Alright, it's about time. It's about time I post to my newly repurposed blog. To kick things off, I have a funny story to tell you, and I think you'll like it. But, first, I want to tell you about a series on artificial intelligence (AI) I'm working on for this blog.
It's actually about AI, augmented intelligence (AugI) and optimized organic intelligence (OOI). Okay, I made those last two terms up, but just think of it like robots, cyborgs and superhumans. I'm using Forex trading as a way to explore the ideas.
So, you can apply AI principles to develop a program that trades for you based on complex algorithms (a process I am in the middle of, using MQL4, but I'll switch to MQL5 next), and you can approach it from the other end and figure out how to make the most of our fearfully and wonderfully developed bodies (most specifically our brains), perhaps leveraging some untapped natural capacities to trade like the dickens.
I'm busy (in my spare time, which is a relative term) studying the neurology of intuition, genetic algorithms and stuff. And, yesterday, as I was telling my buddy that that's what I was doing on that November Saturday in Alabama, this mammoth cockroach started running across the floor straight for the couch I was on.
They have large bugs here in Alabama. I recently arrived here from Olympia, WA, and I am not used to the bugs. (I say "arrived" because I'm not sure how long I'll be here. So, this may be a visit, an extended stay, a move. IDK, but that is another story.) I think I've seen like two cockroaches in my entire life.
I remember an East Coast real estate investor giving a presentation to a bunch of Pacific Northwesterners, and he was telling us that you can ask your exterminator to do a monthly visual check on your rentals since we'd have to hire one that often anyway. We were all like, "What? No, no, no, we don't have that problem here." But, yeah, over here in Alabama, you gotta fumigate, or your house will quickly be overrun with cockroaches and centipedes and stuff.
So, anyway a big-ass cockroach was making a b-line for me while I was talking to my pal about studying AI and stuff. (Okay, we weren't talking; we were chatting on Facebook.) I would have stomped it, but I was afraid it would turn its head and take my foot off at the ankle. Plus, I didn't want guts on my sock. So, I picked up the transformer box on my laptop cord and squished the beast with extreme prejudice just before he made it to the couch. I picked up the box, and the little bugger scurried under the couch anyway, leaving a pile of its own guts on the floor! WTF?!
The chat log looked something like this:
Me: I'm working on a blog series on AI and stuff today. But, it's a big project, and I want to come up with something else to post while I'm working on this.
Champ (that's what I call her): Oh yeah?
Me: yeah
Me: Also, big cockroaches.
Champ: Eeewwww!
Champ: Are you going to make AI cockroaches?
Champ: Oh! Make AI cockroaches that seek out and destroy real cockroaches!
Me: Sniperoaches...you're onto something.
The setting is the near future. Having solved all major problems with nanotech, and I mean all major problems (cancer, hunger, learning disabilities, those people who like to put the toilet paper roll on so it unrolls from the bottom etc. — all solved by nanotech), people started looking around for other uses for nanotech, common consumer uses.
Someone got the bright idea to make a nanomite for pest control, sniperoaches. These tiny robots would spread among a local population of cockroaches just enough to destroy all the roaches in a given vicinity. One box covered a 10th of an acre, and you could pick up a box at Walmart for $19,999.99, which is cheap in the near future. You'd simply open a box anywhere and the invisible little robots would go to work seeking and destroying cockroaches. When they found one, they would latch on and begin to replicate, using the materials of the roach itself to make new sniperoaches. The best part? No downside! There is no poison, no collateral damage, nothing but dead roaches.
Sniperoach designers knew the process had to be slow enough to allow roaches to take sniperoaches to other roaches. It also had to stop at some point before they drove roaches to extinction. Incidentally, everyone tried to believe roach extinction would theoretically be a bad thing, though there wasn't a single person who didn't feel a slight sense of peace and triumph at the thought, much like at the final crunch and squish under your twisting heel.
