#i find it harder to pay attention to the story if it sounds too....scientific and nerdy i guess so i haaave been skipping dialogue

[pcktknife]

I'm curious, what are your thoughts on honkai star rail?

i dont like it as much as genshin but i think its funnier than genshin also theres a little rabbit conductor on a space train so it gets points for that Also also kafka and natasha are hot

[troutpopulation]

It Becomes A Chain (Sigma x reader) pt.2

A/N: pardon the terrible Dutch I used 100% Google translate for that. Also yay! Siebren is actually in the story now!

Present day

  "Alright! So, do we have any requests? Roses, bonsai, squash, anything you see." Your students were deep in thought, until one of them raised her hand.

"Yes, Darcy, go for it." The girl put her hand down.

"Can we do sunflowers today?" She asked. You nodded, smiled, and opened the drawer from the plastic shelf that sat on your countertop. It was labeled with a small card of a sunflower and the name printed in swooping ink. You plucked from it a single seed and pressed it between your palms. It took barely a moment but you felt a sprout. A small plant grew from your hands, rapidly unfurling into a full grown flower in your grasp. You gave it an approving smile before you plucked it from your hands and dropped it into the vase. The students watched with smiles. No matter how many times people saw you do this, it was always something to marvel at, like a magic trick. An incredibly practical magic trick that had its uses in feeding yourself, others, selling flowers, and in this case, drawing a still-life of a sunflower.

"Alright, we're going to draw for mm... Lets go for thirty minutes before we move on to water color." Despite all the jobs your powers have gotten you, you never abandoned teaching art workshops in your home. In fact, you found this was the perfect way to integrate them both. Shortly after your first encounter with your newfound abilities, you were rushed to the hospital by your neighbors. You were sent from facility to facility until someone who could actually help you manage your fate did so. Over the span of several months you learned control and tested the limits of your power. You could grow anything from trees to moss and soon decided that this was in fact a blessing rather than a curse. You began getting accustomed to replicating plants, and it quickly became a normal part of your daily life. Although, to this day you still had no idea how they came to be. Everybody including you and every scientists you'd consulted with were in the dark about the strange projectile that had exploded near your greenhouse. The question was a constant tug in the back of your mind.

You complimented your students' work as you opened your tablet and got to emails from commissioners and scientists alike. By now, the novelty of attention had worn off and you were quicker to say "no thank you" to researchers looking to build partnerships with you to utilize your powers. You had a few art commissions you bookmarked to get to later, and plenty of agricultural companies who wanted to negotiate prices for your services. One however, caught your attention. A laboratory studying outer space in The Hague wanted to pay for your flight and visit. They were interested in your status in the scientific community as a "self sustaining organism".

You scoffed and rolled your eyes. What a pretentious way to say 'hey, we know you can feed yourself and they want to know how to get astronauts to do that'. But then again, you could use a vacation. (Of course you knew this was professional but... Come on. They weren't going to keep you in the lab all day, right? You'd have the chance to go out and enjoy some light tourism. Plus it's a free flight and lodging.)

You decided to respond, going through all the usual formalities stating in the most corporate way possible that you were willing an excited to work with them in The Hague. You closed your laptop, twirling your pencil before tapping it to the paper. You felt like you owed science something, but science also owed something to you. You participated in countless research efforts, but not once could anyone replicate what happened to you. They couldn't even pinpoint how exactly it happened. You were beginning to believe that your willingness to contribute wasn't all because you cared about the advancements of science, but out of the sliver of hope that maybe, just maybe, while they're doing blood samples and having you grow things for them, they'll be able to find out what it was that did this to you.

You made a face. It's not like you're asking to reverse it! You loved your powers. You spent far less on groceries, you felt great being able to feed people and plant trees. Life was great! You had no complaints! It's just... You really wanted to know. How did this happen? Why you?

You open the email back up and quickly send a follow up.

You ask if they can, at all, try to find out the origins of your mutation.

----------------------

  Siebren sipped his coffee, narrowing his grey eyes. What had he written there? Whatever it was, it was scrawled so quickly and carelessly in the heat of a breakthrough that it was almost completely illegible.

He squinted hard, but the word became no clearer. He was jolted from his thoughts as a brisk knock sounded on the white door of his workspace.

"Ja?" He called, turning towards the entrance.

Yes?

"Jouwe koffie, professor." An intern shuffled inside, bringing him the extra caffeine he'd requested.

