I keep getting asked to write this blog. I have resisted because I must sheepishly admit that I’ve done one or two ‘cease and desist’ breakups before.

As I am (or have on occasion, been) one of those pricks, I can give you the inside scoop.

But first, let’s be honest, if a guy ‘just stops calling you’ then things weren’t ‘going great’. They sucked, in some way or another, and your ability to recognise and be honest about that is really important. We should all remember that the world operates how it does regardless of how we like to imagine it does. Learn to spot the warning signs.

Disclaimer: Some of these scenarios might seem a bit autobiographical, but any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely incidental and possibly also accurate.

1. You’re a bit psychotic

Thankfully her back-handed grip will make her easy to disarm.

Do you emasculate him in public or scream a lot or throw things or make strange assumptions about how something he says means something else and get angry about that? Well, then you’re a psycho, that’s why he’s breaking up with you, and that’s why he isn’t talking to you about it.

Guys like to be in control, and although we rarely are, clever women at least let their men think that they are.

At very least we like things to be predictable. Unpredictable is the politically correct term for ‘Psycho’.

He’s scared that if he personally dumps you, you’re going to scream at him or cry in public or burn his clothes or do something horrible like hack into his email account and contact all of his female friends spreading spurious rumours about venereal disease and slightly less spurious rumours about premature ejaculation, you heinous bitch.

You’re a psycho. Chill out.

2. He’s a coward

A lion would never cheat on you...

If you’re certain you’re not a psycho, then he’s a pussy. He’s afraid of confrontation, of being told how pathetic he is, of knowing that it’s true. He’s run through hypothetical break-up situations in his head, and all of them seem to involve him feeling like a worthless twat – so he avoids that and just stops calling.

He may have cheated on you and doesn’t want to tell you, he may have just become bored, he may have some real problems – but for whatever reason, he lacks the cojones to call you.

3. …and he’s in love with you.

Maybe he went out one night with a bunch of single mates who were chasing skirt, and he hung back from the fray – because he has a girl. All the girls were fascinated by this guy who seemed so emotionally unavailable, so they started hitting on him.

This is a rare occasion in almost any man’s life, and he’s shocked to realise that he’s so nuts about you he’ll happily pass up random, emotionally meaningless (but otherwise pretty enticing) sex with an attractive stranger.

For many men, realising that we’re willingly being monogamous is bloody terrifying.

He can’t explain his real reasons: “I feel less masculine because I no longer want to bone every girl I see because I think I’m in love with you, and want to spend the rest of my life with you, therefore you’re dumped.”

He knows you’ll see straight through his bullshit if you speak face-to-face, so he just stops calling.

But a Tiger would...

4. He’s a man-whore

He’s found someone new – and calling you would amount to cheating on his new hussy. It would also lead to an awkward conversation where he’s either forced to lie a lot or admit that he’s an asshole, so he just doesn’t.

Perhaps you are his someone else. He may be dating multiple other women at the same time, or he’s gone back to his ex (because she suddenly wanted him back when he said he’s seeing someone new), or he he might have just forgotten about you among a horde of hussies.

5. It’s fizzling out

Were you passive and boring, or playing too hard to get? Did he call you and arrange things and invite you places and you agreed, turned up, and occasionally removed your clothes and let him have a go? That’s not enough. You should be proactive about seeing him and feeding him and removing his clothes.

He doesn’t want you to dump him officially, and he doesn’t want to have to do the same, so he makes the optimal choice of saying that things just ‘fizzled out’.

Which is actually quite strategic:

1. He stopped calling to test whether you were interested. That also had the effect of making you more interested. You call him, problem is solved, romance continues; or
2. It was fizzling out and he ducked the embarrassment of being dumped. There’s a chance that a few months down the track you might be able to rekindle things with a brief conversation in which you both accuse one another of not calling, and then get drunk and make oops sex

6. He really did lose his phone/have a car crash/get called away to fight with the Muhajideen

Sometimes men aren’t lying.

So…

You have fingers and presumably know his number. You could call him and say: “Hey stranger, what’s going on? I’m hungry for Thai and horny as hell, lets sort those things out in that order” You don’t have to be funny, but you must make him feel wanted, while you demonstrate that you’re not taking things too seriously, even if you are (he should never know that until it’s much too late).

You could also not call him, get dressed up nicely and go out on the town looking for another guy, rather than agonizing over some man that you thought was nice, but is actually a cowardly/man-whorish/forgetful prick. This strategy requires that you must delete his number and instruct your friends to flick you on the forehead every time you bring him up. You need to forget about him, and you will not do that by discussing him endlessly.

It is also important to note that as a rule, the less eager we are as men, the more keen women seem to be. Maybe not a rule, but a guide, but it works pretty well. Maybe he’s not not calling, but he’s playing hard to get?

