Obama on the financial crisis

“What we’ve seen the last few days is nothing less than the final verdict on an economic philosophy that has completely failed. And I am running for president of the United States because the dreams of the American people must not be endangered any more.

“It’s time for a government that is fighting for you — not ignoring you, or fighting against you.

“If you want to understand the difference between how Senator McCain and I would govern as president, you can start by taking a look at how we’ve responded to this crisis. Because Senator McCain’s approach was the same as the Bush Administration’s: support ideological policies that made the crisis more likely; do nothing as the crisis hits; and then scramble as the whole thing unravels. Now, my approach has been to try to prevent this turmoil from occurring in the first place.

“In February of 2006, I introduced legislation to stop mortgage transactions that promoted fraud, risk or abuse. A year later, before the crisis hit, I warned Secretary Paulson at the Treasury and Chairman Bernanke at the Fed about the risks of mounting foreclosures and urged them to bring together all the stakeholders to find solutions to the subprime mortgage meltdown. Senator McCain did nothing.

“This March, in the wake of the Bear Stearns bailout, I called for a new, 21st-century regulatory framework to restore accountability, transparency, and trust in our financial markets. Just a few weeks earlier, Senator McCain made it clear where he stands, [saying] ‘I’m always for less regulation,’ and referred to himself as ‘fundamentally a deregulator.’

“Now this is what happens when you confuse the free market with a free license to let special interests take whatever they can get, however they can get it.”

Actually, there is no confusion.  Any “free” market is a license for special interests and power brokers to take whatever they can get.  Freedom from regulation always makes that possible.

Approximating analog with digital

Future technological advances may allow us to instantiate high-resolution models of our mindbrains on machine substrate, or even create de novo persons.  Critics point out, quite rightly, that machines are digital while mindbrains are analog.  From this insight, they conclude that machines won’t be able to recreate the detailed processing of neural wetware.

However, the critics miss the fundamental fact that we can approximate analog processing with high resolution digital processing.  Nature already does it.

Genes are discrete (digital) while phenotypes are continuous (analog).  Continuous traits can be approximated with a large number of genes that each contribute a small amount to the outcome, or by one gene with a large number of alleles that each tweak the outcome by a small amount.  A continuous phenotype, such as the spectrum of adult human heights, is determined by a set of discrete genes.  Even if we controlled for all other influences on human height and looked at a single hypothetical gene that controls growth hormone output, we can see that, by implementing a large number of alleles, each one resulting in slightly more or less growth hormone output, a continuous spectrum can be approximated.   If adult human height ranges over, say, one meter, and our gene has 1000 alleles, than we can specify height with millimeter precision.  If our gene has a million alleles, than we can specify height with micrometer precision, and so on.  (Of course, in reality, genes merely produce organisms whose traits are differentially influenced by environment, and environmental influence is analog.)

The brain is actually analog and digital.  Synaptic firing is digital, and synaptic organization allows for signal processing through logical operations much the same way that transistors do.  But the events that aggregate to induce synapse firing are continuously additive or subtractive.  They are analog.  This is what the critics are talking about.

If approximating analog events is possible with digital events, then we only need to achieve a sufficently high resolution digital model of pre-synaptic events to produce accurate models of neural processing at any arbitrary level of organization.  Nothing makes this physically impossible.  It’s all a matter of having the technology and money to do it.

Putting things in perspective

“If climate change is a hoax, it’s the greatest hoax ever perpetrated, because everything we do to respond will make us more efficient, more productive, more entrepreneurial, more competitive, [and] more respected [in the world].”

– David Friedman, author of The World is Flat, and Hot, Flat and Crowded.

Google Chrome running on Linux

So, Google released it’s web browser, Chrome, to much fanfare last week.  Right now, only a Windows version is available, but the WINE developers worked quickly to release a patch that allows Linux users to run Chrome.  Here’s the proof:

The directions are available from Ubuntu Geek.

I already used Chrome on my Windows XP computer at work.  It’s ok.  Nothing spectacular.  Sure, it isolates tabs as separate processes so it won’t crash completely, but how often does Firefox crash?  For me, extremely rarely.  It’s also supposed to be faster, but we’re talking about shaving milliseconds off rendering time.  If you are a human being, you won’t notice the difference.  All of the major browsers render in a reasonably timely manner, as far as I can tell.  Chrome also, at this point, doesn’t have extensions that my web browsing experience depends on: Adblock Plus, Element Hiding Helper, Better Gmail 2, etc.

I think I’ll stick with Firefox for now.

Also, the release of Google Chrome has sparked a lot of discussion and debate on Ubuntu Forums.  Imagine what the reaction would be if they ever released a much-mythologized operating system?

39% chance that Sarah Palin would become president

If John McCain wins this election, he will be the oldest person to ever become president.  He chose Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate.  Many have suggested that she is vastly underqualified for the job.  They ask, “If, god forbid, something happened to McCain, is Palin ready for the job?”  Others counter that we shouldn’t suggest such things.  We should expect that McCain will survive his term(s) as president.

Unfortunately, the data belies this response.  According to the Actuarial Life Table provided by the Social Security Administration, there is a 39% chance that McCain will die during the eight years of a two-term presidency! [Add up the probabilities from age 72 to age 79.] And that’s assuming a statistically average 72-year-old, someone who is enjoying the easy life in retirement.  Aside from McCain’s long history of medical problems, including several bouts with skin cancer, the presidency is a stressful job that requires a lot of energy and tenacity.

