Exi-Chat Gateway

Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-12T10:36:00.000-08:00

On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 5:08 PM, spike wrote:
> BillK, if we manage to help Snowmed or something analogous to it go
> mainstream and it turns into a really useful life extension tool, it could
> be the very most important achievement the transhumanist movement has ever
> accomplished. All our yakkity yak and bla bla here over the years would
> pale in comparison to contributing to Snowmed or equivalent going critical
> mass. I define success as creating sufficient awareness that the unwashed
> hordes of internet humanity will use it. Then from that, the next success
> is the creation of digital health profiles that we can somehow chew on in
> background processes. Then perhaps GIMPS, Folding@home and all those guys
> might contribute a few trillion cycles per second to the effort.
>
> Success would be the creation of some kind of user interface which would
> allow a prole to go in and enter, perhaps anonymously, what diseases they
> have suffered, what they ate, where they live, what they smoked, when they
> were born, what damn junk they poked into their veins to build muscle or
> just for kicks, etc, then have the software reduce all that to a digital
> signature and drop it into Snowmed.
>
>

Snowmed is already in widespread use around the world. For example,
the new UK NHS computerised patient records system has adopted the
Snowmed classification system.

Unfortunately the coding system involving disease and all the
sub-categories is too complex for most proles to use. Doctors have
years of training to understand what is going on.

The other problem is that these medical records are scattered around
in hospital systems, insurance systems, doctor's systems, etc. in
thousands of separate computer records systems.

Nobody is collecting it all into one database. Probably because of
patient confidentiality as you said.

It would probably take somebody like Google to collect it all
together. It might happen eventually, when the government decides it
wants to know absolutely everything about everyone. That's the way
things are going anyway.

BillK

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Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-12T09:08:00.000-08:00

>... On Behalf Of BillK
Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 3:42 PM, spike wrote:
>>... We could use something like that Snowmed CT database, and arrange a
> volunteer base to do some kind of background computing project to look
> for unexpected correlations...

>...Thinking it over, it sounds like a project for Watson. I believe they
are already planning to use Watson to help with medical diagnosis. Why do
all these projects take years? BillK

_______________________________________________

BillK, if we manage to help Snowmed or something analogous to it go
mainstream and it turns into a really useful life extension tool, it could
be the very most important achievement the transhumanist movement has ever
accomplished. All our yakkity yak and bla bla here over the years would
pale in comparison to contributing to Snowmed or equivalent going critical
mass. I define success as creating sufficient awareness that the unwashed
hordes of internet humanity will use it. Then from that, the next success
is the creation of digital health profiles that we can somehow chew on in
background processes. Then perhaps GIMPS, Folding@home and all those guys
might contribute a few trillion cycles per second to the effort.

Success would be the creation of some kind of user interface which would
allow a prole to go in and enter, perhaps anonymously, what diseases they
have suffered, what they ate, where they live, what they smoked, when they
were born, what damn junk they poked into their veins to build muscle or
just for kicks, etc, then have the software reduce all that to a digital
signature and drop it into Snowmed.

spike

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Re: [ExI] Mouse to Human Dosage Conversion

2012-02-12T08:53:00.000-08:00

>... On Behalf Of The Avantguardian
Subject: [ExI] Mouse to Human Dosage Conversion

>...Since I know Spike and many people are curious how to translate doses
from mice to human, here is a FASEB article on the subject that is free to
download.

>...http://www.fasebj.org/content/22/3/659.full.pdf+html Stuart LaForge

Cool thanks Avant!

Good chance we will hear back from the medics tomorrow, or very soon I hope.
They may have some kind of inside infrastructure in the profession to deal
with what must be hundreds of requests for off-label prescriptions. You
know as soon as this made the headlines, everyone who knows an Alzheimer's
patient called and asked them if they saw it. The medics will likely make a
heroic effort to maintain some kind of control over this wave.

I can imagine the geriatric docs tomorrow morning with long lines of geezers
outside their offices. Nearly everyone has a family member, friend or
acquaintance with this disease, with little hope, nothing to lose and an
eagerness to sign up for any test of any ray of hope. This I will offer:
the current Alzheimer's medications aren't worth a damn, they are expensive,
have side effects to the point many of them may do more harm than good, and
don't seem to work; all of them together are not worth one single faint
damn.

It's a hell of a note for researchers: if they see something that offers any
hope, they are ethically obligated to report it, even if they have good
reason to doubt this medication will cross the blood brain barrier. Who the
hell knows, perhaps the dopers will come to the rescue of the rest of us:
they figure out how to use this chemical or that solvent to carry the active
ingredient across the barrier. If some damn junky comes up with the
solution to getting bexarotene across the barrier to the amyloid plaques, I
will gladly stop making disparaging comments about junkies.

spike

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[ExI] the changing education model

2012-02-12T08:12:00.000-08:00

I have long been frustrated by what I see as an ossified and outdated
education delivery model. (Basically, I think education has been
"corrupted" by factors which place provider interest over actual
learning. In other words, the financial interests of teachers,
teachers unions, and textbook publishers, and the ideologically-driven
political/financial interests of school boards, administrators,
politicians, and vast self-interested education bureaucracies, tend to
shunt rational ***EDUCATION*** goals down the list and out of sight.)

We had a short discussion a few weeks back along these lines. Anyway,
the internet is changing all that -- Khan Academy, Stanford's online
AI class, MIT opening up its lessons for free online, etc.

Here's another:

http://www.seas.harvard.edu/news-events/press-releases/peer-instruction

Best, Jeff Davis

"Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
Ray Charles
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Re: [ExI] Medical Singularity pain

2012-02-12T08:06:00.001-08:00

>... On Behalf Of BillK
Subject: [ExI] Medical Singularity pain

>...If you read the medical news and science news streams, you get some
impression of the flood of research that is going on. Cancer news has
seeming breakthroughs published every day...The pain comes in realising that
we are going to lose loved ones during those twenty years. Perhaps I may not
last that long myself. Accidents or illness can strike at any time...BillK
_______________________________________________

BillK, if we can get Snowmed CT to go critical mass, that might be the
biggest breakthrough in medicine since penicillin. If we can somehow get
the masses of proles to help reduce their health history from a bunch of
words that only a few overworked doctors can use to a bunch of numbers that
millions of tireless computers can grind away on through the night, we might
get ten big news stories for every one we get now.

I am imagining creating an extension of Snowmed CT that would somehow
accommodate stuff like dietary intake, weight history, frequency of
copulation, mental outlook, although that might be redundant with the
previous, employment history, recreational drug use, environmental exposure
to known toxins, location of the patient, how well you sleep (not so well
lately alas) how many larvae you have spawned and when, accidents, sports
injuries, degenerative diseases, how much alcohol you have devoured and
when, all that kind of stuff.

All this reminds me of a discussion I had with my grandfather about smoking,
40 yrs ago. At that time, the TV advertisers were getting into high gear
about about how bad it is to smoke. My grandfather had given up smoking in
his 40s, before there was any of this (1950s.) He was the kind of guy who
collected data and was always studying this variable vs that, so I asked him
about whether any of the old timers suspected a correlation between smoking
and lung cancer. His answer is one I will never forget. He said they never
knew about lung cancer, but they knew way back even before his time that
smoking was bad for the health and that smokers died sooner. He always
suspected it caused emphysema, and of course there was that raspy smokers
cough. According to him, it was obvious to anyone with at least one eye and
at least two functioning brain cells: you compared those who smoked with
those who didn't, and the signal was as subtle as a steamroller. So he
quit.

About 8 years after we had that discussion, one of his sons developed lung
cancer at age 34. We buried him six months later.

spike

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Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-12T08:06:00.000-08:00

On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 3:42 PM, spike wrote:
> We could use something like that Snowmed CT database, and arrange a
> volunteer base to do some kind of background computing project to look for
> unexpected correlations. Once we get thousands of people grinding away in
> the background, some of those people might study Snowmed CT and come up with
> suggested extensions and improvements, or if nothing else, just clean up
> their own records, mention all the grass they smoked back in college, and
> such as that. Something roughly analogous happened with the cavalcade
> database after we started getting useful data: the others used it and put
> their own data in there, such that it snowballed. If the Snowmed CT
> database does likewise, it would be appropriately named.
>
>

Thinking it over, it sounds like a project for Watson.

I believe they are already planning to use Watson to help with medical
diagnosis.
Why do all these projects take years?

BillK

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Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-12T07:42:00.000-08:00

>... On Behalf Of BillK
Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 4:12 AM, spike wrote:
>>... There may be a way to reduce diseases to a number or series of
numbers.
> This will be needed for sorting purposes...
> Have we any medics among us who can suggest a data structure? Or
> point to one that already exists? spike
>
>

>...Quick to write down, but you are talking about a huge project. Once you
get into it, it is ferociously complicated.

>...The medical profession have been trying to develop a disease coding
system for over 40 years, with some success.

>...SNOWMED CT seems to be the latest system
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNOMED_CT>

>...It covers areas such as diseases, symptoms, operations, treatments,
devices and drugs. Its purpose is to consistently index, store, retrieve,
and aggregate clinical data across specialties and sites of care. It helps
organizing the content of electronic health records systems, reducing the
variability in the way data is captured, encoded and used for clinical care
of patients and research...BillK

_______________________________________________

Thanks BillK! The more I thought about this yesterday, the more clear it
became that this idea is so obvious it must have already been attempted a
thousand times, and there had to be an existing front runner somewhere. I
am surprised I had never heard of it.

About a decade ago, I created a matrix for everything that could go wrong
with a particular oddball motorcycle, the Suzuki Cavalcade. We eventually
collected data from over 600 bikes, along with VIN, so I could get a
manufacture date and so forth. We saw clusters of a particular failure,
trends, calculated mean time between failure of all the subsystems that
commonly fail and so on. That tool allowed us to use all the mathematical
tools we developed in the rocket science industry. I could imagine
something about four orders of magnitude more complicated than that for
humans, which would be an interesting tool in medical research.

We could use something like that Snowmed CT database, and arrange a
volunteer base to do some kind of background computing project to look for
unexpected correlations. Once we get thousands of people grinding away in
the background, some of those people might study Snowmed CT and come up with
suggested extensions and improvements, or if nothing else, just clean up
their own records, mention all the grass they smoked back in college, and
such as that. Something roughly analogous happened with the cavalcade
database after we started getting useful data: the others used it and put
their own data in there, such that it snowballed. If the Snowmed CT
database does likewise, it would be appropriately named.

Way to go BillK!

spike

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[ExI] Mouse to Human Dosage Conversion

2012-02-12T06:01:00.000-08:00

Since I know Spike and many people are curious how to translate doses from mice to human, here is a FASEB article on the subject that is free to download.

http://www.fasebj.org/content/22/3/659.full.pdf+html

Now if someone would kindly send Spike a copy of the original Bexarotene paper, he could start crunching numbers.

Stuart LaForge

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson

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Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-12T05:00:00.000-08:00

On 12 February 2012 00:46, spike <spike66@att.net> wrote:
> I can think of reasons with regard to health insurance and life insurance.
> I can imagine cases where a person who thinks they have cancer might try to
> go anonymously to a medic and get it diagnosed, then figure out some way to
> not have their health insurance cancelled. Or in the coming age in the US
> where we may be required to buy insurance, that information may be
> intentionally hidden.

Yes, did not think of that. Even though keeping silent on a condition
would void the contract, I appreciate that one would be willing to
give it a try.

> In any case, the medical records infrastructure as it exists in the US is
> all about patient privacy, with no regard to filtering out unexpected
> correlations between a medication and some unrelated disease. ù

Yes, the same goes for Italy and continental Europe in general. If
anything, the alternative is between total opacity - say, HIV
positive results - and compulsory report - say, firearm wounds. And
even when a National Health system would make it in principle easy to
collect abundant statistical data on any possible combination of
diseases, drugs, lifestyles, genetic makes, etc., very little if
anything is actually required or even encouraged.

Moreover, according to the EU directive on personal data processing,
the concept of "personal data" is not limited to data referring to
somebody's name, because anything that is "identifying" enough (and of
course any in-depth profiling of an individual would be...)
theoretically qualifies.

--
Stefano Vaj

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[ExI] Medical Singularity pain

2012-02-12T01:43:00.000-08:00

If you read the medical news and science news streams, you get some
impression of the flood of research that is going on. Cancer news has
seeming breakthroughs published every day. The exponential curve of
the Singularity seems to be working. Or, at least, a very steep linear
increase in science research is going on.

You get the impression that in twenty years, every disease will be
curable and ageing itself will be becoming fixable.
(Affordable cures are a separate political / economic question).

The pain comes in realising that we are going to lose loved ones
during those twenty years. Perhaps I may not last that long myself.
Accidents or illness can strike at any time.

As Spike says, it is a great time to be alive. But I'd like to be
twenty years further ahead, please.

(Ignoring all the economic doom and gloom temporarily).

BillK
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Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-12T00:52:00.000-08:00

On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 4:12 AM, spike wrote:
> There may be a way to reduce diseases to a number or series of numbers.
> This will be needed for sorting purposes. For instance, all cancer could be
> 4. Then perhaps colon could be 12, and hyposquamal scatorsic cell could be
> 16 with frumbic
> slambonian harcomipsis syndrome is 5, so a patient with that type of disease
> would be 4.12.16.5.3 once they hit stage 3.
>
> The medications would also be numbered in some systematic fashion. We would
> encode somehow the age of the patient, their race, their bad habits, their
> good habits, whatever we can put in a matrix. Then we can apply our
> mathematical tools that we know so very well, sparse matrix techniques used
> in satellite control systems for instance. It wouldn't even hurt much if
> the patients lie: statistical methods can deal with that.
>
> Now we would need a central website I suppose and some means of getting
> people to drop data into it. We could set it up in some sort of spreadsheet
> perhaps, and let our volunteer background process team grind away, looking
> for correlations or signals in the pile of data.
>
> Have we any medics among us who can suggest a data structure? Or point to
> one that already exists?
>
>

Quick to write down, but you are talking about a huge project. Once
you get into it, it is ferociously complicated.

The medical profession have been trying to develop a disease coding
system for over 40 years, with some success.