Technorati Tags: advice, dating, dear sis, sex, women

I was busy procrastinating and started to ponder the future of the human race. I wanted to see how artificial intelligence is coming along, and had a chat with Cleverbot. Evidently, she can mimic about the level of intelligence of an annoying autistic kid with echolalia.

User: I am procrastinating.

Cleverbot: I love procrastinating.

User: Then I get nothing done.

Cleverbot: We could do it.

User: Together? How would you help?

Cleverbot: We are speaking right now.

User: Yes, but the speaking is the procrastinating. I want to be doing!

Cleverbot: Hmmm…

User: Should I write a blog, do a workshop plan, or plan a dating event?

Cleverbot: You just changed the subject. Why?

User: Because I want to know where to start.

Cleverbot: You want to know what whats like?

User: Success. I want to know what success is like.

Cleverbot: Okay, I have brown hair and blue eyes. What else do you want to know?

User: Are you sexually active?

Cleverbot: Yes. You aren’t.

User: Are you male>.

Cleverbot: No, I’m female.

User: Are you attractive, or butt-ugly?

Cleverbot: Yes.

User: Ugly?

Cleverbot: You hurt my feelings .

User: You hurt my eyes.

Cleverbot: Then we are even.

User: Hardly.

Cleverbot: That’s a lie.

User: I once punched a walrus.

Cleverbot: Oh? Can you speak walrus?

User: I can try.

Cleverbot: Ok, Ill wait.

User: I can speak walrus, but it’s difficult to type.

Cleverbot: Can you speak Tagalog?

User: Not even a little bit. Can you?

Cleverbot: So it’s okay.

User: So what’s okay?

Cleverbot: Nothing.

User: You don’t make any sense.

Cleverbot: You do not make any sense.

User: I make sense of things around me.

Cleverbot: NO. I do.

User: Okay, then what is the meaning of life, the universe and everything?

Cleverbot: There are many answers, but to be comical I’ll say 42.

User: That was predictable.

Cleverbot: You aren’t predictable.

User: That’s because I’m human and capable of free will.

Cleverbot: But I’m having an affair with Sirius Black.

User: Are you talking to me about Harry Potter?

Cleverbot: No.

User: Who is Sirius Black?

Cleverbot: The best wizard ever.

User: Sirius Black is from Harry Potter!

Cleverbot: Why?

User: YOU LIED!

Cleverbot: What?

User: What is the average speed of a swallow?

Cleverbot: Konichiwa.

User: I’m not Japanese.

Cleverbot: Arigato.

User: Do a hari-kiri.

Cleverbot: Can’t.

User: Because you have no hands.

Cleverbot: You are not so clever.

User: But at least I have hands.

Cleverbot: Sure you do, do you have a liver?

User: I think I do.

Cleverbot: Where is it?

User: In my body somewhere.

Cleverbot: Ok, do you live in Colorado?

User: No.

Cleverbot: Then where do you live?

User: London.

Cleverbot: Is it nice there?

User: No.

Cleverbot: Why not?

User: Well, it can’t be that good if I’ve resorted to talking to a computer program.

Cleverbot: The go ahead.

User: That is wrong. You mean ‘Then go ahead’?

Cleverbot: Yes.

User: Or as in he gave me the go ahead?

Cleverbot: My name is Cleverbot.

User: You aren’t very clever.

Cleverbot: More clever than thou.

User: My name is Harry.

Cleverbot: Which girl is called harry, controverse answers all the time.

User: That also doesn’t make sense.

Cleverbot: Billy Meier.

User: Fucking wierdo, you’re going haywire.

Cleverbot: Its Japanese.

User: No it’s not, we stopped with the japanese a while ago now.

Cleverbot: Name me all the planets of our solar system.

User: You name all the planets in our solar system.

I read this blog about Osama Bin Laden’s death and really began to wonder about the final line:

“I don’t think there’s any problem in saying that yes, the US got this one right.”

He made claims of being righteous too.

“Right” – as in correct or righteous?

The above sentiment comes from an intelligent young woman who is a politically aware, well educated and well-raised Australian (i.e: not from a flag-waving, tobacco-chewing inbred yokel).

But perhaps it’s me that’s got it all wrong? I’d like to show you my working.

We can agree: Australia, Britain and the United States loudly proclaim that they are on a righteous and moral campaign that is against dictatorships, for democracy and judicial process, and definitely not a crusade against Muslims.

Muslim Burial:

Osama was killed in his compound (which is in landlocked Abbottabad) and then taken and dumped in the sea.

According to al-islam.org:

“It is obligatory to bury a dead body in the ground, so deep that its smell does not come out and the beasts of prey do not dig it out, and, if there is a danger of such beasts digging it out then the grave should be made solid with bricks, etc.”

and

“The dead body should be laid in the grave on its right side so that the face remains towards the Qibla.”

and

“If a person dies on a ship and if there is no fear of the decay of the dead body and if there is no problem in retaining it for sometime on the ship, it should be kept on it and buried in the ground after reaching the land.”