Your coffee, professor.

He thanked them and asked them for the latest happenings. He was partial to gossip, for otherwise, he'd probably be completely oblivious to anything going on. He stayed almost exclusively in his lab and couldn't resist rambling on any time somebody came in the ask him a question. A quiet moment like this was rare, and an excellent opportunity to catch up with his surroundings.

"We hebben een gast. Zijn naam is (y/n) (l/n), en hij komt uit Amerika." The intern, knowing this, was happy to comply. They informed him of their guest, and Siebren nodded along, sipping his drink.

We have a guest. His name is (y/n) (l/n) and he's from America.

"Iz dat zo? Om welke reden is hij hier?" Interested, the scientist raised an eyebrow.  The intern looked excited. They grinned, looking around, and leaned in to stage whisper.

Is that so? For what reason is he here?

"Dit klinkt vergezocht, maar ik hoor dat hij op commando en snel planten uit zijn lichaam kan laten groeien.." This bit made the astrophysicist choke a bit on his drink. He gave the intern a puzzled look.

This sounds far-fetched, but I hear he can grow plants from his body at will, and very quickly too.

His look of disbelief melted as he rationalized it in his brain. That sounded a little more than far fetched, it sounded like a flat out joke, but who was he to say anything? Here he was trying to harness the power of a black hole. In this facility, anything was possible. He still took it with a grain of salt, though. Perhaps this was a rumor. This place was prestigious and of good renown, but not immune to tall tales and stories being passed around. No place ever really was. He thanked the intern for the coffee and the update and they were quickly on their way to deliver a paper to another professor's office, leaving Siebren alone with his thoughts and research.

If that was a rumor, that was a very creative one. If not... well, then it'd be definitely something worth seeing.

He chuckled to himself. Oh, who was he kidding? That was silly.

He stared harder at his scrawled notes. Suddenly it hit him.

Ah, it had been a variable he's written. Sigma. He somehow got his wires crossed and wrote out its name rather than the symbol itself.

  ----------------------------

     You had touched down at the airport and went straight to work. You did the usual, live demonstrations, samples of every kind, etc. But between all the activity and the jet lag, you were exhausted. Too much to to do much more than admire the view from the hotel room. It was beautiful, and there were people walking about on the sidewalk below. You felt tempted by the cool breeze that rushed in from your open window.

Alright, just one walk and you'll head to bed.

  Elsewhere, Dr. Siebren de Kuiper had embarked on a similar path: a walk from the lab to his car parked all the way down the block.

Today had been long. It turns out that the rumors about the foreign man with the powers of botanical replication were true, and he had spent most of the day indisposed in the labs. Siebren strolled out and took a deep breath of the nighttime air. The sunset must have been lovely, if the dim wisps of fading sunlight behind buildings were anything to go off of. He kind of wished he'd hurried out of his office, as then he might have been able to watch it. That was one of the reasons he preferred to park so far away. The walks along the boulevard in the evening were exquisite.

On the downside, though, he had important papers with him to stuff into the back of his car and forget about, and the wind apparently decided it felt like picking up tonight. After it died down, he loosened his vice grip on his files, only for a sneaky breeze to take him by surprise and blow half the stack out of his grasp.

Siebren gasped and darted after them, pouncing on them and plucking them up from the pavement, muttering to himself. He turned to grab another before his hand touched not a paper, but another person.

He recoiled with a startled "oh" and his widened gray eyes attempted to make out the person in front of him.

"Ah, sorry," You handed his papers back to him. "You dropped these."

"Right, yes, thank y-" His smiled dropped as he spotted over your shoulder the last o his files. He tensed to make his way towards it, but the wind picked up before he could, and it whirled into the air, directly towards a channel of water that cut through the city.

Time seemed to go in slow motion as he stared horrified at his work about to be swallowed by the water.

He raised his arm, whispering a hapless "no" as it descended towards the rippling surface.

You lifted your hand, and in a second the paper was fluttering stagnant in the air.

Siebren couldn't register what just happened. There was a long, smooth stem protruding all the way from your palm, impaling his paper and keeping it in place. Slowly, the vine retracted into your skin, away from the water. When it got only a few feet long, you snapped it from your hand, turning it over to free the paper. You paused as you looked at it.