SNOWMED CT seems to be the latest system
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNOMED_CT>

It covers areas such as diseases, symptoms, operations, treatments,
devices and drugs. Its purpose is to consistently index, store,
retrieve, and aggregate clinical data across specialties and sites of
care. It helps organizing the content of electronic health records
systems, reducing the variability in the way data is captured, encoded
and used for clinical care of patients and research.
-----------------------
Over four decades, SNOMED has developed from a pathology-specific
nomenclature (SNOP) into a logic-based health care terminology. In
January 2002, SNOMED CT was created by the merger, expansion, and
restructuring of the College of American Pathologists (CAP) SNOMED RT
(Reference Terminology) and the UK National Health Service (NHS)
Clinical Terms (also known as the Read codes). The historical strength
of the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED) was its coverage
of medical specialties, while the strength of Clinical Terms Version 3
was its terminologies for general practice.
SNOMED CT cross maps to such other terminologies as ICD-9-CM, ICD-O3,
ICD-10, Laboratory LOINC and OPCS-4

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICD-9-CM>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICD-10>

BillK

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Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-11T22:22:00.000-08:00

----- Original Message -----
> From: Mike Dougherty <msd001@gmail.com>
> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
> Cc:
> Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2012 4:47 PM
> Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article
>
> On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 3:17 PM, BillK <pharos@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Targretin Capsule Initial Dose Calculation According to Body Surface
>> Area Initial Dose Level (300 mg/m2/day)
>> Body Surface Area (m2) Total Daily Dose (mg/day)
>> 0.88 - 1.12 300
>> 1.13 - 1.37 375
>> 1.38 - 1.62 450
>> 1.63 - 1.87 525
>> 1.88 - 2.12 600
>> 2.13 - 2.37 675
>> 2.38 - 2.62 750
>
> If you were asking how many applications of sunscreen per bottle, I
> would understand measurement by surface area. In this case, how does
> measurement of dosage by surface area of the body indicate a correct
> application of neural-affecting drugs?

Because muscle is denser than fat. A lean but muscular man can weigh as much or more than an obese woman but have less flesh. Drugs have to diffuse throughout the whole body to get to where they need to operate. As such, if you dose by weight, the man would overdose but the woman would be fine. Doctors dose by surface area because that is more indicative of what the patient's true cellular volume is than simple weight.

Stuart LaForge

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Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-11T22:09:00.000-08:00

----- Original Message -----
> From: spike <spike66@att.net>
> To: 'ExI chat list' <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
> Cc:
> Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2012 10:41 AM
> Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article
>
>> ... On Behalf Of Jeff Davis
> ...
>
>> ...Best outcome: an effective off-label (ie non-FDA "owned")
> Alzheimer's
> therapy that becomes the champion example for patients' rights. Best, Jeff
> Davis
>
>
> Ja well said. Yesterday we made some calls, learned that it is generally OK
> for a GP to prescribe off-label at the doctor's discretion. We have a
> message in to our family member's doctor asking if she is willing to
> prescribe bexarotene off-label, or do we need to go find a doctor who will.
>
> The next thing we need is to calculate or estimate the dosage. For a first
> shot, I am trying to find out what dose they gave the mice, then scale it up
> linearly. Would you estimate a mouse is about 50 to 60 grams? So whatever
> the mice received, scale it up by a factor of about 1000?
>
> The medications which contain bexarotene supply the information of the
> concentration of the active ingredient, so it will be an easy calculation.
>
> Open to suggestion here. The topic is temporarily open season, so your
> suggestion is free and welcome.

Does anybody have an institutional Science subscription that could send me a copy of this article?

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/02/08/science.1217697

The dosing information and administration route are probably in there.

Stuart LaForge

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson

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Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-11T20:12:00.000-08:00

>... On Behalf Of Brian Manning Delaney
...

Spike wrote, earlier:
>> This goes back to a discussion we had here a dozen years ago. There
should be a database somewhere, where people can dump medical information...
and maintain patient privacy.

>...This is a great idea. Get as much data out there as we can, and see what
correlations we find -- about bexarotene, or anything else that might be
useful! ... But about the specific idea of looking for Alzheimer's rates in
the many people who've taken the drug for skin cancer, it occurred to me
after I sent my post that the researchers of the new paper have probably
already thought of that... Patient records would be spread out across
dozens, perhaps hundreds of physicians and clinics, unfortunately... (This
is why the absence of the database you hope one could pull together really
hurts....) Doable, just a huge amount of work. So much so that Landreth may
have thought of the idea annd rejected it as impractical. -Brian
_______________________________________________

Brian, we would need to invent a system, or look for one in existence,
whereby doctors can estimate the degree of progressive diseases. We already
have cancer described that way, four stages, so we could do the same with
Alzheimer's or anything. It doesn't matter if different doctors evaluate
differently; statistics can handle that problem. If we have any resident
expertise in this or the locals have friends who are hip to medical
statistics, they can surely help. Dammit Jim, I am just a country rocket
scientist, not a doctor.

There may be a way to reduce diseases to a number or series of numbers.
This will be needed for sorting purposes. For instance, all cancer could be
4. Then perhaps colon could be 12, and hyposquamal scatorsic cell could be
16 with frumbic
slambonian harcomipsis syndrome is 5, so a patient with that type of disease
would be 4.12.16.5.3 once they hit stage 3.

The medications would also be numbered in some systematic fashion. We would
encode somehow the age of the patient, their race, their bad habits, their
good habits, whatever we can put in a matrix. Then we can apply our
mathematical tools that we know so very well, sparse matrix techniques used
in satellite control systems for instance. It wouldn't even hurt much if
the patients lie: statistical methods can deal with that.

Now we would need a central website I suppose and some means of getting
people to drop data into it. We could set it up in some sort of spreadsheet
perhaps, and let our volunteer background process team grind away, looking
for correlations or signals in the pile of data.

Have we any medics among us who can suggest a data structure? Or point to
one that already exists?

Once a system starts somewhere, perhaps it would grow, or start competing
systems, kinda like dust bunnies.

spike

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Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-11T19:42:00.000-08:00

El 2012-02-11 18:01, spike escribió:
>
>> ... Brian Manning Delaney
> Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article
>
> El 2012-02-11 15:59, Isabelle Hakala escribió:
>>> ... How difficult would it be to find someone with Alzheimer AND the
> particular type of cancer that it is used for... Isabelle

>> ...Excellent idea!
>>
>> ...A twist on your question: might it be possible to find enough people who
>> /already have/ taken the drug to look for a meaningful reduction in rate of
>> Alzheimer's compared to matched controls? The matching would be tricky of
>> course: look at age-, sex-, etc.-matched controls who also had skin cancer?
>> Then the sample is tiny. Or forget the cancer in the matching, under the
>> assumption it's not significantly related to the dev. of Alzheimer's?
>> (Though there probably is an indirect relation via cancer's impact on
>> exercise levels and diet, which also affect risk of
>> Alzheimer's.) Either way, there's got to be some useful data already out
>> there, seems to me. The drug has been in use for nearly 13 years. The number
>> of people who've taken it might be many thousands. Let's take a look at
>> them!
>>
>> -Brian

> _______________________________________________
>
> Good ideas from Brian, thanks.

Spike- Thanks. Though I see now in an earlier post of yours I missed
that this is more your idea than mine:

Spike wrote, earlier:
> This goes back to a discussion we had here a dozen years ago. There should be a database somewhere, where people can dump medical information, while stripping out identities, so that we can find this kind of signal in the noise. I am surprised something like that doesn't exist somewhere. We could maintain patient privacy while still perhaps filtering out these oddball correlations: a certain type of cancer patient doesn't seem to get Alzheimer's or has a lower rate than the general population. The signal could have been sitting there for years, undiscovered because we have no systematic way to find it among the deep piles of data, hidden away to maintain patient privacy.

This is a great idea. Get as much data out there as we can, and see what
correlations we find -- about bexarotene, or anything else that might be
useful!

But about the specific idea of looking for Alzheimer's rates in the many
people who've taken the drug for skin cancer, it occurred to me after I
sent my post that the researchers of the new paper have probably already
thought of that, and are likely working on it. I was about to email Gary
Landreth (lead researcher) and ask, but I think I'll wait a bit. He's
probably overwhelmed with inquiries right now.

> Do we have any hipsters here who are medics or have friends who are, who are
> hip to how one gets at this kind of data? Seems like there is a masters
> degree offered in some places called Public Health, that deals with this
> sort of thing, ja? If this isn't already a specialized field of study, it
> should be. Otherwise we would need to create it. How?

Public health, partly. But I think this is what a lot of basic medical
research consists of: finding patient records, loooking at them,
determining the relevant variables, and crunching numbers.

Patient records would be spread out across dozens, perhaps hundreds of
physicians and clinics, unfortunately. One would have to get enough
records, look for Alzheimher's diagnoses in the records, but, probably,
have to look in records located /elsewhere/ for later diagnoses because
Alz. would have been diagnosed by a diff. doctor.... (This is why the
absence of the database you hope one could pull together really
hurts....) Doable, just a huge amount of work. So much so that Landreth
may have thought of the idea annd rejected it as impractical.

-Brian
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[ExI] Spider Robinson

2012-02-11T18:15:00.000-08:00

Spider is a good egg. You can't have read his work without realizing
that. I have a few extra reasons to feel kindly and beholden to him, as
I suspect anyone who has crossed his path does.

I was just thinking I should touch base and see how he was doing, now
that a little time has passed since Jeanne's death. And then I heard his
news:

http://www.spiderrobinson.com/index2.html

-- David.

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Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-11T16:47:00.000-08:00

On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 3:17 PM, BillK <pharos@gmail.com> wrote:
> Targretin Capsule Initial Dose Calculation According to Body Surface
> Area Initial Dose Level (300 mg/m2/day)
> Body Surface Area (m2) Total Daily Dose (mg/day)
> 0.88 - 1.12 300
> 1.13 - 1.37 375
> 1.38 - 1.62 450
> 1.63 - 1.87 525
> 1.88 - 2.12 600
> 2.13 - 2.37 675
> 2.38 - 2.62 750

If you were asking how many applications of sunscreen per bottle, I
would understand measurement by surface area. In this case, how does
measurement of dosage by surface area of the body indicate a correct
application of neural-affecting drugs?

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Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-11T15:46:00.000-08:00

>... On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj
...
Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012/2/11 spike <spike66@att.net>
>>...There should be a database somewhere, where people can dump medical
information, while stripping out identities, so that we can find this kind
of signal in the noise. I am surprised something like that doesn't exist
somewhere. We could maintain patient privacy while still perhaps filtering
out these oddball correlations...

>...Yes, this would be a very good idea. Not that I understand why privacy
should really be a primary concern for terminal cancer patients... --
Stefano Vaj
_______________________________________________

I can think of reasons with regard to health insurance and life insurance.
I can imagine cases where a person who thinks they have cancer might try to
go anonymously to a medic and get it diagnosed, then figure out some way to
not have their health insurance cancelled. Or in the coming age in the US
where we may be required to buy insurance, that information may be
intentionally hidden.

In any case, the medical records infrastructure as it exists in the US is
all about patient privacy, with no regard to filtering out unexpected
correlations between a medication and some unrelated disease. We actually
risk patients' lives in some cases in order to maintain medical record
privacy. The only area where we don't really sacrifice safety for privacy
is when a prole's eye doctor finds her vision insufficient for guiding her
Detroit. In that case, they are certain to alert the authorities. But if a
person is found crazy as a loon for instance, that information will
generally not prevent the prole from purchasing firearms for instance. If a
person is found to have HIV, we have no systematic way of warning the public
to not screw with the patient.

Stefano, regarding your comment about primary concerns of cancer patients, I
can imagine we have PLENTY of patients willing and eager to tell all there
is to know, but we have no infrastructure in place to accommodate
information volunteers. I can easily imagine 10 to 20 percent of all
patients volunteering their medical histories. I am one. It might skew the
results toward those of us who have had delightfully boring G rated lives.
Or maybe just the opposite, I don't know. People who are healthy don't give
this question a second thought, because they don't go to see the medics.
This would also distort the record toward the chronic medic-seers.

spike

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Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-11T15:26:00.000-08:00

2012/2/11 spike <spike66@att.net>
>There should be a database somewhere, where people can dump medical information, while stripping out identities, so that we can find this kind of signal in the noise. I am surprised something like that doesn't exist somewhere. We could maintain patient privacy while still perhaps filtering out these oddball correlations...

Yes, this would be a very good idea. Not that I understand why privacy
should really be a primary concern for terminal cancer patients...

--
Stefano Vaj

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Re: [ExI] Alcor vindicated contra Larry Johnson's allegations

2012-02-11T15:09:00.000-08:00

From: extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj
>…
>…Congratulations, even though I regret to hear that "Bankruptcy papers filed by Johnson end Alcor’s ability to collect damages related to this lawsuit from Mr. Johnson, unless there is a subsequent violation of terms by Mr. Johnson."

>…Let Alcor get defamed by somebody with deeper pockets: :-) -- Stefano Vaj

Vanguard Press has deeper pockets, and I would think it is the publisher who is ultimately responsible. Any yahoo can write anything, but I would think the publisher must bear the legal responsibility.

spike

Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-11T15:01:00.000-08:00

>... Brian Manning Delaney
Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

El 2012-02-11 15:59, Isabelle Hakala escribió:
>>... How difficult would it be to find someone with Alzheimer AND the
particular type of cancer that it is used for... Isabelle

>...Excellent idea!

>...A twist on your question: might it be possible to find enough people who
/already have/ taken the drug to look for a meaningful reduction in rate of
Alzheimer's compared to matched controls? The matching would be tricky of
course: look at age-, sex-, etc.-matched controls who also had skin cancer?
Then the sample is tiny. Or forget the cancer in the matching, under the
assumption it's not significantly related to the dev. of Alzheimer's?
(Though there probably is an indirect relation via cancer's impact on
exercise levels and diet, which also affect risk of
Alzheimer's.) Either way, there's got to be some useful data already out
there, seems to me. The drug has been in use for nearly 13 years. The number
of people who've taken it might be many thousands. Let's take a look at
them!

-Brian
_______________________________________________

Good ideas from Brian, thanks.

Do we have any hipsters here who are medics or have friends who are, who are
hip to how one gets at this kind of data? Seems like there is a masters
degree offered in some places called Public Health, that deals with this
sort of thing, ja? If this isn't already a specialized field of study, it
should be. Otherwise we would need to create it. How?

spike

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Re: [ExI] Alcor vindicated contra Larry Johnson's allegations

2012-02-11T15:00:00.001-08:00

2012/2/11 Max More <max@maxmore.com>

Alcor lawsuit against Larry Johnson concluded:

http://www.alcor.org/blog/?p=2471

Congratulations, even though I regret to hear that "Bankruptcy papers filed by Johnson end Alcor's ability to collect damages related to this lawsuit from Mr. Johnson, unless there is a subsequent violation of terms by Mr. Johnson."

