Joshua's blog

Nasogastric Feeding: The Way to Better Nutrition

2014-10-26T16:32:00.000+02:00

I'm redoing my website, and it looks like some old gems will have to, sadly, fall by the wayside. So, I'll publish a few on my blog for posterity. Here's one of the first. Note that, since I wrote this, dietary replacements like MealSquares and Soylent have become popular. Not quite naso-gastric feeding, but a step towards the total replacement of food.

(For those who don't quite get it: It's meant to be funny...)

Nasogastric Feeding: The Way to Better Nutrition

Note added 2012: Leading doctors in Britain's National Health Service are now advocating Naso-Gastric Feeding as the preferred nutritional approach to better health. ( Article from Daily Mail .) Remember, you read it here first--in 1999!

As modern science provides ever more efficient ways to nurture our bodies and preserve our health, exciting new nutritional methods have developed. In particular, Nasogastric Feeding has rapidly gained popularity as the best, most healthful way for us to get our full nutritional needs.

Precisely formulated nutritional fluids are dripped through a tube called a gavage. The gavage goes through the nose into the stomach. The need for unhygienic, messy "food" is obviated by a sterile, nutritionally balanced formula.

NGF is a well-tested and intensively researched nutritional technology. It has been used for decades and preserved thousands of lives. Its health benefits are accompanied by societal and environmental benefits.

Yet a danger lurks for those who promote the beneficial effects NGF for our children and us. A fanatic group called the La Comida League (LCL) is actively trying to deny the health benefits of NGF to the world. These people would insist on a retreat to the bygone days of "food." This article is intended as a clarion call to those who may have been faced with the challenges of LCL fanatics and not known how best to explain the benefits of NGF.

The single greatest value of NGF is, in a word, nutrition. NGF formulas provide a precise 100% of every vitamin and mineral needed by the human body. The relative proportions of these nutrients can be adjusted for the needs of every individual. Calories are also included in precise quantities.

The nutritional dangers of oral ingestion, on the other hand, are well known. People in modern society are becoming more obese and poorly-nourished than ever. "Food" such as potato chips, cheese-burgers and cola provides large quantities of fat, sugar and salt, and almost no vitamins and minerals.

Driven by our baser instincts, who among us has not stuffed disgusting quantities of "food" into our mouths, chip after chip, burger after burger, followed by liters of caffeine-laden cola? Primitive feeding instincts, which may have served humanity well in ancient times, now cause more harm than good. NGF formula, on the other, is measured out in precisely metered quantities that can be fine-tuned to the milliliter.

If the LCL fanatics have their way, it would mean certain death to millions of people. Go into any hospital today and you will see before you dozens of patients whose lives were saved by the gavage. Although NGF is best known for helping people who are comatose or have damaged digestive systems, in fact anyone can benefit from NGF.

The valuable health effects of NGF are not limited to nutrition. Choking on food is among the leading causes of death in the world. The gavage, of course, completely eliminates that danger. (Who among us has not chuckled at the absurdity of a restaurant which sells "food," yet which displays a poster on the Heimlich maneuver -- utterly unnecessary qere it not for the very meals the restaurant provides?)

Food poisoning (now there’s a tautology if there ever was one) is another leading cause of death. Even the most apparently hygienic butcher shop (my dictionary says that "butcher" means "someone who provides food" or "someone who kills people brutally") can be a breeding ground for salmonella and botulism. Needless to say, NGF formula, which is produced in the most up-to-date sterile conditions, never suffers from these problems.

In recent years, "eating disorders" such as anorexia and bulimia have become epidemic. When have you ever heard about "nasogastric-feeding disorders"?

LCL fanatics insist that excessive reliance on NGF can damage the teeth and jaws through disuse. But those who receive nourishment from NGF do not neglect their teeth. Low-calorie flavored chewing gum allows us to satisfy the need to chew, properly separating the instinctive chewing reflex from the unrelated and outdated custom of "eating." Many of those who enjoy NGF have discovered that the chewing urge fades away, and in fact teeth will become extraneous as humanity moves to the wonders of NGF. You might want to go to your oral surgeon for teeth-reduction surgery or teeth-enhancement surgery, as a way of improving your appearance. But teeth today are good for nothing more than an attractive element of personal appearance, once evolutionarily useful, but now meaningful only for aesthetics.

Vegetarians delight in disgusting us with nausea-inducing descriptions of the effects of eating dead animal flesh. But why should eating dead plants, which absorb fertilizer from the dirt, be any better? Whether the fertilizer is animal manure or petroleum derivates, is that what we really want to put in our mouths?

While the health benefits of NGF are the most obvious and important, let us not forget the societal progress that NGF brings. In bygone days, the disgusting experience of watching people masticate their saliva-drenched gobs of "food" was mitigated only by enforcement of "table manners," the worst diversion of human etiquette from true caring to multi-fork-obsessed neurosis ever known.

With a gavage, there is no need to think about the fifth fish fork or whether you should clamp your lips around your teeth as you chew. How is "food etiquette" supposed to enforce cultured conversation at your meals, while at the same time telling you not to talk while you eat?

With NGF, a beautiful, aesthetically-designed feeding line is snaked through your nose, and all that remains is to truly interact with your family and friends: Dinner time can be a time to get in touch, to share your feelings and learn to appreciate each other as human beings.