"Oh my God," You sputtered. "I'm so, so sorry I just- there's a hole in it now and I- I'm so sorry Oh God I really hope that wasn't important I'm so sorry."

"How did you do that?"

"I'm really really sorry, uh, I'm new here."

"How did you do that?"

"Ok not that we usually break people's stuff in America but- I- whatever, anyways I'm sorry."

You and Siebren stared at one another for many moments.

"Uh..." You panicked, holding out a hand to him. He tensed up, not quite recoiling but he did seem wary of the gesture after seeing how you'd just skewered his research paper. "Hi. I'm (y/n). I make plants."

Siebren could barely believe his luck.

[bigherosixfeels]

Hello! You can make a fanfic about Karmi,you could write, please, a story where maybe her mother does not support her being a biotechnologist and they argue and she ends up in the bad-tempered lab and ends up talking to Honey or Baymax and about how her father is support. Thank you!

I was already planning on having Honey Lemon being the one to comfort her, but now that we know they get along, I’m even more excited about this!!

—

Needed Support

Fandom: Big Hero 6: The Series

Rating: K

Characters: Karmi and Honey Lemon

Word Count: 2,121

Summary: Honey Lemon comforts Karmi after she has an argument with her mother

—

“Why don’t you ever want to hear about myprogress at Sycorax?! I created a serum that cured Orso Knox and you barelyacknowledged that!

“You know how I feel about all this. You’rerushing into this bio-stuff too quickly. It wasn’t that long ago that you gotaccepted into SFIT and now you’re interning at some new business? You’re toocooped up in your labs all day.”

“Doing important research that will shape thefuture! All of this means so much to me and you don’t care! You never have!”

“I never said I didn’t care. I just think youneed to be smart about this. Don’t let all of this be the only thing you do inlife. There’s a big world out there. Make some friends…outside of yourviruses.”

 —

It may not have been their worst argument, butit wasn’t exactly the best start to Karmi’s morning. While having breakfastwith her parents, her father asked about her most recent work at Sycorax. Stillfull of pride to being an intern for Liv Amara, Karmi immediately went into detailabout how she, Liv and Chris managed to stop the Mayoi from attacking SanFransokyo. As she was telling this thrilling tale, she noticed how differenther parents’ reactions were.

Her father was fully invested; nodding andsmiling at what his daughter had to say. But each time she glanced over to hermom, she was either paying attention to the remainder of her breakfast orchecking the time on her watch. By the time Karmi was explaining how the serumwas made, she watched as her mother got up from her chair, hurriedly going intothe kitchen to wash off her plate. Instead of returning to the table to listento the rest of Karmi’s story, she went upstairs to grab her briefcase for work.

Her actions weren’t surprising to Karmi, but itleft an nagging pang in her chest. Nonetheless, she finished the conversationwith her dad who congratulated her on her hard work. He made sure to tell herhow proud he was, bringing a temporary smile to his daughter’s face.

It faded the second her mother came back downstairs,announcing that she was going to work. Karmi could admit now that she probablyshould have voiced her dismay over her mom’s lack of enthusiasm later thisevening. Yet, in the moment she decided to confront her about how she wishedshe would have been more engaged in the conversation rather than rushing off togo to work. It was admittedly a bit selfish on her part. She knew her motherworked hard to provide for the family. San Fransokyo traffic was unpredictable.Trying to talk to her about something like this when one foot was practicallyout the door wasn’t a wise move. Not only because her mom was in a hurryanyway, but also because they’ve had talks like this before.

Unlike her father, her mother rarely asked abouther schoolwork. When she asked how school was going, she was more curious aboutwhether or not she was making friends than scientific breakthroughs. She knewher mom meant well and wanted her to be more social, but that wasn’t a concernto Karmi. In the past, classmates tended to let her down, but science neverdid. Over her years of school, Karmi realized she didn’t need friends to makeher happy. She was perfectly content growing pathogens and now discoveringcures for the recent monsters that had been popping up in the city for whateverreason.

As anticipated, an argument followed. Neither ofthem raised their voices too high, but it ended on a sour note. Karmi’s momstormed out of the house, slamming the door on her way out. After trying tokeep her emotions from spilling over, Karmi rejected her father’s offer ofdriving her to school, preferring some alone time on a trolley.

The fight was still bothering her as she walkedonto campus. Karmi held onto herself, fingernails pressing against her arms.She was at a point where she knew tears weren’t going to fall, but anger stillbubbled in her veins. All she wanted was for class to be a decent distraction.To go to her lab later. To be alone. She had the feeling that it wouldbe a tense evening at home.

