The end is near.

I've decided to allow littlefugue.us to expire on December 9th. But I've rented some spiffy new space for blogging and other experiments. I expect to resume my semi-annual posting over at my new space: newcerulean.com, just as soon as I figure out what blogging package I want to use. (Probably WordPress). I'll try to set up an archive of littlefugue over there, in case any of my (three? maybe four?) readers want to reminisce over anything I've posted here in the past three years.

Anyway, it's been fun sharing the occasional slop that overflows my mind, and I expect more fun to come in the new space. Who knows? I may even post more than three or four times a year. Heck, I might start jabbering on about what I had for dinner last night, just like all the real bloggers do.

Automated Posting!

Maybe this is the solution for sparse posters. MeFi has a markov-chain post-smasher that spews a random comment composed of phrases previously emitted on MeFi by a given user. Like one of mine:

I like to give out cans of Coke. It makes a person fearful of being left behind, though, so she clung to the big black helicopter parked on your hands.

All that's needed to unglue this flotsam that comprises the current rise in plasma concentration and is considered a delicacy. So I don't believe they thought "let's see if we had financial incentives backed by some sort of multiple-choice quiz on the biological substrate for solving the essential complexity of problems. Advancement beyond that will require that more of a jury is too great.

Bruce Klein emailed a poll:

  Gregory, quick question... when do you think
  AI will surpass human-level intelligence?

  [ ] 2010-20
  [ ] 2020-30
  [ ] 2030-50
  [ ] 2050-70
  [ ] 2070-2100
  [ ] Beyond 2100
  [ ] Prefer not to make predictions
  [ ] Other: __

  Survey sent to a few friends to gain a better
  perspective on time-frame... results posted:
  www.novamente.net/bruce_blog

  Thanks!
  Bruce

To which I responded:

Bruce,

That depends on what you call 'AI', and what you mean by 'surpass'. If we define intelligence as the ability to solve problems, and define 'artificial intelligence' as the ability of non-biological elements to solve problems, and if we take 'surpass' to mean 'better able to solve problems than a single human mind can', then we're long there.

We've long had superhuman levels of intelligence composed, first, of groups of people who collectively surpass the ability of single humans, and, second, we have computer-human composites that easily surpass human intelligence. (I.E. - Your mind, plus a computer, can easily solve a wide range of problems that your mind alone cannot). The fraction that non-biological intelligence contributes to problem-solving is steadily increasing. There are many areas in which the non-biological contribution is critical. For example, up until the early 1980's, it was still possible for a dedicated band of Electronic Engineers, armed with film and tape, to tape-out a microprocessor mask by hand. Now, with current generation CPUs boasting over a half-billion transistors, a full tape-out (they still use that quaintly anachronistic term, kind of like 'core dump') would require many square miles of acetate and a team of millions. This is just for the physical representation of the masks needed. Nowadays, physical emulation is also critical to calculate paths and gaps, fields, crosstalk, etc., involving far more computation than any army of dedicated humans could ever hope to pull off using pure biology, no matter how diligent or motivated. What's more, each generation of chips requires exponentially more computation to create. So we are already beyond a certain tipping-point: non-biological intelligence is now increasingly required to recursively design itself, and each generation of this recursion is required in order to design the next.

One could argue that the threshold of AI contribution to problem-solving exceeding that of humans has already long passed, at least as far as modern IC design is concerned. So, you see, it is a fuzzy question, with a fuzzy answer. By some measures, I'd say it happened sometime in the late-1980's, when the contribution of non-biological intelligence to many areas of problem-solving exceeded a level that humans alone, no matter how many or how driven, could ever match.

Going forward, we will be faced with growing fuzziness of this question and answer, as bandwidth of interfaces between humans and machines and between humans and other humans grows. The boundaries that are now clearly delineated by sensory bottlenecks may crumble, as neural interfaces allow augmentation of biological intelligence with non-biological components, and our cherished sense of individuality becomes increasingly ambiguous with sensory and other neural information directly leaping 'the great synapse' that now stands between us as individuals. Ultimately, non-biological emulation of biological intelligence will also crumble our current notions of existence, as biological emulations can be instantiated and destroyed at will, adding specific facets of intelligence to our problem-solving abilities on an as-needed basis. Such 'facets' are only bounded by emulation capabilities, and could easily be far greater than the current biologically-constrained intelligence that each of us carries. Future intelligence may instantiate and discard more sentient brainpower than all of us now possess, many times a day.

Short answer - it's already happened. Welcome to the singularity.

