Great TED Video Demonstration of Microsoft HoloLens

A must-see TED video. WOW ! This demo of the "Microsoft HoloLens" is amazing.

Please click the arrow in the center of the above image to view Alex Kipman's marvelous TED video that demonstrates the next advance in Virtual Reality. (Many thanks to my son-in-law, Avi, for turning me onto it.)

Last month, my friend Peggy gave me "Google Cardboard", a simple, inexpensive, and rather primitive Virtual Reality viewer that uses an ordinary smart cellphone as the interactive display. I've enjoyed great fun with it: virtually riding a roller coaster; traveling thru space to the Moon, to Venus, to the other Planets and their moons; hovering above our beautiful Earth and diving down to a city in France, swooping along streets among virtual buildings.

While "Google Cardboard" is a wonderful example of Virtual Reality, especially considering the very low cost, the "Microsoft HoloLens" appears to be way, way, way beyond it! I look forward to the day when this type of device becomes available within the general consumer budget. I'm sure that day will come, and relatively soon. Considering my advanced age (:^) I can hardly wait. WOW !

Ira Glickstein

A Fresh View of Copyright Law in the Digital Age

Larry Lessig is a lawyer and self-proclaimed liberal leftist, but don't let those facts keep you from watching his TED talks! He sheds a bright new light on our previous discussions of L-Mind vs C-Mind issues here at The Virtual Philosophy Club. He has shaken some of my biases and awakened me to new possibilities. Perhaps he will do the same for you.

In the first [click above image to view it], recorded a couple months ago, he contrasts the traditional conservative values with modern liberal ones with logic that will twist your mind into a knot. In the second [click image below to view it], recorded a few years ago, he uses common sence to suggest a balanced view of ownership of creative content.

I'd appreciate your comments. He has clarified and corrected some of my views and, at this point, I am almost completely in agreement with him.

Ira Glickstein

Synthetic Life Breakthrough by Craig Venter

In the above TED talk, recorded last week, Craig Venter unveils the first Synthetic Life, a reproducing, prokaryotic (single-cell life) creation that is coded in a one-million base-pair DNA string. This is a real breakthrough that will, in the near future, enable rapid synthesis of vaccines and perhaps even microbes that will rapidly eat spilled oil and even replace natural oil with oil manufactured out of atmospheric CO2. This is very important stuff!

To create their DNA string, they copied code sequences from existing life forms and they made use of yeast to grow the DNA and they implanted it into a de-nucleated cell. So, although the DNA was made from "four bottles of chemicals", the work would have been impossible without the use of existing, living life forms. Therefore, they have not created life in the laboratory, only showed they could arrange the code at the base-pair level and that it would, indeed, reproduce itself. To prove it was synthetic, they imbedded the names of a few dozen scientists, their website, and a few historical quotes. Thus, anyone who may sequence that DNA in the future will know it is synthetic.

Howard and I have, over the two past decades, gone round and round about Arificial Intelligence and Artificial Life. Now, Synthetic Life is both more and less than Artificial Life. Artificial Life would be constructed out of non-organic materials, such as copper and silicon computer parts, which would be far more of a breakthrough. Unlike Synthetic Life, it would be able to operate at higher and lower temperatures and would be less subject to atmospheric gasses, and so on. That would make Arificial Life a better candidate for spreading human-developed civilization to other planets and solar systems (of course, without the humans).

Ira Glickstein

TED - Irrational Decision-Making

Here is another great TED talk that asks the question: "Are we in control of our own decisions?"

The answer is NO! This could be applicable to our previous discussion of Empathy and the Court. This TED talk clearly demonstrates how our emotions and other non-rational factors control our decision-making much more strongly than reasonable logic.

For example, the person on the far left is "Tom" and the one on the far right is "Jerry". The figure in the top middle is a distorted version of "Jerry" to make him look ugly. The middle bottom is an ugly version of "Tom".

When presented with the top form, and asked who they would date, most picked good-looking Jerry. When shown the bottom form, they picked good-looking Tom. Amazingly, the ugly choice totally changed the results of the selection process!