As she walked through the halls, she unknowinglypassed by the Nerd Lab. While doing so, she had paid no attention to who wascurrently exiting the room.

Honey Lemon absentmindedly hummed to herself.Being the morning person she was, she had already stopped by her lab to work ona project before her first class. With that done and none of her friends beingaround, she decided to get going to her class a little early.

When leaving the Nerd Lab, she happened tonotice Karmi passing by. Her face instantly lit up seeing the biotech genius.They hadn’t talked much since they cured Globby together.

“Hi, bio bestie!” She cheerfully greeted.

Karmi stopped walking. No. Not now. Of all thetimes for Honey to spot her in the hallway, why did it have to be now?

It’s not that Karmi didn’t like Honey Lemon. Sheenjoyed working with her when they found a cure for Globby. She was nice totalk to. She was friendly. Very friendly. At times, she was too bubbly andoverly optimistic, but she always meant well.

Her personality was something Karmi still wasn’tused to. She’s never been around someone as energetic as Honey. It didn’t takelong for her to figure out how fitting her nickname was. While a part of hercould admire her positive attitude, it was off-putting considering she’d ratherbe by herself.

Despite that, she didn’t want to be rude andkeep walking. Karmi could pretend she didn’t hear Honey, but that would onlyraise concerns. Forcing a small grin, Karmi turned to face the chemist.

“H-hi, Honey Lemon.” She raised a hand up togive her a little wave. Hoping that that would be all, Karmi quickly turnedaway.

The second she continued walking, she could hearthe heels of Honey’s shoes clicking in her direction. She caught up to Karmi,beaming down at the younger girl.

“It’s been awhile since we talked. What’s new?”Honey was going to eagerly wait for a response, but something about Karmilooked off. The way she clung onto herself and how her eyebrows were slightlyknitted together were huge giveaways that something was wrong. That on top withher looking away with a frown didn’t sit well. “Is everything okay?”

Again, Karmi stopped walking. She didn’t want toget into what happened earlier this morning. She wasn’t in the mood to vent toanyone. Especially someone she hardly knew. “I’m fine.” She lied, makingherself smile to ease Honey’s worries. “Just going to my lab.”

Unfortunately for her, Honey didn’t buy it. Shecould always tell when someone was feeling down.

“Hey, you can talk to me if you need to.”

“Really, I’m ok-”

“Karmi. You helped me when I needed it forfinding a cure for Globby. Now why don’t you let me help you?”

Karmi froze. She looked down at the floor,wondering if she heard Honey correctly. A fellow classmate offering help to herwas such a foreign concept. She was used to dealing with her problems on herown. To being ignored and invisible to those around her. Honey wanting tolisten to her troubles shouldn’t have been all that surprising. The older girlthought of her as a “bestie” after all.

While they got along great, Karmi still didn’tview Honey as anything more than a classmate. Maybe it was because she was goodfriends with Hiro. Maybe it was because they didn’t see each other much due tohaving different classes. But she knew Honey enough to know that she wasn’tgoing to let her walk off without an explanation.

“I just…got into an argument with my mom thismorning.” Karmi mumbled. “No big deal.”

Honey Lemon frowned. She was glad that Karmiopened up to her, but she could tell how much this was upsetting her. From thedeep scowl growing on her face to her fingers shaking as they clenched harderon her arms, she could tell it was bothering Karmi.

“Aw, I’m sorry to hear that. I’m sure you twowill work things out though.”

Karmi scoffed. “It won’t. We’ve had fights likethese before and they never get resolved. Anytime I talk about what I’m workingon either here or at Sycorax, she never wants to listen. She thinks I’m tooinvested in my studies and is more concerned about my social life.” Karmi letout a huge, frustrated sigh. “I’ve tried telling her that I’m more interestedin working, but does she listen? No.”

She still would have preferred her space, butventing was helping somewhat. Karmi could feel her tension easing, but it wasstill present. She didn’t know why she had decided to reveal so much personalinformation to Honey. She insisted on wanting to help, but would she care nowthat she knew? Or understand?