A beautiful story from the pre-NGF days tells us the difference between Hell and Heaven. In Hell, there is plenty to eat, but everyone’s elbows are locked, so that they cannot bring the food to their own mouths. Heaven is exactly the same, but the people realize that they can feed each other.

This story receives its modern-day realization in the difference between "food" and NGF. In "eating," humans must go to great lengths to repeatedly shovel food into their own mouths. NGF, on the other hand, requires beautiful sharing and cooperation, because intubation is most conveniently done by another person. Think of the family bonding encouraged by family members intubating each other, as opposed to "grabbing a quick bite" and each running their own way.

The aesthetics of NGF allow us to replace the more repugnant instincts by the most elevated spiritual feelings. Although so-called "gourmet nuts" insist that there is some aesthetic quality in food, far more junk food than gourmet food is sold in today’s world, indicating where the preferences of the "foodies" really lie. NGF Olfactory Art, on the other hand, is one of the more exciting trends in the modern art world. Today’s hottest artists mix a palette of scents into NGF fluids, providing "designer formulas" that are all the rage among modern aesthetes. Because NGF formula goes directly into the nose and from there into the stomach, nothing intervenes between the audience and the olfactory creations of these modern-day Picassos.

The workers who produce nutritional products will gain as well. The food industry is well-known as the most abusive in modern society. Whether it’s the meat-packers of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Mexican grape-pickers wading through the sewage-laden California fields, or undocumented aliens sweating over the dishes in your local diner for $3.95 an hour, food workers are seeking any solution that will help them advance beyond their current oppressive conditions. When these people are retrained for NGF formula production, they will be working in clean, modern facilities, receiving significantly higher salaries in greatly improved working conditions. Advanced means of production do not cost workers their jobs, but rather create job and improve standards of living.

Besides the health and social benefits of NGF, the ecological benefits of NGF make it a must for anyone who cares about our overcrowded planet. We all know about the destruction of the rainforest by slash-and-burn agriculture, and agriculture mostly means food.

The hypocrisy of vegetarians becomes clear in this context. Pick up any pro-vegetarian book for an incisive portrayal of the ecological harm caused by meat-breeding. Yet far more acres are taken for growing plants than for feeding animals. The rainforest may be the best-known example, but in fact any acre taken up by a Food Farm is an acre that is no longer pristine wilderness. As much as urban areas have spread, cities still do not take up a fraction of the acreage of farms. According to Paul Erlich, who warned of the population bomb, even if humanity does succeed in producing enough food, we are in danger of turning the whole Planet Earth into a giant feeding lot for humans.

NGF formula, on the other hand, can be produced in controlled conditions from a combination of yeasts, chemicals, and precise quantities of sterilized vegetable matter, so that whatever acreage goes into producing NGF formula produces hundreds of times more nutrition than the equivalent acre in a farm.

Transportation of "food" causes significant harm to our environment. Thousands of trucks deliver perishables like milk (cow secretions) and fruit (plant reproductive organs) every day. This increases traffic jams on the roads and creates air pollution. Yet NGF formula, because it is so highly concentrated and has no refrigeration requirements, can significantly reduce the pollution caused by transportation.

It is up to every concerned citizen to promote NGF as the only way to preserve human health, improve human society, and protect this small planet on which we live. Eating in public should be at first looked down on, and then made illegal. Taxes should be placed on "food" production, subsidizing factories for NGF formulas. Children should be educated on the benefits value of NGF and given government-subsidized nasogastric feedings in schools. And LCL activists should be prevented from polluting the public mind with their primitive nonsense. Legal means should be tried, such as lawsuits against LCL counselors who advise the consumption of food by people who later suffer food poisoning. People who refuse to give their children NGF should also be prosecuted for child abuse. Companies that produce NGF formula will be glad to give financial aid to health professionals and lay people who wish to advocate this essential technology for advancing human welfare.

With vigorous advocacy for the progress of the human race, we can move into a new era of scientific nutrition, freeing humanity from the age-old-burden of the food-eating instinct.

Correcting the Washington Post

2014-10-10T13:42:00.001+03:00

Hey, I got the Washington Post to correct an article.

The journalist listed countries that were helping with the Ebola crisis. Then, out of the ~175 countries not helping with the crisis, he singled out only Israel. This is unfair.

The same journalist, Adam Taylor, had reported just last month about an Israeli medical team sent to Cameroon to help stem the spread of Ebola. In that case, the team went to an area on the margins of the plague, but given that Israel had done something to help, it was unreasonable to list Israel, and only Israel, as not giving assistance.

As it happens, even though the IDF had announced a few days ago that it would not send medical teams, the Foreign Ministry (which is the right department for this anyway) announced today that it is sending field hospitals and medical teams.

I tweeted, mentioning @mradamtaylor. I am impressed that he replied to my tweet and corrected the article within an hour.

"Update: This post has been updated to include the Israeli Foreign Ministry's announcement." Twitter exchange below.