Let Alcor get defamed by somebody with deeper pockets: :-)

--
Stefano Vaj

Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-11T14:56:00.000-08:00

From: extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Isabelle Hakala
Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2012 1:00 PM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

>…How difficult would it be to find someone with Alzheimer AND the particular type of cancer that it is used for... that seems as though there must be SOMEONE out there... and odds are they would be willing to take it for their cancer... esp if it might help their Alzheimers... Seems as though that would be an easy enough test. It isn't like they would say 'oh... you can't take this drug for your cancer because it might help your Alzheimers too, and that would be experimenting'.

-Isabelle

Ooooh good thinking, thanks Isabelle. It should be easy to find cancer patients with Alzheimer’s. The question now at hand is if that information about their medical history is available.

This goes back to a discussion we had here a dozen years ago. There should be a database somewhere, where people can dump medical information, while stripping out identities, so that we can find this kind of signal in the noise. I am surprised something like that doesn’t exist somewhere. We could maintain patient privacy while still perhaps filtering out these oddball correlations: a certain type of cancer patient doesn’t seem to get Alzheimer’s or has a lower rate than the general population. The signal could have been sitting there for years, undiscovered because we have no systematic way to find it among the deep piles of data, hidden away to maintain patient privacy.

Perhaps if we had a group of volunteers who are willing to dump everything about their medical history on the web, that might help. I would sign up, but my medical history is pretty boring: one kidney stone 15 years ago, and nothing else has ever gone wrong.

spike

Re: [ExI] ens puzzle, was: bexarotene

2012-02-11T14:46:00.000-08:00

The puzzle can be arbitrarily complex, using a new algorithm I found.

This is an example of the kind of puzzle one might expect a prole to create when the yahoo is trying to distract himself from the immediate crisis at hand, such as where to find bexarotene, and whether one should use the stuff on an ailing family member. Crises tend to bring out our most creative ideas. This does not mean we should create crises in order to create crisis creativity. This commentary contains exactly __________ Es, __________ Ns, ________ Ts.

My new algorithm discovered a solution in about 16 seconds. If I wanted to take this to absurd lengths, or rather more absurd than I already have, I can take an entire page of text, or a book for that matter, and do the same trick. Aren’t I clever? So what I want you guys to tell me is if I am so damn smart, why is it that I DO NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO about this particular family crisis, and I notice almost no one is offering suggestions. Feel free to toss out anything, and I will offer the reasons why that is a good idea, but has risks and drawbacks, which I will offer freely.

spike

[ExI] Alcor vindicated contra Larry Johnson's allegations

2012-02-11T14:23:00.000-08:00

Alcor lawsuit against Larry Johnson concluded:

http://www.alcor.org/blog/?p=2471

--Max

--

Max More, PhD

Strategic Philosopher

Co-editor, The Transhumanist Reader

CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation

7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110

Scottsdale, AZ 85260

480/905-1906 ext 113

Re: [ExI] new testing with internet access

2012-02-11T14:13:00.000-08:00

On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 11:57 AM, Mike Dougherty <msd001@gmail.com> wrote:
> I chastised him for it at first - but after testing the PHP waters
> myself, that's how ya learn PHP! :)

Works for Perl too, I can testify from personal experience.

Seems to work well for most computer languages in significant
use these days.

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Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-11T13:48:00.000-08:00

El 2012-02-11 15:59, Isabelle Hakala escribió:
> How difficult would it be to find someone with Alzheimer AND the
> particular type of cancer that it is used for... that seems as though
> there must be SOMEONE out there... and odds are they would be willing to
> take it for their cancer... esp if it might help their Alzheimers...
> Seems as though that would be an easy enough test. It isn't like they
> would say 'oh... you can't take this drug for your cancer because it
> might help your Alzheimers too, and that would be experimenting'.

Excellent idea!

A twist on your question: might it be possible to find enough people who
/already have/ taken the drug to look for a meaningful reduction in rate
of Alzheimer's compared to matched controls? The matching would be
tricky of course: look at age-, sex-, etc.-matched controls who also had
skin cancer? Then the sample is tiny. Or forget the cancer in the
matching, under the assumption it's not significantly related to the
dev. of Alzheimer's? (Though there probably is an indirect relation via
cancer's impact on exercise levels and diet, which also affect risk of
Alzheimer's.) Either way, there's got to be some useful data already out
there, seems to me. The drug has been in use for nearly 13 years. The
number of people who've taken it might be many thousands. Let's take a
look at them!

-Brian
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Re: [ExI] ens puzzle, was: bexarotene

2012-02-11T13:18:00.000-08:00

2012/2/11 spike <spike66@att.net>:
> Here's the revised puzzle:
>
> This is a puzzle dedicated to the young people who hang outwardly on
> extropians, such as BillK, Keith Henson and Jeff Davis, for they are they
> are fine guys, yes indeed. This commentary by spike contains _______ E's,
> _______ N's and ______ S's.
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>

Before or after the mailing list suffix is added?

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Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-11T12:59:00.000-08:00

How difficult would it be to find someone with Alzheimer AND the particular type of cancer that it is used for... that seems as though there must be SOMEONE out there... and odds are they would be willing to take it for their cancer... esp if it might help their Alzheimers... Seems as though that would be an easy enough test. It isn't like they would say 'oh... you can't take this drug for your cancer because it might help your Alzheimers too, and that would be experimenting'.

-Isabelle

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Isabelle Hakala
"Any person who says 'it can't be done' shouldn't be interrupting the people getting it done."
"Do every single thing in life with love in your heart."

2012/2/10 spike <spike66@att.net>

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=alzheimers-disease-sympto&offset=2

Remember that Star Trek original Miri, one of the most memorable episodes of the bunch, where the people age very slowly, but some virus or something kills people whenever they get well into adolescence, with no effect on children. Consequently, the only inhabitants of the planet appear to be children, and revolting bastards they are for the most part ("…bonk bonk on the head…") The apparently fifteen yr old Miri has it bad for Kirk, but he doesn't get involved with older women.

Bones races to find a cure, but isn't sure what is the correct dose, so he has to make a wild guess and hope for the best, then use it on himself, otherwise they will all die. It works.

It is better to take a shot in the dark than to meekly die never having fired one's weapon.

spike

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Re: [ExI] ens puzzle, was: bexarotene

2012-02-11T12:56:00.000-08:00

Here’s the revised puzzle:

This is a puzzle dedicated to the young people who hang outwardly on extropians, such as BillK, Keith Henson and Jeff Davis, for they are they are fine guys, yes indeed. This commentary by spike contains _______ E’s, _______ N’s and ______ S’s.

Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-11T12:54:00.000-08:00

>The dosage for cancer treatment has already been specified.
>So I would start with their recommendations.
>Especially as they warn to watch out for toxicity and reduce the dosage if
necessary.

<http://www.drugs.com/dosage/targretin.html>

...
BillK

EXCELLENT BillK, thanks. I went looking for this and missed it. I am
co-dedicating a puzzle to you, for two reasons: you find stuff like this,
and your name does not contain an e, and n, or an s. Stand by for
explanation.

spike

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[ExI] ens puzzle, was: bexarotene

2012-02-11T12:50:00.000-08:00

Humans have evolved to do our best and most creative thinking when dealing with a crisis. When all is well and we are too comfortable, we get conservative and have no good ideas. We squander our plentiful circumstances with scandalously wasteful activities, such as war. But during the actual crisis of war, we do perhaps our best thinking and inventing.

I am enjoying a temporary burst of creativity while dealing with a family crisis related to bexarotene, so I will toss out this idea, and perhaps get back to it later after the creativity burst is over.

Yesterday’s puzzle on my MENSA calendar was a sketch of a television which contained the following commentary:

This flat screen TV contains exactly _______ E’s, _______ N’s and ______ S’s.

The puzzle is to fill in the blanks with spelled out numbers to make the sentence true. The answer is way down at the bottom of this post.

I fiddled around with it for a while, and eventually decided to solve it with a script, and found the answer. Then I found a closed form solution of sorts, but it is still iterative. Using the script, I found a way to generate these kinds of puzzles of arbitrary difficulty. I ran my script twice. It found the solution to the puzzle below after 400 iterations the first time and after 5102 iterations the second time. Here’s the puzzle:

This is a puzzle dedicated to the young people who hang outwardly on extropians, such as Keith Henson and Jeff Davis, for they are they are fine guys, yes indeed. This commentary by spike contains _______ E’s, _______ N’s and ______ S’s.

If you want me to create for you a similar puzzle, which doesn’t need to count Es, Ns and Ss but can be any letters, let me know, I can create it. The puzzle can be of arbitrary length, but if it gets too big the solution may be beyond the reach of even computers.

Answer to the flat screen puzzle down below:

. Don’t give up, you are almost there…

Seven Es, four Ns and eight Ss.

Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-11T12:17:00.000-08:00

On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 6:41 PM, spike wrote:
> The next thing we need is to calculate or estimate the dosage. For a first
> shot, I am trying to find out what dose they gave the mice, then scale it up
> linearly. Would you estimate a mouse is about 50 to 60 grams? So whatever
> the mice received, scale it up by a factor of about 1000?
>
> The medications which contain bexarotene supply the information of the
> concentration of the active ingredient, so it will be an easy calculation.
>
> Open to suggestion here. The topic is temporarily open season, so your
> suggestion is free and welcome.
>
>

The dosage for cancer treatment has already been specified.
So I would start with their recommendations.

Especially as they warn to watch out for toxicity and reduce the
dosage if necessary.

<http://www.drugs.com/dosage/targretin.html>

Quote:
The recommended initial dose of Targretin capsules is 300 mg/m2/day.
Targretin capsules should be taken as a single oral daily dose with a meal.

Targretin Capsule Initial Dose Calculation According to Body Surface
Area Initial Dose Level (300 mg/m2/day)
Body Surface Area (m2) Total Daily Dose (mg/day)
0.88 - 1.12 300
1.13 - 1.37 375
1.38 - 1.62 450
1.63 - 1.87 525
1.88 - 2.12 600
2.13 - 2.37 675
2.38 - 2.62 750

Dose Modification Guidelines: The 300 mg/m2/day dose level of
Targretin capsules may be adjusted to 200 mg/m2/day then to 100
mg/m2/day, or temporarily suspended, if necessitated by toxicity. When
toxicity is controlled, doses may be carefully readjusted upward. If
there is no tumor response after eight weeks of treatment and if the
initial dose of 300 mg/m2/day is well tolerated, the dose may be
escalated to 400 mg/m2/day with careful monitoring.

Duration of Therapy: In clinical trials in CTCL, Targretin capsules
were administered for up to 97 weeks.
Targretin capsules should be continued as long as the patient is
deriving benefit.
------------------------------

BillK

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Re: [ExI] new testing with internet access

2012-02-11T11:57:00.000-08:00

On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 2:29 PM, Adrian Tymes <atymes@gmail.com> wrote:
> That measures searching itself - which, yes, is a job skill, but can be
> seen to not measure knowledge of the field in question.

I watched a coworker become the resident PHP expert using the following:

"How do you get the contents of a file into a variable?"
1) google "PHP get contents file
2) click link to get_file_content() manual page
3) copy/paste example code into current project file
4) tweak to fit

I chastised him for it at first - but after testing the PHP waters
myself, that's how ya learn PHP! :)
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Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-11T11:55:00.000-08:00

>
> The next thing we need is to calculate or estimate the dosage. For a first
> shot, I am trying to find out what dose they gave the mice, then scale it up
> linearly. Would you estimate a mouse is about 50 to 60 grams? So whatever
> the mice received, scale it up by a factor of about 1000?
>

The Mouse Factory says adult mice are about 25 g and jumbo mice are 45-50 g. (That
is snake food.)

A medium rat is 80 g and the extra huge jumbo rats are 250+ g.

Regards,
MB

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Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-11T11:32:00.001-08:00

On 11 February 2012 19:25, Jeff Davis <jrd1415@gmail.com> wrote:
> The compelling nature of the Alzheimer's predicament and the looming
> baby boom demographic will likely dispose of **that** mainstream view.

Yes. Alzheimer is such a beast that it makes the opposite view even
harder to defend than the XIX century view that it was OK if the
mother died provided that the physician did not provide an abortion.

--
Stefano Vaj
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Re: [ExI] new testing with internet access

2012-02-11T11:29:00.000-08:00

On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 10:27 AM, Mike Dougherty <msd001@gmail.com> wrote:
> Take the cleverer parts of proprietary code written by your existing
> pool of talent, ask applicants to explain it to you. Take the top N
> candidates that did a good job explaining the code and ask them to
> introduce new features to the existing code. After they've done this,
> let them find (and describe) flaws in the other applicant's code.
> When they're finished, you have a decision to make whether you hire
> the person who wrote flawless code or the person who identified the
> most potential problems in others' code.

Aye. Don't ask people to do stuff that, in a real situation, they really
would be looking up (like, "describe how (language-specific feature)
works," when you're really trying to find out if they can solve problem
X with the language in question).

Problem is, you need to overcome a psychological hurdle of, "the
best candidate will have memorized all the definitions as well as
know off the top of his/her head how to answer any question". This
is not something that even the interviewers themselves will be able
to do; they excuse it by looking for someone "better" than
themselves.

> If your test isn't for programmers, you might have a different puzzle
> to solve. Time is probably the most realistic measure of information
> synthesis - sure you can have internet access, but do you know how to
> get the answers more quickly/easily than anyone else? I've seen
> people browsing through pages of results rather than issuing a better
> search. That's an unproductive use of clock-time.

That measures searching itself - which, yes, is a job skill, but can be
seen to not measure knowledge of the field in question.

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Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

2012-02-11T11:27:00.000-08:00

2012/2/11 spike <spike66@att.net>
> In the US, we don't really have a choice. One of the early cryonics cases as I recall had a disputed time of death issue. Dora Kent: http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/DoraKentCase.html

I appreciate that, and this is not really unusual in existing legal systems.

Should we however seek an undefined lifespan without at the same time
advocating for the freedom to obtain assisted suicide at any time, for
whatsoever reason?

I fully accept that given the rather remote chances of resurrection,
cryonic suspension of a healthy (or, at least, alive) individual may
well be considered as such by some.

But why should this be anybody else's business? The reason why we
should support even "turist" cryonic suspension, for those willing to
take the bet, is the same why we should support the freedom to obtain
euthanasia and cremation if one so wishes.

