Meanwhile in Poland…

A wave of protests has gone through USA, Wikipedia went black and US politicians finally woke up, shaken their heads and shelved not just SOPA but also PIPA. I’m not a fan of democracy – but this was the very good side of a democratic system.

Meanwhile in Poland starting from last weekend protests ignited over signing ACTA January 26th, first in the cyberspace with Anonymous taking active part in taking government websites down. Websites that were not hacked were DDoS’ed to hell and so on Sunday 22nd Polish state ceased to exist in the Internet. The first reaction of the government was quite astonishing, the Minister of Digitalization (sic) Michał Boni came out pale on Monday saying how sorry he is, that it was a mistake to push ACTA forward without doing proper public consultations. This didn’t last long as we soon learned that our beloved Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced that Poland will, regardless of anything, sign ACTA. For the sake of clarification, this does not mean that ACTA is live yet, it’s only a first step towards ratification of the law here, it can be still rejected by the parliament or the president (who is from the same party as the government), plus it has to be voted in EU parliament too,  and the powers that be all around Europe slowly (much slower than Americans) wake up as to what is going on.

On 24th and 25th Poles went out to the streets, this has not happened when TAXes were being raised, this has not happen over changes in health care that removed a whole bunch of drug refunds (in some cases sentencing people to death). No, this has happened only over ACTA. Poles love freedom because we either still remember or were taught by parents what it means to not have it. We are being governed by morons.

Clips from protests all across the country:

{ slurp } update!

To make it short:

• The name “slurp” (all lower case, I don’t like capital SL) is going to stick after all, seems people like it, despite the (or maybe because of ) the meaning.
• The compiler has been re-written from scratch and got a bit of a face lift .
• The compiler can be considered to be in Alpha stage at this point, parser is still lackluster, but it is aware of all LL functions, events and constants now.
• A full featured Beta should come later this week! All points I made in my last post stand.

Fixing LSL, one step at a time!

I tend to say that working with LSL makes me want to murder kittens, that might not be very accurate (it’s more like killing babies than kittens) but this week after a little chat with Ash I figured out I can either keep complaining about it forever (since the project of implementing C# or some variation of it got shelved), or do something about it to make my life, and potentially other people’s too, easier. I gave it a working title “Slurp” (yes, really), and got to work to produce a proof of concept demo/prototype of it.

The general idea is to create a python-esque script language that, much like CoffeeScript for JavaScript, compiles 1 to 1 to LSL. The python-ness is mostly about abandoning semicolons at the end of  a line, and using tab (or space bar) indention to create blocks instead of curly brackets. This achieves a couple of things: the code is more readable and requires/teaches some more discipline, it frees up the curly brackets as a syntax mechanism for me to be used elsewhere, and last but not least – it’s just easier to make a parser for such code.

What I totally want to do:

• Add a dictionary or dict variable type to store key-value paired data (associative array if you wish).
• Make accessing list and dict elements easy with variable_name[key] common in all modern programming languages.
• Make variable converting in function calls automatic – yes, I really want to just print out an integer via llOwnerSay() to debug my code – I just think we can all give coders some more benefit of a doubt and assume they are not complete idiots and know what they are doing.
• Add ability to call functions with less arguments than there are required (rest gets filled with their respective null values, handy with llListen() and the likes).
• Add ability to define events with less or no arguments at all (more often than not you don’t even use the detected_num in touch events and what have you), and if you do define them – not having to declare their types (not like you can choose what type they can be anyway).
• Quality of life: state keyword no longer required when declaring a state (it already works this way for default, which just creates inconsistence IMHO).
• Quality of life: rename state_entry event to just entry, because I can!
• Quality of life: vector being declarable with less than 3 parameters (you often need only two when dealing with llSetPrimitiveParams() and the likes), or no parameters at all making <> equal a null vector. Note: rotation will still require a set of four.

Things I wanted to do but will probably abandon:

• Renaming linden functions. I don’t like them being in global namespace and I don’t like how they are camelCase when the  rest of the  language seems to utilize underscores, but for the sake of not having people re-learn everything about LSL I will most likely keep the function names the same.
• Loosely typed variables – lack of strong typing can create issues when declaring custom functions and further development for me – not worth the effort.