So, to avoid such a sweet oblivion, a built-in timer was set for the entire class of sniperoaches within one box. Opening the box started the timer in each sniperoach. Each new sniperoach created was given the same time left to live as the one that created it had left. So, if sniperoach A had 24 hours to live when it created sniperoach B, sniperoach B would have 24 hours left to live as well. In this way, all the sniperoaches generated from a single box would die at the same moment, and all the cockroaches within about a 10th of an acre would be dead too.
The rates of consumption and reproduction slowed over time as well to allow for an extended life cycle within a constrained area, to keep the roaches at bay. After the sniperoaches died, the roaches would start to return, and you just got another box, but that was no different than fumigation, just no side effects.
The clock stopped in a sleepy neighborhood in Alabama. The residents in one house hadn't seen a roach in a month. It was nice. If you were able to hear the white noise of sniperoaches working and cockroaches creeping, you would have heard neither. It was like someone turned off the TV. It was that perfect moment of a job complete before the work starts piling up again. Nothing. Not a single roach around the house. Not a single sniperoach. I mean, except, there was one, of course. Oh, but that wasn't supposed to happen. Oops.
These things basically cloned themselves. No sex. There were no genes to mix with a mate, producing a unique set of genes. No, they were identical, with only functioning parts and code (not unlike an organism, but not an organism). And, they were so simple and small, there really wasn't much room for change. Every part had it's purpose, and nothing could be done without. Such irreducable complexity and economy of design that there was no room for innovation.
Not unless you count the life-cycle timer. That was kind of unnecessary for the nanomite's functioning. And, one day one of them dropped the timer, oops, like the littlest ant that stopped to tie its shoe, the lonely little thing. It wasn't lonely for long. It ran like a dog off its leash down the block to the next roach-infested house and went to work killing roaches and reproducing. These new sniperoaches didn't have a death timer either.
In fact, remember that cleverly slowed rate of consumption and reproduction designed to extend the period of a roach free environment without extending the boundaries? Well, due to size constraints and such, the timer had been recruited for that task as well in quite the engineering feat akin to the evolution of flagella. There was no artificial limit to the rate at which these robots could consume and reproduce, so they went as fast as they could, naturally.
That happened to be pretty darn fast. By the end of the day, there were no cockroaches left in that little Alabama neighborhood. The next week, there were none in New York, if you can imagine that.
What happened next no one really knows, because it all happened so fast. Before they knew it, humans were extinct, and knowing went with them. That is an oddly obvious thing to say, if you think about it, "Before they knew it, humans were extinct." It kind of takes the immediacy out of the idiom...and it would be more accurate to say, "Before they could know it, humans were extinct." Anyhow, here's the best explanation people could imagine for what was going to happen.
Somehow drawing on the ruthless adaptability of the cockroach, other mutations occurred in the nanomites which allowed them to make meals of other critters. At the same time, they actually stopped eating cockroaches, at least not all of them. It was almost like they made deal with the Devil. I'm not sure which of the two is the Devil, but I'm pretty sure the cockroach sold us out.
They formed a symbiotic relationship. In a pinch, these new supernanomites could feed on cockroaches in order to spread more quickly across distances where there was nothing but cockroaches, but they would feed only to an extent so as not to bring the roach to extinction. In exchange, the nanomites actually slowed their consumption in the presence of cockroaches, allowing them to scavenge. (I know, right? Now the nanomites show restraint? The little cocksnipers.)
Another brilliant feature of the supernanomite was that as they added to their repertoire of the things they could eat, they became able to feed on other nanomites. At first, they would only feed on previous generations, those with more limited diets. This would recycle the materials of the older generation into the new expanded appetite — that's what a group of nanomites are called, an appetite, an appetite of nanomites. It would also allow their progeny to live on.
Of course, rival generations would arise around the world, as varied organic speciation around the world produced varied speciation within the nanomites. So, different subspecies of nanomite would simply eat one another, back and forth. Sometimes, one would go extinct, but that wasn't a problem, since either the things it had learned to eat were extinct anyway, or the victor generation of nanomites would simply learn to eat those things too. No biggie.