I don't think Adam Taylor is out to get Israel. I don't think he is even obsessed with Israel. The world is obsessed with Israel. Taylor he saw an item on his newsfeed "IDF decides not to send teams to West Africa" and that stuck in his mind. Taylor didn't see an item "Portuguese army decides not to send team to West Africa" because the world doesn't care. (And for the record, since Taylor's comments concerned Israel's relative wealth, Portugal's economy is about the same size, but I don't think they're sending anyone.)

It would make a good penance for Taylor to write about Israel's efforts for public health in Africa and other parts of the world, far out of proportion to the size of its economy. If Cuba gets an article on that, why not Israel?

Name is fate

2014-09-16T22:38:00.000+03:00

Who wrote this article? It's in one of my areas of interest.

Fox, J. (2014). Intelligence and rationality. Psychologist, 27(3), 143-143. (British Psychological Society.)

Here it is.

That J in "J. Fox" stands for Joshua.

But it's not me. Just a doppelganger.

Then there is that other Josh Fox. The Jewish anti-shale extraction activist with a degree from an Ivy League university.

But not me again.

השלט המצחיק ביותר במדינת ישראל

2014-03-21T10:21:00.002+02:00

שערוריות אין מספיק במקומותינו

2013-12-15T19:33:00.001+02:00

כידוע, מדינת ישראל כל כך רגועה ומושלמת שאין על מה להתעצבן. אבל אל יאוש! אחרי חיפושים נרחבים מצאתי שערוריה ענקית, בשלושה חקלים.

1. הסרט השני של ההוביט מכונה "מפלתו של סמאוג." אוי לנו כי הושברנו! The Desolation of Smaug "מפלתו"?! Desolation בלעז "שממה." מה עשו לספר הנהדר הזה?

2. בפרסומת לסרט השני של ההוביט, כך כתוב: "הגמדים, בילבו וגנדלף הצליחו לברוח מההרים המיסטיים,...."

The Misty Mountains הם ההרים המיסטיים?! לאן הגענו! לאיזה שפל הידרדרנו!

3. קְהָ‏זָ‏ד דוּ‏ם, מה פתאום!

מי לכל הרוחות החליט שעברים דוברי העברית צריכים להיות פחות עבריים מרעואל בכבודו ובעצמו -- הסופר הדגול אמר שדמות הגזע הגמדי מושפע מהעם היהודי, וששפתם בנוייה בהשראת העברית.

האות (רונה) kh מסמנת, לרוב הדעות, את הצליל k^h, דהיינו כּ עם אספירציה. סביר שה-כ' הרפוייה בעברית התפתחה היסטורית מצליל כזה. ייתכן גם ש-kh מסמן את הצליל x, דהיינו ח' של ימינו. אבל שפת הגמדים היא שפה עם שלוש פונימות לשורש, בדיוק כמו עברית. ב- khazad שלוש אותיות, לא ארבעה. עבריים -- לאן?!?!

סכנה קיומית מבינה ממוכנת. מאמר בכלכליסט

2013-12-07T22:11:00.002+02:00

סקירה של ספרו החדש של ג'יימס ברט לגבי הסכנה הקיומית מבינה ממוכנת (בינה כללית מלאכותית).

לעוד בעברית, ראו גם את המאמר שלי בגלילאו.

כמו בספרו של ברט, המאמר מספק סקירה ראשונה מסוגה להרבה פרטים חשובים שעד כה נמצאו רק במאמרים אקדמיים ובשיחות רשת בין מביני עניין.

מצד שני, למרות שלא חסר דבר, ההסבר כאן אינו צלול כמו במאמרים למומחים הקיימים ברשת, ולדעתי הקורא עלול לא לתפוס את מהות העניין.

הייתי ממליץ את הספר לסקרנים שרוצים מבוא כללי לנושא, אבל לא הייתי ממליץ אותו לאחד שלדעתי עשוי להפוך לחוקר או תומך חשוב בעבודה לבטיחות בבינה ממוכנת.

ביקורת קצרה שלי לספר מופיעה באתר אמאזון.

(תודה לאורי פריימן על ההפנייה למאמר.)

Snowdenizing UFAI

2013-12-07T19:21:00.002+02:00

Here's my post to LessWrong about setting ethical norms for AGI development which will slow down secretive, unsafe projects by casting a shadow of suspicion on all the leading researchers. The responses were not very supportive of the idea, but you can judge it for yourself.

Why officers vs. enlisted?

2013-10-31T16:01:00.001+02:00

My post now appears at LessWrong.

It's always puzzled me that, in armies, officers form a separate hierarchical ladder from the NCOs and enlisted soldiers.

Armies could have a single hierarchy, top to bottom, as in the simplified diagram below on the left. Instead, all armies have two distinct ladders, with one strictly above the other, as on the right. (Reminds me of those wacky non-standard integers☺)....

Our MTG update is in the Jerusalem Post

2013-10-09T13:30:00.003+03:00

Take a look at an item in Michael Ordman's Good News Israel blog, also in JPost, which we sent in. (Search the page for Shahar.)

And here's an extra scoop, some fact-nuggets that Benjamin pointed out. It's a little too mathematical for a quick JPost blog post, but since all my readers are MTG fans, you'll eat it right up.

With Uri Peleg's victory in 2007, Israel is in third place among countries in number of World Championship holders. It is in first place for number of champions per capita. Yay us!