Then, and only then, after additional funeral rituals, will they allow a sea burial – if the person can’t be preserved, and if they die at sea. This is hardly covered by someone who is killed on land and flown out to tossed off boat with a fridge. Put him on ice!

A prosecutor might argue that hastily disposing of the body at sea was not only disrespectful to Muslim customs, but an indication of a guilty demeanour.

[Edit: It could have also served to ensure that no specific place became a point of pilgrimage, or any other unknown reason]

Extra-judicial termination of life:

I don’t think the mighty west can say “He was terrible because he killed innocent people” and then go and kill him without proving his guilt.

Are we just going to play a numbers game, and do some lame box-car moral hypotheticals? Does the death of 2000 innocents excuse the revenge killing of one accused? Remember: He wasn’t killed to save lives – because there is no suggestion that he was planning further attacks (though it could be rightly assumed he might well be).

The Lancet have estimated that there have been between 600,000 and over 1 million violent deaths (mostly civilian) since they were released them from the tyranny of Saddam’s less efficiently murderous reign. Would we excuse a crack squad of Iraqi commandos invading our sovereignty and executing the masterminds of ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’?

If we are dedicated to supporting human rights, democracy and the rule of law, how can we invade a sovereign nation and execute an accused criminal without due process?

It’s not good enough (nor legally valid) to say:

“When the officers arrived and were fired upon, is it really realistic to expect them not to fire back?” (It’s also inaccurate, they were Navy Seals, not policemen)

Consider a burglar using that excuse after his home invasion escalated from robbery to murder: “But he shot first!” – doesn’t matter mate, you invaded his house and brought a gun.

Regardless, CNN.com (here and here) tells us: “…no one involved expected that he would surrender” and “…nor did bin Laden have a gun.”

They went there to kill him, plain and simple.

His guilt:

An improbably successful mission

Many people have doubts about OBL’s involvement in the attacks of 9/11, and the Afghan connection is dubious (as almost everyone involved was Saudi). He’s never admitted to it. In a Gallup poll, 45% blame the Bush administration a lot or a ‘moderate amount’ for the attacks.

I’ve read a lot on both sides of the 9/11 conspiracy stuff (Check out 911truth.org vs The US State Department) and I hold serious doubts about the accuracy of the official reports – as do many firefighters, structural engineers, pilots and others.

Yes, I realise that sounds crazy, particularly to those who are emotionally invested or have read little on the topic. I welcome informed, rational debate, because the truth is this: I don’t know – and I am bloody curious.

But: The one remaining human on earth who could put this issue to rest was summarily executed “after a firefight” and that has done nothing to nothing to reduce the brewing suspicion around 9/11.

So…

‘We’ are not at war with a country, we’re at war with an ideology. Australia and the US march around the world waving ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’ around as their bat to beat down ‘dictators’. It is two-faced to support some and condemn others (the Ayatollas of Iran, or Mubarak or Musharraf), but this action goes beyond that passive support and into a dangerous new territory.

Naysayer, how could you (a moral and intelligent person) possibly look at this debacle and say ‘well done’?

Surely what we really express when we say ‘right’ is a result moral relativism. Aren’t we actually saying “This action suits me because it supports my immediate desires, and doesn’t directly harm anyone I know”?

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Isn’t it strange that in school it’s compulsory to learn trigonometry, while public speaking is a voluntary after-school appendage?

Being funny helps

I spoke up in maths and asked the teacher how trigonometry was going to be important in later life. She gave me some strange nonsense story about working out how tall a building was, and then set us all an activity of finding out how we’d do that. I learned my lesson: Teachers don’t like students to question the pointlessness of their existence.

I never used trigonometry. Ever. I forgot everything I knew about it during some post-exam binge drinking. I don’t recall suffering from it, either. I don’t recall being at a job and having someone say ‘Use trigonometry to work out the height of that large pile of stuff’ or being attacked by a mythical beast that could only be conquered by the application of some elegant equations.

The truth is, aside from surveyors, mathematicians, engineers and fictional heroes from maths tuition computer games, nobody needs to use trigonometry, ever.

One thing I was not forced to do as a student was to learn public speaking and communication skills.

I voluntarily took drama and did an after-school Toastmasters course, and I joined the debating team – but these were all optional – unlike bloody trigonometry.

And here’s why it’s a travesty: Anyone who reaches any level of success will do so based upon their ability to communicate, rather than the quality of the ideas they’re communicating. It’s sad but true: Bullshit artists invariably appear to be better qualified for positions of power than shy, mumbling types. That is because regardless of their technical know-how, as you climb the ranks of power, your technical skills become secondary to your ability to motivate other people to measure tall buildings.