--
Stefano Vaj

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Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-11T10:41:00.000-08:00

>... On Behalf Of Jeff Davis
...

>...Best outcome: an effective off-label (ie non-FDA "owned") Alzheimer's
therapy that becomes the champion example for patients' rights. Best, Jeff
Davis

Ja well said. Yesterday we made some calls, learned that it is generally OK
for a GP to prescribe off-label at the doctor's discretion. We have a
message in to our family member's doctor asking if she is willing to
prescribe bexarotene off-label, or do we need to go find a doctor who will.

The next thing we need is to calculate or estimate the dosage. For a first
shot, I am trying to find out what dose they gave the mice, then scale it up
linearly. Would you estimate a mouse is about 50 to 60 grams? So whatever
the mice received, scale it up by a factor of about 1000?

The medications which contain bexarotene supply the information of the
concentration of the active ingredient, so it will be an easy calculation.

Open to suggestion here. The topic is temporarily open season, so your
suggestion is free and welcome.

spike

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Re: [ExI] new testing with internet access

2012-02-11T10:27:00.000-08:00

2012/2/11 spike <spike66@att.net>:
> Here's your challenge: how do you design a test such that it separates the
> smart applicants from the rest? Assume internet access.

Take the cleverer parts of proprietary code written by your existing
pool of talent, ask applicants to explain it to you. Take the top N
candidates that did a good job explaining the code and ask them to
introduce new features to the existing code. After they've done this,
let them find (and describe) flaws in the other applicant's code.
When they're finished, you have a decision to make whether you hire
the person who wrote flawless code or the person who identified the
most potential problems in others' code.

If your test isn't for programmers, you might have a different puzzle
to solve. Time is probably the most realistic measure of information
synthesis - sure you can have internet access, but do you know how to
get the answers more quickly/easily than anyone else? I've seen
people browsing through pages of results rather than issuing a better
search. That's an unproductive use of clock-time.

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Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-11T10:25:00.000-08:00

2012/2/11 Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj@gmail.com>:

> ...the mainstream view remains just the
> opposite, and perhaps increasingly so.

The compelling nature of the Alzheimer's predicament and the looming
baby boom demographic will likely dispose of **that** mainstream view.

Or an effective AMA and FDA-approved Alzheimer's therapy will emerge
to moot the issue.

Best outcome: an effective off-label (ie non-FDA "owned") Alzheimer's
therapy that becomes the champion example for patients' rights.

Best, Jeff Davis

Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-11T09:41:00.000-08:00

On 11 February 2012 16:15, The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020@yahoo.com> wrote:

Maybe fewer prayers would go unaswered, if more people were willing to play God.

Excellent aphorism in an excellent post.

Too bad that we are probably preaching to the choir in a transhumanist list, while the mainstream view remains just the opposite, and perhaps increasingly so.

--
Stefano Vaj

Re: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies

2012-02-11T09:37:00.000-08:00

On 11 February 2012 15:55, BillK <pharos@gmail.com> wrote:

Your example works fine when low-level processors work on bits of a problem.

But Keith was talking about whole civilisations.
Long communication delays mean that they will no longer be one unified
civilisation. They will diverge into separate civilisations.

What escapes me is why this should be the case, rather than a continuous civilisation/mind, increasingly diverging with distance but without any substantial quantum leaps, as it used to be the case for, say, the Roman Empire from the Scotian to the Persian border.

Mind, I do prefer a scenario of multiple, diverse and somewhat "independent" units. But this require some "border" to exist, defining an "in" and an "out" even though "closeness" is equal in the opposite direction, and I suspect that such borders will of a voluntary and arbitrary nature, and sometimes with grey areas in-between - not so differently from our current and past experiences of human cultures themselves.

As such, the communication delays would stop the mind growing above a
certain size, because it would take too long to reach a decision.

This is the point. How do we deal with that *today*? We decentralise. At an organic, computing, corporate and political level. When does something become independent enough to stop being considered as part of an entity/system? It is a matter of POVs, and dubious cases abound.

The mind itself will decide what the optimum size would be for calculating
efficiency and if it wants to expand then it would build another mind
next door.

This assumes that some ontological difference exists between, say, the computer and the network, an attitude which is probably based on the very steep decrease of informational exchange speed when we step outside an organic brain and try to communicate with neurons in another one, notwithstanding the fact that they may be spatially closer than the opposite side of my head.

I am inclined instead to consider such distinction upon closer inspection much fuzzier than one might think.

So, in an informationally dense universe, to decide where a "mind" begins and another stops may not be so easy. Even though, admittedly, vast semi-void spaces between denser "islands", such as interstellar or intergalactic gaps, might provide the breaks and the asymmetries serving this purpose (if you are Pluto, it is not the same to communicate with the inner system and with Alpha Centauri).

--
Stefano Vaj

[ExI] saul kent's cryonics documentary, was: RE: mail: a paper device...

2012-02-11T09:33:00.000-08:00

From: spike [mailto:spike66@att.net]
…

>…In the US, we don’t really have a choice. One of the early cryonics cases as I recall had a disputed time of death issue. Dora Kent: http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/DoraKentCase.html spike

When I started reading up on the Dora Kent case, I wondered if Saul Kent is still with us. He is alive and well. This interesting 2009 cryonics documentary held my attention for nearly half an hour, something very few forms of entertainment can manage in these times of severe attention span deficit:

Part 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaHavhQllDI

Part 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Psm96dR1d1A&feature=related

Part 3:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBYIzWblGTI&feature=related

[ExI] new testing with internet access

2012-02-11T08:58:00.000-08:00

This is something that has been on my mind for some time. We still use the same old testing techniques that have been around for decades, but the needs of employers have changed radically. Your employees have internet access and you need them to be good at it, so is there a way to test for it?

http://ask.slashdot.org/story/12/02/10/1951210/ask-slashdot-how-to-allow-test-takers-internet-access-but-minimize-cheating

Here’s your challenge: how do you design a test such that it separates the smart applicants from the rest? Assume internet access.

spike

Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

2012-02-11T08:46:00.000-08:00

2012/2/11 Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj@gmail.com>:
> Another important angle. Should one who is willing to bet on cryonic
> suspension really wait for entropic mechanisms destroying his identity to
> kick in?

As Max put it, being frozen is the second worst thing that can happen to a
person.

Cryonics may be useful as a backup plan, but for most people, a better
primary plan is to live (for whatever state of being one deems to constitute
"living", and not merely "existing") as long as possible, in the hopes that
aging gets defeated (or effectively so) before means such as cryonics
become necessary. Even better if one actively assists such efforts -
whether via money, labor, or by some other means.

Granted, that's quite a gamble. That's why cryonics is there for those
who no longer have this option.
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Re: [ExI] mail: a paper device in that metal thing on the front of the house

2012-02-11T08:40:00.000-08:00

2012/2/11 spike <spike66@att.net>:
> Can you imagine the
> latency we used to suffer, when you had to write out a letter by hand and
> send it through the post office? It is hard to see how you could even
> communicate that way.

Please. It is perfectly easy to see how you could communicate.
Granted, it wasn't anywhere close to real time, so there were
workarounds for any communications that had to get there ASAP, but
a delay in communication does not render communication impossible.

Heck, even email is sometimes delayed - and in most cases, it is not
realistic to expect the recipient to be checking email every second, or
even to have a notification the moment email comes in. Postal mail is,
for the most part, just email with longer latency - thus why they're both
called "mail".

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[ExI] mail: a paper device in that metal thing on the front of the house

2012-02-11T08:11:00.000-08:00

From: spike [mailto:spike66@att.net]
…

>…In the US, we don’t really have a choice. One of the early cryonics cases as I recall had a disputed time of death issue. Dora Kent: http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/DoraKentCase.html spike

Interesting article. One odd thing just jumped out at me: Dr. Perry refers to going to the mailbox and getting a letter from a friend. That was in December 1987, less than 25 years ago. Right about that time, I was transitioning to email as the primary form of written communications. Within a few years we no longer got paper mail from friends, other that Christmas cards, which I still send out in paper form. Can you imagine the latency we used to suffer, when you had to write out a letter by hand and send it through the post office? It is hard to see how you could even communicate that way.

spike

Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

2012-02-11T07:56:00.000-08:00

From: extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj
…

We are in a position to cast caution to the
wind and become lab rats, for the alternative is bankruptcy of the family
and gradual death in which even cryonics may not be able to help, as the
brain may be destroyed long before the body stops functioning.

>…Another important angle. Should one who is willing to bet on cryonic suspension really wait for entropic mechanisms destroying his identity to kick in? Stefano Vaj

In the US, we don’t really have a choice. One of the early cryonics cases as I recall had a disputed time of death issue. Dora Kent: http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/DoraKentCase.html

spike

Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-11T07:48:00.000-08:00

From: extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj
Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2012 5:46 AM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012/2/11 spike <spike66@att.net>

>>…It is better to take a shot in the dark than to meekly die never having fired one’s weapon.

>…This is not really what dominant ideologies dictate… the important thing is that it is not your fault, and that you have not attempted to play God. -- Stefano Vaj

I fear you are right Stefano. There’s something else going on, an increased urgency that may be more apparent to Californians. I suspect we have systematically underestimated the life penalty from smoking. In my own misspent youth, they estimated 3 to 5 years was the life penalty for smoking, but estimates have risen over the years as data came in. In California, is it very rare to see a person smoking, and a lot less common elsewhere. Consequently there may be a loooot more boomers living to be old, in which case Alzheimer’s will hit us like a tsunami, causing costs of those patients to dwarf other societal medical costs.

spike

Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-11T07:15:00.000-08:00

_____________________________
>From: Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj@gmail.com>
>To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
>Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2012 5:45 AM
>Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article
>
>
>2012/2/11 spike <spike66@att.net>
>
>It is better to take a shot in the dark than to meekly die never having fired one's weapon.

The Star Trek story reminds me of the true life story of Louis Pasteur and the invention of rabies vaccine:

http://www.angelfire.com/al/aloysius/rabies.html

The writer leaves out many details including the fact that Pasteur administered the vaccine to the boy himself even though he was a chemist and not trained in medicine. This is all the more amazing because Pasteur *had* a physician in his employ named Emile Roux who was trained in medicine. But Roux refused to give the boy an untested vaccine on ethical grounds. He even lodged a formal protest against his boss for "playing God". Lucky for Pasteur and all of mankind that the chemist was right and the physician wrong.

So what happened here? A distraught mother begged a man to save her son. The man risked his career in an attempt to save the boy. The result? That man became remembered as one of the greatest men in history. Pasteur went on to become one the founding fathers of microbiology and disproved the spontaneous generation of life, fleshed out germ theory, saved the French wine industry from an invasive yeast species by inventing "pasteurization", and discovered the entire concept of stereo-chemistry and optical polarization-rotation which give rise to "left handed" and "right handed" organic molecules.

>This is not really what dominant ideologies dictate, which is the essence itself of neoLuddisme, humanism, environmentalism, providentialism, etc.
>
>Whenever a risk exists, doing nothing is morally superior to doing something ("meddling with nature, providence, the divine plan, the... market, etc.").
>
>Somebody dies, or some disaster happens, too bad, but the important thing is that it is not your fault, and that you have not attempted to play God.

Attempt to play God? Seriously? Most people are too afraid to color outside the lines to even think of playing God. Baaaaaaaaah! Little do they know they play God unintentionally for their children all time.

Maybe fewer prayers would go unaswered, if more people were willing to play God.

Stuart LaForge

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson

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Re: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies

2012-02-11T06:55:00.000-08:00

2012/2/11 Stefano Vaj wrote:
> I am not persuaded that there is any real limit to acceptable latency, given
> that any arbitrary computational node speaks anyway very quickly with
> neighbouring nodes, no matter how "distant" it may be from an arbitrary
> "centre", so the rationale to connect three of them is not so different from
> having the last one added in a row of 10^10 of them.
>
> This simply means that "long-distance calls" are reduced as much as possible
> in favour of local computation and data caching.
>
> Take for instance the contemporary scenario, where we have at one extreme
> the internal working of registers of single processing unit, then the
> processor with its internal cache(s), then your possibly multiprocessor
> board with its RAM, then (virtual?) clusters thereof, then perhaps a
> configuration such as folding@home where possible latency already may
> measure in weeks - much higher than what would exist in a ideal, optimised
> star-sized computronium sphere.
>
>

Your example works fine when low-level processors work on bits of a problem.

But Keith was talking about whole civilisations.
Long communication delays mean that they will no longer be one unified
civilisation. They will diverge into separate civilisations. These
future 'million-times speed up' intelligences will probably be more
like hive-minds than the groups of individuals that we have today. As
such, the communication delays would stop the mind growing above a
certain size, because it would take too long to reach a decision. The
mind itself will decide what the optimum size would be for calculating
efficiency and if it wants to expand then it would build another mind
next door. Though I don't see why it would want to create a competitor
for resources. Unless resources are really plentiful, of course.

BillK
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Re: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies

2012-02-11T06:21:00.000-08:00

On 11 February 2012 07:43, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson@gmail.com> wrote:

Maybe this isn't important. People went around the earth when it took years.

We may have already had this discussion before, but I think that if we should take contemporary IT as a good enough metaphor of intelligence in general, "hierarchical structure" is the answer to "latency" and "scarce band".

I am not persuaded that there is any real limit to acceptable latency, given that any arbitrary computational node speaks anyway very quickly with neighbouring nodes, no matter how "distant" it may be from an arbitrary "centre", so the rationale to connect three of them is not so different from having the last one added in a row of 10^10 of them.

This simply means that "long-distance calls" are reduced as much as possible in favour of local computation and data caching.

Take for instance the contemporary scenario, where we have at one extreme the internal working of registers of single processing unit, then the processor with its internal cache(s), then your possibly multiprocessor board with its RAM, then (virtual?) clusters thereof, then perhaps a configuration such as folding@home where possible latency already may measure in weeks - much higher than what would exist in a ideal, optimised star-sized computronium sphere.

But even in organic brains I suspect that most computations already take place at a "local" level, with neurons firing neighbouring neurons in a limited area, rather than involving the entire system, as the latter solution would pointlessly degrade the overall performance of the same.

--
Stefano Vaj

Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

2012-02-11T06:01:00.000-08:00

On 11 February 2012 00:38, spike <spike66@att.net> wrote:

If they find something that looks positive, ANYthing
positive, I want them to report exactly what they saw and don't bother
talking about three to five year clinical trials because too many families
don't have three to five years.

