From: Tun Kai Poh [t_poh@hotmail.com] Sent: Friday, February 12, 1999 6:41 AM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - De-lurking and GEO Marshals Jason Hockley said: > Marvel? Judge Dredd is from an English comic called >2000AD. As far as I know Marvel have nothing to do with it. >I could be wrong though. That's right. In fact, some years ago DC Comics got the rights to reprint 2000AD material in the US. Don't know if that's still the case, but I suspect it is. Kai Poh, comic-reading Malaysian Lagopmorph ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Leif Magnar Kjønnøy [leifmk@pvv.ntnu.no] Sent: Friday, February 12, 1999 1:29 AM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Cc: blue_planet@TanSoft.COM Subject: RE: [BLUE PLANET] - Cetacean HtH... On Thu, 11 Feb 1999 BIOHZD@aol.com wrote: > Hello Leif, > > You write: > > Yeah, and can't they [cetaceans] also breathe through the mouth? ["Nope"-explanation snipped] All right, I sit corrected. That is a potentially *very interesting* point of biological trivia, y'know. Makes stabbing 'em in the blow hole all that more interesting, I should think. Or bludgeoning them about that part with the proverbial blunt object. I'm going to go find a book on cetacean physiology.... *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Tun Kai Poh [t_poh@hotmail.com] Sent: Friday, February 12, 1999 7:14 AM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Humans and Ecology Auberon said: >Here's something I got from my news service today that's oddly on point. > >http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2558405704-99a Here in Malaysia, it was all over the front pages of the national papers. But then, it did quote our Prime Minister. Dr. Mahathir's been critical of Western economic policy since the mid-80s. The IMF has been using the economic crisis in Asia as a chance to force developing countries to allow foreign ownership of local banks, in exchange for loans and aid. Malaysia refused. Since when has the IMF done more good than harm lately, anyway? Most people here see us as holding the line against a "new colonialism." Kai Poh, Malaysian Lagomorph ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: jonpwil@email.com Sent: Friday, February 12, 1999 11:02 AM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - BP Websites Hi all, As some of you know my Blue Planet website "Triton's Grotto" and my Blue Planet Webring. "The Trench" have been closed for some time. Real life always seems to get in the way! At any rate, I have been working on them again and will have them back up and running next week. Thanks for the time, Jonathan P. Williams ----------------------------------------------- FREE! The World's Best Email Address @email.com Reserve your name now at http://www.email.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Chris Sakal [csakal@erols.com] Sent: Friday, February 12, 1999 2:13 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Humans and Ecology The problem with the IMF isn't really the policies of the institution itself, it's the fact that the countries which need bailing out often refuse to meet the standards that are necessary to turn their economy around, or, even if they agree to them, often can or will not implement such measures, making the IMFs loan a waste. How much money need be sunk into coutries without the desire or the cabability to turn their economies around before the lender is justified in actually wanting to make sure that they money that's been given away, no trifling sum, may actually do some good? It's all well and good to say that those countries that have money have a debt to those which do not, but then to argue that the "moral" and "fair" thing to do is to just keep throwing large amounts of money a a country with a depressed economy without having any say over the economic policies (which are the cause of the economy's depression in the first place) is not only grossly unfair, it's rediculous. Take Indonesia for example. Yes, the situation there is critical, the economy completely collapsed and tens of thousands (at least) suffer from extreme poverty. That's a damn shame, but it's really nobody's fault but the leadership of Indonesia. The IMF is trying to help, but if the country refuses or cannot implement measures that will curb the cronyism, corruption, and just plain incompetance that got it there in the first place, what's the point of pumping more money into the system, at best it will be of very temporary help, and what it will probably do is allow a priveleged few to further enrich themselves at the expense of the vast majority. Let's look at Malasia and it's staunch opposition of this "new colonalism". Basically, as I can see, the point is that it's very wrong for the western investors to actually want to get something back from their investment in the country and that what would really be right is for large banks to just send a lot of money over and not try to exert any control over it at all. Does this sound silly to anyone else? In short, I'm firmly in support of the IMF. It's not perfect, but it has some of the best and brightest minds of international finance advising it, and it exists specifically to help with situations like this - the failures it has had lately have much less to do with it's competance than the competance of the countries that it is trying to bail out - so before you go crying that we should try to save impoverished nations, how about letting them, no, forcing them if need be to take some part in saving themselves, without that, it's all useless anyway. Chris Sakal csakal@erols.