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posted by janrinok on Monday February 26 2018, @09:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the tick.......tock dept.

Construction begins on Jeff Bezos' $42 million 10,000-year clock

Installation has finally begun on Jeff Bezos' 10,000-year clock, a project that the Amazon CEO has invested $42 million in (along with a hollowed-out mountain in Texas that Bezos intends for a Blue Origin spaceport), with the goal of building a mechanical clock that will run for 10 millennia.

It's a monumental undertaking that Bezos and the crew of people designing and building the clock repeatedly compare to the Egyptian pyramids. And as with the pharaohs, it takes a certain amount of ego — even hubris — to consider building such a monument. But it's also an unparalleled engineering problem, challenging its makers to think about how to keep a machine intact, operational and accurate over a time span longer than most human-made objects have even existed.

Consider this: 10,000 years ago, our ancestors had barely begun making the transition from hunting and gathering to simple agriculture, and had just figured out how to cultivate gourds to use as bottles. What if those people had built a machine, set it in motion, and it was still running today? Would we understand how to use it? What would it tell us about them?

The actual idea for the clock comes from Danny Hillis, who originally proposed a 10,000-year clock in 1995 in Wired as a way to think about the long-term future of humanity and the planet. That idea grew into the Clock of the Long Now, a project by the Long Now Foundation, which Hillis went on to co-found to build an actual, working version of the proposed clock.

Also at CNBC.


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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @09:20PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @09:20PM (#644206)

    Needs a really loud alarm at 9,999 years to scare the fuck out of whatever is left of humanity at that time.

    • (Score: 5, Funny) by edIII on Monday February 26 2018, @10:49PM

      by edIII (791) on Monday February 26 2018, @10:49PM (#644278)

      Yes, but instead of being a clock, let it be a countdown timer. As it starts to wind down in the last few days, start some rotating symbols on the clock.

      At the very end, send out a large mechanical Cucko from the face of the clock.

      --
      Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
  • (Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday February 26 2018, @09:25PM (20 children)

    by nitehawk214 (1304) on Monday February 26 2018, @09:25PM (#644209)

    $42 million is a hell of a lot of money... for a clock

    --
    "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
    • (Score: 4, Touché) by frojack on Monday February 26 2018, @09:42PM (7 children)

      by frojack (1554) on Monday February 26 2018, @09:42PM (#644219) Journal

      And it will probably be pilfered just as were the ancient Egyptian tombs. Probably sooner rather than later if history is any guide.

      As the nation crumbles the drilled out cave will become some factions hole in the wall, change hands by force, stripped of titanium, and trade goods. Bezos can't build in the death traps the pyramid builders got away with.

      But hey, let him build several hundred of these. It's a great jobs program. Probably no better way to return all that loot he sucked out of the economy over the years.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday February 26 2018, @09:55PM (4 children)

        by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Monday February 26 2018, @09:55PM (#644233) Homepage Journal

        The Great Pyramid was once clad in white marble.

        --
        Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
        • (Score: 3, Informative) by minegoat on Monday February 26 2018, @11:23PM (3 children)

          by minegoat (6872) on Monday February 26 2018, @11:23PM (#644298)

          Actually, the pyramids were clad in polished white limestone (not that it detracts from your point).

          • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday February 27 2018, @01:01AM (2 children)

            by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Tuesday February 27 2018, @01:01AM (#644350) Homepage Journal

            I once owned an impressively detailed book about the great pyramid. I don't know what eventually happened to it.

            --
            Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
            • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @11:46AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @11:46AM (#644567)

              Fucking tomb robbers probably got it.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @02:02PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @02:02PM (#644608)

              Muslims moved into your house, stole your stuff, raped your wife, killed your dog, kicked your cat and demanded you pay them rent?

      • (Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday February 27 2018, @07:03PM

        by nitehawk214 (1304) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @07:03PM (#644726)

        Like the pyramids, the were constructed with the thought that future generations would hold the same values as the current ones.