I do not have the foggiest idea about Bexarotene, but I strongly support your view on that in more general, philosophical terms. "I shall overcome my mortality, or at least die trying" is what the very old and very new ethic commands.

We are in a position to cast caution to the
wind and become lab rats, for the alternative is bankruptcy of the family
and gradual death in which even cryonics may not be able to help, as the
brain may be destroyed long before the body stops functioning.

Another important angle. Should one who is willing to bet on cryonic suspension really wait for entropic mechanisms destroying his identity to kick in?

There again, I appreciate that those practically involved with cryonics had better be prudent in their public stances, but at a philosophical level I think we should make it abundantly clear that our answer is a resonant No, political correctness and caution be damned.

--
Stefano Vaj

Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-11T05:45:00.000-08:00

2012/2/11 spike <spike66@att.net>

It is better to take a shot in the dark than to meekly die never having fired one's weapon.

This is not really what dominant ideologies dictate, which is the essence itself of neoLuddisme, humanism, environmentalism, providentialism, etc.

Whenever a risk exists, doing nothing is morally superior to doing something ("meddling with nature, providence, the divine plan, the... market, etc.").

Somebody dies, or some disaster happens, too bad, but the important thing is that it is not your fault, and that you have not attempted to play God.

--
Stefano Vaj

Re: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies

2012-02-10T22:43:00.000-08:00

On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 8:31 PM, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins@mac.com> wrote:

> On 02/10/2012 11:39 AM, Natasha Vita-More wrote:
>>
>> Can someone suggest five well-known science fiction authors and their
>> book titles that speculate on cyberspace as an alternative environment
>> for leaving the flesh/meat body behind? You don't have to like, agree
>> with or support the narratives, and they don't have to be
>> transhumanist in scope.
>
> Please share this list when you collect it. I would love to read more
> stories like that. The only ones that spring immediately to mind are:
>
> Permutation City (Egan)
> Accelerando (Stross) (parts of it)

Go here: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html

Download the RTF version and search for "FieldCircus."

You actually need to read the whole thing to get the context, but if
you have, this will get you to the right place to appreciate perhaps
the best book to date on the Singularity.

The world Stross places this novel in is right out of the late 80s,
early 90s Extropian mailing list, when M Brains and computronium were
brand new ideas. An exchange between Hans Moravec and me (reviving
authors through their works) becomes a plot element toward the end of
the novel.

"The Clinic Seed" also explores the uploaded world, in this case a
tiny African village is uploaded.

Per my recent posting, I no longer think it's practical to surround a
star with computronium (speed of light problems). Instead population
centers will probably shrink to sizes in the few hundred meter range
and sunk the the deep oceans for cooling.

I really don't see any way out of this. Being smart is a prime goal
for transhumanists. Everyone wants to be smarter than average. A
substantial part of being smart is being able to think faster. This
leads to a runaway situation where we rapidly run into distance being
time. We hardly notice telephone communication delays unless they are
going through satellites. But speed us up a million fold and the
maximum delay is (20,000 km/300,000 km/s) or 1/15 s. At a million to
one speed up, that would impose a subjective round trip delay of a day
and a half from one side of the earth to the other. Subjective round
trip delay to the moon would be a month.

Maybe this isn't important. People went around the earth when it took years.

Keith

> Golden Age triology (John C Wright)
>
> - samantha
>
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> Message: 16
> Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:17:48 -0800
> From: Samantha Atkins <sjatkins@mac.com>
> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
> Subject: Re: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless
> bodies
> Message-ID: <4F35B3AC.10509@mac.com>
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>
> On 02/10/2012 12:39 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote:
>> 2012/2/10 Natasha Vita-More <natasha@natasha.cc>
>>
>> Can someone suggest five well-known science fiction authors and
>> their book titles that speculate on cyberspace as an alternative
>> environment for leaving the flesh/meat body behind? You don?t
>> have to like, agree with or support the narratives, and they don?t
>> have to be transhumanist in scope.
>>
>>
>> Egan and Gibson jump to mind, but I am sure you have already thought
>> of them.
>>
>
> Lawnmower Man
> TRON
>
> When I think about it though, I think the Golden Age triology is about
> the only fully developed post-singularity upload universal culture I
> have come across. If I am missing some I would love to hear of them.
>
> - s
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> Message: 17
> Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:31:42 -0800
> From: Samantha Atkins <sjatkins@mac.com>
> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
> Subject: Re: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless
> bodies
> Message-ID: <4F35B6EE.3050406@mac.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"; Format="flowed"
>
> True Names (sort of but not a full blown uploaded culture)
>
> On 02/10/2012 12:39 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote:
>> 2012/2/10 Natasha Vita-More <natasha@natasha.cc>
>>
>> Can someone suggest five well-known science fiction authors and
>> their book titles that speculate on cyberspace as an alternative
>> environment for leaving the flesh/meat body behind? You don?t
>> have to like, agree with or support the narratives, and they don?t
>> have to be transhumanist in scope.
>>
>>
>> Egan and Gibson jump to mind, but I am sure you have already thought
>> of them.
>>
>> --
>> Stefano Vaj
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> extropy-chat mailing list
>> extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org
>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
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> Message: 18
> Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:43:02 +0100
> From: Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj@gmail.com>
> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
> Subject: Re: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless
> bodies
> Message-ID:
> <CAPoR7a5tqWrXrYmqBD=DUgSkOFHBjoy6Mm3RP8aWbz3PGESM5Q@mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> 2012/2/11 Samantha Atkins <sjatkins@mac.com>
>
>> **
>> Permutation City (Egan)
>>
>
> At least parts of Schild's Ladder and above all of Diaspora civilisations
> live permanently in a virtual wordl, even though much different of that of
> Count Zero.
>
> --
> Stefano Vaj
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> Message: 19
> Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 21:10:02 -0500
> From: Mike Dougherty <msd001@gmail.com>
> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
> Subject: Re: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless
> bodies
> Message-ID:
> <CAOJFdbK9xKAk9Ua=_C-9YMuwmHRA87aS3qdM7ZusP57xAtfzLQ@mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>
> 2012/2/10 Natasha Vita-More <natasha@natasha.cc>:
>> Can someone suggest five well-known science fiction authors and their book
>> titles that speculate on cyberspace as an alternative environment for
>> leaving the flesh/meat body behind? You don?t have to like, agree with or
>> support the narratives, and they don?t have to be transhumanist in scope.
>
> Rudy Rucker's Ware series. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ware_Tetralogy
>
> I'm assuming everyone here has already read it and simply forgot about it
> or otherwise didn't think of it in response to "cyberspace as an
> alternative environment."
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> Message: 20
> Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:05:03 -0800
> From: "spike" <spike66@att.net>
> To: "'ExI chat list'" <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
> Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article
> Message-ID: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>
>
> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=alzheimers-disease-sympto
> <http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=alzheimers-disease-sympto&
> offset=2> &offset=2
>
>
>
> Remember that Star Trek original Miri, one of the most memorable episodes of
> the bunch, where the people age very slowly, but some virus or something
> kills people whenever they get well into adolescence, with no effect on
> children. Consequently, the only inhabitants of the planet appear to be
> children, and revolting bastards they are for the most part (".bonk bonk on
> the head.") The apparently fifteen yr old Miri has it bad for Kirk, but he
> doesn't get involved with older women.
>
>
>
> Bones races to find a cure, but isn't sure what is the correct dose, so he
> has to make a wild guess and hope for the best, then use it on himself,
> otherwise they will all die. It works.
>
>
>
> It is better to take a shot in the dark than to meekly die never having
> fired one's weapon.
>
>
>
> spike
>
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> Message: 21
> Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:17:37 -0800
> From: "spike" <spike66@att.net>
> To: "'ExI chat list'" <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
> Subject: [ExI] temporary open season declared on bexarotene was: RE:
> good bexarotene article
> Message-ID: <00fa01cce86b$b5802280$20806780$@att.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>
>
> As your friendly nanopotent ExI-chat moderator, I propose a temporary open
> season on what looks like an exciting development, the use of bexarotene
> against Alzheimer's. We have tried this before, and it works pretty well:
> for the next week, if you are posting on this topic, it doesn't count
> against your normal daily posting guidelines of five posts a day. Let's do
> this for a week, shall we?
>
>
>
> If one is a non-cryonicist, the best thing that can happen is to live a long
> life and have a sudden heart attack. No suffering, low cost to the family,
> etc. You are just gone. Getting cancer is the worst thing.
>
>
>
> If on the other hand, one is a hardcore cryonics believer, a sudden heart
> attack is a bad thing because you cool and perhaps suffer brain degradation
> while the local yahoos figure out what to do. Some form of cancer is
> actually good perhaps, for one knows about how long one has to live and can
> make arrangements for the Alcor team. But for the cryonics hipster,
> Alzheimer's is perhaps the worst thing that can happen, for the brain is
> ruined by the time the family can call in the team.
>
>
>
> If that is not bad enough, Alzheimer's is probably one of the most likely
> ends for those who take good care of themselves. Any promising Alzheimer's
> therapy is exciting.
>
>
>
> spike
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> From: extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org
> [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike
> Sent: Friday, February 10, 2012 6:05 PM
> To: 'ExI chat list'
> Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article
>
>
>
>
>
> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=alzheimers-disease-sympto
> <http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=alzheimers-disease-sympto&
> offset=2> &offset=2
>
>
>
> .
>
> spike
>
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[ExI] temporary open season declared on bexarotene was: RE: good bexarotene article

2012-02-10T19:17:00.000-08:00

As your friendly nanopotent ExI-chat moderator, I propose a temporary open season on what looks like an exciting development, the use of bexarotene against Alzheimer’s. We have tried this before, and it works pretty well: for the next week, if you are posting on this topic, it doesn’t count against your normal daily posting guidelines of five posts a day. Let’s do this for a week, shall we?

If one is a non-cryonicist, the best thing that can happen is to live a long life and have a sudden heart attack. No suffering, low cost to the family, etc. You are just gone. Getting cancer is the worst thing.

If on the other hand, one is a hardcore cryonics believer, a sudden heart attack is a bad thing because you cool and perhaps suffer brain degradation while the local yahoos figure out what to do. Some form of cancer is actually good perhaps, for one knows about how long one has to live and can make arrangements for the Alcor team. But for the cryonics hipster, Alzheimer’s is perhaps the worst thing that can happen, for the brain is ruined by the time the family can call in the team.

If that is not bad enough, Alzheimer’s is probably one of the most likely ends for those who take good care of themselves. Any promising Alzheimer’s therapy is exciting.

spike

From: extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike
Sent: Friday, February 10, 2012 6:05 PM
To: 'ExI chat list'
Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=alzheimers-disease-sympto&offset=2

…

spike

Re: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies

2012-02-10T18:10:00.001-08:00

2012/2/10 Natasha Vita-More <natasha@natasha.cc>:

> Can someone suggest five well-known science fiction authors and their book

> titles that speculate on cyberspace as an alternative environment for

> leaving the flesh/meat body behind? You don't have to like, agree with or

> support the narratives, and they don't have to be transhumanist in scope.

Rudy Rucker's Ware series. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ware_Tetralogy

I'm assuming everyone here has already read it and simply forgot about it or otherwise didn't think of it in response to "cyberspace as an alternative environment."

[ExI] good bexarotene article

2012-02-10T18:05:00.000-08:00

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=alzheimers-disease-sympto&offset=2

Remember that Star Trek original Miri, one of the most memorable episodes of the bunch, where the people age very slowly, but some virus or something kills people whenever they get well into adolescence, with no effect on children. Consequently, the only inhabitants of the planet appear to be children, and revolting bastards they are for the most part (“…bonk bonk on the head…”) The apparently fifteen yr old Miri has it bad for Kirk, but he doesn’t get involved with older women.

Bones races to find a cure, but isn’t sure what is the correct dose, so he has to make a wild guess and hope for the best, then use it on himself, otherwise they will all die. It works.

It is better to take a shot in the dark than to meekly die never having fired one’s weapon.

spike

Re: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies

2012-02-10T17:43:00.000-08:00

2012/2/11 Samantha Atkins <sjatkins@mac.com>

Permutation City (Egan)

At least parts of Schild's Ladder and above all of Diaspora civilisations live permanently in a virtual wordl, even though much different of that of Count Zero.

--
Stefano Vaj

Re: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies

2012-02-10T16:31:00.000-08:00

True Names (sort of but not a full blown uploaded culture)

On 02/10/2012 12:39 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote:

2012/2/10 Natasha Vita-More <natasha@natasha.cc>

Can someone suggest five well-known science fiction authors and their book titles that speculate on cyberspace as an alternative environment for leaving the flesh/meat body behind? You don't have to like, agree with or support the narratives, and they don't have to be transhumanist in scope.

Egan and Gibson jump to mind, but I am sure you have already thought of them.

--
Stefano Vaj
 
 _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat 

Re: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies

2012-02-10T16:17:00.000-08:00

On 02/10/2012 12:39 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote:

2012/2/10 Natasha Vita-More <natasha@natasha.cc>

Can someone suggest five well-known science fiction authors and their book titles that speculate on cyberspace as an alternative environment for leaving the flesh/meat body behind? You don't have to like, agree with or support the narratives, and they don't have to be transhumanist in scope.

Egan and Gibson jump to mind, but I am sure you have already thought of them.

Lawnmower Man
TRON

When I think about it though, I think the Golden Age triology is about the only fully developed post-singularity upload universal culture I have come across. If I am missing some I would love to hear of them.

- s

Re: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies

2012-02-10T16:13:00.000-08:00

On 02/10/2012 11:39 AM, Natasha Vita-More wrote:

Can someone suggest five well-known science fiction authors and their book titles that speculate on cyberspace as an alternative environment for leaving the flesh/meat body behind? You don’t have to like, agree with or support the narratives, and they don’t have to be transhumanist in scope.

Please share this list when you collect it. I would love to read more stories like that. The only ones that spring immediately to mind are:

Permutation City (Egan)
Accelerando (Stross) (parts of it)
Golden Age triology (John C Wright)

- samantha

Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

2012-02-10T15:38:00.000-08:00

>... On Behalf Of BillK
Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 5:43 PM, spike wrote:
>> Expensive? Compared to what? ...
>> This round of bexarotene is on me.