And there's another achievement: Since MtG is actually not so popular in Israel, the country may well be in first place for ratio of world champions to players -- in other words, when Israelis get into the game, they are far more likely than anyone else to become #1 in the world!

Wikipedia -- a list of Magic: The Gathering World Championship

האם בכלל כדאי לדווח על עבירות?

2013-10-06T10:45:00.001+03:00

עדכון 8.10, יום אחרי פרסום הערך הזה:

חדשות טובות. אנשי מועצה אזורית מטה יהודה השיבו לדואל שלי (גם כתבתי להם) והציעו לקנוס משליך הפסולת לפי עדותי!
______________
הפוסט המקורי: 7.10
לפני כמה ימים, ראיתי בקבוק עף מרכב הנוסע בכביש 375. בקבוק הזכוכית התנפץ על השוליים. אחר כך, עפו שתי שקיות פלסטיק.

תיעדתי את הזמן, המקום, ומספר הרכב, וצילמתי אותו.

שלחתי דו"ח מפורט וברור למשרד להגנת הסביבה.

התשובה מהפקידה מיכל דסה: "אינך רשאי לשלוח לנו תלונה על השלכת פסולת מאחר ואינך נאמנת [כך במקור] ניקיון."

אילו רצתה לשכנע אותי שמשרדי הממשלה אדישים, ושאין סיבה לדווח לרשויות, לא היתה יכולה לעשות עבודה טובה יותר.

_____________________
עדכון לערך הזה בערב של 7.10

מישהו הציע שאהפוך לנאמן ניקיון.

אבל התשובה של הפקידה לא בדיוק נותנת את התחושה שטוב להיות נאמן ניקיון. היא היתה יכולה לענות "תודה על הדיווח. טוב לראות עירנות כזאת, שעוזרת לנו לשמור על הניקיון. לצערי, החוק קובע שרק דיווח של נאמן ניקיון יכולה להיחשב לראיה משפטית." (אם זה בכלל נכון.)

אבל היא לא אמרה זאת, רק "אינך רשאי לשלוח לנו תלונה..." והוראות כיצד ניתן להכפיף את עצמי מרצון לביורוקרטיה אטומה וחסרת איכפתיות לגבי תקפיד שלה.

Fracking vs in-situ oil shale retorting: Let's get it straight

2013-08-27T19:52:00.000+03:00

(Disclaimer: This post is strictly the product of my own brain, not those of any fellow activists, who tend more towards sanity.)

The Valley of Elah and the Adullam region are threatened by in situ shale oil retorting, heating up the ground to 350C for 2-3 years so that a petroleum product called kerogen leaks out. (The kerogen in the region's rocks is said to be of good quality, but high in sulfur, which will be removed on-site. Don't worry, we have been assured that there will be no rotting-egg smell.)

It is important not to confuse this with fracking, which involves shooting hundreds of thousands of liters of chemical-laden water into the ground to force out petroleum products.

There is a real difference between fracking and in-site retorting. Read the recent news article for background.

Specifically, Dead Cthulhu lies dreaming in the WATERY DEPTHS of R'yleh, whereas Lord Satan's preferred abode is a SUBTERRANEAN BURNING PIT of sulfur.

Just wanted to make that clear.

Only a 30% chance of Cthulhu, say fracking experts

My article on Acausal Trade

2013-08-14T20:37:00.000+03:00

Possibly the only article yet published on acausal trade.

It's on the LessWrong wiki, also on joshuafox.com.

In acausal trade, agents P and Q cooperate as follows: P simulates or otherwise analyzes agent Q, and learns that Q provably does something that P wants, if P does what Q wants; and Q symmetrically learns the same about P.

Contents

1 Description

2 Prediction mechanisms

3 An example of acausal trade with simple resource requirements

4 Acausal trade with complex resource requirements

5 Related Concept: Super-rationality

6 Relevance to Friendly AI

7 See also

8 References

...

See the full article for more at the LessWrong wiki or on joshuafox.com.

A bet on extreme futures with Robin Hanson

2013-08-13T11:13:00.001+03:00

A post at LessWrong:

"Betting on the future is a good way to reveal true beliefs.

"As one example of such a bet on a key debate about a post-human future, I'd like to announce here that Robin Hanson and I have made the following agreement. (See also Robin's post at Overcoming Bias)."

... More at LessWrong

The "Singularity Hypotheses" is available

2013-04-09T19:40:00.002+03:00

It includes my article with Roman Yampolskiy, which is available here.

The book is available in electronic and paper versions.

H/T Amnon Eden, the editor.

Book page at Springer

חומרים מאכלים

2013-04-09T18:02:00.000+03:00

לפני 4 שנים בדיוק כתבתי על "חומר מאכל" טעים במתקן מים ליד צפרירים. סודיום היפוכלוריד. יאמממם! אבל עיון בלועזית גילתה שה-כ אמורה להיות דגושה: חומר מְאַכֵּל (corrosive).

חשבתי שצריך להוסיף דגש. אבל אנשי מקורות חבמים ממני. הרי דגש נראה כמו כתם אבק או שריטה בשלט. במקום זה, שינו את השלט ל"חומרים מאכלים" בפי שתראו למטה:

2009:

2013:

הטבות לתלמידי לשיבה בלבד!