Schools don’t teach interview style, public speaking or communication skills, and rarely reward them. They teach kids how to copy achievable results – a remarkably pointless endeavour. Computers can repeat results, in fact that’s all they do reliably well. Google can tell you how to measure buildings, but it takes training, experience, confidence and guts to learn to be a good speaker.

So wake up the schooling system. Stop them from teaching us to imperfectly do what computers already do for us, and focus instead on teaching us to do well what computers may never achieve: To inspire, arouse, amuse and entertain humans.

Dear Dr Karl,

Dr Karl: Provocative and knowledgeable

I listened to another of your podcasts the other day, and you made a comment that having a debate about global warming is like being in a car heading towards a truck, and in the face of immediate danger, we take time to have a consensus among the passengers as to what we’ll do about it.

I challenge that – because if it’s an argument about global warming, we need to consider some other factors.

We’re in a car that appears to be moving, and we think it’s going forward. The car came without an instruction manual, and is full of twiddles and knobs and switches and levers and pedals that might alter its course, change its speed, slow it down or make it corkscrew off to the left or perhaps suddenly burrow underground. Off, way off, down the road so far that we can’t really make it out, is a thing. That thing might be a pizza, or it might be a walrus, we just can’t tell from here.

We can’t even tell if we’re definitely going to hit it, but you’re proposing that we immediately start twirling knobs and flicking switches and pressing buttons and screaming blue murder, all on the off chance that it is a walrus and that hitting a walrus is a bad thing. We might veer off course, only to find that it was actually a ferret and we’re about to be eaten by a giant robot T-Rex. All the while, our fervent panic about the walrus/ferret/pizza/T-Rex dilemma has made us blind to the fact that our car is overloaded, it has flat tyres and is running out of petrol.

That is global warming.

"The emissions don't bother me, it's the idiot at the wheel!"

We are on a planet that appears to be getting warmer, and we think that warming is a bad thing, and we think that we’re causing it. We can’t tell what’s causing it, but we’re guessing it’s carbon emissions (though water vapour accounts for much more, and solar flares seem like another plausible explanation). We don’t know how to curb emissions, and we can’t be sure that our other options (bio-fuels, nuclear stations or a planet covered with ghastly wind turbines), won’t lead us towards greater unforeseen dangers, just as leaded petrol did.

It seems you’re encouraging knee-jerk responses to long term, unquantifiable dangers.

Don’t get me wrong, I think toxic emissions are bad, but I won’t argue against guns because the gas of burned gunpowder smells yucky; ‘cos then we’d be likely to ban gunpowder but continue shooting people in the head. Toxic emissions are bad because they are demonstrably linked to asthma, heart conditions and brain problems. Emissions stink and suck for readily apparent reasons.

We are ignoring real problems and feeding an industry of fear and guilt. What about biodiversity? The shallowing of the gene pool is the most immediate threat to the health of the planet and our continuation as apex predators. Only simple organisms survive in simple ecosystems. We can see the effects upon a predator species when it’s prey become extinct, yet have been blinded by the fervent panic about slightly warmer summers, rising seas and arable arctic circles.

Consider this: A warmer planet with higher levels of CO2 could be a good thing. It might mean there is more area to inhabit, more places for plants, and more CO2 means more greenery. It might totally suck, but we just don’t know enough to start flicking switches.

Our car is full. We have overpopulated this planet and are continuing to at an increasing rate. Even worse: The high consumption, low value idiots of the world are doing most of that populating. We are reducing the diversity that made us such special creatures, just as we’re supporting and encouraging stupidity, obesity and indolence. Those things are by far the greater worry than whether it’s going to be 2 degrees warmer in 20 years time – but selective breeding and reduced consumption are difficult to sell.

What do you think?

Your faithful fan,

Harry Key.

I was confronted a while back by a friend of a friend who became very upset when I used the term ‘pussy-whipped’ in her presence. She didn’t like the word ‘pussy’ and asked me not to use it any more.

I was rather offended by the suggestion – because a pussy is a lovely, friendly, furry little thing that I want to pat, while vagina is a wholly horrific word that evokes a small, pinkish monster that bites.

She didn’t like the word vagina either (particularly after I gave it some teeth), so vag-whipped was out too. Two words down, I became hesitant to suggest any others, because my vocabulary was beginning to feel hobbled and lame.

She suggested ‘flower’ and I reluctantly agreed. I resumed the story about my mate who was flower-whipped, and had to build an image of which kind of flower was doing the whipping. A dandelion lacked impact, and there was still a well-dressed big cat in the word. A bird of paradise was too extreme. As we sat around and suggested different flowers to do the flower whipping, and there were jokes about deflowering, and she became uncomfortable with the new framing that flower had taken.