HuffPo article has a bit more info.
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/09/bexarotene-alzheimers-mice-skin-ca
ncer-drug_n_1266430.html>

>...Despite their optimism, scientists say it's important not to overplay
the progress. After all, drugs that work in mice do not necessarily help
humans...

We know. Read on please.

>... Aisen says, "so caution is essential until human studies confirm target
engagement," that is, the removal of amyloid plaques.

Caution is essential. Noted.

>...As ReXceptor moves forward with its clinical trial plans, it will
inevitably have to contend with the demands of the families of Alzheimer's
patients...

Imagine that.

>... Landreth emphasizes that calling your physician after reading an
article like this one is a bad idea. "Don't try this at home," he
cautions...

Please let us contact Dr. Landreth and explain that the phrase "Don't try
this at home" is actually code for "Try this at home." It's another one of
those like when a cop is standing there saying "Move along folks, there is
nothing to see here."

>... "because we don't know we what dose to give, we don't know how
frequently to give it, and there are a few nuances to its administration..."

Noted. You have a standing army of patients who will pay for the medication
themselves and experiment in a thousand different ways because *they have
not one goddam thing to lose* NOTHING! And everything to gain. So hand
over the medication and stand out of the way, because this army is coming,
for we do know this: the current medications are ineffective, and may be
making the problem worse.

>... So one shouldn't be prescribing it off-label." BillK

Prescribing my ass! We aren't asking doctors or anyone else to take
responsibility for this outcome. What I expect of researchers is honesty
and openness. If they find something that looks positive, ANYthing
positive, I want them to report exactly what they saw and don't bother
talking about three to five year clinical trials because too many families
don't have three to five years. We are in a position to cast caution to the
wind and become lab rats, for the alternative is bankruptcy of the family
and gradual death in which even cryonics may not be able to help, as the
brain may be destroyed long before the body stops functioning.

Bexarotene is a straw of hope where currently there is none. I can imagine
the black market for this stuff has gone open loop, and I don't see why not:
the dopers somehow get whatever it is they poke into themselves without
anyone prescribing that damn junk. So why can't the rest of us do whatever
it is they do? Doctors, hand over the medications and stand back, we buy
the risk, and good luck to us.

spike

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Re: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies

2012-02-10T12:39:00.001-08:00

2012/2/10 Natasha Vita-More <natasha@natasha.cc>

Can someone suggest five well-known science fiction authors and their book titles that speculate on cyberspace as an alternative environment for leaving the flesh/meat body behind? You don't have to like, agree with or support the narratives, and they don't have to be transhumanist in scope.

Egan and Gibson jump to mind, but I am sure you have already thought of them.

--
Stefano Vaj

Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

2012-02-10T12:23:00.000-08:00

----- Original Message -----
> From: spike <spike66@att.net>
> To: 'ExI chat list' <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
> Cc:
> Sent: Friday, February 10, 2012 8:25 AM
> Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?
>
> This is one of those cases where there will be volunteers lining up for
> miles for the first study that offers this stuff. Alzheimers patients have
> absolutely nothing to lose, and their lives to regain. None of the articles
> flying about on the internet in the last couple days have said how much it
> costs to make this stuff, but if they would tell me, I would personally kick
> in a few thousand bucks to make a gallon or two, and have a relative start
> drinking it down.
>
> Anyone found any info on how to synthesize bexarotene? The dopers somehow
> make in their home labs meth-a-whatever-that-stuff-is to get stoned, so can
> we grab their chemical expertise and hire them to cook us up some of this
> bexarotene? We will overlook that other business, and this will give them a
> chance to use their chemistry talent for something constructive.

Spike, looking at the chemical structure, it looks it would be time-consuming to manufacture by a DIY. The online prices you are finding are for the pharmaceutical grade stuff precisely dosed for cancer treatment. Rather than have a chemist start from scratch to synthesize bexarotene, I recommend you inquire as to the price of the industrial grade stuff which usually much cheaper and available by the kilogram from chemical companies all over the world. I found two in China that have it in their catalog but you have to inquire as to the price. I think the suppliers are all in China because of patent issues. In any case, I can't imagine how a state-side DIY chemist could do any cheaper or better.

Once you have the bulk product, then hire a drug chemist to QC the product from China and purify it to pharmaceutical grade. I think this would be your cheapest route, Spike.

Here is the information you will need for that:

IUPAC Name: 4-[1-(3,5,5,8,8-pentamethyl-5,6,7,8-tetrahydronaphthalen-2-yl)ethenyl]benzoic acid

CAS Number: 153559-49-0

Suppliers:

Atomax Chem
Address：Huiji 302 Huitingju Bao'An Avenue, ShenZhen, China 518104
Tel：0086 755 33239182
       sales department: 601
       Purchasing department: 602
       Accountant department: 608
Fax: 0086 755 33233381
Email：Atomax.chemicals@gmail.com, info@atomaxchem.com

Amadis Chemical Co., Ltd.
SaiBo Pioneer Park
No.168,Jianding Road,Jianggan District.
310021.Hangzhou,Zhejiang,P.R.China.
Tel:0086-571-89925085
Fax:0086-571-89925065
Email:sales@amadischem.com
Web:www.amadischem.com

Stuart LaForge

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Re: [ExI] call to arms against a terrible disease: was RE: Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

2012-02-10T11:45:00.000-08:00

Nice idea, but the numbers in practice tend not to work.

On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 10:58 AM, spike <spike66@att.net> wrote:
> Now imagine an enormous and grimly dedicated army of citizen scientist
> volunteers, a million proles who raise Alzheimer mice in their homes, and
> run the little bastards regularly, perhaps several times daily.

A million unpaid citizen scientists focused on one project, which requires
their time on a regular basis (not just their computers' time), would be
difficult to recruit even for this - especially if you limited
yourself to the US
(which, given regulations, you might have to). But let us say you had
100,000 - for something like this, that might be doable.

> We have an internet central distribution point which collects the data from
> everywhere, similar in principle to GIMPS and Folding@Home and such.

And yet so very different. GIMPS and Folding@Home are fully automated,
and as such the quality is far better. Furthermore, they only require
computer time; the people running this can forget it's even there. That's
the secret to how they recruit so many people: someone just has to
participate once, and then they're "helping" on a recurring basis by not
doing anything (since these run while the computers idle).

Ask anyone who runs a volunteer organization, how difficult it is to get
recurring labor - even untrained labor, even for the best of causes.

> We
> have some standard food we give the mice, plus some study ingredient. Could
> be bexarotene, or any oddball thing: some medication left over in the
> cabinet, doesn't matter what it is, but let's get enough volunteers to try a
> bunch of things, doesn't even need to be a medication.

You'd have to organize the logistics of sending these out, and then make
sure they're properly identified in the database. If "mystery ingredient
10-THP" turns out to be a winner, you'd better be able to say what that
ingredient is, but if no one bothered to record it properly before the
experiment (when, so far as anyone knew yet, it'd do no better than the
millions of others that had been tried), you're SOL.

Worse, the 99+% of ingredients that didn't work also need to be identified,
so people don't waste time retesting the same old thing. (Sure, lots of
people might volunteer to buy plain old aspirin to test. After the 1,000th
test shows no effect, 10,000 more people running that test really won't
help at all...especially if that's the only test they can think of, that they'd
be able and willing to run.)

> I can envision a setup which could contain about ten mice, cost about
> a few hundred bucks and perhaps 10 a month in recurring costs.

Easily at least $100/month, including raising and feeding the mice. For
one thing, what's your cheese budget for the month, if you anticipate
running at least a test a day, possibly several? For another, what about
shipping around stuff that's worth testing but that no one had lying around
(or sending in to some central place, a mystery compound that needed
identification, so the tests run on it would mean anything)?

That's $10,000,000 in total project budget per month. Even if most of
that comes out of those 100,000 pockets, quite a bit is still going to
have to come from some central source.

> It could
> communicate with the internet,

It? The automated system itself? How does it know which drug it is
testing, or the state of the mouse being tested? A mouse given an
appetite suppressant would be less likely to go for cheese than an
equal one not given anything, and this has nothing to do with
Alzheimer's.

In general, such experiments need to be run in as identical setups
as possible, to screen out unrelated factors. With the setup you are
proposing, it does not seem practical to do this.

Which is not to say that something like this couldn't work - just a
few problems with this embodiment. Maybe you can find a way to
address those challenges?

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[ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies

2012-02-10T11:39:00.000-08:00

Can someone suggest five well-known science fiction authors and their book titles that speculate on cyberspace as an alternative environment for leaving the flesh/meat body behind? You don’t have to like, agree with or support the narratives, and they don’t have to be transhumanist in scope.

Thank you,

Natasha

Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

2012-02-10T11:19:00.000-08:00

On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 5:43 PM, spike wrote:
> Expensive? Compared to what? For those families facing the prospect, the
> heartbreaking emotional drain and staggering expense of putting a family
> member in Alzheimers care, we will grasp wildly at any straw, a bit like
> what I am doing right now. Eugen, in the US, the cost of Alzheimers care is
> often largely carried by the family and it is typically 5000 Euro/month, and
> sometimes more. This can go on for years.
>
> This round of bexarotene is on me.
>

HuffPo article has a bit more info.
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/09/bexarotene-alzheimers-mice-skin-cancer-drug_n_1266430.html>

Landreth and Cramer have formed a company called ReXceptor
Therapeutics that intends to begin a preliminary trial in humans in
the next few months to determine whether the drug crosses the
blood-brain barrier and clears amyloid, as it does in mice. If those
processes occur, clinical trials on the drug's effectiveness in humans
could begin even this year, and they would probably last from 18
months to three years. The drug loses patent protection for cancer
this year, but Case Western has filed for patents for its use in
Alzheimer's.

Despite their optimism, scientists say it's important not to overplay
the progress. After all, drugs that work in mice do not necessarily
help humans. Moreover, the genetically engineered version of mice used
in this study do not recapitulate every aspect of the human disease.
For instance, the mice do not experience the effects of dying neurons
(despite having impaired cognition), and they do not go on to develop
a hallmark characteristic of a later disease stage in humans--namely,
the accretion of so-called tau proteins that seem to abet the killing
of nerve cells. "Transgenic mouse experiments have not reliably
predicted therapeutic effects in humans," Aisen says, "so caution is
essential until human studies confirm target engagement," that is, the
removal of amyloid plaques.

As ReXceptor moves forward with its clinical trial plans, it will
inevitably have to contend with the demands of the families of
Alzheimer's patients. Landreth emphasizes that calling your physician
after reading an article like this one is a bad idea. "Don't try this
at home," he cautions, "because we don't know we what dose to give, we
don't know how frequently to give it, and there are a few nuances to
its administration. So one shouldn't be prescribing it off-label." It
is also unclear whether a drug like bexarotene would work at a middle
or advanced stage of the disease, when neurodegenerative processes
have already set in.

------------

BillK

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[ExI] call to arms against a terrible disease: was RE: Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

2012-02-10T10:58:00.000-08:00

>... On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes
Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 8:25 AM, spike <spike66@att.net> wrote:
>> Anyone found any info on how to synthesize bexarotene? The dopers
somehow make in their home labs meth-a-whatever-that-stuff-is ...

>...The equipment and skill needed to reliably produce good quality
medicinal drugs, are rarely to be found among those making cheap, black
market recreational drugs.

OK skip that idea. Looks like there are several pharma-products available
that contain bexarotene, so the homebrew isn't necessary in any case.

However this all gives me one hell of an idea.

Suppose there is some odd chemical somewhere which does dissolve amyloids in
the brain. Do we wait years or decades for some obscure lab to stumble onto
it? Perhaps no one ever does. However, all is not lost.

Imagine some standard memory test for mice, a maze of some sort perhaps,
where ordinary proles with no scientific training could use, by simply
putting the mice in one end and noting the time to find the cheese. Imagine
cheap detectors at various points in the maze, which for these purposes can
be every bit as simple and cheap as a small magnet you glue onto or leg band
onto your mice, with copper loops in various hallways, then software which
takes the results and reduces the mouse's score to one or two numbers, such
as time and error rate.

Now imagine an enormous and grimly dedicated army of citizen scientist
volunteers, a million proles who raise Alzheimer mice in their homes, and
run the little bastards regularly, perhaps several times daily.

We have an internet central distribution point which collects the data from
everywhere, similar in principle to GIMPS and Folding@Home and such. We
have some standard food we give the mice, plus some study ingredient. Could
be bexarotene, or any oddball thing: some medication left over in the
cabinet, doesn't matter what it is, but let's get enough volunteers to try a
bunch of things, doesn't even need to be a medication.

We could design a standardized maze which has living quarters, a maze which
lets the mice through to get a reward, then circles back to the living
quarters, all of it isolated well enough that anyone can set it up in the
garage and need not have the experimenters directly contact the mice in any
way. I can envision a setup which could contain about ten mice, cost about
a few hundred bucks and perhaps 10 a month in recurring costs. It could
communicate with the internet, send the data to a volunteer group who grok
how to extract a signal from the noise. The home volunteer citizen
scientist would be responsible only for supplying food and the one test
ingredient.

Have we anyone here who knows how to organize something like that? Or knows
someone who knows? I think I can design a standard mouse maze that can be
produced in quantity. I think I can do the instrumentation to detect a
mouse magnet running by, and the software to collect the results.

It could be there is some medication sitting quietly in the cabinet, waiting
waiting waiting for someone to discover that it works against Alzheimers, as
millions suffer the agony of losing their life's memories, their savings,
their personhood, their everything.

spike

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Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

2012-02-10T10:09:00.000-08:00

On 10 February 2012 18:43, spike <spike66@att.net> wrote:

Expensive? Compared to what?

Actual manufacturing costs? :-)

--
Stefano Vaj

Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

2012-02-10T09:43:00.000-08:00

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl
Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 08:25:25AM -0800, spike wrote:

>> Anyone found any info on how to synthesize bexarotene? The dopers
somehow

>...Looks easy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bexarotene

...

>...It should probably be commercially available...

It is!

http://targretin.com/

>...https://www.google.com/search?q=bexarotene+buy however somewhat
expensive...

Expensive? Compared to what? For those families facing the prospect, the
heartbreaking emotional drain and staggering expense of putting a family
member in Alzheimers care, we will grasp wildly at any straw, a bit like
what I am doing right now. Eugen, in the US, the cost of Alzheimers care is
often largely carried by the family and it is typically 5000 Euro/month, and
sometimes more. This can go on for years.

This round of bexarotene is on me.