        --
        "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
      • (Score: 1) by nwf on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:50PM

        by nwf (1469) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:50PM (#644788)

        That was my first thought. When there are 20 billion nearly starving people on the earth in the year 3000, a silly clock becomes a source of valuable material. Unless it has some sort of death ray, but then it will find other uses in the future. If they install it in Camden, it will be stripped in one night.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday February 26 2018, @09:47PM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday February 26 2018, @09:47PM (#644225) Journal

      Bezos is the world's richest man, at least when his Amazon stock is counted.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @10:41PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @10:41PM (#644273)

      only a super rich dumbass would spend so much money for something so stupid. you could start a project to start community gardens or some shit and feed millions of people, but nooo, lets build a fancy clock.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @12:03PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @12:03PM (#644578)

        If people wanted community gardens to feed themselves, what the fuck is stopping them planting them? It's not like fucking vegetable seeds are expensive.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:42PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:42PM (#644701)

          Land and water.

          In my city there are community gardens, with not enough plots, and waiting lists to get to use it. I tried talking my apartment complex into putting in some plots, but the only land they have available is grass with sprinklers and they dont want to tear that up.

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @10:52PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @10:52PM (#644279)

      If they installed it in Texas they need to set it back twenty years.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @12:29AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @12:29AM (#644329)

        Well they could put it in down town San Fran and it could be a bum hotel.

      • (Score: 1) by redneckmother on Tuesday February 27 2018, @02:55PM

        by redneckmother (3597) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @02:55PM (#644628)

        What? Only twenty?

        Full disclosure: I'm a Texan. I, too, think this is funny!

        --
        Mas cerveza por favor.
    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday February 26 2018, @10:52PM (3 children)

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday February 26 2018, @10:52PM (#644281) Journal

      Well, given 10,000 years, that's just $4200 per year. ;-)

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday February 27 2018, @01:07AM (2 children)

        by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @01:07AM (#644354) Homepage Journal

        If he put $42 million into an annuity, it would pay out a lot more than that. A lot more. More than a lot of people make. I wouldn't want to live on it, for me it would be a serious downgrade, it would be very basic. But a lot of folks would be happy. calculator.net/annuity-payout-calculator.html [calculator.net]

        • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @06:46AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @06:46AM (#644518)

          You are a fraud!!! the Real One would never link to calculator!!

    • (Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Thursday March 01 2018, @05:12AM

      by linkdude64 (5482) on Thursday March 01 2018, @05:12AM (#645610)

      He's trying to compete with Tesla for "Cool edgy publicity thing" imo

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @09:30PM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @09:30PM (#644214)

    Consider this: 10,000 years ago, our ancestors had barely begun making the transition from hunting and gathering to simple agriculture

    Sorry, but that's just not true. That is a long-held and long-promulgated narrative (or even a modern myth), which has been utterly dismantled in the last 20 years by geological, archaeological, linguistic, fossil, and DNA evidence which shows humanity has a much longer, much richer history than that.

    Go look into it; you can start with reading about Göbekli Tepe [wikipedia.org].

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @10:39PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @10:39PM (#644271)

      that's what i was thinking when i read the summary: bullshit!

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:11AM (8 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:11AM (#644491) Journal

      Go look into it; you can start with reading about Göbekli Tepe.

      A site which was active since 11,000 years ago with some basic stone working and societal organization? No, it doesn't show what you claim it shows.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:50AM (7 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:50AM (#644498)

        And "basic stone working" doesn't even begin to describe it; there are some massive megaliths that would have been difficult to position (let alone procure) even with modern equipment, and there are 3D stone carvings of animals. It shows that there must have been some advanced societal organization well beyond "simple agriculture".

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 27 2018, @06:17AM (6 children)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 27 2018, @06:17AM (#644512) Journal

          It shows that there must have been some advanced societal organization well beyond "simple agriculture".

          Not seeing it myself. Simple agriculture allows for higher populations and the ability to do modest group projects like this.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:57AM (5 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:57AM (#644537)

            Göbekli Tepe is an enormous site, much of which is still buried according to ground-penetrating surveys; it would be a very large project even by modern standards.

            You're just making a fool of yourself.

            • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @11:53AM (2 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @11:53AM (#644570)

              No, khallow is right. I by myself picked up and moved a bunch of 20 to 50 ton stones last weekend when I was building a druids circle in the backyard last week.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @07:10PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @07:10PM (#644733)

                Have you seen the videos about the Michigan guy who moves giant chunks of concrete by himself,
                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K7q20VzwVs [youtube.com]
                > Wally Wallington has demonstrated that he can lift a Stonehenge-sized pillar weighing 22,000 lbs and moved a barn over 300 ft. What makes this so special is that he does it using only himself, gravity, and his incredible ingenuity.

              • (Score: 1) by fritsd on Tuesday February 27 2018, @09:23PM

                by fritsd (4586) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @09:23PM (#644813) Journal

                No, khallow is right. I by myself picked up and moved a bunch of 20 to 50 ton stones last weekend when I was building a druids circle in the backyard last week.

                OMG you must be one of those bug-eyed green monsters from Enki Bilal's cartoon Ship of Stone [wikipedia.org]!!1!
                How's life in Argentina?

            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 27 2018, @02:18PM

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 27 2018, @02:18PM (#644617) Journal
              Sorry, still not seeing it. You haven't shown that the technology at the area is more advanced than simple agriculture. And let us remember even if you are right, that one site that is particularly advanced is not the world.

              Come on, the site was in use for 2000 years. Even a small organized group could move a lot of stone in that time, if they were so inclined.
            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 27 2018, @02:29PM

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 27 2018, @02:29PM (#644620) Journal
              Even more relevant, there's no evidence the builders of Göbekli Tepe actually had simple agriculture. It's certainly not the sort of evidence I would put forth to claim that some off-hand remark was a "long-held and long-promulgated narrative (or even a modern myth)".
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday February 26 2018, @09:54PM (20 children)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Monday February 26 2018, @09:54PM (#644231) Homepage Journal

    -ne?

    How much of the code we write today will still be in use ten thousand years from now?

    The vast majority of code that I've written in three decades won't even run on today's computers.

    Let's start with small steps: How much of your code will still be in use in ten years?

    There's lots of ten year old code that's still around but that is only a tiny fraction of the total amount of ten year old code.

    For quite some time now it has become vitally important that after I'm gone I will be remembered for something good that I've done. Nobody is going to remember me for my software.

    Homer's Illiad and Oddysey were composed - not written at first, but passed on as an oral tradition - almost three thousand years ago, yet they are still widely read today. I've read them both.

    If I am to be remembered for anything, it will be for my writing [warplife.com].

    That's why I have come to regard coding as just my day jobs. I have forsworn getting paid for my writing. It's all free as in beer; some is free as in freedom.

    A while back I emailed my entire family and told them my only wish for what happened after I'm gone is that they will see to it that my writing is kept online...

    ... forever.

    But the longest term that domains can be registered for is just ten years. Quite likely the time will come that my domains are captured by cybersquatters.

    It is for that reason that I will self-publish print editions of my essays, starting with my essays about mental illness. I must charge for those but I won't charge much.

    I expect there is a way I could get them printed on acid-free paper then stored in pure nitrogen, as the constitution and declaration of indolence are.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday February 26 2018, @10:09PM (15 children)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday February 26 2018, @10:09PM (#644244) Journal

      The central insight of, among others, Buddhism, is that all conditioned ("contingent" might be a better word here) things are not first-order phenomena, and therefore destructible. All that has form will cease to exist someday. Don't fret over it; even the fretting is one of those conditioned things.

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday February 27 2018, @01:00AM (6 children)

        by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Tuesday February 27 2018, @01:00AM (#644346) Homepage Journal

        Specifically she said that "When you're dead you won't know whether anyone remembers you."

        I replied "It would comfort me a great deal when the end is near to know that I will be remembered".

        I'm not clear how long it will be, but when the Sun's hydrogen is depleted it will become a Red Giant, with the result that it will swell up to engulf the earth's entire orbit.

        When that happens very little of humanity's works will remain. Hopefully we will have reached the stars by then.

        --
        Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday February 27 2018, @03:18AM (4 children)

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @03:18AM (#644440) Journal

          Why? At any given moment, there is no future yet, and the past is just a way we have of describing states of lesser entropy. None of this is first-order; it's ALL conditioned, ALL contingent. Just be in the now; that's really all there is.