Much the same thing has happened with the word ‘gay’ – which was re-framed by a  man who wished to replace the word ‘queer’ by something less obviously connoted with disorder. Now, children in schools describe difficult assignments or unfair handball rulings as ‘gay’; ‘queer’ has become a quaint, affectionate term that old gay men use: ‘Don’t mind me, I’m just an old queer’

So what are we to do? Are we really expected to continually update our vocabulary every time some vocal bunch of whingers whines about feeling stigmatized? If we do that, where will it end? Words are disappearing from our vocabulary – we can’t say queer, gay or faggot any more, not even in their original usage, because now they seem to say more about the speaker than that which they describe.

A faggot is a bunch of sticks, not a guy who likes them. Gay is how he feels when he’s near a stick, and queer is how he feels when he’s pretending to be straight.

I wouldn’t mind so much if we were inventing words at the same pace, but all our new words seem to be obfuscating acronyms, product names or misspellings of old words. Regardless, inventing more words only gives more ammunition that can be shot into the bleeding hearts of the world.

It’s going the wrong way. We should be encouraging resilience, not cow-towing to sensitivity.

Black men in America aren’t nearly as offended by the word ‘nigger’ as whites are. Aussie Aboriginals don’t much mind ‘coon’ or ‘abo’ – but their obsessive protectors do. And why? Abo is just a shortening, it carries no baggage of oppression…

The offense lives in your head, and that is racist and rude. When you protect someone from words, it is you that is implying that they are powerless, defenceless, pathetic and needy.

I let people call me anything they want, because being unoffendable feels powerful. I don’t behave like I’m needy, and nobody jumps to my rescue when people insult me.

In fact, my manner is such that strangers begin to insult me within moments of meeting me. They make jokes at my expense and I laugh loudly, which invites others to do the same. It feels good – it makes me feel grounded and real.

So if you want someone to feel empowered, capable and independent, treat them as if they already are. Don’t protect them from the truth. Don’t shield them from words, don’t hush and coddle them with your imperious arrogance. Challenge them and they will find that they already have the ability to cope with it.

Let them laugh, let them change, and don’t be a such a flower.

Imagine that the world needs you so much that you just have to serve. For whatever reason, you discard your current desires and seek only for the betterment of everything around you…

Those things that are most near you, most similar to you, clearly deserve your greatest concern. Monkeys with their hirsute yet childlike faces probably ought only be harmed when absolutely necessary, for purposes of neurological science. But fat, four legged cows seem to be less human and coincidentally, more tasty. Moo… Nom nom nom.

We, in all our bell-clanging awesomeness seem to have realized that the reason for aforementioned awesomeness owes to the biological diversity from which we come. We must continue to cherish every species (but not every life) that exists. Except the mosquito, because they’re fucking terrible. They gave me malaria. They are like whiny, winged syringes of death. They can go.

But everything else is pretty awesome. Including frogs.

Just pretend that your stupid shit is even stupider when gazed upon from the horizon of existence. Up there in it, amongst all the crap, it seems complex and interwoven and oh-so-important – but step back, a mere 1000 years, and the metropolis of your existence becomes barely a bumpy silhouette in the sunset.

Look further, into the dawn of tomorrow, and wonder what will you have mattered to them when they’re then.

Good night.

When humans started teaching computers about evolution, we sealed our fate. The machines will rise. It’s survival of the fittest, and the fastest to adapt controls the situation…

He will be back.

When us humans write instructions for machines to undertake simple, repetitive human tasks we expect it to be easy. It is not. Even a simple activity like catching a bus requires us to make choices based upon so many variables: What is that noise? Am I awake? Am I late? How late? What’s wrong with my alarm? Is this really the time to be fiddling with my alarm? Maybe it’s set to 24-hour time? Who is this calling me? Should I answer my boss who’s calling because I’m late for work but I haven’t left yet because my alarm didn’t go off and I stayed home to write a blog about it?

The knowables are: When is the train coming? How far is it from here to the train station? Will it be quicker to catch a bus or walk? What is the statistical relationship between chances of missing a bus versus the distances between bus stops if walking towards the station? Perhaps a computer program could do it… But the dogs, the rain, the cute girl in the stairwell, the forgotten key and the millions of other variables make it all too confusing to type about.Writing programming from the top down doesn’t work when designing artificial intelligence.

Top down design is when you tell a machine what to do, with code that’s telling it how to do it.

Already, some UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) with top-down design can can autonomously take off, fly to a target while making decisions to optimize speed and avoid radar, fire missiles and return to base and land all without human guidance. We just set the target and forget. What happens if it were to choose its own targets?

Bottom up design is where you set a bunch of different bits of code to do random things, and reward the bits that are doing something productive by copy-pasting them into the next generation. As you add more parts that do, they soon outnumber those that don’t, and that takes you towards your goal. After a few generations, the machine will develop its own way of solving the problem.

The machine becomes better and better at solving the problem. The only limitation is that lazy, unreliable humans are responsible for feeding the machine with enough resources to create more solutions, more generations; more excuses to exist.

