent a robot from harming humans, requires a robot to obey humans, and instructs a robot to protect itself—as long as that does not violate either or both of the first two laws.

“Because I have a lot of faith in this approach,” he says, “E will be controlled.”

And we read in Philip K. Dick’s novel how that worked out…

October 28, 2008

Where I’m At

Fightin’ for My Life
Joe Ely Butch Hancock

I’m ridin through the middle of some god forsaken town
Dark figures from the shadows, theyre tryin to cut me down
Some hero of the hour needs a rival of some kind
So dont talk to me right now, I’ve got survival on my mind

It might seem a little strange to you
But babe I got some things to do
Things for me that just cant wait
Dont let your love turn to hate
I got nothin in the world against you babe
But its gonna be a rough night out tonight
I got a feelin Im fightin for my life

Some street gang in the alley is tryin to tan my hide
I give aem all my money but theyre still not satisfied
Theyre callin out some names but it dont reflect on you
So dont bother me Im tryin to makeem see my point of view

It might seem a little strange to you
But babe I got some things to do
Things for me that just cant wait
Dont let your love turn to hate
I got nothin in the world against you babe
Its gonna be a rough night out tonight
I know the kung fu and Im fightin for my life

They say those silly phantoms are only in your mind
But I swear that even some of them get out from time to time
Some are rough and some are rowdy, some are fast to make the scene
But the ones that move so slow, theyre the ones that treat you mean

I used to read the Bible and Paradise Lost
now it looks like everybodys been gettin double-crossed
I dont mean to crash the cymbals, I dont mean to beat the drum
I dont wanna waste your time, you know Id rather save you some