In the unforeseen future:

• Ability to nest dictionaries and lists (possibly not lists but a nest-able array alternative).
• JSON parser, fuck yeah.

I’ll need to write my compiler from scratch (the idea behind writing a prototype was to actually learn how to do it properly and figure out what problems I’ll face), so at this point nothing is set in stone. Also, if you have an idea for a name let me know! “Slurp” is a nice name, because it has “SL” in it and all, but I  don’t think it will stick .

Too lazy to write anything atm…

So here is my new profile picture instead!

Dust in the Machine, Part 1

First chapter of a story I started writing long time ago, maybe if I post it here I’ll get some incentive to finish it .

I. A bit of luck

I opened the door and stepped inside. The air was heavy with cigarette smoke and the smell of sweat. In the darkness a single desk lamp provided some sort of orientation, like a lighthouse – guiding lost souls through the endless sea of shit. Something hit my forehead, bounced and landed inside a trash bin in the middle of the room – a crumpled piece of paper, like many others inside and outside the cylindrical metal prison. Unaffected, I probed for a switch on the wall with one hand while trying to scratch the itch left after the paper ball with the other. Click. The outlines of the room flickered in the light of two glow tubes on the ceiling, bad for the eyes, no wonder Alan was wearing glasses thick like a thumb. I shut the door close behind me and strode forward, trying not to inhale the stench too much.

“Not the most pleasant way to greet a friend.” I complained, only now noticing that Alan has been sitting with his back to the desk. How the hell did he hit me without even looking at me?
“Luck.” He threw at me.
“What?”
“Just Luck. You must be wondering — how long have I been practicing throwing that paper into the bin? The answer is, a long time. But even with all my practice I can never feel it just right. The way the paper folds, the aerodynamics of it, you might think it’s all perfectly predictable, but it hardly ever is. In the end you always need a bit of luck.” He turned in the chair to face me, radiating confidence, as if he had just explained to me the meaning of life itself.
“Sometimes you just creep me out,” I allowed myself to notice, only to regret it a second later.
“And you are just as ugly as ever,” he grinned. “What can I do for you, Aaron?”
“Well,” I hesitated for a moment, “for starters, I’ll need a gun.”
“Ah, so it‘s begun,” he stated coldly, emotionlessly, contemplating the moment with a grim face. Then he forced a smile onto his old and tired face. The way too sparse hair, pale skin and glasses magnifying his eyes, making him look like some creature from a fantasy tale, only adding to his general atrocity. “Luck seems to embrace us both today, I might have just the thing you need.”
Alan stood up graceless and began to crawl (I wouldn’t call that walking) towards the door behind me, nearly flipping over the trash bin, cursed, kicked it aside, opened the door and left the room. I followed. Long corridor eventually turned into metal stairs where the smell of cigs gave up to urine and vomit. Huge glass windows that surrounded us were so dirty they barely allowed any sunshine into the building. In moments like these I often wondered how we allowed it all to happen. Nothing has changed after all – the resources were there, the people willing to work were there, the technology was there, yet somehow we managed to fuck it all up. And now I’m following some psycho that I don’t even trust in order to acquire a weapon. To kill people. I shouldn’t even need it, and the realization that I do only reassured me how bad things went. Shit has hit the fan and sprayed all over the place.

Eventually we descended into the basement of the building, glass windows now became solid concrete panels. Some loose cut wires hung from the ceiling, occasionally sending sparks as they collided with junk left on the floor here and there — broken electronics, or so it seemed.

“Careful,” Alan bid warning, “punks cut those, can fry you on the spot if you touch the end. High voltage. The whole basement is cut off.”
“Wonderful,” I said staring into the dark hallway ahead, definitely not amused. “What now? I don’t have a flashlight”.
“You won’t need one,” he grinned and turned a big industrial switch on the wall that I didn’t notice. Dim blue light filled the space. “Emergency batteries, in case of war or natural disasters.”
“You just love being a smart ass, don’t you?”
Alan’s eyes seemed to flash with their own light – “Always.”