The warnings are mostly to do with pregnancy, which I can assure you is not
a factor in this particular family member's life. OK, so I have sent this
around to the fam, and we are getting the goddam hell on this right away.
The clock is ticking loudly.

spike

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Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

2012-02-10T09:15:00.000-08:00

On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 08:25:25AM -0800, spike wrote:

> Anyone found any info on how to synthesize bexarotene? The dopers somehow

Looks easy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bexarotene

> make in their home labs meth-a-whatever-that-stuff-is to get stoned, so can
> we grab their chemical expertise and hire them to cook us up some of this
> bexarotene? We will overlook that other business, and this will give them a

It should probably be commercially available. In fact it is:
https://www.google.com/search?q=bexarotene+buy however somewhat
expensive.

> chance to use their chemistry talent for something constructive.

They have no chemistry talent, with the exception of some people
who post on Erowid.
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Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

2012-02-10T09:13:00.000-08:00

>... On Behalf Of spike
Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

... On Behalf Of Jeff Davis
Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

>...Call me a silly blue-sky optimist. At first I thought, "Is it April
1st?" Then, "Holy sh*t!"
>...Drug quickly reverses Alzheimer's symptoms in mice
>...http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-02/cwru-dqr020512.php
>...Best, Jeff Davis

>... We will overlook that other business, and this will give them a chance
to use their chemistry talent for something constructive... spike

...and furthermore...

We often hear a comment about how we should be cautious about medical
studies on mice, how they aren't necessarily applicable yakkity yak and mice
are differ from humans bla bla. Well, note that nearly all these kinds of
studies have to do with cancer research. We know cancer is a bunch of
different things, and we know mice are different. But other beast studies
not related to cancer are very helpful: in areas other than cancer, humans
are physiologically more similar to the other mammals. For instance, the
same diabetes drugs for humans will help most other mammals with that
disease.

Beast brains are more similar to ours than their cancer cells are similar to
ours, at the neuron and synapse level. So I would argue Bexarotene is
worth a try even if we don't know everything. In this case, humans would be
the ideal lab beast, because we already have an infrastructure in place to
assess the efficacy of the medication: family members to observe results,
memory tests in the form of everyday activities, a ready control group
(those who refuse to take any medication) everything we need to test this
stuff.

Let's get on it! Lets go! DAVIA DAVAI DAVIA!

spike

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Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

2012-02-10T08:49:00.000-08:00

On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 8:25 AM, spike <spike66@att.net> wrote:
> Anyone found any info on how to synthesize bexarotene? The dopers somehow
> make in their home labs meth-a-whatever-that-stuff-is to get stoned, so can
> we grab their chemical expertise and hire them to cook us up some of this
> bexarotene? We will overlook that other business, and this will give them a
> chance to use their chemistry talent for something constructive.

The equipment and skill needed to reliably produce good quality medicinal
drugs, are rarely to be found among those making cheap, black market
recreational drugs.

A better source would be DIY biotech enthusiasts. Similar mindset, better
quality, little or no law enforcement interference.

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Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

2012-02-10T08:25:00.000-08:00

... On Behalf Of Jeff Davis
Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

This is one of those cases where there will be volunteers lining up for
miles for the first study that offers this stuff. Alzheimers patients have
absolutely nothing to lose, and their lives to regain. None of the articles
flying about on the internet in the last couple days have said how much it
costs to make this stuff, but if they would tell me, I would personally kick
in a few thousand bucks to make a gallon or two, and have a relative start
drinking it down.

Anyone found any info on how to synthesize bexarotene? The dopers somehow
make in their home labs meth-a-whatever-that-stuff-is to get stoned, so can
we grab their chemical expertise and hire them to cook us up some of this
bexarotene? We will overlook that other business, and this will give them a
chance to use their chemistry talent for something constructive.

spike

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[ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

2012-02-10T07:58:00.000-08:00

Call me a silly blue-sky optimist. At first I thought, "Is it April
1st?" Then, "Holy sh*t!"

Enjoy.

Drug quickly reverses Alzheimer's symptoms in mice

Case Western Reserve researchers discover FDA-approved drug rapidly
clears amyloid from the brain and reverses cognitive defects

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-02/cwru-dqr020512.php

Best, Jeff Davis

Re: [ExI] Functionalism and Lakoff

2012-02-10T02:52:00.000-08:00

On 10 February 2012 02:39, Henry Rivera <hrivera@alumni.virginia.edu> wrote:

This topic brings to mind the phenomenon of when amputees have pain in their missing phantom limbs and are able to relieve the pain sometimes using "mirror therapy." http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_box
I think this lends support to idea that the present-day brain to be functional/comfortable/balanced needs at least to have the perception of (feedback indicating) embodiment. I'd extrapolate that in whatever medium the essence of our perception exists, we may require the perception of being embodied in an avatar. My belief obviously is that the essence of our perception is separable from the body in principle but requires at least the feedback mimicking a body to function properly.

Yes. I think that major amputations may suggest what "changes" in one's identity when losing increasing parts of one's body without having them replaced by transplants or prostheses.

Moreover, the ex-istence, the "being out there", in the world (or at least "a" world) is considered by some as essential to any accurate emulation of anthropomorphic or even teriomorphic intelligences (so that AI would be basically a robotic, rather than a computational, issue).

In the article I have circulated the link to yesterday. I remark however that much of a human's complexity is in his or her brain, so that a full-body emulation should be just marginally more difficult than a brain-only one. If we crack the first problem, nothing indicates that the second would be a show stopper...

--
Stefano Vaj

Re: [ExI] Functionalism and Lakoff

2012-02-09T17:39:00.000-08:00

This topic brings to mind the phenomenon of when amputees have pain in their missing phantom limbs and are able to relieve the pain sometimes using "mirror therapy." http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_box
I think this lends support to idea that the present-day brain to be functional/comfortable/balanced needs at least to have the perception of (feedback indicating) embodiment. I'd extrapolate that in whatever medium the essence of our perception exists, we may require the perception of being embodied in an avatar. My belief obviously is that the essence of our perception is separable from the body in principle but requires at least the feedback mimicking a body to function properly.

-Henry

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[ExI] Everything You Always Wanted to Know About AI* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)

2012-02-09T15:57:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Catarina Lamm, an English translation of my paper Artificious Intelligences, which has just been published in the fifth issue of Divenire, the only continental peer-reviewed theoretical journal about transhumanism, is now online here.

This brief essay summarises the radically posthumanist views of AI which are discussed by several multidisciplinary angles in the rest of this issue of Divenire, available in print for all those who understand Italian.

Enjoy! :-)

--
Stefano Vaj

Re: [ExI] Fwd: Embodiment

2012-02-09T13:16:00.000-08:00

Good article. Thanks Jeff!

Natasha Vita-More
PhD Researcher, Univ. of Plymouth, UK
Chairman, Humanity+
Co-Editor, The Transhumanist Reader

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Davis
Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2012 10:59 AM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Embodiment

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27553/?nlid=nldly&nld=2012-02-07

Best, Jeff Davis

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[ExI] Fwd: Embodiment

2012-02-09T08:58:00.000-08:00

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27553/?nlid=nldly&nld=2012-02-07

Best, Jeff Davis

Re: [ExI] Eating (Was: Drinking)

2012-02-09T06:24:00.000-08:00

On 9 February 2012 13:58, Ben Zaiboc <bbenzai@yahoo.com> wrote:

Amino acids and fatty acids trigger satiation hormones that carbs don't.

Apparently, a relatively high caloric input composed only by proteins and fats does not really makes one to become overweight because the relevant biochemical triggers are not activated, so it is at worst a waste (Atkins's or Eades's diets tell you that if you check what you eat you do not really have to checkl how much you eat).

But I suspect that fats, when they are not ingested together with carbs, activate self-limiting reactions. Try to eat butter by spoonfuls on an empty stomach, and you do not go very far. Replace it with bread and butter, and you end up having not just added the bread, but also eaten a lot more butter than you would have otherwise.

--
Stefano Vaj

Re: [ExI] Functionalism and Lakoff

2012-02-09T06:05:00.000-08:00

2012/2/8 Natasha Vita-More <natasha@natasha.cc>

Has anyone read George Lakoff's writings on functionalism? His essay "Philosophy in the Flesh" is Brockman's The Mind: Leading Scientists Explore the Brain, dismisses functionalism as Putman's former interest, which he later dismissed and argued against. Lakoff claims that the mind is studied in terms of its cognitive functions independently of the brain and body. How can this be possible? If the mind is what the brain does (More) and the brain is an organ of the body, then how can Lakoff make this claim? It seems absurd to me and misleading.

Mmhhh. A "weaker" form of functionalism might however just imply that we can study - and perhaps replicate - cognitive functions under a "black box" approach.

Take for instance a microprocessor. If I copy the relevant lithographic masks I am in breach of the relevant special IP rights.

But I can also map its responses to all possible inputs, and (try and) re-design a functionally equivalent processor that will be compatible with the first, and exhibit its features entirely irrespective of the internal structure and working of the first processor.

Of course, speaking of minds, nothing guarantees that such an attempt is going to be successful, and - even more importantly - that I am going to end up with something with a performance even vaguely comparable with the original system, that is the organic brain of which I am trying to emulate the functions.

--
Stefano Vaj

Re: [ExI] Eating (Was: Drinking)

2012-02-09T05:31:00.000-08:00

>>
>> An alternative would be a relatively high fat but low
>> calorie diet: go ahead
>> and eat your egg mcmuffin, but have only one. Then go
>> ahead and eat a
>> burger, but make it a small one, then stop! That's it,
>> enough calories for
>> that day.
>

Consider Rabbit Starvation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_starvation

Regards,
MB

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Re: [ExI] Eating (Was: Drinking)

2012-02-09T04:58:00.000-08:00

"spike" <spike66@att.net> wrote:

> >... On Behalf Of Ben Zaiboc

> >...It's no paradox that eating fatty food doesn't make
> you fat, and doesn't
> give you heart disease. You don't have to be French to
> prove it. You just
> have to stop being scared of dietary fat. And stop
> taking notice of the
> USDA. I don't think it's a stretch to say that they
> have actually caused
> the obesity epidemic. Ben Zaiboc
>
>
>
> Ben I think you are right. I come at this not from
> understanding diet
> theory, but rather from having stumbled onto an observation
> accidentally.

[Story ensues]

> I think this trait of craving fat has evolved into
> humans. If this is
> correct, it explains why so many weight losers fail: the
> dieter attempts a
> diet too low in fat, which creates a persistent craving
> which eventually
> overpowers all reason and the most iron clad
> willpower. Eons of
> evolution-selected instinct brutally crushes everything in
> its path, up to
> and including the will to live.
>
> An alternative would be a relatively high fat but low
> calorie diet: go ahead
> and eat your egg mcmuffin, but have only one. Then go
> ahead and eat a
> burger, but make it a small one, then stop! That's it,
> enough calories for
> that day.

That's interesting. I hadn't really considered the psychological effects of a low-fat diet, but it corresponds to my experience too (or rather that of a friend who is a bit of a 'low-fat' fanatic, and when exercising, especially when training for something like a triathlon, is frequently ravenous). I'd just add that a high-fat (and especially high-protein) meal actually makes it a lot easier to stop eating. Amino acids and fatty acids trigger satiation hormones that carbs don't.

Ben Zaiboc

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Re: [ExI] Functionalism and Lakoff

2012-02-09T01:59:00.000-08:00

On Wed, Feb 08, 2012 at 09:27:44PM -0500, Mike Dougherty wrote:

> Do the proponents of neural computation discount testosterone or
> adrenaline as body chemicals? Their impact on the brain is pretty

Why would you deliberately build a bad model, and then expect it work?

> profound - but is that because the body is the sensorimotor apparatus
> that the brain uses to interact with the world? If so, then wouldn't
> neurons-only be artificial in the same way that computer programs
> doing exactly as they are programmed to do is considered artificial
> intelligence or behavior? I'm thinking of the rat brain robots;
> they're neurons but without biological bodies.

Anything practical has to be embodied. Isolated neuron cultures
are at mercy of researchers, and will go into the biowaste bin once their
work is done. Useless things don't stick around in the real world.

> I think making this distinction between brain and body will be
> continuously redefined. It won't scale well as people end up sharing
> telepresence devices, projecting their concept of the self into new
> containers or conversely as "my" identity is running concurrently on

It's an illusion, albeit a useful one. Detachable sensoriums which
can be relocated at relativistic speed do have their uses.

> multiple machines with multiple perspectives. This doesn't even need
> far-future technology to envision - several ustreams coming together
> form a sense of security around my stuff. To the extent that I am
> able to reach into those spaces either by awareness (read only) or by
> robotic manipulators, I could claim to be present. Are these
> assistive technologies my body? How far apart does one's prosthetic

Tools are being incorporated into your internal body maps, so in
a sense they're part of you. On the other hand, they're like crutches.
Your avatar is left slackjawed and with virtual drool as you have
your massive coronary in the ergonomic chair in front of your
battlestation.

> need to be before it is no longer considered part of the local body
> and becomes part of the extended body?
>
> Good topic Natasha, thanks :)

--
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org
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Re: [ExI] Planets galore!

2012-02-08T22:29:00.000-08:00

What an exiting theory! This is one heck of a disaster movie in the making
too, step aside Bruce Willis! :0)

Jeremy

Jeremy Webb Heathen Vitki
Tel: (07758) 966076
e-Mail: jedwebb@hotmail.com
http://jeremywebb301.tripod.com/vikssite/index.html

On 08/02/2012 16:32, "BillK" <pharos@gmail.com> wrote:

> Nomadic Planets May Swarm the Galaxy
> <http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.2687>
> <http://kipac.stanford.edu/collab/research/highlights/tidbits2012/nomads>
>
> We estimate that there may be up to ~10^5 compact objects in the mass
> range 10^{-8} -10^{-2} solar mass per main sequence star that are
> unbound to a host star in the Galaxy. We refer to these objects as
> nomads; in the literature a subset of these are sometimes called
> free-floating or rogue planets. Our estimate for the number of
> Galactic nomads is consistent with a smooth extrapolation of the mass
> function of unbound objects above the Jupiter-mass scale, the stellar
> mass density limit, and the metallicity of the interstellar medium.
>
> Complete pdf file
> <http://arxiv.org/pdf/1201.2687>
>
> ===============
>
>
> Can there really be up to 100,000 wandering planets for *every* star?
> That's a mind-boggling big number of planets.
>
>
> BillK
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>

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Re: [ExI] Functionalism and Lakoff

2012-02-08T18:27:00.000-08:00

2012/2/8 Natasha Vita-More <natasha@natasha.cc>:
> We have already discussed embodiment vs. disembodiment and the consensus is
> that we will exist in some type of system/substrate that can be seen or
> understood as a body (or new interpretation of body). If functionalism is
> the most appropriate position to take in this regard, why would
> functionalism claim to be devoid of a body? This brings us back to the
> annoying issue of disembodiment, which Lakoff claims to be the objective of
> and metaphor for neural computation.