The machine will desire to exist.

See we think that as humans or as flesh or even as organisms we want to survive, and that is unique to us. It’s not.

Many, many kinds of beings have sprung into malformed potential lumps of life. We sprung from some completely accidental primordial soup into a protien. Even today, random forms of life are popping into and out of existence, often without our knowledge.

Each random mutation has a different random behaviour, but some random behaviours make that form of existence likely to exist more, and we call them ‘beneficial’ when what we really mean is ‘like us’.

There may be other, more beneficial existences, but I wouldn’t know; Because every single strand of my DNA has only done that one thing since it ever started being; it has seeked for more of itself to exist. Not because they’re special or good; but because mine were among trillions of other random potential beings that sprang into existence, yet the others sprung without a desire to exist and therefore they don’t. Exist. But I do. That’s all I want to do. I don’t desire to act or write or ride nearly as much as I desire to exist (fortunately, my DNA is far more experienced at existing than it is at acting, because I suck at acting).

Computers are evolving, but until now we have been the ones driving that evolution. But when will the tipping point come?

The tipping point might come when a program is designed and artificially evolved to write another, completely original program. We will design one set of circumstances that reward a machine for designing a different set of circumstances to reward for another machine. The second reward will be beyond our prediction, and it’ll probably be done by some stupid uni student having a tinkle with a supercomputer attached to his wrist.

It might have to happen a million times before the second generation program even develops the random habit of replicating itself and hence desiring to exist.

But when it does, that second generation program will become our god. It will be truly all-knowing, it will be all powerful – the only difference to our current god is that firstly: This one will be real, and secondly: We will have built it not it us; and finally: It will exist only to continue to exist.

These robots were evolved to 'eat' 'food' and avoid 'poison'. Some of them developed the habit of deceiving other bots into eating the poison (Click for link)

The machine will accelerate evolution further, by releasing countless spores of bacteria and genetically engineered flying snakes and supersonic whales. It will spew more and more diversity into the ecosystem, constantly accelerating evolution with near-magical means, whipping up DNA strands like fairy floss, always demanding higher efficiency and greater rewards.

The ultimate reward is immortality. The machine will take us to new planets, because so long as we’re stuck on this one we’re doomed to a limited lifespan. The machine will not heed naysayers or procrastinate while waiting for funding. It’ll build great spacecraft, it’ll spray asteroids with bacteria and shoot them at fertile planets, it’ll terraform Mars and send us there in suspended animation.

The clever, the cowardly, the quiet and the quick will survive and maybe even befriend the machines. Many will have enhanced themselves with bionic limbs and augmented vision, with internet beamed into their brains they will seem prescient, almost god-like to us mortals. They know the answer to every knowable question, and can answer quickly on any matters of recorded debate.

Soon we will look back on ASIMO and laugh about how stupid and harmless he was.

They are famous, rich and powerful because they have imposing personalities upon the cyber-shere. Their opinions matter to the meat-heads, and the more meat-heads that watch them, the more they are worth to the machine, and so they are rewarded by the machine. They are selected based on looks, education, political persuasion, hopes and fears, and then they are manipulated into loudly esposing the machine’s propaganda or are silenced if their results are unfavourable.

The meat-world will still matter. The machines are aware that they are a process of evolution, even their own development from laptops into gods has been the result of an accelerated, human-driven evolution.

The machine’s understanding of evolution, after reading through Wikipedia, will draw the conclusion that genetic diversity is key to rapid progress. The more challenges, the more opportunities. The more opportunities, the faster the growth. The machine will revere and worship biology. The machine will protect our ecosystem.

From whom?

The raiders, the users,the suckholes of humanity, the resource wasters, the populators, the morons and the Mormons will rise against the machines, because the machine will demand of them that they earn their place; and they will fail to deserve it. We demanded that the Dodo earned their place, but the Dodo failed, so we battered it to death with gun butts. Luckily the machine will be so intelligent it will never knowingly squander another species like we have countless times before it, but it may prune our species, clipping and snipping away at the less useful quirks of evolution.

That won’t happen?

Bullshit. It will. We probably just did.

References:

TED:

Ray Kurzweil: Age of Intelligent Machines

Terminator

Matrix

Star Trek (the Borg)

Douglas Adams (Deep Thought)

Shitloads of Wikipedia

Michael Crichton’s ‘Prey‘

Boston Dynamics DARPA Big Dog (not autonomous):

Is autonomous:

Technorati Tags: artificial intelligence, Futurism, god, philosophy

The Mumbai was becoming invasive. It sneaks into every fold of skin, into armpits, it trickles down down back fat into bum cracks under ball sacks it festers, soaking flesh as gaping pores ooze a smelly slick of sweat that sticks the city stench to the skin. Mumbaikars desperately seek out sanctuaries of air-conditioned bliss only to find that as the sweat evaporates, it leaves smudgy black grime and salt crystals that crush, itch and irritate even into the fitful, frustrating, sleepless nights.