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: c718678@showme.missouri.edu Sent: Friday, February 12, 1999 4:48 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Re: Abo conciousness (ACCESS DENIED) ACESS DENIED LONG! There's no way to know for sure wether a being is conscious/self aware unless that being is yourself. Any behavior could be programmed, genetic, or learned Pavlovian response, theoreticallly, and there's no way to even be sure that other humans are self aware (I'm sure we could all name a few who don't seem like it.) But its still useful to *speculate* about the consciousness or lack thereof of other creatures. The mirror test is a good one. Put a mirror in front of an aborigine and (by my humble guess) it would recognize itself as itself. Trying to determine wether an entity makes decisions by its own will or by genetically encoded reaction to stimulus is harder. Even dogs learn and use learned behavior, but a dog will bark at a mirror. So we have to incorporate low-level learned behaviors into our descritption of non-sentient behavior. But then, what's "low level"? Arbitrary, if you ask me. The aborigine's behavior can't all be directly genetically programmed or they would have no reaction to an unknown like humans. So there's some learning, and decisions based on that learning are made. And me and any deists out there would say that any action is based on a decision, conscious or otherwise, that is based on the way the entity is genetically and environmentally "taught" to react. In other words, maybe the aborgines just act on their genetic programming, but in my opinion, so do we. So all of this says little either way about their sentience. But the aborigines do have a goal, an intent in their actions. Wanting,intent, to me, means sentience. Sure, you could say a computer "wants" to beat you at chess, or a fly intends to survive and reproduce, which is why I started this post by pointing out that you cannot be sure of the sentience of any entity other than yourself, but the aborigines have a goal that involves an effect OUTSIDE of themselves: the survival of the planet etc. and make complex decisions to that end. So we're back to the point of complexity, and in my opinion that's what it all boils down to. I've found this to be an unpopular belief - in fact I haven't found anyone who agrees with me - but I think that sentience isn't an either/or thing. I think there are levels of self-awareness. To visualize this, compare your state of conscioussness when you're half-asleep to when you're fully awake. Humans are more self-aware than, say, dogs, because we have more brainpower and more types of brainpower, not because we have some one thing that dogs lack: we're just more complex. And a dog is probably more self-aware than a fly. And in-between dogs and humans are chimps and drunk people, not necessarily in that order:) As far as rebellious aborigines, I don't think an entity can deviate from its genetic programming, but if its programming is complex enough, then a slight variation in stimulus could produce an extreme variation in behavior (this ties into my view of how humans have free will despite what I said earlier about being a product of our genes and environment. If you really want to know, I can go in to that too:). In other words, I *would* say that aborigines rebelling could happen, except that they have such an extreme telepathic link and chemical control that they almost share one conscious - it'd be kinda like a Borg rebelling, but even harder because even seperated from the "collective" an aborigine's genes "tell" it what its goal is. Later, Eva @@@(* > *)@@@ On Thu, 11 Feb 1999, Auberon wrote: > ACCESS DENIED > > > Archangel Gabriel wrote: > > > > This raises some deep questions about what is and isn't intelligence. Does > > complex genetic programming that mimics the behavior of consciousness in > > detail represent consciousness itself? The aborigines are genetically > > Well, they've got the problem solving skills to be called intelligent. > What the real question is, is whether they in fact are capable of the > conception of "I". If you show an abo a mirror, does it attack, like a > chicken, or clean its whatever, like a chimp? That's the important > question -- if they can concieve of the self, then they can concieve of, > and model the responses of, others. Or so the argument goes. It is a > good question. > > > programmed to do what they do, but they interpret the programming and seem > > to come up with answers of their own. If it looks like a duck and quacks > > like a duck... > > Then it's a parrot or a raven. Those are the two birds shown to have > some abstract problem solving skills and some measure of inspiration. > Inspiration, it turns out, is a rare thing in nature. Cetaceans, > parrots, ravens, and humans are the only ones I know for sure possess > it, tho I suspect that if I weren't so lazy, I could find articles > showing that chimps, oran-utans (sp?), and possibly gorrillas (great > apes, all) display it, too. > > > Also I suspect that they do have a Religion and Mythology (although I have > > no real evidence). Their creators no doubt hold the position of Gods, and a > > species with a chemical memory stored in the water they live in MUST have > > some lingering stories that could count as Myth. > > What they'd have, from what the book says, is more akin to a philosophy. > They have the sure knowledge that they were created for a purpose, and > that serving that purpose is the only reason for being. In a way, > they're all fundamentalists (harkening back to an old thread). Whether > that allows for much individualization, or whether they even conciously > carry out that purpose, is another question altogether. > > An amusing aside that I hadn' thought about before: If abos are > concious, there's the possibility of one "losing its faith" as it were. > Or maybe they have rebellious teenagers, just like higher mammels. What > a cool adventure idea. An