About the nature and composition of electrons we have nothing more than theories.

Anyway, without a link to a credible source (sorry, not the good book), your post is just words.

I like our brave soldier of god (he can even take a joke without losing his head; he deserves to go to heaven; too bad, there isn't one), but I take that as an insult. 

Of course, as an atheist, I couldn't never believe on what I wrote.

But anyone that believes on an omniscient god have to accept that he knew exactly how we would be when he (allegedly) created us.

So, god would be creating conscientiously and deliberately atheists.

We could say that god was doing that in order to use atheist as an example to teach a lesson to theists.

But since god could create good theists that would never need any burning of atheists to be good theists, the only rational explanation to someone that accepts the premises that god exists and is omniscient would be that god is a sadist that loves to burn unnecessarily atheist in hell.

Free will is incompatible with the omniscience of god.

If he knows the future, he knows what we are going to do and, therefore, everything we do is already determined.

Determined by god, since he created (allegedly) us exactly as we are and determined to do what he knew we would do.

Of course, all of this only points out that there is no god and that, anyway, logically, he could never be omniscient and good at the same time, taking in account how bad the world and humans in certain situations can be.

But this is a dilemma theists have been trying to deal with (and failing miserably) for centuries.

By the way, let's avoid name calling, ad hominem arguments and certain terms. We can do better than that.

Actually, silence seems enough as answer to some posts. If necessary, there is always the good old permanent ignore.

Anyway, everyone is free and welcomed to post here whatever opinions, especially the ones I completely disagree with.

Taking in account current voting results of this poll, the majority of our fellow bitcointalkers thinks AI is no threat or can be easily controlled.

I explained abundantly why I have serious doubts that we could control (in the end, it's always an issue of control) a super AI by teaching him human ethics.

Besides, a super AI would have access to all information from us about him on the Internet.

We could control the flow of information to the first generation, but forget about it to the next ones.

He would know our suspicions, our fears and the hate from many humans against him. All of this would fuel also his negative thoughts about us.

But even if we could control the first generations, soon we would lose control of their creation, since other generations would be created by AI.

We also teach ethics to children, but a few of them end badly anyway.

A super AI would probably be as unpredictable to us as a human can be.

With a super AI, we (or future AIs) would only have to get it wrong just once to be in serious trouble.

He would be able to replicate and change itself very fast and assume absolute control.

(of course, we are assuming that AIs would be willing to change themselves without limits, ending up outevolving themselves; they could have second thoughts about creating AI superior to themselves, as we are).

I can see no other solution than treating AI like nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, with major safeguards and international controls.

We have been somehow successful controlling the spread of these weapons.

But in due time it will be much more easy to create a super AI than a nuclear weapon, since we shall be able to create them without any rare materials, like enriched uranium.

I wonder if the best way to go isn't freezing the development of autonomous AI and concentrating our efforts on developing artificially our mind or gadgets we can link to us to increase our intelligence, but dependent on us to work.

But even if international controls were created, probably, they would only postpone the creation of a super AI.

In due time, they will be too easy to create. A terrorist or a doom religious sect could create one, more easily than a virus, nuclear or nanotech weapon.

So, I'm not very optimistic on the issue anyway.

But, of course, the eventuality of a secret creation by mean people in 50 years shouldn't stop us trying to avoid the danger for the next 20 or 30 years.

A real menace is at least 10 years from us.

Well, most people care about themselves 10 years in the future as much as they care for another human being on the other side of the world: a sympathetic interest, but they are not ready to do much to avoid his harm.

It's nice that a fellow bitcointalker is trying to do something.

But I'm much more pessimistic than you. For the reasons I stated on the OP, I think that teaching ethics to a AI changes little and gives no minimal assurance.

It's something like teaching an absolute king as a child to be a good king.

History shows how that ended. But we wouldn't be able to chop the head of a AI, like to Charles I or Louis XVI.

It would still be a jump in the dark.

As the European Union is now it is irrelevant as a real instrument of peace.