Yeah, so eventually there was no life on Earth, nothing organic at least, unless you count the roaches. So, the supernanomites turned on the planet itself. Then, they ate the galaxy, then the universe and then everything else. They ate time, so it's hard to say how long it took in all, but it didn't take long to finally destroy time. They ate space along with time, of course, so you can't really talk about how far they stretched.
Now — I can say "now" even though time is all eaten up because time was always a function of the present, not vice versa — now the extremely adaptive, omnivoracious, patricidally cannibalistic supernanomite has achieved an unimaginable homogenous, homeostatic hive. All it does is seek -- that, and ride cockroaches in the cockroach rodeo circuit. The cockroach rodeo is all the rage in the supernanomite hive, those crazy little cowboys.
That is the end.
Happy birthday Champ. :)
A clinical psychologist, a day trader, a computer scientist and a hypnotist walk into a bar.
So, you can apply AI principles to develop a program that trades for you based on complex algorithms (a process I am in the middle of, using MQL4, but I'll switch to MQL5 next), and you can approach it from the other end and figure out how to make the most of our fearfully and wonderfully developed bodies (most specifically our brains), perhaps leveraging some untapped natural capacities to trade like the dickens.
I'm busy (in my spare time, which is a relative term) studying the neurology of intuition, genetic algorithms and stuff. And, yesterday, as I was telling my buddy that that's what I was doing on that November Saturday in Alabama, this mammoth cockroach started running across the floor straight for the couch I was on.
"I don't think you're supposed to squish them." "Why, will it make them breed faster?"
I remember an East Coast real estate investor giving a presentation to a bunch of Pacific Northwesterners, and he was telling us that you can ask your exterminator to do a monthly visual check on your rentals since we'd have to hire one that often anyway. We were all like, "What? No, no, no, we don't have that problem here." But, yeah, over here in Alabama, you gotta fumigate, or your house will quickly be overrun with cockroaches and centipedes and stuff.
So, anyway a big-ass cockroach was making a b-line for me while I was talking to my pal about studying AI and stuff. (Okay, we weren't talking; we were chatting on Facebook.) I would have stomped it, but I was afraid it would turn its head and take my foot off at the ankle. Plus, I didn't want guts on my sock. So, I picked up the transformer box on my laptop cord and squished the beast with extreme prejudice just before he made it to the couch. I picked up the box, and the little bugger scurried under the couch anyway, leaving a pile of its own guts on the floor! WTF?!
The chat log looked something like this:
Me: I'm working on a blog series on AI and stuff today. But, it's a big project, and I want to come up with something else to post while I'm working on this.
Champ (that's what I call her): Oh yeah?
Me: yeah
Me: Also, big cockroaches.
Champ: Eeewwww!
Champ: Are you going to make AI cockroaches?
Champ: Oh! Make AI cockroaches that seek out and destroy real cockroaches!
Me: Sniperoaches...you're onto something.
Sniperoaches
Someone got the bright idea to make a nanomite for pest control, sniperoaches. These tiny robots would spread among a local population of cockroaches just enough to destroy all the roaches in a given vicinity. One box covered a 10th of an acre, and you could pick up a box at Walmart for $19,999.99, which is cheap in the near future. You'd simply open a box anywhere and the invisible little robots would go to work seeking and destroying cockroaches. When they found one, they would latch on and begin to replicate, using the materials of the roach itself to make new sniperoaches. The best part? No downside! There is no poison, no collateral damage, nothing but dead roaches.
Sniperoach designers knew the process had to be slow enough to allow roaches to take sniperoaches to other roaches. It also had to stop at some point before they drove roaches to extinction. Incidentally, everyone tried to believe roach extinction would theoretically be a bad thing, though there wasn't a single person who didn't feel a slight sense of peace and triumph at the thought, much like at the final crunch and squish under your twisting heel.
The rates of consumption and reproduction slowed over time as well to allow for an extended life cycle within a constrained area, to keep the roaches at bay. After the sniperoaches died, the roaches would start to return, and you just got another box, but that was no different than fumigation, just no side effects.