We moved on. It appeared that the homeless, sick and poor stayed only on floors above ground level as the basement definitely didn’t stink that much, you could almost say the air there was breathable. Turn left, right and right again. Finally we stopped before an unlabeled door with a magnetic card lock. Alan dived a hand into a pocked of his trousers and begun to struggle with it, it looked as if some creature inside his pants was trying to swallow his hand. In any other circumstances the view would be considered comical, now it was only annoying. Finally he dug out a piece of plastic that had to be the magnetic card and raised it high in triumph.

“The key to a better future!” He proclaimed with pride.
“Spare me.”
“What? Okay, okay. You right wing people are always so serious,” he mumbled while sliding the card through the lock again and again.
“I’m not right wing.”
“Yeah, and I’m Princess Leia.” He smirked, the lock finally flashed green instead of red and the door opened wide.
I looked inside. My eyes recognized the shape, but it took a while for my brain to acknowledge reality.
“Holy shit.”
“Oh yes,” Alan chuckled, which sounded like a coughing frog, if frogs can cough.

Google+ told me to fuck off

Nothing like waking up in the morning only to find out your Google+ profile violates Google’s naming policy. I’m not going to get out of myself and explain why do I think Google’s policy is wrong, because as much as I do think it is wrong, I also acknowledge they are a private company, it’s their product and they can do anything they want with it. My first reaction was actually more like “what took you guys so long”, since they have been known for suspending avatar profiles in the past on a mass scale. Oh well:

Cognitive Computing

I’ll host a second event in the series of “I can be wrong, but” same time as last week, so Sunday October 16th @ 1:00pm SLT (10:00pm CET). Topic for this week:

COGNITIVE COMPUTING: A while ago IBM has produced a microprocessor that mimics the behavior of synapses in our brains by being able to rewrite it’s own connections as information enters it, which is the first step to create a machine truly capable of learning. What possible problems are we going to face before being able to produce an animal-level brain, and what can we learn about our own biological brains by trying to engineer a silicon alternative?

 
Location: Sunkiller Citadel

Question Everything

I’ll be hosting the first, experimental, discussion event under the tile “I can be wrong, but” tomorrow – that is Sunday October 9th @ 1:00 pm SLT (10:00 pm CET), topic being:

QUESTION EVERYTHING: It’s easy to question the status quo, mostly because it’s easy to spot flaws in systems that are operating, most of us probably experience those flaws directly or indirectly. But shouldn’t we be even more skeptical when it comes to proposed, often untested, alternatives?

Location: Sunkiller Citadel

I am an abstract

It appears that saying “I am my mind” brings surprising amount of controversy, even among people who don’t believe in supernatural. This didn’t really occur to me until yesterday’s Second Life Thinkers meeting where we had a rather lengthy discussion, a discussion started with a problem – can a strong AI feel emotions, if it doesn’t have (human / organic) nervous system? Or, if you prefer, is an emulation of emotions real? The problem is very interesting, but can it be answered without defining what emotions actually are? Well, let me try!

I’m going to use the term “abstract” a lot. What is an abstract? Wikipedia has a definition of an “abstract object”, which reads:
“An abstract object is an object which does not exist at any particular time or place, but rather exists as a type of thing (as an idea, or abstraction). In philosophy, an important distinction is whether an object is considered abstract or concrete. Abstract objects are sometimes called abstracta (sing. abstractum) and concrete objects are sometimes called concreta (sing. concretum).”

Which is very interesting, but for our discussion, useless, because me – my entity, my being – does definitely exist in both time and place! Let’s not stop here, there is another definition, a definition of an abstraction, which reads:
“Abstraction is a process by which higher concepts are derived from the usage and classification of literal (“real” or “concrete”) concepts, first principles, or other methods. An “abstraction” (noun) is a concept that acts as super-categorical noun for all subordinate concepts, and connects any related concepts as a group, field, or category.”