The TED presenter, Dan Ariely, uses several other examples to show how our decision process may be totally altered by the presentation of undesirable, non-chosen alternatives.

HOW DOES THIS BEAR ON PROFESSIONAL DECISION-MAKING?

Well, if a decision is close between two alternatives, which is always the case for hard decisions in business (or the Supreme Court, where, by definition, cases are almost always close choices), a good strategy could be to introduce a slightly "ugly" version of the choice you want the deciders to make.

For example, a prosecutor could include the death penalty as an option, even if he or she thought a 20-year sentence is most appropriate. The "ugly" death penalty option would make it more likely the jurors would settle on a long sentence. Given a choice between 10 years and 20 years, they might pick 10. If the death penalty was added to the menu, they would be more likely to choose 20 years.

The other lesson I take from this TED talk is that professionals should adopt methodologies that, to the extent possible, exclude emotional factors. For example, my Decision tool "forces" the deciders to consider multiple factors and weights in reaching a decision.

Ira Glickstein

Our Moral Profiles

UPDATED 20 Nov 2008

See our Blog Topic on Five Channels of Morality based on Jonathan Haidt's TED Talk 19-minute TED video.

Please take the online test at http://www.yourmorals.org/ and report your scores in a Comment to this Topic. The above graph compares the moral profiles of the average L-MIND and C-MIND with the profiles of members of this Blog.

• The L-MIND profile starts off high for the first two channels and then trails sharply downward for the final three.
  
• The C-MIND profile is pretty level all across the channels.
  
• Ira starts off moderately low at Harm and slowly increases over the remaining channels.
  
• Steve Ruberg has a "u" profile that is higher at either end, for Harm and Purity.
  
• Stu starts off extremely high at Harm and then steadily goes downhill to very low at Purity.
• Howard is all over the place like a "sawtooth wave", relatively high on Fairness and Ingroup and low on Authority and Purity.
• Joel is relatively low on most channels and pretty level across the board.


• The BLOG AVERAGE is pretty level, starting a bit high and ending a bit low.

How can we possibly agree about anything? Or be friends? Yet we are!

TYPE

Harm Fairness Authority Ingroup Purity

L-MIND

3.6 3.7 2.1 2.1 1.3

C-MIND

3.0 3.0 3.3 3.1 2.9

Ira

2.5 3.5 3.5 3.8 4.2

SteveR

3.5 2.8 2.7 2.8 4.0

Stu
4.5 3.8 3.0 2.5 1.2

Howard
2.2 4.2 1.3 3.2 1.2

Joel

2.2 2.7 1.8 2.7 2.5

Ira Glickstein

The TED Talks - Five Channels of Morality

Howard linked to this TED Talk in a Comment on a previous Topic. I think it is worthy of being a new Topic so I am copying it here, along with Joel's positive Comment as well as my favorable take on it.

Jonathan Haidt's views on the five channels of morality were previously posted by Stu. Howard also posted a previous link to a TED talk on memes. If Howard, Joel, Stu, and Ira agree on the importance of a concept, and the value of TED talks, we can't all be wrong, can we? ("Great minds think alike" but "fools seldom differ" or something like that :^)

Please view the 19-minute TED video because it is definitely worth your time.

Here is my short version, using screen captures from the video with some annotation I added.

The image above shows what Haidt posits are the five channels or tools or foundations of traditional morality: 1) Harm-Care, 2) Fairness-Reciprocity, 3) Authority-Respect, 4) Ingroup Loyalty, and 5) Purity-Sanctity.

The graph shows the result of over 23,000 US respondants who took the online test at http://www.yourmorals.org/

You may want to take the test and report your personal results here as a Comment.

Haidt points out that self-described liberals rate Harm and Fairness very high.

They rate Authority, Ingroup, and Purity very low.

Conservatives rate all nearly equally, with Harm at the top and Fairness at the bottom, but all in a tight range.

Moderates score between the extremes.