The more recent declarations of Trump about NATO (www.nytimes.com/2016/07/21/us/politics/donald-trump-issue) do create concerns about its future as an instrument of peace in Europe if he gets elected.

   Since god (allegedly) created all of us, knowing very well what we would do and believe (the good book say he is omniscient, knows everything: Psalm 139:16 "Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be"), he created us as we are.

   When god (allegedly) created humankind, he already knew who would be the ancestors of Hitler and knew that Hitler would born on 20 April 1889 and do all the things he did.

   Any insignificant change on the current of events would avoid the existence of Hitler (a few seconds could be the difference that would allow a brother to be born created by a different spermatozoid and not Hitler).

   But god decided to create his ancestors exactly the way that allowed Hitler to be born.

   So in the end, god planed and created Hitler with full conscience about whom he was creating (see also Marshall Brain, http://godisimaginary.com/i6.htm).

   He is guilty for everything Hitler did as an individual is guilty for creating a chain of events with the clear conscience that those events will necessarily provoke a catastrophe or even any damage.

Since god (allegedly) created all of us, knowing very well what we would do and believe (the good book say he is omniscient, knows everything: Psalm 139:16 "Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be"), he created us atheists.

Why is the question theists have to answer.

Maybe god loves to have many atheists to burn in hell, so he makes many deliberately.

Clearly, this brave soldier of god thinks god is going to save him for spending his time trying to convert us.

The problem is that he is so bad (if his nick was suggested by a theist friend, I know where his friend found inspiration for the nick) trying to convert us that he ends up doing the opposite: he stimulates atheism.

At best, he will end at purgatory for instigating atheism. At worst, he will end up with us in hell. Wouldn't it be fun? He could keep preaching us there.

I seriously doubt he converted anyone on bitcointalk. If I'm being unfair, feel free to post if he converted you.

"Gobekli Tepe isn't 13,000 years old" 

"The Universe and the world only have about 6,000 years" 

Carry on the good (from our perspective) or god (from his perspective) work.

As cells die, they are expelled from our body (so, their atoms are expelled). New cells are made from matter (atoms) that we incorporate (oxygen we breathe, food we eat, liquids we drink).

Even the neurons' atoms are replaced as they repair themselves. Probably, by expelling old molecules and creating new ones.

By this process, all our atoms seem to be replaced by new atoms of the same type.

We are just natural clones of ourselves.

I just updated the OP.

Yes, it's huge for a post. But you can just read the bold parts.

Your post looks like a post from a person who believe a lot on conspiracy theories.

You post no evidence for your assurances.

The economic elites (the rich) are the ones who have more to lose for breaking the law. Because of that, they think very well before doing that.

The elites you are talking about are the AI specialists and they mostly confess what I wrote about: they still haven't a clue about what they are doing. It's trial and error.

Actually, atheism is also fueling the development of AI.

Many of those AI developers are atheists, therefore, they don't have any hope about what will happen when they die.

Their only hope is "curing" aging thanks to AI:
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/11/ray_kurzweil_s_singularity_what_it_s_like_to_pursue_immortality.html

Ben Goertzel - AGI to Cure Aging: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tESG1KMgx7I

https://www.singularityweblog.com/bill-andrews/

So, no conspiracies or master plans, just people who love life trying his best to stay alive.

In the end, they seem willing to become AI machines' pets to keep living.

Thanks, but no need to tip me.

If you want to help us, atheists, promoting reason, science and tolerance, just post on this thread sometimes.

No doubt, many theists are tolerant people, however, the number of radical believers has been growing (thanks just to their higher birth rates and massive indoctrination of their children) and they can end up being a menace to our way of life or, at least, the one of our children.

Radicalism/orthodoxy has been rising not only on Muslim countries, including Turkey or Indonesia, but also on Israel and even on the United States.

And, yes, in the end, religion is mostly about the power and financial support of a cast of professional priests that live on the credulity of their fellow citizens.