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
          • (Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday February 27 2018, @03:51AM (3 children)

            by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Tuesday February 27 2018, @03:51AM (#644447) Homepage Journal

            While time changes when one observes fundamental particles, it is not possible to determine the direction in which time changes. Time only has a definite direction when one observes particle systems that are large enough to have measurable entropy.

            That time increases in the direction of increasing entropy is known as The Arrow Of Time.

            When this was discussed in my graduate thermodynamics class, I asked the instructor "We do not yet know whether the Universe is open, flat or closed," - at least we didn't know back when I pointed that out - "Suppose the Universe is closed, and so will eventually collapse back on in itself in The Bug Crunch."

            "Will the people who live at that time" - during the collapse - "experience time going forward or backward?"

            A classmate quietly said "That's very insightful", then the room fell so quite you could hear a pin dropped.

            No one attempted to answer my question.

            --
            Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
            • (Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Tuesday February 27 2018, @06:25AM

              by maxwell demon (1608) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @06:25AM (#644513) Journal

              Well, the answer is simple: People will experience time as going forward. They still will have memories of lower entropy times, not of higher-entropy times. It's just like people will always find that gravitation points down, no matter whether they are in Europe or Australia.

              --
              The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
            • (Score: 3, Funny) by deimtee on Tuesday February 27 2018, @11:59AM

              by deimtee (3272) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @11:59AM (#644576) Journal

              The Bug Crunch. I like that. There are entirely too many nasty bugs here in Oz. The Bug Crunch would be welcomed by most aussies.

              --
              If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
            • (Score: 3, Informative) by fritsd on Tuesday February 27 2018, @07:08PM

              by fritsd (4586) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @07:08PM (#644731) Journal

              Ilya Prigogine [wikipedia.org] wrote a book "Order out of Chaos" [goodreads.com] about the Arrow of Time, together with Isabelle Stengers [wikipedia.org]. Their works are mostly popular science, but somewhere between chemistry and philosophy: an unusual field. Very fascinating.

              The idea that we, humans, are thermodynamical systems far out of equilibrium, is way cool, I think.

              Their books from the '80s were during the time that everybody including Jeff Goldblum became interested in chaos theory; however, their work is not just another popscience handwavy "it's all chaos!" book but a quite deep investigation into why the Arrow of Time is important for living systems such as we.

              If I remember correctly (long time ago since I read it even though I have it on the shelf), it covers the Belousov-Zhabotinsky "traffic light" reaction, time reversal, Bénard cells when you boil an egg, and embryology (how does the ovum know what has to become top and tail??).

              Enjoy!

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:09PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:09PM (#644675)

          >she

      • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday February 27 2018, @12:17PM (7 children)

        by acid andy (1683) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @12:17PM (#644582) Homepage Journal

        The central insight of, among others, Buddhism, is that all conditioned ("contingent" might be a better word here) things are not first-order phenomena, and therefore destructible.

        I'm glad you bring this up, Azuma, because something I've been wondering about lately is whether the most fundamental aspects of the self, like for example the first person perspective or (perhaps even more fundamentally) personal identity, can possibly be destroyed. I know a key aim of Buddhism is to try to attain release from the self but I don't know whether they believe it is somehow destroyed -- either way I'm much more interested in the philosophical aspects than the religious ones of this.

        I wonder whether personal identity is so fundamental and indivisible that it can never be destroyed. My favorite philosopher, Chalmers argues that first person consciousness can't be reductively explained. Most things that can be reductively explained can also be broken apart into simpler physical bits. If something can't be broken up then it can't really be destroyed, can it?

        --
        If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:29PM (6 children)

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:29PM (#644775) Journal

          Not so. Something that's irreducible isn't necessarily indestructible. Also...are we *sure* first-person consciousness is irreducible? The entire point of the above is that this is emphatically and manifestly *not* the case, that the ego is an emergent phenomenon.