The final image indicates why liberals reject three of the five tools of traditional morality, in Haidt's view:


LIBERALS REJECT> Ingroup Loyalty (they CELEBRATE DIVERSITY)

LIBERALS REJECT> Authority-Respect (they QUESTION AUTHORITY)

LIBERALS REJECT> Purity-Sanctity (they say KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF MY BODY)





HOWARD'S COMMENT
Ira exhibits another C- vs. L-mind difference that...
November 12, 2008, 9:46:00 PM(Howard Pattee)

Ira exhibits another C- vs. L-mind difference that I think makes sense. C-minds make judgments based on the past performance over a lifetime.

L-minds make judgments based on the potential of youth for the future. If I judged my students on C-mind criteria, I would fail as a teacher.

Here is a TED talk about C- and L-minds that I think pretty much covers the conclusions of our own discussions, except that it does appear liberally biased to some conservatives. Remember, he is speaking to an audience that is mostly liberal. The comments are also interesting.

In this post-US-election week, TED is passionately discussing Jonathan Haidt's talk on the difference between liberals and conservatives.


JOEL'S COMMENT
Howard said:If I judged my students on C-mind crit...
November 13, 2008 (joel)

Howard said: If I judged my students on C-mind criteria, I would fail as a teacher. Here is a TED talk about C- and L-minds that I think pretty much covers the conclusions of our own discussions, except that it does appear liberally biased to some conservatives. Remember, he is speaking to an audience that is mostly liberal. The comments are also interesting.

Joel responds: Thanks for the citation. I think it was an excellent presentation. I especially liked the fact that he tied the prewired part of morality to evolution. Although he and the audience (or his expectation of the audience) appear to be L-minds, the theory itself seems pretty free of bias to me.As for judging students, it seems to me that you aren't making allowances for ALL of Haidt's five criteria.

A C-mind would also be concerned with fairness and therefore judge based upon the current course only.

I've seen teachers (both L-minds and C-minds) make allowances, based upon excellent performance in previous courses. I condemn such a practice (although frankly I've occasionally been a beneficiary as a student).

On the other hand, the grade point average is cumulative. It's the appropriate measure for recruiters and graduate school admission. I must say that I've seen recruiters give somewhat more weight to the last year. I've also seen a recruiter overlook lackluster academic achievement based upon a candidate's impressive performance at the interview. Is the latter situation comparable to the selection of Obama over McCain?

With respect -Joel

Ira Glickstein


NOTE: See the : Morality profiles of the participants in this cross-discussion.

The TED Talks: Is There a God?

I was talking with Ira and Joel about using the TED talks videos as a springboard for TVPClub blog discussion. Here are the opening sentences in their website's "About TED" page:

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free. Almost 150 talks from our archive are now available, with more added each week. These videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted.

Our mission: Spreading ideas.

So, as you can see, on paper (pixels?) it looks pretty promising as an intellectual source and igniter --- and in fact, I've viewed several of their offerings and they are of high quality.

As an experiment, I am proposing that all interested parties take 29 minutes (they lied about the 18 minutes in this case) to view Richard Dawkins' talk on militant atheism and respond to it. There are already many responses on the TED site to this talk.

To get to the Dawkins' talk video I would recommend that you navigate to it in order to get a better feel for the website; just use the link:

http://www.ted.com/

to go to the home page and the first line indicates that you can search by theme, talk title or speaker. Next make sure that View as Visualization and Resize by Most Discussed are checked and the page displays visual blocks whose size is determined by the amount of discussion generated and when you pass your mouse over each graphic more information appears --- it's fun to play around with.

Here is one way to navigate to Dawkins' talk:
Click on "Themes A-Z" just above the red line.
Click on the Theme, "Is There a God?" under the letter "I" and wait patiently.
Click on the video "Richard Dawkins on militant atheism" to begin watching the video.

The "About" section previews the talk and the speaker and the "Comments" section is similar to our blog and worth browsing. If you rate the talk you can view a summation which uses the same clever size technique (using words this time). I'd like to view "How the Mind Works" at some point but how to proceed from here is anybody's and everybody's choice.

Enjoy,

Stu