Narrow-Bandwidth Television Association

harry dalek wrote:

Viewmaster wrote:But verification will come one day methinks. If we reveal our location, let's hope they are a friendly bunch of 'lads and lassies'.

Or Hermaphrodites ! that don't look like this Zanti misfit i think we would not get a long with an intelligent insect .

If intelligence can reach us they must be more advanced than we are.

Would an insect with a smaller brain than ours ever become so advanced?

Can an advanced brain be made of such materials as to be smaller
than our own, yet so much more advanced in
space travel then we are?

I would expect our 'visitors', if any one day, to be a loada big 'eads.
Or, "Two heads are better than one."

To take a lead from Harry, perhaps The Outer Limits supports your view, although this "alien" is one of us - namely Gwyllm Griffiths (played by good old David McCallum) after 1 million years of evolution.

“Where are we going? Life, the timeless, mysterious gift, is still evolving. What wonders, or terrors, does evolution hold in store for us in the next ten thousand years? In a million? In six million? Perhaps the answer lies in this old house in this old and misty valley."

gary wrote: Life, the timeless, mysterious gift, is still evolving. ."

It always saddens and annoys me when some claim that evolution doesn't exist.
When all around them humanity is forever struggling to develop yet more types of antibiotics in order to overcome
the constantly evolving bacteria.

Yes and this particular episode of The Outer Limits was actually censored by the AmBC for promoting Darwinism - although I think the main objection was when his "lady friend" reversed the settings and he was scripted to regress into a protoplasm - they didn't like that....

Just wait until the "Big Crunch" and time reverses - then they'll be sorry... whoops this is an "open universe" thread - I might get thrown out for suggesting that!


CORRECTION: I have just realised this is not (necessarily) an "open universe" thread - it was just that trouble maker Albert taking me off topic again (as if I needed prompting)

gary wrote:However, in reference to a "cold universe" it is important to realise that the average temperature of the universe will always be the same (if it is indeed expanding unendingly - if it isn't there are other implications) - if it wasn't then the law of conservation of energy would be violated.

Surely, it's not the average temperature that needs to remain the same. The clue is in the name "conservation of energy". As the universe expands, the energy is spread over a larger area and the average temperature decreases.

Note, for instance, the cosmic microwave background radiation. This started off unbelievably hot, but has now cooled to within a few degrees of absolute zero through the expansion of the universe.

Dave Moll wrote:Surely, it's not the average temperature that needs to remain the same. The clue is in the name "conservation of energy". As the universe expands, the energy is spread over a larger area and the average temperature decreases.

Note, for instance, the cosmic microwave background radiation. This started off unbelievably hot, but has now cooled to within a few degrees of absolute zero through the expansion of the universe.

True but the CMBR is in thermodynamic equilibrium and therefore can be neglected when referring to "heat death". It is the average temperature of the localised "hot" spots (e.g. stars etc.) I am referring to.

BTW Albert never mentioned "heat death" but I assume that is what he was referring to. This is when, due to entropy, all those "hot" spots disperse into the surrounding "soup" such that there are no longer any temperature differentials, i.e. no energy transfer (no heat).

Viewmaster wrote:

harry dalek wrote:

Viewmaster wrote:But verification will come one day methinks. If we reveal our location, let's hope they are a friendly bunch of 'lads and lassies'.

Or Hermaphrodites ! that don't look like this Zanti misfit i think we would not get a long with an intelligent insect .

If intelligence can reach us they must be more advanced than we are.

Would an insect with a smaller brain than ours ever become so advanced?

Can an advanced brain be made of such materials as to be smaller
than our own, yet so much more advanced in
space travel then we are?

I would expect our 'visitors', if any one day, to be a loada big 'eads.
Or, "Two heads are better than one."

Some spiders can problem solve, insects and such are only limited in size due to oxygen levels in the earths atmosphere i suppose the way they breath they were much bigger in earths past ..bees and ants do things that seem intelligent ..i am not sure size matters for brain size its self more the shape size in different parts of the brain reason elephants don't rule the earth

Yes its a big universe i expect what ever you could think out is out there some where perhaps it will be there bad luck if they ever meet us we have never been to kind to any thing different to us we either eat it or kill it ...

harry dalek wrote:Some spiders can problem solve, insects and such are only limited in size due to oxygen levels in the earths atmosphere i suppose the way they breath they were much bigger in earths past ..bees and ants do things that seem intelligent ..