          Buddhists refer to it as emerging from the aggregates or "skandhas," if I remember right, one of those being physical matter. The others are things like perception and sensation, which are themselves epiphenomena of that same matter if you ask me. When you think about it this way, the ego is a fourth- or fifth-order phenomenon at most.

          A lot of Buddhism contradicts itself or is a cultural holdover--the idea of people spending quintillions of years or even eternity in the worst hell, Avici, for example, and even "Avici" was just one of the Hindu hells (means "without waves") before Buddhism co-opted it. There's plenty of the usual universal social control mechanisms in there. But I am overall very impressed with them and how they've managed to make a practical (if sometimes extremely metaphorical...) guide to human consciousness so long ago.

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
          • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday March 01 2018, @06:15PM (5 children)

            by acid andy (1683) on Thursday March 01 2018, @06:15PM (#645884) Homepage Journal

            Not so. Something that's irreducible isn't necessarily indestructible.

            You might be right but when I thought really hard about this in the past, I couldn't think of anything irreducible in the universe that can be destroyed. I don't count anything that's a high level human linguistic shorthand for a particular configuration of particles (for example a liquid state or the color or mass of an object). Similarly, regarding emergence, I can't think of anything emergent that isn't one of these aforementioned shorthand human labels. Can you give me any examples? Obviously I won't allow consciousness as the only example!

            Generally, fundamental things in the universe can't be destroyed. For example it's commonly held that energy can be neither created nor destroyed, although it can be converted into matter. It's conceivable that consciousness is a similar fundamental property of the universe.

            Also...are we *sure* first-person consciousness is irreducible?

            In The Conscious Mind, Chalmers argues at length why it cannot be reductively explained. A good way he illustrates it is the Philosophical Zombie Argument. It roughly states that you can imagine an exact physical copy of a conscious human individual, so their body, brain and neural states are identical, with one important difference that this zombie twin has no first person conscious experience. As you can imagine, any physical examination or objective experiment performed on the two twins would find them to be physically identical therefore subjective first person consciousness cannot be explained by any objective third person analysis. Chalmers goes on to explain (as far as I can remember) how this is equivalent to any Reductionist analysis (so no matter how finely grained your analysis of the physics of the brain, there's always subjective experience left over, unexplained).

            Of course, the above argument doesn't mean subjective experience can't be reduced into component parts. It just means that the knowledge is apparently unreachable to us through any conventional, objective analysis.

             

            --
            If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
            • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 02 2018, @03:32AM (4 children)

              by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday March 02 2018, @03:32AM (#646192) Journal

              I've been wondering about P-zombies and the Chinese Room gedanken for years too, and not gotten too far, but one thing does occur: just because we can imagine a P-zombie doesn't mean it's possible for P-zombies to actually exist. We need to be careful not to commit the same epistemological sins Christian and Muslim apologists do when they attempt an ontological argument (yes, Plantinga, that includes your bullshit Modal version; leave axiom S5 the hell alone, you pervert).

              In other words, it may be the case that a P-zombie can't exist because the condition stipulating that its brain states be identical would logically necessarily give rise to consciousness.

              --
              I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
              • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday March 02 2018, @11:11AM (3 children)

                by acid andy (1683) on Friday March 02 2018, @11:11AM (#646316) Homepage Journal

                In other words, it may be the case that a P-zombie can't exist because the condition stipulating that its brain states be identical would logically necessarily give rise to consciousness.

                Yes, I think that's one of the common objections to the P-zombie argument. Personally, I think that's an extraordinary claim and extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. It just seems to me that no matter how complex the logic, true first person experience isn't ever suddenly going to pop out of the manipulation of third person axioms. If it is, then that's a step that needs explaining. It's possible that humans just lack the intelligence, by many orders of magnitude. to grasp this, but it does seem unlikely to me.

                --
                If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
                • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 02 2018, @10:29PM (2 children)

                  by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday March 02 2018, @10:29PM (#646664) Journal

                  I don't think it's any more or less extraordinary than saying that producing something with the exact same brain states, right down to the quantum superpositions of the electric flows, would *not* produce consciousness.