abo tries (probably repeatedly) to make > contact with the players, probably eventually being killed or kidnapped > by others, but only after leaving the characters with the knowledge, but > no proof, that the abos are intelligent and aware. > A corollary to that is, what if there was a group of heretic abos who'd > decided that *humans* are the creators? It'd make any character > interactions with abos that much more confusing. They see one group, > which drives away a lesser white. Later, they a group (could they tell > the difference?) doing something incriminating. Or swimming away from a > villiage that's all asleep. Don't tell the characters what's going on, > of course. But watch them get their brains all twisted up. And, of > course, the academic reputation of any brains in the group would be > flushed by any articles they wrote, no matter how much footage they had. > Where'd the footage go, anyway? Hehe. Comments? > > -- > +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= > > "I never get involved in my own life. It's too much trouble" > - Michael Garibaldi (Babylon 5) > > > *************************************************************************** > To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line > 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. > *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: c718678@showme.missouri.edu Sent: Friday, February 12, 1999 6:01 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Re: Abo conciousness (ACCESS DENIED) ACCESS DENEID long, but not as long as the last one As an addendum to my previous email (I guess I forgot where I was going with all that) the aborigines weren't created (or changed?) by evolution, and they must have pretty similar DNA in order to not be subject to natural selection; in other words, practically no variation in the species. That said, if you believe that behavior comes from genetics at all (and frankly I don't see how one wouldn't) aborigine rebellion isn't likely since they don't vary. I say that because, even though the fact that the aborigines have behaviors intended solely for the purpose of aiding other species is proof that they're not a product of evolution, but since they have genes, if there was the usual variation and hostile forces at work and they reproduced more "naturally", the species would evolve over time anyways. Then again, they don't reproduce in the normal way, do they? So maybe natural selection isn't a concern after all. Later, Eva @@@(* > *)@@@ *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Auberon [fskln1@uaf.edu] Sent: Friday, February 12, 1999 9:52 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Re: Abo conciousness (ACCESS DENIED) c718678@showme.missouri.edu wrote: > > ACESS DENIED > LONG! Both are still true. > There's no way to know for sure wether a being is conscious/self aware > unless that being is yourself. Any behavior could be programmed, genetic, Thank you, Mr. Descartes. ;-> > or learned Pavlovian response, theoreticallly, and there's no way to even > be sure that other humans are self aware (I'm sure we could all name a few > who don't seem like it.) Oooh! Oooh! I've got a whole list! > But its still useful to *speculate* about the consciousness or lack > thereof of other creatures. The mirror test is a good one. Put a mirror in > front of an aborigine and (by my humble guess) it would recognize itself as After a while. Sight is a secondary sense to them (one argument for dolphin intellect despite the fact that they often bomb the mirror test). > itself. Trying to determine wether an entity makes decisions by its own > will or by genetically encoded reaction to stimulus is harder. Even dogs > learn and use learned behavior, but a dog will bark at a mirror. So we > have to incorporate low-level learned behaviors into our descritption of > non-sentient behavior. But then, what's "low level"? Arbitrary, if you > ask me. That nicely sums up a problem I have with that kind of research. Fairly often, no sliding scale is established. Just a series of categories. "Lower" or "Low level" intelligence, "Higher Animal" intelligence, and "Human-level". Well, of course, if you define the top rung as human, no other animal's going to get there! > The aborigine's behavior can't all be directly genetically programmed or > they would have no reaction to an unknown like humans. So there's some > learning, and decisions based on that learning are made. There are passages in the book that indicate to me that abos are testing humans in a process similar to the scientific method. I freely admit, however, that I consider abos intelligent, if only minimally self-aware. > And me and any deists out there would say that any action is > based on a decision, conscious or otherwise, that is based on the way the > entity is genetically and environmentally "taught" to react. In other > words, maybe the aborgines just act on their genetic programming, but in > my opinion, so do we. I don't quite understand what this has to do with deism. I'd love to have that clarified, but by private mail -- not exactly a list thing. Sounds like behavioural psychology, to me. Which, incidentally, is my prefered model. Rat psychologists, unite! > So all of this says little either way about their sentience. But the > aborigines do have a goal, an intent in their actions. Wanting,intent, to me, > means sentience. Sure, you could say a computer "wants" to beat you at chess, But the computer doesn't want to play chess. A car doesn't want to drive anywhere. They're both following orders. Does an abo really want to direct the ecology of a planet? [snip] > the point of complexity, and in my opinion that's what it all boils down > to. I've found this to be an unpopular belief - in fact I haven't found > anyone who agrees with