2013-04-08T17:49:00.000+03:00

מה קורה כשהטבות וסובסידיות ממשלטיות מגועות רק לבני הישיבות? מספרו של בנימין לאו "חכמים - ימי בית שני." ".

עד שרק מכבסה אחת משלמת את כל הארנונה

2013-04-07T20:42:00.000+03:00

מה קורה שפוטרים את בני הישיבה מארנונה וממיסים שונים? מה חושבים כל יתר האזרחים?

מספרו של בנימין לאו "חכמים - ימי בית שני."
".

Who needs Dungeons and Dragons ?

2013-04-05T17:52:00.000+03:00

Who needs Dungeons and Dragons when you've got your own maze of twisty tunnels designed to trap and defeat the invader?

Benjamin, Daniel, Abigail and I crawled through the tunnels at Hurvat Shua, 4 km from our house. The Jews dug the tunnels to prepare for the Roman legions in the Bar Kochba rebellion in 131 CE.

View Larger Map

Thanks to our neighbor, archeologist Dr Uzi Leibner, for introducing the neighborhood to these caves last week.

The tunnels twist from cave to cave. Each cave has several exits; some tunnels have other tunnels branching off in unexpected directions, like overhead. It would be very easy to get lost. We only ventured in to the depth of three caves, but there is a lot more to explore.

The tunnels are just wide enough to crawl on your belly, maybe 50 cm in diameter. In one place I had to force my shoulders through.

'
.

Read an article by Boaz Zissu and Amos Kloner (p. 41 ff) with cool photos and a discussion of these tunnels

Dio reports on the reinforcement of militarily advantageous sites with fortifications, passages and underground networks, and the rebels’ tactic of avoiding head-on clashes with the Romans: "To be sure, they [the Jews] did not dare try conclusions with the Romans in the open field, but they occupied the advantageous positions in the country and strengthened them with mines and walls, in order that they might have places of refuge whenever they should be hard pressed, and might meet togethere unobserved under ground; and they pierced these subterranean passages from above at intervals to let in air and light".

Dio’s account is consistent with the archaeological discoveries, especially with the "Hiding Complexes" phenomenon. Certain rock-cut features of the hideout complexes (as narrow tunnels – "burrows" (fig. 6), vertical shafts (figs. 7, 8), locking and blocking devices) constitute distinguishing marks of their function, and enable the identification of the phenomenon.

The burrows link external chambers used previously as cisterns (fig. 9), limestone quarries (fig. 10), ritual immersion baths, olive presses, storerooms and granaries, stables and rooms for raising animals, columbaria (fig. 11a,b), and so on; connecting them made the chambers unusable for their previous function and purposely impaired the local way of life and economy.

The burrows are low, narrow and can only be traversed by walking on all fours, sliding on the knees, or crawling (fig. 12). The burrows bend from time to time at diverse angles and in some cases the level of the floor changes (fig. 13). Small side chambers were hewn in the walls of the burrows for various purposes.

Shafts were cut out in the complexes for use as entrances or exits. The shafts had locks and their entrances were camouflaged - usually inside a room or courtyard of a house in the aboveground settlement. Shafts connecting burrows whose floors were at different levels were hewn vertically from the top down.

The entrances to rooms and burrows were closed, blocked, or cut off with various kinds of devices, such as a stone slab the same size as the burrow, a large round stone the size of the average opening, beams, and bars. The people hiding would lock the entrance behind them from the inside.

To prepare a hideout and light lamps inside, one needed ventilation. Vertical shafts were hewn in the ceilings of the rooms for the removal of rubble from the hewing; once the complex was completed, they served as air vents and were camouflaged on the surface.

A regular supply of water was vital. Many hiding complexes incorporated earlier cisterns (fig. 14). A burrow opened into the upper portion of the cistern a few meters above its floor so that water could be stored up to that point; thus the people hiding in the complex had a steady supply of water that could be drawn clandestinely.

The architectural uniformity among many of the complexes seems to be evidence of orders from above, planning, and implementation in one short period of time, as a result of the military conception of the Bar Kokhba's revolt leadership.

Perhaps preparing the hideouts was part of the civilian population’s role in getting ready for revolt, subversive activity, and hiding in various stages of the war. Creating the hiding complexes was a sophisticated way of overcoming the difficulty of a head-on clash with the Roman legions.

The complexes were intended to serve as hideouts for weeks or even months and as bases for the rebels. Food, weapons, and other supplies could be stored there secretly. The small, narrow, winding burrows were meant to make it difficult for the enemy to infiltrate and advance in the underground maze.

The burrows could be blocked and locked easily and efficiently, and parts of the complex could be cut off from the outside. An individual Roman soldier bearing weapons and an oillamp would have a hard time advancing on all fours or dragging himself along the ground in an unfamiliar burrow or moving through the vertical shafts, and he would be in an inferior, vulnerable position compared with the rebel lying in ambush for him.

The shafts were designed to hinder or even stop movement along the burrows by changing the floor level, and they could easily be stopped up with rocks. Therefore an enemy would have to fight one on one, losing the advantage of the trained military unit formed with frontal combat in mind.

More at the article.