“I’m sure your mother cares about what you do,”Honey responded. “From the sounds of it, it seems that she wants you–”

“I know what you’re going to say,” Karmiinterrupted. The last thing she wanted was for Honey to finish her naive statement.“I’ve heard more times than I can count from her. ‘Make some friends.’ ‘Yourviruses aren’t much for company.’ ‘Staying in your lab all day isn’t good foryou.’” She remarked in a mocking tone. Pinching the bridge of her nose, shecontinued. “In her own way, she means well. That I understand too. I just wishthat when I talked about what I’m doing, she was more…attentive. That’s all.That’s not too much to ask for, is it?”

Honey gently reached out to Karmi, placing ahand on her shoulder. She flinched at first, but allowed herself to look upHoney. She was smiling, but it wasn’t the usual, cheery one she almost alwayshad. It was warm and comforting. Karmi’s shoulders lowered, her grip on herarms loosening.

“Of course not. Biotech is something you’rereally passionate about. It makes you excited and you want to share thatexcitement. I’m the exact same way with chemistry!” Honey exclaimed. “You dohave someone to talk to about all this, don’t you?”

Karmi nodded. “My dad. He’s always been sosupportive. I know that when I have something to tell him, he’ll listen andwant to know all sorts of details. He may not understand all the scientificjargon, but he always hears me out. He’s the best.” The smile that had made itsway on her face faded the second she thought about her mom again. “I don’tknow. I guess that’s what I want my mom to be like too. I don’t expect her toknow what I’m talking about, but it’d be nice if she was as intrigued as mydad.” “Well, maybe you should try telling her that.”

“…I-I’ve wanted to. But I don’t like arguingwith her. Why did I even bother trying to confront her this morning? I knewshe wouldn’t listen. It wasn’t a good time when she was trying to go to work.”

“Try telling her how you feel when it isa good time,” Honey encouraged. “When both you and her aren’t busy. Patchthings up. Maybe this is all some misunderstanding. If you’re both open andhonest, you should be able to find common ground.”

Karmi took Honey’s words into consideration.These days, talking to her mom was like pulling teeth, but perhaps Honey made agood point. When she argued, Karmi only mentioned what her mom seemed to notcare about. Things only escalated worse from there until one or both of themstormed off. She was tired of it. She was sure her mother was tired of it too.They needed to figure things out sooner or later. Sooner being the betteroption.

“Okay…I’ll do what I can.”

“That’s the spirit!”

Without warning, Honey wrapped her arms tightlyaround the biotech major. The embrace was suffocating, not to mention a littleembarrassing due to being in the halls. Karmi nearly forgot how much of ahugger Honey Lemon was. She had told Honey that she wasn’t a hugger before.Either that slipped her mind or she chose to ignore it in an attempt to comforther. Whatever the case was, Karmi reluctantly leaned into the hug. Maybe alittle support from someone else was needed after all.

“Thanks.”

—

I really like how this one turned out!! I definitely wanted to get this fic out and done before season 2 started, but I’m actually glad I didn’t. Season 2 gave me more stuff about Karmi to work with for this fic and since her and Honey get along so well, it made this even better imo!! I loved seeing their interactions in Nega-Globby!

I do hope that at some point in this series we get to meet Karmi’s family (as well as the nerd gang’s family PLEASE LET US MEET THEM!!!) While it’s hard to guess what Karmi’s family life is like, I do hope she has parents that love and care about her. I can see at least one of them being a little unsure about what she wants to do, but still approve of it at the end of the day. Only time will tell (possibly)

Anywho, I guess that’s it. Thanks for the request @ficsinhistory I really enjoyed writing it!! :D

[transhumanitynet]

Obstacles to Mind Uploading

Sing The Body Electric

“Mind Uploading” is the idea that the pattern of information which constitutes your perceptual awareness, memories, personality, and all other cognitive functions can be abstracted from the brain it developed in, and “run” on a different computational substrate. In other words; that the stuff which makes you, you could in principle escape the inherent limitations of human biology… such as inevitable short-term mortality. If it is plausible, that is a profoundly powerful and transformative idea.

Of course, the uploading idea has a myriad of opponents. The vast majority are ill-informed people whose opposition relies more on instinct and straw-clutching than good arguments well supported by evidence. To be fair, the same could be said of the uploading idea’s many dilettante fans who simply like the notion without having seriously researched its plausibility. The paragraphs below offer a whirlwind tour of objections to uploading, and the degree to which they should be taken seriously.