                  Too many people try and use this as "consciousness is sooooo mysterious, I bet it's irreducible, therefore Yahweh!" in their apologetics that I'm immediately suspicious of it. They don't even consider the idea that consciousness and first-person experience could be emergent properties, epiphenomena of pre-existing and ultimately non-conscious entities.

                  If anything, the data from split-brain patients and the results of very specific localized brain lesions on peoples' personalities should be a very large series of very strong checkmarks in favor of this hypothesis. Consciousness seems very ad-hoc and complex in the sense of having a lot of parts.

                  --
                  I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                  • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday March 02 2018, @11:59PM (1 child)

                    by acid andy (1683) on Friday March 02 2018, @11:59PM (#646718) Homepage Journal

                    I don't think it's any more or less extraordinary than saying that producing something with the exact same brain states, right down to the quantum superpositions of the electric flows, would *not* produce consciousness.

                    I disagree. There's no mechanism recognized in currently accepted physics for first person experience to arise from what is essentially just collections of particles and forces interacting and moving about. As far as we know so far, there's also nothing in the rules of logic or mathematics that can cook up first person experience from the physics either. Indeed, without our own private evidence for the existence of subjective experience, there's no scientific reason to believe it exists at all.*

                    In this universe, I can certainly argue that since I seem to have subjective experience that by symmetry it seems plausible that a copy of myself, or indeed another human, also has subjective experience. However, according to Chalmers (again I'm going from memory here), it only needs to be logically possible for any universe to exist containing my P-zombie twin. The zombie twin doesn't need to be physically possible in this universe. If this holds, then any tacked on hypothesis about epiphenomenalism or emergentism is irrelevant, because we can still logically conceive of a universe where those extra hypothetical rules do not apply.

                    If anything, the data from split-brain patients and the results of very specific localized brain lesions on peoples' personalities should be a very large series of very strong checkmarks in favor of this hypothesis. Consciousness seems very ad-hoc and complex in the sense of having a lot of parts.

                    That sounds to me like you're considering the third person components of consciousness (behavior and the psychology and information processessing of the brain) which are all things that could still go on "in the dark" without any conscious experiencer, or to put it another way, they're all things that could be observed in a P-zombie.

                    *OK, the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics gives a role to the observer but that still provides no mechanism or conditions for first person experience to exist.

                    --
                    If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
                    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday March 03 2018, @05:05AM

                      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday March 03 2018, @05:05AM (#646853) Journal

                      It's the ontological argument trap again...we can imagine lightsabers too, and we did, in Star Wars, but that doesn't mean a lightsaber could exist in our universe or any other possible universe either.

                      The strongest tell for me that consciousness is likely an epiphenomenon is that it needs a substrate--we've yet to see a freestanding mind, one without *some* sort of substrate somewhere. And that's not even getting into all the stuff I mentioned before about the split-brain cases, which is an even stronger tell for our specific type of consciousness. Basically, if first-person consciousness were irreducible *and* a first-order phenomenon, there wouldn't be a need for brains, bodies, etc. We'd have basically Platonic forms.

                      Emergent behaviors can be irreducible. "Emerges from" isn't the same thing as "made of." A table is made of a bunch of wood, but there is no table-ness in the wood. There isn't even "potential table-ness" in the wood. It is possible for wood to be arranged in such a way that it has all the properties of a table, but to then call it not-a-table seems rather disingenuous.

                      Or take glucose. Glucose is six carbons, twelve hydrogens, and six oxygens arranged just so. Nowhere in the individual atoms will you find any hint of glucose-ness; it's the particular arrangement of said atoms that give rise to glucose. Be careful not to fallaciously reify concepts.

                      --
                      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @12:04AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @12:04AM (#644314)

      Let's start with small steps: How much of your code will still be in use in ten years?

      Well, it's been just over 10 years since I started working my current job. If experience will help me make this estimate, only my most god-awful shitty hacks will still be in use in 10 years.

      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @12:27AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @12:27AM (#644328)

        I have written will over a few million lines of code at this point. NONE and I mean NONE of it is in use anymore. Anywhere.

        Code is ephemeral. We write it. It is used for awhile and then it is gone. At first I was kind of mad. I had put a ton of work into that stuff. But then I realized with no value the code should go away. It is in the way of new code that can replace my code that no longer holds any value.