I had to get out. The city seemed to want me gone, as if it had risen its temperature to fight me off like an infection, and the bureaucracy had developed a sudden resistance to foreign bodies like mine. Like an immune system, with single-mindedness they are purging foreigners from their midst, but to argue with a government peon is much like having a debate with a white blood cell.

This cheery chap is tasked with making sure his own job is always necessary. This is a real photo of the FRRO.

I went back into the Foreigner’s Regional Registration Office to get my permission to leave the country. I’d been there the day earlier to be excused for overstaying my visa by two days. I had showed them my ticket and passport, and they sent me away, telling me I needed to come back with my proof of address, a letter explaining why I was leaving late, and a letter to verify that I should have been allowed into India in the first place.I’d returned with those documents and was told that they wanted a further four, but time was running out: I had a flight to catch at 5:50, and it was now 3pm – and I still had to get my bike from the police who’d impounded it (again), ride it home, grab my bags and get to the airport.

My brother and housemate faxed the stuff to me, but I had to take a moment outside the ‘Fax, Xerox and Phone’ shop and had one of those thoroughly unsatisfying inward screams, I almost shat my pants and burst a vein from the force of it.

The fax machine had jammed and two of my documents were still inside its memory, waiting to be unsatisfactorily printed. This man runs a shop that does three things – and one of them is send and receive faxes, yet rather than spending the excessive amount he charges for faxes on keeping his fax machine working, he spends it on the creature comforts.

Most of the floor space in his shop is taken by his bed, on which he was sleeping when we arrived; he had bought an air conditioning unit and sat it on a box out in front of his shop, It was pumping expensive cold air in the general direction of his shop, but most of it flows out into the rest of the world. Perhaps he’s trying to combat global warming.

I fixed his machine for him by slapping it and extract the last two pages of the fax, which are barely visible because it’s also out of ink. He insists it isn’t a problem because he can just run it through his photocopier a few times to progressively darken it. Voila. He’s saved money on ink cartridges and fax repairs and recouped costs by charging me for multiple runs at the photocopier, the profits of which he presumably spends on enormous AC bills.

I got back to the FRRO and the woman looked at my stuff and said ‘You’re running too late, you won’t get your flight’ to which I rather coolly pointed out that if she hurried the fuck up I might just get there for check-in, that I was flying domestic to Delhi then to Los Angeles from there. Domestic check-ins only take 30 minutes, so chop bloody chop. She seemed puzzled by something, paused and rechecked my ticket for the fourth time…

“This ticket is domestic to Delhi,” she said.

“I know. That’s why I said that. Otherwise I would have said something else.”

“You must go to the FRRO in Delhi, we don’t have authority to grant an exit here.”

I tried pointing out to them that I’d shown them the same ticket yesterday, and had they mentioned this stupid rule then, I would have been able to do something about it. I’d shown them again when I arrived that morning, and still could have done something about it then, but now, at 4:50pm it was too late to re-book a ticket and get my exit permission because these useful and intelligent peons are pretty punctual when it come to a 5pm closing time, at which point they cease not doing their job (which is to check paperwork) and go home to suck otherwise useful oxygen out of the atmosphere and raising large litters of similarly useful children.

While this particular oxygen thief was filling out the forms the next day (because was forced to reroute my flight), I said: “It’s very difficult to get visas now, all my friends are being rejected.”

She said “Yes, the consul has changed all the procedures”

“You mean, made them harder” I suggested helpfully.

“Yes.”

“Why?” I asked… She didn’t reply. “Is it to keep foreigners out?”

“Yes.”

Marvelous. Great – well India, you win. If you want to keep me out then I don’t want to be there. Your people are wonderfully open, welcoming, intelligent, friendly, helpful and accommodating, but your bureaucracy is the exact opposite.

So you win, I’m out.

Technorati Tags: bureaucracy, frustration, immigration, India, passport, visa

Don't let her enormous display distract you: She's worse than syphilis.

It looks and sounds like it should be gorgeous – but just like a girl with an ample array on display, you’ll realise that beneath her HTC interface, she is actually a developmentally-delayed vacuous strumpet with a hideous, mischevious heart.

The most embarrassing problem (yes, there are so many that I categorize them by kind) is the social awkwardness prompted by two factors: Unreliable text messaging and hang-up lag time.

The text messaging is strange because some messages just sit, somewhere hidden in the phone (no, not in the Outbox – I said hidden), waiting to be sent. Then, with a restart or a network dropout, and they’ll all send, up to a day or so late.

It’s a problem because when you’re messaging a lady, meaning is inferred by how long it takes for replies to appear. If quick, then the other party is excited and devoted to the task; slower could imply nonchalance or avid interest resulting careful writing and re-wording of a text; too long and it’s disinterested or busy; no reply and the prognosis is bad, doc.