Where to Begin? You Are Already A Machine

Human argumentation is rarely half as rational as we like to imagine it is. For a start, our estimates and judgments of whether an argument is correct are heavily dependent on context. More specifically, we are overly influenced by what are known as “frames” or “anchors”; i.e. by the initial point of reference we use to start thinking about… anything. For example, a million dollars sounds like a lot to a homeless person, and like considerably less to Bill Gates.

This is highly relevant to arguments about uploading, because people tend to begin those arguments from different starting points, depending on whether they like the idea or not. Opponents of uploading tend to start out with an implicit assumption that humans and machines are very different things, and never the twain shall meet (for one reason or another). Uploading advocates, however, will frequently argue that the human organism is already a machine of sorts, thus acting as a kind of living testimony to the possibility of intelligent, conscious machines.

The core issue tends to be a fundamental misunderstanding (albeit one that is often deliberate) over the question of what it is to be a machine. Opponents invariably define machines in terms of those artificial devices which already exist or have existed, whereas advocates focus on the underlying principles of known organisms and artifacts. In case you hadn’t guessed; I am an uploading advocate, and I believe that we are – in the deepest sense – already machines, and always have been.

Computational Power, S-Curves, & Technological Singularities

Of course, that still leaves a considerable (some would say intractable, even impossible) gulf between our current technical ability on the one hand, and the ability to intelligently alter, replicate, and improve upon our own biological machinery on the other. For a cogent, exhaustive argument for the ability of accelerating technological development to deliver on these promises, I would suggest reading “The Singularity Is Near” by Ray Kurzweil.

The basic premise of that book is that technological innovations make more innovation easier to produce, which in turns leads to the (already well observed) acceleration of change. Accelerating change leads to an exponential (rather than linear) pattern, by which we might reasonably expect to see twenty thousand years of technological innovation at the c.2000 CE rate by the end of the 21st Century. That is definitely enough innovation to bridge the kind of technical gap we’re talking about. Of course, opponents like to deny that accelerating change even exists, but their claims are increasingly hard to take seriously if you pay attention to the latest developments coming out of cutting-edge labs.

Minds, Bodies, and… Intestines?

Broadly speaking, on the technical level (i.e. leaving aside arguments that we can upload minds, but shouldn’t), there are two types of opponent argument. One is that the mind cannot be reduced to information and thus modelled. The most common version of that argument comes from religion, involves “souls” (whatever they are), and is addressed further below. The second is that the mind can be modelled in terms of information, but we are modelling the wrong information.

I would not want to dismiss that second argument too quickly. To be frank, more often than not it is perfectly on the money. It’s just that I believe we are moving closer and closer to modelling (and understanding) the right information all the time. Let’s be clear, here: The oft-heard refrain that “the mind and consciousness are complete mysteries, we have no idea how they work” are ridiculous, infantile catchphrases used only by people who are wilfully ignorant of the last twenty years of developments in cognitive neuroscience and related scientific disciplines.

AI research is littered with ridiculously simplistic assumptions from people who’ve had little or nothing to do with cognitive science or any related discipline, working on their own narrow-domain problems and then somehow assuming that their models capture the intricacies of, well… everything. The first “AI Winter” and the challenge of developing competent AI chess players was perhaps the most notable early wake-up call in that department. To cut a long story short, the moral of that story is that AI researchers have a habit of making lots of huge, terrible assumptions.

These days, it’s much harder to find a serious researcher who thinks you can abstract away most neurological processing without “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”. These days, complexity is increasingly respected and explored, which means not only not dismissing it, but also not holding it up as some magical ‘deus ex machina’ from which consciousness will emerge if we can only hook enough artificial neurons up to each other…

Anyway, such issues lead to some interesting grey areas, which are often (in my opinion) misused for the purposes of argument. For example, certain biologists have made a lot out of observed connections between the human gut microbiome and “enteric nervous system” on the one hand and cognition as a whole on the other. The research literature essentially says that human intestinal health affects our mood and other personality aspects. On the one hand, that is an entirely reasonable observation, of course. It is hardly surprising that our moods and cognitive abilities are highly sensitive to the state of the body they are instantiated in!