And a story from those times:

Another ancient tradition that has been reevaluated in the light of recent archeological discoveries has to do with an obscure law in the Mishnah that forbids the wearing of “nailed sandals” on the Sabbath. The Talmud traces the prohibition to a tragic occurrence that occurred “in the final days of the ‘persecution’ [sh'mad],” a standard rabbinic expression for the Bar Kokhba insurrection: A group of Jews who were hiding in a sealed off cave saw the tracks of a nailed sandal that inadvertently [or: as a trick? JF] been worn backwards, and assumed that enemy soldiers had entered their cave. In the ensuing panic, which took place on a Saturday, “more people were killed than were killed by the enemy.”

A variant of the story had it that it was the familiar scratching sound of the sandals’ nail-heads on the ground outside the cave that had provoked to the hysteria, with its deadly consequences.

Indeed, the dreaded nailed sandal was often equated in ancient sources with the might of the Roman legionary, and the word kalgas, from the Latin caliga, became a synonym for a fierce soldier.

Nevertheless, the Talmudic rationale for the prohibition of wearing nailed sandals on the Sabbath was dismissed by most respectable scholars as too farfetched for serious consideration.

Here again, archeology has altered our perspectives on the matter.

On a mountainous ridge overlooking Jericho, a cave was excavated in 1986, and it soon became clear that it was one of those caves that had served as a refuge for Jews during the Bar Kokhba uprising. The cave also contained the remains of a nailed sandal that had evidently belonged to a Jewish revolutionary. The owner of the sandals apparently perished in the cave, along with more than thirty men and women of diverse ages.

This tragic episode, or one very much like it, might lie at the root of the halakhic prohibition against wearing the lethal footwear.

The Singularity Wars

2013-02-10T23:19:00.002+02:00

(Cross-posted on LessWrong.)

This is a introduction, for those not immersed in the Singularity world, into the history of and relationships between SU, SIAI [SI, MIRI], SS, LW, CSER, FHI, and CFAR. It also has some opinions, which are strictly my own.)

The good news is that there were no Singularity Wars.

The Bay Area had a Singularity University and a Singularity Institute, each going in a very different direction. You'd expect to see something like the People's Front of Judea and the Judean People's Front, burning each other's grain supplies as the Romans moved in.

The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence was founded first, in 2000, by Eliezer Yudkowsky.

Singularity University was founded in 2008. Ray Kurzweil, the driving force behind SU, was also active in SIAI, serving on its board in varying capacities in the years up to 2010.

SIAI's multi-part name was clunky, and their domain, singinst.org, unmemorable. I kept accidentally visiting siai.org for months, but it belonged to the Self Insurance Association of Illinois. (The cool new domain name singularity.org, recently acquired after a rather uninspired site appeared there for several years, arrived shortly before before it was no longer relevant.) All the better to confuse you with, SIAI has been going for the last few years by the shortened name Singularity Institute, abbreviated SI.

The annual Singularity Summit was launched by SI, together with Kurzweil, in 2006. SS was SI's premier PR mechanism, mustering geek heroes to give their tacit endorsement for SI's seriousness, if not its views, by agreeing to appear on-stage.

The Singularity Summit was always off-topic for SI: more SU-like than SI-like. Speakers spoke about whatever technologically-advanced ideas interested them. Occasional SI representatives spoke about the Intelligence Explosion, but they too would often stray into other areas like rationality and the scientific process. Yet SS remained firmly in SI's hands.

It became clear over the years that SU and SI have almost nothing to do with each other except for the word "Singularity." The word has three major meanings, and of these, Yudkowsky favored the Intelligence Explosion while Kurzweil pushed Accelerating Change.

But actually, SU's activities have little to do with the Singularity, even under Kurzweil's definition. Kurzweil writes of a future, around the 2040s, in which the human condition is altered beyond recognition. But SU mostly deals with whizzy next-gen technology. They are doing something important, encouraging technological advancement with a focus on helping humanity, but they spend little time working on optimizing the end of our human existence as we know it. Yudkowsky calls what they do "technoyay." And maybe that's what the Singularity means, nowadays. Time to stop using the word.

(I've also heard SU graduates saying "I was at Singularity last week," on the pattern of "I was at Harvard last week," eliding "University." I think that that counts as the end of Singularity as we know it.)

You might expect SU and SI to get in a stupid squabble about the name. People love fighting over words. But to everyone's credit, I didn't hear squabbling, just confusion from those who were not in the know. Or you might expect SI to give up, change its name and close down the Singularity Summit. But lo and behold, SU and SI settled the matter sensibly, amicable, in fact ... rationally. SU bought the Summit and the entire "Singularity" brand from SI -- for money! Yes! Coase rules!

SI chose the new name Machine Intelligence Research Institute. I like it.

The term "Artificial Intelligence" got burned out in the AI Winter in the early 1990's. The term has been firmly taboo since then, even in the software industry, even in the leading edge of the software industry. I did technical evangelism for Unicorn, a leading industrial ontology software startup, and the phrase "Artificial Intelligence" was most definitely out of bounds. The term was not used even inside the company. This was despite a founder with a CoSci PhD, and a co-founder with a masters in AI.

The rarely-used term "Machine Intelligence" throws off that baggage, and so, SI managed to ditch two taboo words at once.