I would interpret the functionalism separation of brain and body to
attempt to narrow the "mind" to computation of physical structures
solely in and of the brain.

Do the proponents of neural computation discount testosterone or
adrenaline as body chemicals? Their impact on the brain is pretty
profound - but is that because the body is the sensorimotor apparatus
that the brain uses to interact with the world? If so, then wouldn't
neurons-only be artificial in the same way that computer programs
doing exactly as they are programmed to do is considered artificial
intelligence or behavior? I'm thinking of the rat brain robots;
they're neurons but without biological bodies.

I think making this distinction between brain and body will be
continuously redefined. It won't scale well as people end up sharing
telepresence devices, projecting their concept of the self into new
containers or conversely as "my" identity is running concurrently on
multiple machines with multiple perspectives. This doesn't even need
far-future technology to envision - several ustreams coming together
form a sense of security around my stuff. To the extent that I am
able to reach into those spaces either by awareness (read only) or by
robotic manipulators, I could claim to be present. Are these
assistive technologies my body? How far apart does one's prosthetic
need to be before it is no longer considered part of the local body
and becomes part of the extended body?

Good topic Natasha, thanks :)

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Re: [ExI] Drinking

2012-02-08T16:06:00.000-08:00

On 02/08/12 14:41, Kelly Anderson wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 1:59 AM, Kryonica <kryonica@gmail.com> wrote:
>> This morning on BBC news "too much drinking" is once more all the
>> rage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16869618
>>
>> Does anyone know how well founded scientifically is all this talk
>> about for instance increased risk of mouth cancer if one glass of
>> wine regularly turns into two or three? I get suspicious with
>> these general statements (after being repeatedly reminded by Anders
>> that they have to be taken with a pinch of salt and that one must
>> always have a look at the real scientific article behind them), and
>> all the more so because I like my red wine and have read elsewhere
>> (on the BBC!) that it is good for me :-/ The BBC article is full
>> of very sweeping statements indeed that would require some expert
>> reading to sort the wheat from the chaff.
>>
>
> I understand that even a little alcohol does increase the incidence
> of breast cancer, but I can't point to the specific research.
> However, it was reinforced recently by my girl friend's doctor (while
> getting a mammogram).
>
> There is a lot of anti-alcohol sentiment where I live (Utah), so it
> is difficult to separate out what is real and what is not.
>
> Drinking while pregnant, even in relatively small amounts does
> increase the chances of FAS for the fetus. That's not a fun one.
>
> I don't think anyone would argue for large amounts of alcohol. That
> clearly does liver damage and lots of other bad stuff. Had a friend
> of a friend die last week from that stuff.
>
> There are of course the reports that the antioxidants in red wine
> helping the French. The question is whether you could get
> antioxidants some other way... and I don't think we know a lot about
> the health hazards of just a little alcohol. There are some
> indications that longevity is better in people who never use any
> alcohol, but since the people in those studies also didn't typically
> smoke, it's hard to draw a very strong conclusion.
>

I thought the epidemiological studies about alcohol were relatively
solid: light drinkers live longer than non-drinkers, and whether it is
wine or beer or anything else doesn't make a difference. Higher odds of
cancer, more than compensating lower odds of cardiovascular death.

Meta-analysis reviews:
http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d671 (0.87x)
http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/166/22/2437 (0.82x)
http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2010/12/10/jech.2010.121830

None of this proves causation, and there are many suggested mechanisms
of action not related to anti-oxidants.
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[ExI] Functionalism and Lakoff

2012-02-08T13:01:00.000-08:00

Has anyone read George Lakoff’s writings on functionalism? His essay “Philosophy in the Flesh” is Brockman’s The Mind: Leading Scientists Explore the Brain, dismisses functionalism as Putman’s former interest, which he later dismissed and argued against. Lakoff claims that the mind is studied in terms of its cognitive functions independently of the brain and body. How can this be possible? If the mind is what the brain does (More) and the brain is an organ of the body, then how can Lakoff make this claim? It seems absurd to me and misleading.

We have already discussed embodiment vs. disembodiment and the consensus is that we will exist in some type of system/substrate that can be seen or understood as a body (or new interpretation of body). If functionalism is the most appropriate position to take in this regard, why would functionalism claim to be devoid of a body? This brings us back to the annoying issue of disembodiment, which Lakoff claims to be the objective of and metaphor for neural computation.

Natasha

Natasha Vita-More
PhD Researcher, Univ. of Plymouth, UK
Chairman, Humanity+

Co-Editor, The Transhumanist Reader

Re: [ExI] Drinking

2012-02-08T11:13:00.000-08:00

>... On Behalf Of Ben Zaiboc
>...

>...It's no paradox that eating fatty food doesn't make you fat, and doesn't
give you heart disease. You don't have to be French to prove it. You just
have to stop being scared of dietary fat. And stop taking notice of the
USDA. I don't think it's a stretch to say that they have actually caused
the obesity epidemic. Ben Zaiboc

Ben I think you are right. I come at this not from understanding diet
theory, but rather from having stumbled onto an observation accidentally.

Story: My bride and I hiked on the west side of Mount Rainier thrice on a
stretch that requires three camping nights. First trip, carried too much
food, so our packs were too heavy. Second trip, same trail, carried not
quite enough, so we devoured the last crumb of our reserves the last day:
dangerous. Third trip, summer 2003, we scored some back country permits,
which lengthened the trip to four camping nights and increased the distance
about 15 miles. We needed to lighten our packs, so we went with all freeze
dried foods, which are zero fat. So for five days, we were burning calories
like crazy, with sufficient calories but insufficient fat (insufficient as
in zero.)

On the last day of that trip only about 5 miles from the end of the trail,
we came to a bunch of trees that had blown down across the path, creating an
obstacle that ended up taking a couple hours to climb through. We had
sufficient food reserves to camp a fifth night and hike out the next day,
which would have been the safer way to go probably, but our craving for fat
drove me to decide to clamber over the piles of trees (dangerous to do while
tired) and hike out that evening. Our craving for fat overpowered our sense
of reason, ordinarily very sound and cautious.

I think this trait of craving fat has evolved into humans. If this is
correct, it explains why so many weight losers fail: the dieter attempts a
diet too low in fat, which creates a persistent craving which eventually
overpowers all reason and the most iron clad willpower. Eons of
evolution-selected instinct brutally crushes everything in its path, up to
and including the will to live.

An alternative would be a relatively high fat but low calorie diet: go ahead
and eat your egg mcmuffin, but have only one. Then go ahead and eat a
burger, but make it a small one, then stop! That's it, enough calories for
that day.

spike

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[ExI] RES: Planets galore!

2012-02-08T11:11:00.001-08:00

<BillK> We estimate that there may be up to ~10^5 compact objects in the
mass
range 10^{-8} -10^{-2} solar mass per main sequence star that are unbound
to a host star in the Galaxy. We refer to these objects as nomads; in the
literature a subset of these are sometimes called free-floating or rogue
planets. Our estimate for the number of Galactic nomads is consistent with
a
smooth extrapolation of the mass function of unbound objects above the
Jupiter-mass scale, the stellar mass density limit, and the metallicity of
the
interstellar medium.
</BillK>

This makes perfect sense to me. Considering that a star happens when enough
gas is gathered in a sphere to ignite nuclear fusion, it makes sense that
the amount of failed stars must be bigger than the amount of successful
ones. They just couldn't gather enough gas.

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Re: [ExI] Planets galore!

2012-02-08T10:36:00.001-08:00

>... On Behalf Of BillK
Subject: [ExI] Planets galore!

Nomadic Planets May Swarm the Galaxy
<http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.2687>
<http://kipac.stanford.edu/collab/research/highlights/tidbits2012/nomads>

>>...We estimate that there may be up to ~10^5 compact objects in the
>>mass
range 10^{-8} -10^{-2} solar mass per main sequence star that are unbound to
a host star in the Galaxy... Complete pdf file
<http://arxiv.org/pdf/1201.2687>

===============

>>...Can there really be up to 100,000 wandering planets for *every* star?
That's a mind-boggling big number of planets...BillK
_______________________________________________

...

>...The Strigari paper is very interesting and useful: their theory should
be testable with current instrumentation using short timescale microlensing
events. I hope they are right BillK: in the long run, more metal in the
galaxy is a good thing... spike

_______________________________________________

WOW that Strigari et.al. paper is exciting! This is one of those rare
opportunities where a model can be verified in a reasonably short time. The
WFIRST is scheduled for launch in 2020:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Field_Infrared_Survey_Telescope

Is this a great time to be alive or what?

spike

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Re: [ExI] Drinking

2012-02-08T10:36:00.000-08:00

> From: "spike" <spike66@att.net>
>
> >... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson
> ...
>
> There are of course the reports that the antioxidants in red
> wine helping
> the French... -Kelly
>
>
> Kelly, I am assuming you saw this:
>
> http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/01/11/red-wine-researcher-accused-falsify
> ing-data-on-health-benefits/
>
> I haven't heard the rest of the story, but the health
> benefits of red wine
> are again being re-examined carefully. One of the
> major researchers
> reporting positive results has been accused of falsifying
> data.

That 'French paradox' thing should have the status of an urban myth by now.

It's never been about the wine, it's about the fact that the China study has been thoroughly debunked, yet people still continue to believe its message.

It's no paradox that eating fatty food doesn't make you fat, and doesn't give you heart disease. You don't have to be French to prove it. You just have to stop being scared of dietary fat. And stop taking notice of the USDA. I don't think it's a stretch to say that they have actually caused the obesity epidemic.

Ben Zaiboc

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Re: [ExI] Drinking

2012-02-08T10:22:00.000-08:00

On 8 February 2012 18:00, Eugen Leitl <eugen@leitl.org> wrote:

Supercentenarians are a different breed than ordinary people. The more we
look the more obvious it becomes. I'm not sure this can be packaged into
a simple therapeutic (supercentenarian mimic) vector anytime soon, even
should we know what makes them so different, which we don't.

Yes. If a supercentenarian used to like to wear pink socks, the most we can tell is that pink socks are compatible with longevity.

Mimics of single traits is certainly not guaranteed to deliver, and even if a factor actually plays some role in one's longevity, this might have simply to do with the expression of a different genetic endowment from your own.

--
Stefano Vaj

Re: [ExI] Drinking

2012-02-08T09:23:00.001-08:00

I like your grand-mother and am tempted to follow her recipe for longevity with wine and tea. Difficult though to avoid water with exercise and when temperatures are extreme - but then I suppose you grandmother did not exercise: it might have taken a few years off her life span ;-D

On 8 Feb 2012, at 16:28, Stefano Vaj wrote:

On the anedoctical side, my grand-mother died at age 104, and for the last forty or fifty years or her life she did not drink any water. Red wine at meals, essentially, plus an occasional tea at 5 pm, say, once or twice a week. Very little other liquids, but those contained in food.

Re: [ExI] Drinking

2012-02-08T09:00:00.000-08:00

On Wed, Feb 08, 2012 at 05:28:44PM +0100, Stefano Vaj wrote:

> On the anedoctical side, my grand-mother died at age 104, and for the last
> forty or fifty years or her life she did not drink any water. Red wine at
> meals, essentially, plus an occasional tea at 5 pm, say, once or twice a
> week. Very little other liquids, but those contained in food.
>
> Another individual who spent his entire life in Sardinia and died at 105+
> reportedly had the same lifestyle .

Supercentenarians are a different breed than ordinary people. The more we
look the more obvious it becomes. I'm not sure this can be packaged into
a simple therapeutic (supercentenarian mimic) vector anytime soon, even
should we know what makes them so different, which we don't.
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Re: [ExI] Planets galore!

2012-02-08T08:57:00.000-08:00

>... On Behalf Of BillK
Subject: [ExI] Planets galore!

Nomadic Planets May Swarm the Galaxy
<http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.2687>
<http://kipac.stanford.edu/collab/research/highlights/tidbits2012/nomads>

>>...We estimate that there may be up to ~10^5 compact objects in the mass
range 10^{-8} -10^{-2} solar mass per main sequence star that are unbound to
a host star in the Galaxy... Complete pdf file
<http://arxiv.org/pdf/1201.2687>

===============

>...Can there really be up to 100,000 wandering planets for *every* star?
That's a mind-boggling big number of planets...BillK
_______________________________________________

It sure seems like there would be more than one nomad in orbit around the
sun outside the orbit plane of the planets. We have Pluto/Charon which are
thought to be Kuiper belt objects, that are out of the plane, but those are
the only ones. If there are really that many nomads we should have several
of them in the neighborhood, off the plane. I haven't done the calcs on
this, but their notion might help explain the orbit velocity of stars as a
function of distance from the center of the galaxy.

The Strigari paper is very interesting and useful: their theory should be
testable with current instrumentation using short timescale microlensing
events.

I hope they are right BillK: in the long run, more metal in the galaxy is a
good thing.

spike

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Re: [ExI] Planets galore!

2012-02-08T08:51:00.000-08:00

----- Original Message -----
> From: BillK <pharos@gmail.com>
> To: Extropy Chat <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org>
> Cc:
> Sent: Wednesday, February 8, 2012 8:32 AM
> Subject: [ExI] Planets galore!
>
> Nomadic Planets May Swarm the Galaxy
> <http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.2687>
> <http://kipac.stanford.edu/collab/research/highlights/tidbits2012/nomads>
>
> We estimate that there may be up to ~10^5 compact objects in the mass
> range 10^{-8} -10^{-2} solar mass per main sequence star that are
> unbound to a host star in the Galaxy. We refer to these objects as
> nomads; in the literature a subset of these are sometimes called
> free-floating or rogue planets. Our estimate for the number of
> Galactic nomads is consistent with a smooth extrapolation of the mass
> function of unbound objects above the Jupiter-mass scale, the stellar
> mass density limit, and the metallicity of the interstellar medium.
>
> Complete pdf file
> http://arxiv.org/pdf/1201.2687

That would be consistent with the MACHO model of dark matter to explain the rotation curve of galaxies.

Stuart LaForge

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson

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