It is quite another thing, however, to suggest (as opponents sometimes do) that this intestinal “second brain” (so-called by popular science writers) is intrinsic to intelligence or conscious awareness, or any harder to model than any other part of the extended nervous system. You could argue up this garden path for a long time, but the basic reality can be illuminated with a simple Reductio Ad Absurdum: Do you really believe that if you could fully capture everything happening in a person’s brain but not their (personal, specific) intestines, then something fundamentally definitive about that person would be missing? If you do, then I would hazard that you have some rather, ahem, fringe notions about what information is actually processed by the enteric nervous system.

Leaping the Gap from Data to Software

Another intriguing, and yet ultimately spurious objection to uploading is to say that you can collect all the neurological data you want, but without some kind of “animating force” in the form of properly configured software then it would be for nothing. On a certain level this argument can carry some weight, but again it’s easy to take that too far.

The value of this opposition argument is inevitably correlated with the degree to which uploaders are committed to a degree of abstraction of human neural activity. Basically, we know that humans are intelligent and consciously aware. With a technology that modelled the human nervous system down to each individual atom, there is no need for software that has any “magic sauce” beyond faithfully replicating the physics of atomic interaction. Of course that would require a staggering amount of computational power to achieve if it is even possible (the jury seems to be out on that, depending upon the computational assumptions you make), so the natural temptation is to take shortcut. Just model entire molecules, neurons, neuron-clusters, brain regions… and so on. The more abstraction you rely upon, the more you have to rely upon software to bridge the gap.

That is an entirely fair point. It is not, however, any kind of argument that uploading is impossible. To the contrary, it is an argument for the establishment of the circumstantial boundaries within which uploading is possible, given sufficient available computational power.

A Final Note on Souls and Other Fictions

If you believe that you could perfectly capture every conceivable physical aspect of a person down to the atomic level, putting aside all of the technological achievement required to do such an incredible thing, and still believe that something important is being missed out, then it seems fairly safe to say that you believe in souls.

Not in some metaphorical, poetic sense, but in proper old-fashioned, literal “soul stuff” which somehow acts like a physical substance but obeys none of the laws of physics, and which people only imagine exists because they read about it in a work of fiction (and/or refuse to believe that they could be made of the same stuff as literally everything else in the observable universe).

If that is your position, then I’m afraid I only have two words for you: Grow Up.

Further Reading

AI Transcends Human Cognitive Bias http://transhumanity.net/ai-transcends-human-cognitive-bias/

Obstacles to Mind Uploading was originally published on transhumanity.net

[rachael-helps-lifestyle-fitness]

Learn French with stories - Storytelling in French for self-learners.

Twenty years ago I was probably where you are now: struggling to learn a 2nd language (French in my case).  I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t remember how to write new words that I had just learned, forgetting the pronunciation and the spelling.

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All my teachers would say the same thing to me: “you spell the word the way it sounds, you just sound it out, that simple”. I would sound out the word and still get it wrong and it was not simple.

Right after a teacher said a word, sound, or played an audio cassette (yes, at that time mp3 did not exist); I could reproduce it.

Reproduction of a sound and facial expression, I learned that technique from my brother who would mimic me as a child. Now I’m a master mocker.

I remember those expensive textbooks, the reading and writing exercises that we had in class which were so boring, I struggled to pay attention.

“What’s wrong with me!”, I would scream in my head to myself.

I enrolled in so many language classes that I could have paid for a new car. Always thinking it was the teacher, the school’s fault etc…

I was so frustrated that I gave-up several times trying to learn French.

That was until I decided to move to Paris in 1997.

I enrolled again in a new language class in San Francisco, but this time I was more focused, more determined, because I wanted to live and work in Paris.

I made it through a whole class, learned some vocabulary, but still unable to speak nor hold a conversation.

Let’s not talk about my pronunciation...

I took a leap and planned my moved to Paris, “I’ll master it when I get there” I told myself.

Fast forward to 1999, I found a job and needed to really work on my poor French conversation skills. So, I enrolled in Institut Catholique in Paris, a six month program.

That is when I learned, at the age of 24, I was dyslexic.

My teachers had no solution for me and just gave me this advice: “You need to work harder”.

And that is what I did.

I took the bull by the horns by researching and testing different techniques on myself.

I was my own little guinea pig.

How and where would I start?

I started with what I like doing in my free time. I love illustrations, colors and stories. When I was in California, I loved hanging out with friends on the beach at night in front of a bonfire, making s'mores and storytelling. We would make up all kinds of stories.

I would alway remember the stories afterwards.

Humm…. I remembered the stories.

That was my first clue that led me to go to the public library in Paris.