The MIRI name is perhaps too broad. It could serve for any AI research group. The Machine Intelligence Research Institute focuses on decreasing the chances of a negative Intelligence Explosion and increasing the chances of a positive one, not on rushing to develop machine intelligence ASAP. But the name is accurate.

In 2005, the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University was founded, followed by the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge University in early 2013. FHI is doing good work, rivaling MIRI's and in some ways surpassing it. CSER's announced research area, and the reputations of its founders, suggest that we can expect good things. Competition for the sake of humanity! The more the merrier!

In late 2012, SI spun off the Center for Applied Rationality. Since 2008, much of SI's energies, and particularly those of Yudkowsky, had gone to LessWrong.com and the field of rationality. As a tactic to bring in smart, committed new researchers and organizers, this was highly successful, and who can argue with the importance of being more rational? But as a strategy for saving humanity from existential AI risk, this second focus was a distraction. SI got the point, and split off CFAR.

Way to go, MIRI! So many of the criticisms I had about SI's strategic direction and its administration in the years I first encountered it in 2005 have been resolved recently.

Next step: A much much better human future.

The TL;DR, conveniently at the bottom of the article to encourage you to actually read it, is:

MIRI (formerly SIAI, SI): Working to avoid existential risk from future machine intelligence, while increasing the chances of positive outcome
CFAR: Training in applied rationality
CSER: Research towards avoiding existential risk, with future machine intelligence as a strong focus
FHI: Researching various transhumanist topics, but with a strong research program in existential risk and future machine intelligence in particular
SU: Teaching and encouraging the development of next-generation technologies
SS: An annual forum for top geek heroes to speak on whatever interests them. Favored topics include societal trends, next-gen science and technology, and transhumanism.

יום שלג בגוש עציון הנצור

2013-01-10T18:57:00.003+02:00

המשימה: להגיע לגוש עציון המושלגת. לא הרחק מאלון השבות האגדי מחכה לנו שלג. שיחקנו שם בפאתי אלון שבות לפני שנה, והיה מדהים. שלג כזה רואים רק מדי כמה שנים. ויתר על כן, שניים מהילדים ואשתי היו בחגיגת בר מצווה באותה עת והחמיצו את החוויה. אם כן, ההגעה אל השלג היתה הכרחית.

יצאנו מעמק האלה מוקדם בבוקר (מוקדם למשפחה שילדיה אינם מורגלים לקום בשביל לימודים בבית ספר). אבל כשהגענו למחסום ג'בעה -- אוי לנו! -- חייל חסם לנו את הדרך. ראינו שכמה נהגים עקפו אותו, אבל לא היה לנו אומץ לשים פס על כוחות הביטחון. פנינו לאחור. אנו מכירים היטב איך מכוניות בארץ, שנהגינן אינם מיומנים לתנאי קרח, מחליקות ופוקקות כל כביש ורחוב בימי שלג, אז ייתכן שהחסימה, לצערינו, מוצדקת.

ניסינו לעבור דרך צור הדסה. אבל בצומת רמת בית שמש -- אוי ואבוי! -- חסמה המשטרה את הדרך. גם בימי שלג קודמים ראינו את התופעה הזאת. כל הדרכים חסומות.

שבנו הביתה, פנינו נפולות.

כעת, היה צורך בתוכנית חלופית נועזת. לקראת הצהריים, יצאתי כסייר להקדים את המשפחה ולפתוח ציר לכיוון גוש עציון הנצורה, או לפחות למקומות מושלגים שבהם ניתן לשחק. האם נספיק להגיע לפני שהשלג ייעלם?

בצומת רמת בית שמש, עדיין חסמו שוטרים את הדרך. ברדיו שמעתי שאפילו כביש מספר 1 חסומה מלטרון ועד לירושלים. אם כן, רבצה עלינו הסכנה שהדרכים כולן תיחסמנה עד שיימס השלג, ולא נראה אותו בכלל!

אבל לו נואשתי. הכרתי דרך אחורית קטנה, כזאת שסיפקה את התקווה האחרונה לראות את השלג.

עברתי את מחסיה, וניגשתי לכביש העולה לנס הרים בדרך צדדית שעוקפת את הצומת. אבל לא היה צורך. לא היה שוטר שם והדרך היתה פתוחה לפניי! תוך שתי דקות ראיתי שכבה דקה של שלג על חלק מהסלעים. התקשרתי הביתה והמשפחה יצאה בעקבותיי, שהרי כדאי לצאת אפילו לראות כמה פתיתים, והלוואי שנראה עוד יותר.

ככל שעליתי להרים השלג התעבה. ליד נס הרים, השלג היה גבולי לצורך משחק בו. ליד בר גיורא, היה ללא ספק שחיק (זאת מילה?). בפארק בגין, היה ניתן לעצור כבר לשחק, כפי שעשו בני משפחתי לפני חמש שנים. השמש הקרינה את אורה על השלג, שנמס לפני עיניי. האם יספיקו להגיע אל השלג ולשחק בו?

כל הדרך עדכנתי אותם בטלפון, והם נוסעים 20 דקות אחריי.

אבל גם עתה לא אמרתי נואש. למרות שהנתיב בין ערימות השלג היה צר, ולמרות שביום שלג קודם הוא נחסם ליד חוסן, המשכתי מעבר לביתר עילית וחוסן ועד לדרך 60 הפונה דרומה אל הגוש. בנווה דניאל, השלג כבר נערם לגובה שוויצרי.