And this has been going on for at least 13,000 years (see Gobekli Tepe).

Actually, Bakunin, writing about the tree of knowledge, makes satan the hero and god the villain.

Satan (assuming the form of the talking snake) is the one that tries to teach humans, giving us access to knowledge.

God is the one that tries to keep us ignorant and expels us from paradise for becaming what we are, sapiens.

In the end, we are made basically of quarks (base of the protons and neutrons which form the atom's nucleus) and electrons.

As far as specialists know, both quarks and electrons are elementary/fundamental particles, made of "pure energy" (perhaps, composed by the famous strings). All its mass is created by the Higgs field because of the way they interact with Higgs Bosom.

These kind of particles have been compared not to a violin, but to the sound/vibration that the violin makes.

That seems what we are: a specific pattern of organization of energy.

But this is the easy part.

Things only start to be really bizarre when we think about what these particles that are part of our body can do according to quantum mechanics.

If the subatomic particles of my (temporarily) atoms can be at different places at the same time, am I also (of course, not conscientiously) at different places at the same time?

If god existed, he would pardon theists... (well, one would like to think that he wouldn't pardon believers that like to end in glory taking with them as many infidels as they can).

They don't know what they are doing (mostly, talking about).

They just say what others told them about things no one knows anything.

It's all about will to believe no matter what, because of education and fear of death (from death and from what they think can happen after death if they say they don't believe).

Let's leave aside for now the question of accepting to be outevolved by our creations, since it's possible to present acceptable arguments for both sides.

Even if I have little doubt that it would end up with our extinction.

The main point, which hardly anyone would argue against, is that creating a super AI has to bring positive things in order to be worthy.

If we were certain that a super AI would exterminate us, hardly anyone would defend their creation.

Therefore, the basic reason in favor of international regulations of the current investigations to create a super/general AI is that we don't know what we are doing.

We don't know exactly what will make an AI conscious/autonomous.

Moreover, we don't know if their creation will be dangerous. We don't have a clue how they will act toward us, not even the first or second generation of super AI.

Until we know what we are doing, how they will react, what are the dangerous lines of code that will change them completely and to what extension, we need to be careful and control what specialists are doing.

Probably, the creation of a super AI is unavoidable.

Indeed, until things start to go wrong, his creation will have a huge impact on all areas: scientific, technological, economical, military or social in general.

We managed to stop human cloning (for now), since that doesn't have a big economic impact.

But A.I. is something completely different. This will have (for good or bad) a huge impact on our life.

Any country that decided to stay behind will be completely outcompeted (Ben Goertzel).

Therefore, any attempt to control AI development will have to be international in nature (see Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, p. 253).

Taking in account that AI development is essentially software based (since hardware development has been happening under our eyes and will continue to happen no matter what) and that it can be created by one, or a few developers, working with a small infrastructure (it's more or less about writing code), the risk that he will end up being created against any regulation is big.

Probably, the times of open source AI software are numbered.

Soon, all of these developments will be considered as military secrets.

But regulation will allow us time to understand what we are doing and what the risks are.

Anyway, if the creation of an AI is inevitable, the only way to avoid that humans end up being outevolved, and possible killed, would be to accept that, at least some of us, would have to be "upgraded".

Humanity will have to change a lot.

Of course, these changes can't be mandatory. So, only voluntaries would be changed.

Probably, in due time, genetic manipulation to increase human brain capacities won't be enough.

Living tissue might not be susceptible to be changed as dramatically as any AI can be.

We might need to change the very nature of our composition, from living tissue to something synthetic with nanotechnology.

Clearly, we will cease to be human. We, the homo sapiens sapiens, shall be outevolved.

Anyway, since we are still naturally evolving, this is inevitable.

But at least we will be outevolved by ourselves.

Can our societies endure all these changes?

Of course, I'm reading my own text and thinking this is crazy. This can't happen this century.

We are conditioned to believe that things will stay more or less as they are, therefore, our reaction to the probability of changes like these during the next 50 years is to immediately qualify it as science fiction.