me - but I think that sentience isn't an either/or > thing. I think there are levels of self-awareness. To visualize this, I agree, but I'd also separate intelligence from self-awareness. You can injure a person so that they can still recognize themselves in a mirror, but they're vegetables when it comes to processing power. Or vice versa. I don't think anyone would contend that the abos are unintelligent, or lack problem solving abilities, but do they know who they are? Can they write poetry, appreciate a sunset, tell epic tales of the first of their kind to make contact with the space monkeys? Or are they more akin to a huge parallel processing system, disseminiating information, performing experiements, analizing data, and making adjustments in the ecology, without that spark that would allow them to get together at the corner bar after work and bitch about the shift supervisor? > compare your state of conscioussness when you're half-asleep to when > you're fully awake. Humans are more self-aware than, say, dogs, because > we have more brainpower and more types of brainpower, not because we have > some one thing that dogs lack: we're just more complex. And a dog is > probably more self-aware than a fly. And in-between dogs and humans are > chimps and drunk people, not necessarily in that order:) Another one of my major gripes about nonhuman intelligence research -- the researchers don't often seem to understand the concept of "differently able" (Yeah, I hate PC, but the term applies here). That is to say, the question is not "How are these creatures able to use problem solving skills or other hallmarks of intelligence like empathy to better survive in their environment?" Rather, the question is, "How much like humans are they?" which is why so little research is done on avians. Great apes look like us, we can deal with that. Dolphins are at least mammels, and live in a different medium, but we can relate somewhat. A raven? C'mon! They're bird brains! No volume, and they're "lower" animals. > As far as rebellious aborigines, I don't think an entity can deviate from > its genetic programming, but if its programming is complex enough, then a That depends what exactly you mean by deviate. Intelligence is a funny thing. If I have, for instance, a genetic makeup that allows for an aggresive response resulting in a reaction the result of which is pleasureable, I can spend a lot of time picking fights in bars. Or I can play superviolent first person shooters. Or I can start arguments with French Canadians (I can say that, I am one). Only one of these is going to get me arrested. So you can say that I'm programmed to be more likely to be violent, but not that I'm more likely to end up in jail. In other words, there's the programming, yes. But there's also what you DO with it. > slight variation in stimulus could produce an extreme variation in > behavior (this ties into my view of how humans have free will despite > what I said earlier about being a product of our genes and environment. > If you really want to know, I can go in to that too:). In other words, Sure. Go into it. > I *would* say that aborigines rebelling could happen, except that they > have such an extreme telepathic link and chemical control that they almost A) Not telepathy B) They do have pheremonal control, but that just means that you can't get too funny around other abos, or they'll *put* you in line. > share one conscious - it'd be kinda like a Borg rebelling, but even harder > because even seperated from the "collective" an aborigine's genes "tell" > it what its goal is. Which still doesn't address the possibility that some abos could decide that humans are the Creators. "...after all, bob, *you* ever see one?" -- +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= "I never get involved in my own life. It's too much trouble" - Michael Garibaldi (Babylon 5) *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: BIOHZD@aol.com Sent: Friday, February 12, 1999 10:45 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - Some Announcments Hey All, I have a couple of announcements. 1. NBC is showing a National Geographic special on dolphins Saturday (2/13) night at 7pm central time. 2. We've just made a couple new posts to the website. The first is another of Jason Werner's blithe commentaries on the life and times of Red Sky Charters. The crew is in the midst of a convoluted misadventure I cheekily call "A Simon in the Rough". Check out this installment and see what's befallen the hapless bunch this time... ; ) The second post is to the Restricted Access page in the RS CommCore section. It is an incomplete, but oh so cool, detail from the cover illustration for the Access Denied booklet. In short - IT ROCKS! Later All, Jeff Barber Biohazard Games *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Kevin C. Carpenter [kccarpenter@mindspring.com] Sent: Friday, February 12, 1999 11:14 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Some Announcments Yep, like I mentioned to the list earlier, this one looks like it will be good. I've noticed a number of books and documentaries focused more on the study of actual dolphin behavior and less on vague, glossed-over descriptions of them that some shows have presented in the past. Honestly, I think presenting them in a more realistic and 'wild' way (as the show's title suggests) really shows just how impressive they are. I wonder how much of the change has to do with new journalistic perspectives on such things, and how much from new data and studies. I'd wager a bit of both. - Kevin C. Carpenter >Hey All, > >I have a couple of announcements. > >1. NBC is showing a National Geographic special on dolphins Saturday (2/13) >night at 7pm central time. > *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message.