השומר בשער אמר שלא ניתן להיכנס ברכב, כי הדרכים הפנימיות חסומות, אז החלטתי להמשיך. וטוב שכך. ליד אפרת, השמש התכסתה בענן, ועד לצומת גוש עציון שרר ערפל כבד. כבר לא היה חשש שהשלג יימס.

ובהיכנסי לאלון שבות -- הידד! החל לרדת עוד שלג! המשפחה בעקבותיי, נכנסנו ליישוב, ושם בפאתיו שיחקנו משחקים שרק עולי ארצות הכפור מכירים היטב מימי נעוריהם.

Fatal Flaws in SI's R&D Plan?

2013-01-10T17:34:00.004+02:00

A post on LessWrong, with Kaj Sotala.

SI's current R&D plan seems to go as follows:

1. Develop the perfect theory.
2. Implement this as a safe, working, Artificial General Intelligence -- and do so before anyone else builds an AGI.

The Singularity Institute is almost the only group working on friendliness theory (although with very few researchers). So, they have the lead on Friendliness. But there is no reason to think that they will be ahead of anyone else on the implementation.

.... more on LessWrong ...

Unequal under the Law

2012-12-24T10:38:00.001+02:00

My talk "Unequal under the Law: Legal Systems and Artificial General Intelligence", from the 8th Annual Colloquium on the Law of Futuristic Persons. Second Life, December 10, 2012.

My talk on Dec. 10, in Second Life

2012-12-06T19:12:00.000+02:00

I will be speaking on "Unequal under the Law: Legal Systems and Artificial General Intelligence" at the Colloquium on the Law of Futuristic Persons."

Dec. 10, 2012, at 1.15 pm Eastern Standard Time, 8.15 pm Israel Standard time.

The conference will be online, in Second Life.

Details here.

Easy to configure custom plasmids

2012-11-21T23:25:00.001+02:00

Stanislaw Lem's science fiction novel, Futurological Conference, 1971, is a masterpiece of technobabble meant to show the bewilderment of a man thrown a hundred years into his own future: For example, the protagonist is offered "up'n'at'm, one of the vigilanimides, a powerful countersomniac and antipsychem agent. A derivative of dimethylethylhexabutylpeptopeyotine."

But if I were writing scifi in 1970, I couldn't do better than this. It's just technical language, but still: This shop (shop?) is offering to sell you what? How?

Subcloning, Simplified

Transcriptic is the simplest and lowest cost way to order custom plasmids. Send us source material to start from or synthesize it for only 34 ¢ / bp, all from one workflow. Starting at $275.

Learn more »

What is Transcriptic?

Transcriptic is an easier, faster, and cheaper way to assemble plasmids. Configure your order online and be done in minutes.

Avoid the lab bench and spend your time focusing on the creative parts of the science.

How It Works

It's easy to configure custom plasmids ranging from a commercial backbone with one short insert to completely de novo kilobasepair constructs, all right in your browser.

All products are completely sequenced and guaranteed to be 100% accurate for your target sequence.

Get Started

There's no equipment to buy or other upfront costs to get started. It only takes five minutes to set up your account.

Names we didn't give our children

2012-11-14T21:22:00.002+02:00

Snir, Osnat, Puah, Dudu, Laizy, Gitl, Luzer, Fraidy, Gidi, Ditzy, ...

Joshua's blog

Nasogastric Feeding: The Way to Better Nutrition

Correcting the Washington Post

Name is fate

השלט המצחיק ביותר במדינת ישראל

שערוריות אין מספיק במקומותינו

סכנה קיומית מבינה ממוכנת. מאמר בכלכליסט

Snowdenizing UFAI

Why officers vs. enlisted?

Our MTG update is in the Jerusalem Post

האם בכלל כדאי לדווח על עבירות?

Fracking vs in-situ oil shale retorting: Let's get it straight

(Disclaimer: This post is strictly the product of my own brain, not those of any fellow activists, who tend more towards sanity.)

Specifically, Dead Cthulhu lies dreaming in the WATERY DEPTHS of R'yleh, whereas Lord Satan's preferred abode is a SUBTERRANEAN BURNING PIT of sulfur.Just wanted to make that clear.

Only a 30% chance of Cthulhu, say fracking experts

My article on Acausal Trade

Contents

A bet on extreme futures with Robin Hanson

The "Singularity Hypotheses" is available

חומרים מאכלים

הטבות לתלמידי לשיבה בלבד!

עד שרק מכבסה אחת משלמת את כל הארנונה

Who needs Dungeons and Dragons ?

The Singularity Wars

יום שלג בגוש עציון הנצור

Fatal Flaws in SI's R&D Plan?

Unequal under the Law

My talk on Dec. 10, in Second Life

Easy to configure custom plasmids

Subcloning, Simplified

What is Transcriptic?

How It Works

Get Started

Names we didn't give our children

Specifically, Dead Cthulhu lies dreaming in the WATERY DEPTHS of R'yleh, whereas Lord Satan's preferred abode is a SUBTERRANEAN BURNING PIT of sulfur.

Just wanted to make that clear.