Our ancestors reacted the same way to the possibility of a flying plane or humans going to the Moon.

The difference of an (real) atheist from a believer is that we have no absolute certainties at all, especially about any god.

We don't say that god doesn't exist, we just say that we have no reasons to believe that he exists. It's the same that we say about vampires or dragons.

The burden of proof is on anyone arguing something positive, like that there is a higher being that created deliberately the Universe.

The fate of the Universe

 I already posted about the beginning of the Universe and wrote also on its end. Let me add something more on it (it’s not my field).


The consensus about the fate of the Universe is moving into the Big Rip or the Big Chill. And that is good, since the Big Crunch would be the worst of the scenarios.

The precise numbers change from author to author, but the numbers about the composition of the Universe are more or less around these:

Normal stuff: 4.9% (the numbers go around 4.6 and 4.9%: mostly, 4%, are hydrogen and helium; with stars amounting to about 0.5% and neutrinos for approximately 0.3%).

Dark matter: 25% (the estimations oscillate between 22% and 27%).

Dark energy: 70% (the opinions swing between 66% and 73%).

See, accessible:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe#Contents https://www.spacetelescope.org/science/composition_of_universe/ http://space.about.com/od/astronomybasics/a/Composition-Of-The-Universe.htm

This composition changed during the life of the Universe. It seems that dark energy has been gaining preponderance.

Clearly, now it is this energy that is controlling the Universe.

Basically, the specialists only know well regular matter. They know little about dark matter and know almost nothing about dark energy.

It’s known that dark matter responds to gravity and constitutes the back bones of the Universe, around which galaxies are formed (with a strong help from black holes, since every galaxy seem to have one on its centre).

So, dark matter is what keeps galaxies united.

However, what is controlling things now is dark energy and it has the contrary effect. This energy is pulling apart galaxies.

It seems that some time ago the velocity of the expansion of the Universe was decreasing.

But, currently, the Universe is expanding faster, because of the increase of dark energy.

Therefore, once, the Universe was dominated by dark matter, but now is controlled by dark energy.

The issue is still debated (it depends on the intensivity of dark energy, on the reason for its increase and its rate and possible limit), but now specialists are saying that the galaxies will expand faster and faster.

Some controversial calculations point out for 22 thousand millions years from now as the date of the Big Rip.

In due time, if humankind is still here, our descendents will only see the stars of our galaxy, Milky Way, on the night sky. All the other galaxies will be out of sight.

Then, at about 60 millions before the Big Rip, even our Milky Way will be ripped apart. All solar systems would follow the same path a few months before the final Rip.

On that time, our Solar System won’t probably be here.

Our Sun will start expanding and destroy all life on Earth on one or two thousand million years and will explode on about five thousand million years.

But these are not the only problems, even if the Solar Systems could resist the growing speed of expansion, it’s also confirmed that the Universe is dying.

The number of stars created has been diminishing. One day, the Universe will be a dark place, because, one by one, stars will die and less and less ones will be created.

So, what can kill us first? The Big Rip, caused by the speed of expansion of the Universe, or will it be the Big Chill, provoked by the slow death of the Universe?

From a natural perspective, one or both of these situations seem inevitable.

But no need to feel gloomy about this.

A touch of human magic might be possible.

If we won’t screw up and end destroying ourselves, we know for sure that we shall be very far from this planet and solar system long before the end of the Sun.

And, if we accept the theory of the Multiverse (saying that there are other universes besides this one) we might also find a way out of this Universe long before he fails us.

Michio Kaku argues that it's (theoretically) possible to create a wormhole to another universe.

Nothing like keep hoping for some meaning by dreaming we “can” endure forever (we won’t, because forever never ends).

Sorry, I no longer have curiosity about your "truth" about god. Quoting that aware study was a major shot on your own feet. For me, it's case close. And it should also be to you: 1/2 on 152?