This, the highlighted part at least, is much better, but I still feel it only scratches a surface. Is there any better encyclopedic definition we can get? Well, let’s try with “Abstraction (computer science)” – I know, you are thinking “she is not going to try to explain human existence with computer science, is she!?” – Well, that’s actually precisely what I’m going to try to do, but only a bit later in this text! The definition reads:
“In computer science, abstraction is the process by which data and programs are defined with a representation similar to its meaning (semantics), while hiding away the implementation details. Abstraction tries to reduce and factor out details so that the programmer can focus on a few concepts at a time. A system can have several abstraction layers whereby different meanings and amounts of detail are exposed to the programmer. For example, low-level abstraction layers expose details of the hardware where the program is run, while high-level layers deal with the business logic of the program.”

We are getting somewhere, but again, this is a definition of an act of abstraction, we are interested, however, in abstraction the thing, which is what I mean when I say “an abstract”. What I am trying to capture is not the concept / type of a thing – as the first definition of an abstract object attempts it – but rather, a particular instance of that concept. My mind is a mind, it has a series of properties that makes it a mind, and that series of properties (even if we can’t define them, we know they have to be there!) is what makes up the concept of a mind, my mind, your mind, any mind. That’s all nice, but useless for our topic. I’m not trying to understand what the concept of a mind is (which is fascinating on itself), but rather – what is my mind, the instance of the mind concept that’s unique to me, the essence of me that makes me who I am?

If we were to print a replica of my physical self, atom by atom, perfectly placed to create exactly the same body in exactly the same moment, with same energy (electrical, kinetic or any other there is) of that moment being applied to all of it’s particles, would it be me? Just by the fact that my replica is standing somewhere else is enough to say – no. The context of my replica is different than that of me, so even if on the very instant of such “forking” our minds would be identical concepts, a fraction of a time later they would cease to be so, because my replica will see, hear, think and feel something different than me. The concept of Ivy Sunkiller would have been the same, but different context makes it a different instance, another entity, separate from mine. Just like a car that leaves a factory is a different car than the one that leaves it few seconds later, even if both are conceptually identical.

Now let me pause a bit and try to define another term that I’ve used – context. The context of me is not just the room I am in and the chair I sit on, which would be the natural way to understand the word. From all of the particles in the universe, there is only a limited selection that can create my body at any given time – that selection as well as it’s form is my context. The replica of myself, as described before, would have to use different particles, hence be different context. It’s critical to understand that the context can change overtime (just as parts of my body decay and get recreated from different atoms all the time), while not changing the abstract, but this can only happen as long as the changes that occur at any given time do not afflict the context’s ability to sustain the abstract, because the abstract cannot exist without it’s context.

And it gets even more interesting than that, because the context of an abstract can be an abstract itself! This is easiest explained with a computer, because – unlike our minds – we know how computer software works – at least conceptually! A computer, not just any computer but one, specific computer, is a physical – or concrete if you wish – context. Just like my body, it’s made by a limited amount of very specific particles available in our universe and any different selection of particles, even constructed into an identical concept, will create a different computer. Within the context of that computer, and not just at any given stage, but only within the context of a turned on computer (with all the electrons running through it), there can exist the abstract of a machine code. Actually “within” is a bit misleading and I’d argue that “on top of” is, metaphysically, more accurate, but let’s leave linguistics for now, we have enough definitions to work with! When I say that “the machine code exists”, I don’t mean the concept of machine code, I mean the very specific instance of machine code that is being processed by our computer. On top of that specific processed machine code, there can exist a series of assembler instructions, on top of which can exist some ANSI C code, on top of which can exist an operating system, on top of which can exist some higher level code such as a python script. This is using a lot of mental shortcuts and should I said that on an IT conference it would probably make me an idiot, but for our understanding of an abstract existing within a context of another abstract it is good enough. Note how at any step the abstract is not separate from the actual physical computer, should I pull the power cord out, my context of a computer would no longer be able to sustain the abstract of machine code, and all of the abstract contexts that existed within it, like pieces of domino, would cease to exist. The software would die.