What this tells us is that there is a significant chance Sarah Palin would become president within those eight years.  Kind of scary.  Are you willing to give Sarah Palin a 39% chance to become president?

Aaronson on technology

Robin Hanson on the Overcoming Bias blog links to Scott Aaronson’s review of The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil (which I’ve read, and whom I watched deliver a speech at the first Singularity Summit).

There’s a lot I could say about that review, and I will, but right now I just want to point out one thing that Aaronson writes:

Secondly, there’s nothing bad about overcoming nature through technology.  Humans have been in that business for at least 10,000 years.  Now, it’s true that fanatical devotion to particular technologies—such as the internal combustion engine—might well cause the collapse of human civilization and the permanent degradation of life on Earth.

Aaronson understands something that I was arguing with transhumanists years ago.  The future is not about seeding the oceans with nitrogen or spraying the atmosphere with carbon-fixing nanobots.  Those programs treat the symptoms, not the disease.  The future is about a world without carbon dioxide production to begin with.  It is a world without fossil fuels.

The combustion of reduced hydrocarbons is 1830s technology — it goes all the way back to whale oil, and we all know how good that was for whales.  It’s time to make a fundamental shift in energy, and in that respect, our whole civilization.  Clean, renewable energy is the way of the future, and transhumanists need to understand and promote it.  Transhumanism must be a green philosophy.

Shiki-Colors

My new favorite theme.

IOC opens investigation into He Kexin’s age

Yep, the story just crossed the news wire.

BEIJING (Reuters) – The International Olympic Committee has ordered an investigation into allegations Chinese authorities covered up the age of a double gold medal winning gymnast because she was too young to compete.

He Kexin, who won team gold in artistic gymnastics and an individual title on the asymmetric bars, was registered as being born on January 1, 1992.

There have been persistent media allegations that He had competed in earlier tournaments under a later birthdate, and on Thursday an American computer expert said he had uncovered Chinese state documents that proved she was 14 and not 16.

An IOC official said the International Gymnastics Federation had been asked to investigate because of “discrepancies” over He’s age. Gymnasts must turn 16 in the year of the Games to take part.

There’s also a more complete story.

The Chinese gymnast age controversy

The interwebs are abuzz over a controversy regarding the ages of several Chinese women gymnasts.  Critics point to several news reports, and even an official Chinese government web site, which listed Chinese gymnast He Kexin’s birthday as 1 January 1994 instead of the “official” date of 1 January 1992.  That would make her 14 years old and not qualified to compete in the Beijing Olympics.

The problem is that the only official and accepted documents for age — birth certificates and passports — are printed by the very entity that is accused of engaging in fraud.  It would be trivially easy for the Chinese government to forge such documents.

Is there another way to ascertain her age?  Well, there are age- and development-related changes in hormone levels and other physiological markers.  However, these always distribute on a normal curve, and it’s entirely possible for a 16-year-old at the tail end of the distribution to have the developmental and physiological profile of your average 14-year-old.  Some girls simply develop more slowly.

(Of course, it’s also possible that the gymnasts’ development was retarded with drugs, which violates IOC rules, and while the IOC is cracking down on other forms of doping, they seem to be turning a blind eye to the possibility of doping for developmental retardation.)

So physiological profiles won’t yield a precise age.  Another option is developmental markers such as growth plates in the long bones.  Once again, however, the presence of growth plates of a certain size could merely indicate that He is a slow developer.  It wouldn’t be proof positive that she is underage.  However, the presence of growth plates that indicate a 16-year-old in development would dispel the rumors once and for all.

Another option is amino acid racemization.  All amino acids produced in living systems, including humans, are in the L stereochemical configuration.   Over time they racemize to the R enantiomer until they reach stereochemical equilibrium, and each amino acid does this at a precise and measurable rate.  By comparing the ratio of L and R enantiomers, a time since the deposition of the protein can be determined.  One common technique utilizes aspartate racemization.  The problem is that the assay must be performed on tissues that are formed at or before birth, and that become essentially biochemically inactive.  The most common sources are myelin proteins that line the axons of neurons in the brain, and proteins from certain layers of the lens of the eye.  As you might imagine, a biochemical assay of this sort is too invasive to be performed on living subjects.

So there is no good biological aging assay for living human subjects.  We are stuck with having to take the word of the Chinese government.

Unfortunately, the Chinese government has a dubious track record on such matters.  Chinese gymnast Yang Yun earned a bronze in the Sydney Olympics in 2000, and later admitted that she had been underage during the competition.

Of course, nobody is denying that these gymnasts are talented.  He Kexin and her teammates are the best gymnasts at the Beijing Olympics.  But if we’re going to have rules, they must be followed.  Otherwise, China gains an unfair advantage by being the only team not handicapped by the rules.  After all, there may be plenty of 14-year-olds in other countries who are more talented than the gymnasts chosen to represent those countries in Beijing.

Ultimately, this controversy isn’t about gymnastics.  It’s about government fraud and government censorship.  The damage that could be inflicted on the reputation of the Chinese government, which is working feverishly to orchestrate a positive image of itself during these games, would be far worse than the loss of a few medals.  I guess it’s no wonder they are working just as feverishly to cover their tracks.

Russia wins gold in women’s individual gymnastics

Seriously, that might as well be the headline.  Nastia Liukin was born to and trained by a Russian.  Her American citizenship is incidental.  Ah, but the US team performed incredibly well in women’s gymnastics, anyway.  No need to pick nits.