        • (Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday February 27 2018, @01:09PM

          by pTamok (3042) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @01:09PM (#644598)

          Some of my code has been running continually on large commercial systems for about 30 years. I say continually, as the systems it runs on have been rebooted occasionally, and swapped out for new hardware less frequently. I didn't expect it to be in use that long when I wrote it, but it 'does the job'. and there has never been any pressing need to rewrite it. I suspect there is a fair amount of code like it spread across the world: nothing cutting edge - just 'logical glue' tying other applications together. It's not big, its not important, and any competent programmer could write a replacement very easily. It happens to be written in FORTRAN-77, which is unusual, as most such code is probably written in a COBOL variant. There's probably a fair amount of MUMPS code around, too, and probably JCL, REXX and CICS.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday February 27 2018, @01:33AM

      by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @01:33AM (#644364) Homepage Journal

      Did you ever hear of "Y2K"? You never hear about it. People don't know this, there was something called "Y2K," which is what the computer people called the year 2000. And all the cyber was supposed to go boom. Because they did the years, in cyber, as 98, 99, 00. And 00 in cyber, in the computer, is zero. Which is less than 99. Big problem, right? Only it didn't happen, we were fine. Because the cyber changes so fast. Which is why nobody heard of it, it was a nothing. You wait and see, the year 10,000 will be a nothing too. They say the years will go 9998, 9999, 0000, they won't. Because the cyber will change before it's a problem.

      You love to write, so do I. Let me tell you, I wrote a very political book years ago in the year 2000, The America We Deserve, and I said in that book that we better be careful with this guy named Osama bin Laden. I mean I really study this stuff. I really find it very interesting, and even though I’m a businessman I find it, I’ve always found, I’ve always been involved in politics -- I said we better be careful with Osama bin Laden. There’s a guy named Osama bin Laden. Nobody really knew who he was. But he was nasty. He was saying really nasty things about our country and what he wants to do to it. And I wrote in the book, this was 2000, two years before the World Trade Center came down, I talked to you about Osama bin Laden, you better take him out. I said he’s going to crawl under a rock. You better take him out. And now people are seeing that, they’re saying, "You know, Trump predicted Osama bin Laden" -- which actually is true. Believe me. And two years later, a year and a half later he knocked down the World Trade Center. Because we had a President who didn't read my books. He read a picture book about a goat. And he sat reading that book while those HORRIFIC attacks went on. Sad!

  • (Score: 2) by archfeld on Monday February 26 2018, @09:57PM (1 child)

    by archfeld (4650) <treboreel@live.com> on Monday February 26 2018, @09:57PM (#644235) Journal

    Reminds me of an episode of Futurama in which 'Great Pharaoh' Bender has his giant statue constructed. "Remember me"

    --
    For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @06:02AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @06:02AM (#644503)

      Despite the fact that it's one of the most monumental and mathematically aware structures ever built on the face of the Earth, there is no explicit signature on the Great Pyramid of Egypt; there is only a very hidden and probably faked cartouche stating "Khufu" (a Pharaoh), but otherwise the Great Pyramid is utterly devoid of any sort of inscriptions. Unlike so many of the Ancient Egyptian sites, the inside of the pyramid is bare, providing no hieroglyphs, stories, pictures, names, reliefs, or anything to explain what it is, who built it, why it was built, how it was built, etc. NOTHING.

  • (Score: 2) by donkeyhotay on Monday February 26 2018, @10:16PM (3 children)

    by donkeyhotay (2540) on Monday February 26 2018, @10:16PM (#644251)

    It's called a sundial. Pretty accurate too. Built out of proper materials it should easily last 10,000 years... or until the Taliban blow it up, whichever comes first.
       

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @10:45PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @10:45PM (#644277)

      Would that be accurate in 10,000 years?

      That's a long time, even continental drift would be a factor. It seems from this image [wikimedia.org] that North America is moving left / rotating counter clockwise, so it would probably be a little off by then ...