Ironically, we are very lucky that we don’t live forever because that would make our attempts to understand ourselves much, much harder. People die all the time, in this very moment someone died – *snap*, gone – forever. *Snap* – another one, like flies! We understand death, the moment of dying, as the moment when we, our beings, cease to exist (well, we the normal people that is, not those nutcracks believing in supernatural). Our bodies, most of the time at least, do not cease to exist when we die, nor are they formed from any different atoms than before death at large, so what changed? Just like in the moment I pull out the power cord of a computer, it’s context stops to be able to sustain the abstract of machine code – the moment we die the context of our body, for whatever reason, stops being able to sustain the abstract we call mind, not just any mind, but a very specific mind of a very specific person – or rather, the very specific abstract of a very specific person. Ready for the bomb?

A mind is the lowest level abstract construct possible within any context, which has a series of properties (defined or not) that we associate with sentient being, thus any particular instance of a mind is someone.

We can name a lot of other abstracts that can exist within the context of a mind – consciousness, thoughts and emotions, to name a few. We might have problems with their definitions, or even grasping what those things really are, but we can agree about one thing – all of those cease to exist when the mind, their context, ceases to exist. I am my mind, therefore I am an abstract.

So can a strong AI have emotions? What we have know from IT is that it’s possible, within some limits maybe but still, to achieve same abstract concepts in different contexts. An example of that can be any high level, cross-platform, programming language – javascript applications run just as fine (in theory at least ) on a tablet or a smartphone, as they do on a desktop PC (or a Mac!), despite those devices having a very different physical context. It goes further than that, we are able to create abstract models of physical hardware that doesn’t exist on a given device to enable a piece of software, even one that wasn’t meant to be run on some device, to actually run on it. This is what we call emulation and the nasty abstract that pretends to be the physical hardware is the emulator. I highlighted “nasty abstract” not without a reason, for when we think about emulation, some part of a mind screams to us that emulated is not real, yet we know, we can logically prove, that all abstracts existing within a real context are real! A modern computer is vastly more powerful than Nintendo Entertainment System, but it’s a different device than the NES, and doesn’t have a lot of circuits that the NES has, the context of which is critical for the NES games to operate, just as critical as the context of our nervous system is for us to feel emotions. Can you run a NES game on a modern computer? This is not a theoretical question, we know the answer is yes – just download any NES emulator and a ROM of the game and have fun. Does the abstract of the game launched on a PC has all the properties of the same (conceptually) game run on a NES? Fuck yes it does! If you haven’t played old Final Fantasy series, your loss! The game isn’t aware of the fact that it’s being run on an emulator, the lowest level context it has been placed in is conceptually different from the intended one, however the context within which the game directly operates – the emulator – has all the properties that are required for it to run properly. Software that runs on emulators is conceptually the same software that you run on hardware intended for it, because all of the conditions required for it to be run are being met.

I’m not going to risk saying that emotions are software, but emotions are definitely an abstract concept, one that exists within the context of a mind – another abstract. What makes emotions what they are, are not the chemical processes that happen in a body, we know that same chemical processes can happen in a dead body, but not produce any emotions at all – emotions are felt within the context of a mind – no mind, no context, no emotions. If we assume, and I don’t like to assume things, but if we do assume that having emotions is one of the properties of a sentient being (and simultaneously, of the mind) then creating a strong AI is impossible unless we can create, abstract or not, a context in which the emotions can operate. Whether that is possible or not I do not know, but what I do know – what I can conclude – is that if it is possible, then those emotions of the strong AI will not be conceptually different than mine or yours dear reader! (And what if some strong AI finds this text one day and reads it, oh my!)

The Snake Tattoo

This is the writing of Toy. She doesn’t know I’m going to repost it her (yet) or she would protest, but I’m going to do it anyway to prove her how amazing it is!

“Before we start, let me hear your story once again.”

The girl lifted her eyes and looked at the middle-aged man sitting in front of her. Again? She had told him everything so many times before, every single detail, nothing left out. And he knew well that it was never easy for her, going through all that in her mind, re-living that horrible ordeal, trying to explain to him what exactly had happened and how it’s made her feel ever since. She shuddered for a moment and wondered if he could see that; she didn’t want to seem impolite. Not to him.