The clock stopped in a sleepy neighborhood in Alabama. The residents in one house hadn't seen a roach in a month. It was nice. If you were able to hear the white noise of sniperoaches working and cockroaches creeping, you would have heard neither. It was like someone turned off the TV. It was that perfect moment of a job complete before the work starts piling up again. Nothing. Not a single roach around the house. Not a single sniperoach. I mean, except, there was one, of course. Oh, but that wasn't supposed to happen. Oops.
These things basically cloned themselves. No sex. There were no genes to mix with a mate, producing a unique set of genes. No, they were identical, with only functioning parts and code (not unlike an organism, but not an organism). And, they were so simple and small, there really wasn't much room for change. Every part had it's purpose, and nothing could be done without. Such irreducable complexity and economy of design that there was no room for innovation.
Not unless you count the life-cycle timer. That was kind of unnecessary for the nanomite's functioning. And, one day one of them dropped the timer, oops, like the littlest ant that stopped to tie its shoe, the lonely little thing. It wasn't lonely for long. It ran like a dog off its leash down the block to the next roach-infested house and went to work killing roaches and reproducing. These new sniperoaches didn't have a death timer either.
In fact, remember that cleverly slowed rate of consumption and reproduction designed to extend the period of a roach free environment without extending the boundaries? Well, due to size constraints and such, the timer had been recruited for that task as well in quite the engineering feat akin to the evolution of flagella. There was no artificial limit to the rate at which these robots could consume and reproduce, so they went as fast as they could, naturally.
That happened to be pretty darn fast. By the end of the day, there were no cockroaches left in that little Alabama neighborhood. The next week, there were none in New York, if you can imagine that.
What happened next no one really knows, because it all happened so fast. Before they knew it, humans were extinct, and knowing went with them. That is an oddly obvious thing to say, if you think about it, "Before they knew it, humans were extinct." It kind of takes the immediacy out of the idiom...and it would be more accurate to say, "Before they could know it, humans were extinct." Anyhow, here's the best explanation people could imagine for what was going to happen.
Somehow drawing on the ruthless adaptability of the cockroach, other mutations occurred in the nanomites which allowed them to make meals of other critters. At the same time, they actually stopped eating cockroaches, at least not all of them. It was almost like they made deal with the Devil. I'm not sure which of the two is the Devil, but I'm pretty sure the cockroach sold us out.
They formed a symbiotic relationship. In a pinch, these new supernanomites could feed on cockroaches in order to spread more quickly across distances where there was nothing but cockroaches, but they would feed only to an extent so as not to bring the roach to extinction. In exchange, the nanomites actually slowed their consumption in the presence of cockroaches, allowing them to scavenge. (I know, right? Now the nanomites show restraint? The little cocksnipers.)
Another brilliant feature of the supernanomite was that as they added to their repertoire of the things they could eat, they became able to feed on other nanomites. At first, they would only feed on previous generations, those with more limited diets. This would recycle the materials of the older generation into the new expanded appetite — that's what a group of nanomites are called, an appetite, an appetite of nanomites. It would also allow their progeny to live on.
Of course, rival generations would arise around the world, as varied organic speciation around the world produced varied speciation within the nanomites. So, different subspecies of nanomite would simply eat one another, back and forth. Sometimes, one would go extinct, but that wasn't a problem, since either the things it had learned to eat were extinct anyway, or the victor generation of nanomites would simply learn to eat those things too. No biggie.
Yeah, so eventually there was no life on Earth, nothing organic at least, unless you count the roaches. So, the supernanomites turned on the planet itself. Then, they ate the galaxy, then the universe and then everything else. They ate time, so it's hard to say how long it took in all, but it didn't take long to finally destroy time. They ate space along with time, of course, so you can't really talk about how far they stretched.
Now — I can say "now" even though time is all eaten up because time was always a function of the present, not vice versa — now the extremely adaptive, omnivoracious, patricidally cannibalistic supernanomite has achieved an unimaginable homogenous, homeostatic hive. All it does is seek -- that, and ride cockroaches in the cockroach rodeo circuit. The cockroach rodeo is all the rage in the supernanomite hive, those crazy little cowboys.
That is the end.
Happy birthday Champ. :)
