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Chris OConnor  Rhodes Scholar BookTalk.org Owner

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Chris OConnor  Rhodes Scholar BookTalk.org Owner

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ZachSylvanus Intern Bronze Contributor

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Posted: Mon Nov 18, 2002 9:05 pm Post subject: Re: PLEASE help write this email message everyone!
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| I'll take a look at it maybe tomorrow night, but I can't promise anything....got a paper due thursday, a lab exam tomorrow night, and thursday night I need to spend some time with my girlfriend :\ |
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Chris OConnor  Rhodes Scholar BookTalk.org Owner

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xilog Almost a regular
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Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2002 3:50 pm Post subject: Re: PLEASE help write this email message everyone!
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I thought I'd give my answer to the question which book is best. (raised in the opening message of this thread)
Global Brain was best for me.
Partly I guess because I was already interested in that topic and I'm not terribly interested in "Evil", so I probably wouldn't have read "The lucifer principle" if I hadn't already read Global Brain.
I did feel while I read "The lucifer principle" that there was a lot of common ground between the books but a great deal worth reading in the first book even after reading the second. However, for me Global Brain was best, I think his thinking seemed to have matured and the primary subject matter more constructive.
Roger Jones |
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Chris OConnor  Rhodes Scholar BookTalk.org Owner

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xilog Almost a regular
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Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2002 5:07 pm Post subject: Re: PLEASE help write this email message everyone!
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There are lots of different conceptions of Global Brain. I have a page on this topic at: www.rbjones.com/rbjpub/cs/ai014.htm
Bloom's take on the Global Brain is that its been around for a very long time, almost since the beginning of life on this planet.
For me and some others who think a global brain is something yet to happen we are just talking about different things. Howards conception is different to mine, but just as interesting, and because the kind of global brain he is talking about has been around a long time, he can tell us a lot more about it than we can say about something which we think might happen sometime.
Quote: I'm nervous that I'm getting sucked slowly into something irrational.
Don't worry, it looks OK (or better) to me. (mind you, I didn't really understand the guys who thought The Lucifer Principle mystical) |
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Ani Osiris Almost a regular
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Posted: Thu Dec 19, 2002 2:09 pm Post subject: Re: PLEASE help write this email message everyone!
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Quote: The "global brain" concept sounds magical...mystical...supernatural. Please tell me Bloom is using these words figuratively, as he was with the "Lucifer Principle." I'm nervous that I'm getting sucked slowly into something irrational.
I haven't read Global Brain, but in The Lucifer Principle, Bloom is using the concept in a literal (not figurative) sense. He also constantly describes it as if it were conscious, etc. - whether he actually means that, I honestly can't tell (but it irks me because he is either wrong (if he means it) or IMO unconscionably careless (if he doesn't), and either way it's very misleading); but I think that sort of 'god-like' quality that he attributes to the superorganism makes it seem mystical. It reminds me entirely too much of the New Agers who go off the deep end with Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis. |
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Ani Osiris Almost a regular
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Posted: Thu Dec 19, 2002 2:13 pm Post subject: Re: PLEASE help write this email message everyone!
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Quote: For me and some others who think a global brain is something yet to happen we are just talking about different things.
This is a much more defensible position; and one that I don't necessarilly disagree with, though I might certainly quibble over details of exactly what's going on and what it means. Call it a complex adaptive system rather than a brain or organism, and I think there's a good deal of explanatory power in it. |
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xilog Almost a regular
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Posted: Thu Dec 19, 2002 3:25 pm Post subject: Re: PLEASE help write this email message everyone!
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Quote: Call it a complex adaptive system rather than a brain or organism, and I think there's a good deal of explanatory power in it.
What's in a name? Surely the explanatory power rests elsewhere?
For me "complex adaptive system" doesn't do it, we already have lots of those around. The kind of system that interests me is one which is intelligent, more intelligent than humans.
Please don't ask me to define intelligence, but an example of the kind of thing which probably requires this level of intelligence is proving hard mathematical theorems like the four colour theorem. This isn't of course the kind of thing which Howard is interested in, and the global brain he talks about can't do it. (well, I suppose actually he would say that it did do it). |
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