"Seem" is the operative word here. It's all blind instinct isn't it with no reasoning going on at all ?

It's true that some creatures perform, what to us seem amazing tasks......just see how a simple garden spider, overnight, can weave a tracery to support a web across a huge expanse of 5ft or so, as compared with hits size. (Some 350 ft span on our terms.)

That's not clever nor intelligent, but just blind evolutionay instict for self preservation of it and its species, isn't it? There is no original thought process going on.

But I guess it's all down to how one defines 'intelligent.'

Certainly, some spiders do appear more intelligent than some folk I see on TV or meet in the street

Viewmaster wrote:"Seem" is the operative word here. It's all blind instinct isn't it with no reasoning going on at all ?

It's true that some creatures perform, what to us seem amazing tasks......just see how a simple garden spider, overnight, can weave a tracery to support a web across a huge expanse of 5ft or so, as compared with hits size. (Some 350 ft span on our terms.)

That's not clever nor intelligent, but just blind evolutionay instict for self preservation of it and its species, isn't it? There is no original thought process going on.

But I guess it's all down to how one defines 'intelligent.'

Certainly, some spiders do appear more intelligent than some folk I see on TV or meet in the street

Yes they are programed and i suppose we still have it in us as well.
I am mainly thinking why do we think mammals can only gain higher intelligence....if this spider had enough time who knows ..

Getting back to the red dwarf star that can burn for trillions of years a spider like animal has more than enough time if its lucky enough to have its planet around one of these stars.....perhaps the problem for one of these planets is every thing has enough time perhaps they have more than just one species of animal life thats evolved higher intelligence....which brings me back to earth and how we think of and treat every thing thats just below us .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portia_(genus)

Lucky for us the we are on earth where our Portia are small..

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As I have been interested in artificial intelligence since I was a kid (a long time) it is of great disappointment to me that we are still, as far as I can determine, no closer to ascertaining the mechanism of "intelligence" (Albert's definition) in the human brain, some thing I consider is almost certainly a prerequisite for AI.

In his 2 books The Emperors New Mind, and Shadows of the Mind, the great Mathematical Physicist, Sir Roger Penrose, posits that "reason" is non-algorithmic and hence cannot be implemented on a Turing machine. He suggests it is quantum mechanical in nature and goes on to suggest that we need a theory of quantum gravity before any further progress can be made in this area.

The Physicist and Cosmologist Lawrence Krauss is quite scathing of this suggestion (whilst conceding Penrose is the better scientist).

If these two great minds can't agree what chance do the rest of us have?

I commend the 2 Penrose books with the caveat that, whilst he avoids the use of advanced mathematics, it is still very heavy going.

In any case it would seem that, if Penrose is right, the size of the brain may not be all that important for the development of "reason".

I also hope Penrose is wrong because, if he is correct, I'll never be able to teach my desktop PC to "think" .

Gary,

If we are looking to endow a PC (or indeed any computer) with creative thought then I suggest we add some noise to the system.

Currently computer programming conforms to fairly rigid rules with little accomodation for random events to be added.

We might also consider returning to a (noisy) analogue domain which might thow up some interesting results.

Of course the easy part is to allow such 'personality' to be added to each processor.

The difficult part is filtering the output to remove the dross with hopefully some original ideas left as the balance.

And we would have to expect that a computing run would produce differing results on successive passes.

Bit like a human really!

Maybe name the programming language ' C? '

Kind regards,

Graham

Doesn't creative thought need both knowledge and previous experiences on which to be able to think laterally?
To be able to put 2 and 2 together, (gleened from experience) to make 5, the creative result?

Can a new born baby really have any creative thought? I can't remember that far back.

That's a valid point Albert,

Oh well back to the drawing board (or AutoCAD these days)

Cheers,

Graham

AncientBrit wrote:...And we would have to expect that a computing run would produce differing results on successive passes. Maybe name the programming language ' C?'

Now that did raise a chuckle this end...

Steve A.

Thanks Steve,

G