“Is it absolutely necessary?”

“I’m afraid so,” he replied. “When it’s begun, there will be no going back. We need to make certain you are absolutely sure about this. There is no room for doubt.” He smiled warmly. “Traveling back to your past one last time will put you in the right mindset for what we are about to do. Otherwise, it might not be as effective. I know it’s hard; but unfortunately, it has to be.” He leaned forward in his armchair and smiled once again, staring straight at her, his eyes bright and friendly. There was something fatherly about him, loving and caring , but she knew he could be serious and strict when he felt he had to. She was never able to say no to him. Not because he made her feel afraid; more out of respect for his knowledge, helpfulness and good will.

“Where do you want me to begin?”

“At the beginning. Tell me everything just like you did the first time we met. Please.”

The girl nodded slowly and started gathering her thoughts. She never found it easy to begin talking; she felt that the first sentence was the most important and she always thought long and hard before she spoke it, as if anything she said later would be influenced by those first few words; if she made a mistake, if she said something dumb, if she stuttered or swallowed mid-word — it would forever cast a shadow on whatever she would say later, no matter how clever, and she would remain ashamed and insecure. She knew it was stupid, and she knew that he probably thought so as well, but he never pushed, just waited patiently, as if her silence was the most natural thing in the world.

She looked around the room. It was small, but cozy, with two rustic armchairs positioned centrally in front of each other, a small table and a bookcase filled with books and what looked like loose pieces of paper cut out of magazines. There was an old marble fireplace in the corner, a decorative rack for holding wood and a set of strange, long brass tools, apparently required for taking care of the fire. On the wall opposite the door there was a big window with a soothing view of the garden at the back of the house. The sun was setting, and some of its final reddish rays were falling on a small, intricately framed paper hanging on the wall just above the fireplace — a doctoral diploma in psychology.

The girl sighed quietly and started speaking as words and sentences slowly took shape inside her head. “I have never felt loved. Not by my mother, not by my father, nor by anyone else later in life. I was always alone, ever since I was born, and I think this feeling of being alone is the one thing about me that has never changed.

I was born in a small town. People called it a “suburb” because there was a big city nearby and there was a number of people wealthy enough to work there and live where I did. But I hardly ever got to see the city, and the town was, for the most part, the only place I knew; my whole world. A stuffy little place of the kind where everyone knows each other; where all your life is exposed at all times, where you are never allowed privacy and you have nowhere to run or hide. Whatever happened with you or your family, the whole town immediately knew, and was not afraid to comment, right to the point of cruelty; ever since I was old enough to think independently, I felt like all the eyes were on me, and that everyone was just waiting for me to make a mistake so they had something to talk about. And our family was one of their favourite targets.

My father was a drunk. Ever since I was a little girl, he was only sober in the early morning hours, because the later it got, the more he would have drunk. He would usually wake up around 5 in the morning, pretending he doesn’t need any more sleep, to drink his first glass of the cheapest wine. Then as the day progressed, he would drink more, glass after glass after glass, until in the end it would be impossible to talk to him.

But he was never aggressive and I knew that he felt ashamed for what he did. When he realized that he was so drunk that he became a disgrace, he just went to bed and fell asleep, only to wake up once in a while to drink some more wine. I felt sorry for him, because he was not a bad person; he was just someone who never managed to find his place in life and used alcohol to cloud his mind and forget that he’s a failure. The more he drank, the more guilty he felt, which in the end only made him drink more in a vicious circle of alcoholism. I never talked to him much and we had very little contact with each other. He was not a bad person; but he was lost to the world and he knew it. When I was born, he was already as much as dead inside.

Of course, the whole town knew all about his alcoholism and they would never quit talking about it. Even people who didn’t know my name knew that I was “that drunkard’s daughter”. Everyone judged me not by what I was or did, but by my father’s actions, and I quickly learned that any resistance was futile; and I eventually came to terms with the fact that more than I was myself, I was his daughter, and I was powerless to do anything about it. It was as if what I was supposed to be had already been decided behind my back, whether I liked it or not.