Greg

How to fight terrorism.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid is giving $10 billion to improve education in Dubai. The article observes that 'The whole Arab world publishes fewer books than the country of Turkey'. The Jihadi-Salafis are largely a product of young Arab men, facing bleak prospects with little education and endemic unemployment, seeing jihadism as a way of transcending their situation and, in their minds perhaps, doing something to redress the imbalance they perceive between the affluence of the west and the poverty and lack of accomplishments of the Arab world.

Education will go a long way toward dampening the smoldering embers that fuel terrorism. I would say that it is probably the most important ingredient in an effective anti-terrorism prescription, which, in my opinion, consists of:

1. Education for everyone, and not that rote memorization of verses that passes for education in Madrassis. Real education in fields that are demanded by business.
   
2. Frictionless commercial markets - make it trivial for someone to go into business, and eliminate red-tape, corruption and obstructive competition (such as monopolisim and patent-trolling). In the US, all I have to do is say "Shazzam! Flubco is now a business", and it is so. Once I actually succeed in selling more than $1000 worth of stuff, I have to obtain a tax license from the state, which requires all of 15 minutes and $16 for a two-year license. The developing world should optimize this process in their own markets. Ideally, developing nations should subsidize new businesses with tax breaks and other incentives.
   
3. Frictionless capital markets - make it easy for developing businesses to obtain capital and trade in their own equity. Also, make it possible for successful businesses to retain their earnings, rather than pay exorbitant taxes. The people who created this wealth in the first place are probably better positioned to employ these profits to create more wealth than the government who would confiscate these earnings 'for the public good'.
4. Invest in infrastructure - make it easy and affordable to exchange goods and services through transportation and communication networks that actually work.

If there were a way the US could apply this prescription to the current hotspots of terrorism, instead of blowing upwards of $1 trillion on military intervention, I suspect we'd see a much greater impact on terrorism. If nothing else, dear reader, you and I can help cultivate enterprise in developing areas by extending microloans through services such as Kiva. I suspect each developing entrepreneur who is given a leg up will result in 10-fold greater overall economic benefit, as the needs of their businesses ripple out into their economic community, possibly employing someone who might otherwise take up or at least endorse terrorism as a way of life.

A teacher at Arapahoe High School here near Denver produced a powerpoint presentation for the faculty back in August of 2006. It has since become a small youtube hit, with many people sharing it. A friend of mine just emailed me a link to the video of the slideshow, asking for comments. Though I've long been an avid fan of the whole singularity / transhumanism / extropian outlook, I was surprised to find myself replying:

Blah, blah...transhumanism...blah, blah...singularity...blah, blah... technocalypse...any day now...

I mean, we're already living in the future. Where are the domed cities? And where is my damned jet pack? Can I get a refund?

Anyway, that stuff about how there are so gosh-darned many smart Chinese and Indians that they could eat our lunches and scarcely burp is pretty much crap. As these economies grow, they have their own needs to satisfy. If we project their standard of living upward, it is reasonable to assume that they will soon need the same percentage of technical people per capita that we do. In fact, there is already a shortage of technical talent in India, despite their churning out an alleged 600,000 freshly-minted engineers a year. Turns out that India, for example, is really only producing about 112,000 comparable engineers, versus 137,000 in the US. They have over three times the population of the US, requiring over three times as many engineers for their own needs, let alone satisfying the outsourcing demand of the rest of the developed world. But they produce fewer comparable engineers than us. Hence the shortage. As India gains affluence, they may outsource to us. And don't get me started on their infrastructure problems. Both India and China suffer from endemic corruption and a clan/caste sclerosis, and will continue to have a very difficult time forming the necessary social cohesion and frictionless markets needed to really reach their predicted potential. So unless our government is soon by of and for all Hispanics, I suspect the US and Europe will continue to set the standard by which other societies measure themselves, for many decades to come.

And that stuff about exponential accelerating change? I've been eagerly awaiting this singularity for the past 2 decades, and I don't know about you, but I'm starting to wonder if maybe it isn't going to come quite as quickly as the evangelists predict. In fact, as I spectate from my 50th lap around the sun, I'm starting to doubt that it's coming fast enough to save my increasingly wrinkled ass from the short and brutish fate that all men have shared till now. (Though I do plan to have my wrinkled ass frozen, just in case).

Okay, so is this me getting middle-age-cynical? Or just realistic?

Saudi Arabia going dry?

This article observes that oil production by Saudi Arabia has declined 8% in 2006. Respondents to the article project oil jumping over $100 by this summer. Might be a good opportunity to go long. Heck, if a person didn't want to gamble on a futures contract, today they could pick up a deep in-the-money call option on August crude at $95 for just $140. If crude actually hit $100 before the option expires, that $140 could return over $5500, a return of over 3,900%. (Of course, that's a whole lot like betting on the 40:1 long shot at the dog track, but what the heck).