As I stated more than once, the burden of proof is on the believer side. I don't have to demonstrate that god is an illusion.

Ben Goertzel is working on the issue and knows the work of everyone worth knowing working on the AI field. He knows what he is talking about.

Having an AI more intelligent than us is no longer a simple possibility.

There is no paradox. If you know the question, you will find an answer.

The only problem is if you know so little that you can't even formulate a correct question. Even so, you can end up finding it with several attempts. As we do on Google, until we find the correct key/technical words.





 

I already answered to you about that issue here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1221052.msg15070414#msg15070414

But I'm going to repost the full justification that I posted here: https://oneskeptic.tumblr.com/post/146726224082/on-death


"Since there can’t be any immortality, and death is our destiny, unfortunately, the issue of the effect of immortality on the value of time can’t be really tested.

Clearly, being able to live thousand of years would lower the value of our time. But I surely wouldn’t mind to have time to be able to real waste it.

You could tell yourself that you would be ready to die, after having a meaningful life. But that is just rubbish.

Or write, like Mark Twain, that death is as just natural as life, implying that we have to accept it as we accept life.

But this is also absurd. Death is natural, but it’s the end of life.

Let’s deal with death with a laugh, but saying that it must be a pleasant one is nonsense or proper of people that don’t give enough value to their limited time of consciousness.

Even being death “natural”, it doesn’t cease to be coercive.

Imagine a world where everyone is forever young, except your self or your child. Wouldn’t that be terrible? Does the simple fact that death happens to everyone makes it something you must accept with a sincere smile?

Think about kids that have Werner syndrome, Cockayne syndrome or other fast aging disease. Does the tragic nature of their condition results from the simple fact that are rare situations and, therefore, “unfair” to them?

Mark Twain wrote as well that we also didn’t have any opinion about living, it was also imposed.

Actually, that is not exactly true; a part of us had literally the run of his life to live, the spermatozoid. Every one of us is a victorious being that won the prize over millions of others.

Being afraid of death is more than understandable. It’s logical.

Someone who doesn’t fear (or, at least, feels negatively) death is someone who doesn’t love anything in life, not even himself.

In the end, the only positive way to part from this life would be if we were completely bored with it.

Think about it: life is like a relationship, the only happy way to end it is if we were tired of it. If we still love it, death will always be a tragedy.

Besides, being able to make our own decision to end life is also a positive thing. Death wouldn’t be imposed by nature, but would be our own decision.

One of the major problems of death is that is imposed on us against our will.

Of course, parting this life because one is bored with it wouldn’t be exactly a happy moment. But it might be less unhappy than to parting it when we are still in love with life.

The problem is that a lifespan of 100 years, at best, is not enough to have any conditions to reach the goal of getting bored with life.

It’s impossible to determine how much time we would have to live in order to start feeling really bored and willing to die.

But if suicide is the less oppressive way to die, I think I probably would need many thousand years to start thinking about it.

Of course, I’m not making an apology of suicide. If I was able to chose the way to die, I would chose suicide, but because that would allow me to be a master of death and, so, to live thousand (or million) of years.

Suicide makes sense only if living is a real pain. Because of physical pain; or because of unbearable boredom.

In our current conditions, where life is a blink of an eye of awareness, in between two eternities of being nothing (before being alive and after being dead), suicide seems absurd.

But the only less bad way to die would indeed be suicide; after a very, very, long life.

Unfortunately, currently, that isn’t yet available. We have a short lifespan. There is little hope to get bored of life.


So, better enjoy our luck to be alive like if we had a chance on a trillion of quadrillions to be born, since our actual odds were even worst than these.


Make the most of life like if it was a single drop of water tumbling on our thirsty lips on an infinite desert.
  

Value every day of it as if we were on a death row, because we are; we just have a wonderful, huge, cell and no one told us yet when it’s going to be our turn. "



Anyway, you have the interesting/original opinion, not me. My profound dislike of death is very common.

Very few people like to live in a wonderful death row.