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:52PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:52PM (#644707)

        Interesting, looking at that map it looks like Australia North America and Asia will all eventually collide

  • (Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday February 27 2018, @12:29AM (2 children)

    by looorg (578) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @12:29AM (#644330)

    What is the warranty like on that thing? Not like anyone of us will be around in 10k years. Good luck finding spare parts or someone to repair it when it eventually breaks down.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @04:13AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @04:13AM (#644457)

      > ...warranty...

      Like all extended warranties, it's really just an insurance policy. And of course Bezos is self-insured, like any sensible rich person.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @02:04PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @02:04PM (#644610)

      12 month warranty just like everything else unless you pay more but good luck claiming

  • (Score: 2) by fritsd on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:53PM

    by fritsd (4586) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @08:53PM (#644792) Journal

    It makes sense to me, that they built this "Clock of the Long Now".

    The Pyramids have inspired people for millennia: who were the people who built that thing, what is it for, nobody knows anymore, etc.

    Similarly, even though this clock is hidden inside a mountain, the concept that it exists will inspire generations that, as well as the clock, a period of 10 000 years is something that exists.

    - 10 000 first cities like Jericho, *before* the Stone Age in Europe, last stragglers cross the Bering Strait land bridge to America before it gets underwater, Doggerland teeming with woolly mammoths

    - 04500 Stone field of Carnac (Obélix??)

    - 03000 Babylon, Ur, Damascus, Nineveh, Jerusalem, Beirut, etc.

    - 02500 Pyramid of Giza

    - 02300 Stonehenge

    - 01750 Hammurabi Code

    - 00700 Iliad and Odyssey

    0 Life of Brian

    00500 Romulus Augustulus kicked out by Odoacer

    01000 Icelandic parliament decided they should become Christians; Middle Ages in Europe; Maya civilization going downhill, Avicenna wrote the Kitāb al-Šifā in what is now Uzbekistan, somebody finally bothered to write the Chanson De Roland down. Saint Hildegard of Bingen re-invented beer with hops!

    01350 The Black Death in Europe

    01480 Sandro Botticelli paints the Primavera

    01500 Montezuma II's Aztec empire attacked by the Spanish

    01650 The café was invented

    01748 Denis Diderot writes book about a talking vagina and doesn't get burned at the stake. And a (much less popular) encyclopedia

    01789 French Revolution

    01850 Semmelweiss invents washing your hands with soap, but doesn't know why it works

    01885 Louis Pasteur, after having discovered that germs exist, sticks a needle with dead rabid rabbit stuff in a 9 year old boy, and doesn't get sued

    01896 Svante Arrhenius writes a popular book about Global Warming

    01914 First World War

    01920 The Spanish Flu, where my granny lost several of her cousins IIRC

    01940 Second World War, my granny said she saw a pretty young Nazi soldier shot dead out of our cherry tree where he was hiding. IIRC.

    01949 George Orwell writes 1984

    01962 Pope Johannes XXIII organizes the Second Vatican Council

    01964 Stanley Kubrick directs "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb"

    01968 Paris Social Revolution
    01969 Woodstock. Apollo 11. My grandfather asked my parents if I could please stay up and watch it with them on TV (I was 1). The old people of the village were worried that the Man in the Moon would get pissed off.

    01976 Sex Pistols (we traded cards of them in the school yard). No Future.
    01977 Voyager 1 and 2. Carl Sagan. The future is bright (maybe not for punks or people looking for work).

    01980 I owned a radio cassette player so I could listen to the radio while doing my homework, *and* I could tape songs from the top 40.

    01999 Michael Mann discovers our possible nemesis, the hockey stick

    02000 I earned quite a decent wage with helping a multinational with their Y2K problem, whatever theRealDonaldTrump says!

    02016 Randall Munroe wrote his cartoon # 1732, "Earth Temperature Timeline", which is much nicer than this weird Soylentnews comment of mine today

    02018 Falcon Heavy, US president Donald Trump
    02019 US president Lisa Simpson?
    02020 George Orwell's "1984" (from 1948) becomes Public Domain?

    02400? Futurama

    02500 Buck Rogers

    10000?

    20000??

    30000 The Plutonium waste in the Hanford Site is only half as dangerous as now

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