Laisser le Bon Temps Rouler

On April 2nd, new SEC rules come into effect covering "portfolio margin calculations". This means that the margin requirements for good-faith deposits that control leverage in margin accounts will, in some cases, be dramatically relaxed. Here's one example from a list of examples.

PROTECTIVE PUT POSITION
Long 500 IBM @ $91.25
Long 5 puts IBM APR 90 @ $ 2.50

Current strategy margin is 50% of stock plus full payment for put or $24,062.50
New portfolio margin requirement is $1,878.00

So before April 2nd, you'd have to maintain $24,062.50 of fungible value in your account to cover possible market fluctuations against this position of 500 shares of IBM @ $91.25 ($45,625 worth) despite also holding 5 contracts of at-the-money puts. But since the puts provide insurance against a decline in value of your IBM shares, there's no need for 50% of the value of the stock, so the SEC will now allow your broker to ask you to maintain only $1,878 margin deposit. (I'm guessing that amount is still needed to guarantee payment of interest?)

Bottom line: $25,000 right now only allows you to control 500 shares, even if you guarantee them against loss with matching puts. After April 2nd your broker will be free to allow you to leverage that $25K to control 6600 shares ($600K worth) of IBM as long as you insure them against decline with matching puts. Of course, you'd still have to pay interest on that $600K from your broker, but since you hold collateral shares that are insured against loss, your broker should happily lend you that much. Then if IBM rises $3.75, you've doubled your $25,000. Sweet. But now, having an extra $25K of marginable value in your account, you can pyramid your investment, buying another 6600 shares and 66 long puts. Say IBM goes up another $3.75. So you double your investment again, ending up holding about 27000 shares worth around $2.5 million, guaranteed not to lose money over the life of the puts. All from $25K and a total rise of a little over 8% in IBM. Okay, these are sloppy numbers, and it's not clear that the entire rise in value of IBM shares will translate 100% into added margin value, but it should work out pretty close to this. (Though having to service interest on $2.5 million could make you want to 'focus' real hard on each tick of IBM).

Fun?

How the Middle Class Is Getting Screwed - New York Magazine

Kurt Andersen says that upper-management compensation is screwing us middle-class folks.

Although I certainly agree that upper-management compensation has become absurdly inflated, I was disappointed that Mr. Andersen didn't point out who is asleep at the wheel while this is happening. It is the owners of corporations who are ultimately responsible for what their companies do. Turns out, that's ultimately you and I, since most ownership is now in the hands of institutional investors who are minding the nest-eggs of ordinary people such as ourselves. They, alongside the increasingly rare individual stockholders, are only interested in the performance of their shares. They do not take any interest in the actual operation of the companies they own. As a result, their appointed directors have no particular incentive to bid competitively for management talent - to the contrary, a directorship that approves an absurd compensation can proudly state they've spared no expense to recruit the very best. I suspect a bit of investigation would reveal a disconcerting level of cozy familiarity between management and directors, that enables these abuses. As mentioned in the article, we in the US could improve on things by having salaries of top management voted on by the owners. But this would still require that enough owners take an active interest in the running of their companies. A second point I feel the author neglected was what the net effect would be of confiscating 100% of the salary of these overpaid CEOs and distributing it among the remaining workers. If the average CEO earns something close to 100 times what an average worker does, and if the average overcompensated CEO heads a company with, say, 5000 workers, then confiscating his entire salary and distributing it would amount to a 2% bonus for these workers. Nothing to sneeze at, but hardly the difference between being screwed and living the high life, and not very supportive of the sensational thesis of this article. But in a Utopian world of journalism, where facts are facts, fair is fair, and a journalist's continued employment doesn't hinge on how much they pander to the emotions of their readers, this is a significant point that should have been made.

So, although I agree upper-management compensation is abusrdly inflated above the actual wealth-creation they contribute, it seems to me that claiming the middle-class is "being screwed" by this is just another example of sensational media distortion.

Still, Mr. Andersen points out that median household income has risen only 15% in the preceeding 25 years, and has actually dropped over the preceeding five years. Given greater levels of productivity, one might imagine this indicates somebody, somewhere is skimming all this productivity into their own pockets at our expense. But this supposition ignores a dramatic shift in the composition of American households. According to the US Census Bureau,

"Householders living alone had become the most common specific household structure in 2000, replacing the 1990 combination of householder, spouse, and natural and/or adopted children."

So although average US household income fell, so did the size of the average household. Without controlling for this factor, the observation of a decline in household income is another sensationalistic factoid that transcends lies, damn lies and statistics, by telling a half-truth.