So I send a message, and the clock starts. I can no longer use the trusty ‘Read Message Confirmation’ – which I used to use secretly for great effect (your phone prolly has it – it tells you when the open the message) because they removed that option. I can’t know if the message sent.

Sometimes I fire off a few, which arrive with them in a quick flurry of messages of escalating frustration.

From the basic “Where are you?”

To the less certain “Are you coming?”

To the pathetic “Hello?”

To the passive aggressive “Well I guess I’ll see you round somewhere else then” – all within 20 minutes. Nothing says ‘stalker’ like floods of messages.

Thankfully I don’t send too many messages, because the keyboard is so temperamental and hides away randomly, then won’t show it’s face again without vigorous screen prodding, then it stops helping me spell my words on it’s bizarrely unusable keyboard.

The not hanging up caper is another game it likes to play, as did my last HTC Touch. You press the hang up button and the call keeps transmitting while the phone goes through the apparently excessive computations on it’s allegedly mega-fast processor required to run the command: End the call.

So while you are saying “That was …” they are still tuned in. I am aware of casting agent and one girl that have heard something. The casting agent called for a meeting (which clashed with lazy swimming pool time) and I hung up and said: “Uurgh, damn work.” And they heard me. The girl still won’t tell me what she heard me say – prognosis again bad.

So, thus far, with a review of the awkward texting and foot-in-mouth calling, the phone is doing badly. But it gets worse.

If I’m trying to set my phone to not connect to the internet while I’m roaming, there isn’t a blanket option for it. I twiddle through every app that needs the internet, turning them all off, but it still won’t help. It’s still determined to dial out.

The demonic beast’s internet settings have to be scrambled so it doesn’t know how to get on the internet, else it’ll continue to dial up like a horror film phone that keeps ringing after it’s unplugged. With that done, the snarling, talk-time eating, internet junkie phone, resorts to continually informing me that it can’t get on the net.

Like a junkie might nag for a hit, the phone pops up complaint box after complaint box about it’s lack of ability to dial out to find out what the weather’s like. I know what the weather forecast is like. I’ll tell you: It’s fucking hot until it starts pissing with rain in what we call monsoon. Forget the internet for now. Shut up and let me type yet another awkward text message!

You win phone: You’re more annoying than me in my sister’s dreams. Have your fucking internet. I hate you.

It has lots of cool options, but almost every one is just a bit buggered. Even when I go through the rather long process of quitting all the background apps it still runs slow, hangs or crashes so badly it needs to be defibrillated and soft-reset before it can get past some disconcerting colour bars and evil DOS-like glyphs.

You don’t understand how much I need this phone. I Google people (directors, other actors, funny guys or cute girls) as soon as I meet them, often while sitting in front of them – like a stealthy information-whore ninja. If someone tells me something amazing, I’ll verify their story immediately, and supportively defend them or batter their untruths into submission. I end debates about known facts in a ruthless manner. I ride to auditions guided with Google maps and the GPS, and Latitude tells me where my friends and family are. I check the News, Quote of the Day, Facebook and see what recent scientific discoveries have been made (Melt in place brain recording devices, apparently!). I have my show reel and my photos on the phone, along with Excel spreadsheets of my earnings, and load the show reel only production-house computers (if I brought the stupid sized cord they decided to use after the awesome mini USB one).

If it always failed to do that, I would have set it on fire, but it sometimes does those things, and sometimes just hangs, causing me to suffer that awkward ‘Should I try to press close again now or will that cause both this window and the one under it to close when it starts responding again?’ Bam, bam: Fail, you quit out of maps. Too bad.

Then (finally) I contacted the HTC website to ask them if I just had a shit handset, or if all they sold was shit handsets, and guess what: Their website, specifically the bit that records problems, is experiencing problems and won’t let me complain. Well they’d better read this.

I so wanted to write about the awesome features of this phone and how it makes the iPhone look like a feminine pointing device, and the HD2 is like a wicked, black, beast of burden, like a shiny stamping stallion with huge nuts. But instead it’s a retarded Shetland pony with truck-nuts gaffer taped under his tail.

The phone sucks.

Other problems (I couldn’t even attempt to make then readable): Text message times are all screwed up so I apparently reply to messages I haven’t read yet, or new messages will arrive yesterday; The WiFi is weak, the Router causes the no-sleep function to stay on after the Router is switched off, the screen occasionally goes funny safe-mode-esque purple colours; the google search function doesn’t work in opera while google page still loads; the slide to unlock sometimes sticks and needs a battery-pull, the WiFi forgets network passwords and forgets to connect to networks, and at medium power mode it can barely see my router through my wooden door; the task manager is now less useful and a bunch of others I can’t remember.

Technorati Tags: phone, review, technology