Xethanol Responds to ShareSleuth.com Posting

Notice Xethanol didn't say anything in the ShareSleuth article was wrong, merely 'misleading'. What's more, they don't even allege that Cuban engaged in improper stock trading. If the ShareSleuth article had been trumped-up lies to enable profitable shorting, Xethanol would not only have said so, but would have filed suit against them.

Read more at home.businesswire.com/p...

Cost of Iraq war could surpass $1 trillion
So let's see... $1,000,000,000,000 dollars, divided by a population of 26,000,000, gives $38,461 per person in Iraq. The per capita GDP (purchasing power) in Iraq is $3,400. So by the time we're "done" in Iraq, we will have ended up spending enough money to have hired every man, woman and child, at average wages, for ten years to work full-time at rebuilding their country. Or, if we just hired all 7,500,000 men between the ages of 15 and 64 years of age, we could have paid each of them $133,333, which would come to 39 years of full-time employment. Yup, we could have hired each and every working-age man in Iraq, for pretty much their entire career. I don't know about you, but if I were given 39 year's wages to improve my little corner of the world, I bet I could make it pretty fancy.

My new year celebration:

Greg@Gibby:/home/Greg
=>while true
> do
> sleep 1
> date
> done
Sat Dec 31 23:59:38 MST 2005
Sat Dec 31 23:59:39 MST 2005
Sat Dec 31 23:59:40 MST 2005
Sat Dec 31 23:59:41 MST 2005
Sat Dec 31 23:59:42 MST 2005
Sat Dec 31 23:59:43 MST 2005
Sat Dec 31 23:59:44 MST 2005
Sat Dec 31 23:59:45 MST 2005
Sat Dec 31 23:59:46 MST 2005
Sat Dec 31 23:59:47 MST 2005
Sat Dec 31 23:59:48 MST 2005
Sat Dec 31 23:59:49 MST 2005
Sat Dec 31 23:59:50 MST 2005
Sat Dec 31 23:59:52 MST 2005
Sat Dec 31 23:59:53 MST 2005
Sat Dec 31 23:59:54 MST 2005
Sat Dec 31 23:59:55 MST 2005
Sat Dec 31 23:59:56 MST 2005
Sat Dec 31 23:59:57 MST 2005
Sat Dec 31 23:59:58 MST 2005
Sat Dec 31 23:59:59 MST 2005
Sun Jan 1 00:00:00 MST 2006
Sun Jan 1 00:00:01 MST 2006
Sun Jan 1 00:00:02 MST 2006
Sun Jan 1 00:00:03 MST 2006
Sun Jan 1 00:00:04 MST 2006
Sun Jan 1 00:00:05 MST 2006
Sun Jan 1 00:00:06 MST 2006
Sun Jan 1 00:00:07 MST 2006
Sun Jan 1 00:00:08 MST 2006
Sun Jan 1 00:00:09 MST 2006
Sun Jan 1 00:00:11 MST 2006

Nothing like the exhilaration of writing a last second script to a hard deadline.

Ann Coulter says Kwanzaa is a fake holiday invented by an FBI stooge. She goes on to say that

when Karenga, the inventor of Kwanzaa, was asked to distinguish Kawaida, the philosophy underlying Kwanzaa, from "classical Marxism," he essentially explained that under Kawaida, we also hate whites.

I find Ann is often more entertaining than illuminating, but if these statements are accurate, then it really shines a very unflattering light on the whole notion of Kwanzaa as a celebration of African cultural heritage. Oh, Ann also pokes her sharp conservative stick at George W, for

saluting the intellectual sibling of the Symbionese Liberation Army, killer of housewives and police. He is saluting the founder of United Slaves, who were such lunatics that they shot Panthers for not being sufficiently insane -- all with the FBI as their covert ally.

Definitely worth a read, even if you're not an Ann Fan.

Bennett says: aborting "every black baby in this country" would reduce the crime rate

How on earth can someone even pose such a notion as a hypothetical? The man clearly has a political or even physical death wish. He appears to defend his statement by claiming it was intended as an outrageous example of a solution to help stimulate conversation of all possible solutions to the crime problem. One has to wonder, however, if this is the first solution that comes to his mind, what does this reveal of his worldview?

Byron White Courthouse

Byron White Courthouse
Originally uploaded by gjbloom.

Federal appellate courthouse in Denver. Turns out this used to be a Post Office. Can you imagine that? Who builds iconic columns outside a friggin post office? Smells of ancient pork to me. This building surrounds a hidden courtyard into which only grand jurors are ever permitted.

Oops

Oops
Originally uploaded by gjbloom.

Got me one-a-them digital cameras (finally). So I'll try posting a photo or two using Flickr. This is a shot of a wall in Denver (around 18th & Stout, I think). Looks like something happened long ago. Fire, I'd guess, but whatever was burning is long gone. There's only a parking lot next to the building now.