At first I tried magazines, novels etc.. but that wasn’t easy for me, it took too long (I have a short attention span) and I got so tired of translating every word. That’s when I went into the children's section of the library.

Colors, illustrations and not a lot of texts in a book. I was hooked.

I was able to pick up simple phrases that I could remember and reuse for later conversation with people. Also, I was able to understand the context in how grammar was used in French. Plus learn about real French places and regions.

The best of all it was fun and entertaining.

I would lose myself in these stories and their vivid settings, this is immersion at its best. I’d later move on to watching cartoons in French.

Some of the other students in my class would laugh at me because I had kiddie books, and not reading on the same level as them. But I didn’t care, I was remembering and was able to start speaking French freely.

Fast forward to today, I am now fluent in French.

It’s my 2nd language. I can speak my mind freely and conversate with anyone on the street, in a cafe and at work.

The Power of Stories.

At that time when I was <strong>self-testing</strong> different ways of learning French, I didn’t know that different scientific research had proven that stories do something to our brain. It engages the entire brain and activates several brain areas that regular learning techniques cannot reach.

According to research you will acquire more vocabulary and grammar if you engage in meaningful ways with the language you’re trying to learn.

There is also a method created by Blaine Ray, a spanish teacher based in California during the 1990’s, called TPR Storytelling (Teaching proficiency through Reading and Storytelling).

This method is based on teaching foreign languages that builds upon scientific research. This can take a variety of forms from reading aloud to acting out a story and singing.

“I don’t read, I just look at pictures“ Andy Warhol.

This was my old saying, I used it for years.

Why?

What is exciting about learning anything through a heavy textbook (even the tiny ones without pictures)? I used to hate to read, that was until I re-discovered children’s books.

I was easily engaged through the narrative contexts with illustrations and thus finally fell in love with reading. Can you believe that?

So, I get you if you feel that reading is not important to learning a 2nd language, nor if you don’t like to read or write. I was once where you are at now.

Your wish is my command.

Over the past six years I’ve been making videos on YouTube, I get many requests on: “How to learn French?”, “I’m dyslexic too”, “What technique did you use?” etc… “.

With the help of my natural born French Husband H.B., we have set out to create storytelling videos of children's stories in French.

How are our storytelling videos different from others?

We are not looking for well-known children's stories translated into French. I don’t know about you, however I’m tired of The Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks and The Three Bears translated into French.

Sorry but I know the story already and so do YOU. Plus you don’t learn about French culture and everyday life from these stories.

And where are the idioms ????

We are looking for those diamonds in the rough. There are lots of great children's stories, French authors and illustrators in France.

However, if you don’t know where to look, how do you find them?

That’s where HB and I come in with our Storytelling’N French (learning French with stories). We’ll curate children’s literature that is easy for self learners (like me).

The best of all, it will be read by HB, a native French Speaker (no worries, don’t want you to pick up on my american accent).

Test it yourself ! One technique from many.

Imagine using this technique to learn a language like French.

Imagine reading through a story in French, learning new vocabulary along the way, and recalling the tiny details easier.

GO test yourself!

The only way to know if your brain will accept the French story with open arms is to test yourself. Don’t just take my word for it, you can definitely make use of this tool, too. And it will be a fun and “un-boring” supplement to your French language studies.

Our first Storytelling ’N French is now online :

The Bee and the Garden Spider (Abeille et épiere) by Emile Vast, with the permission of éditions MeMo, Nantes France.

First watch the video (10mins):

Second, read the blog post here: “Storytelling ‘N French Bee and Garden Spider (Abeille et Épeire) by Émilie Vast ” on the video so you know how to use the video in your French language studies.

In the comments below, I’d love to hear from you.

So, please share:

Have you already tried this technique before?

How did you feel afterwards, and what changes happened in your language learn process?

What’s keeping you from doing these simple exercises?

I love learning about new techniques in self-learning.

Please share yours!

If you enjoyed this post, I’d be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook.

Would you like to get MORE personal?

MORE intimate details, to my no-bull-shit perspective, on surviving in France (life, work, relationships and more). I will write you two lettres (letters) per month. Yes, the old fashion way. Sound cool? Then sign-up to une lettre de Rachael.

Thank you for reading and adding your perspective to the conversation! See ya in the comments down below .

[fingaudioart]

Making Complex Sound Design that Isn’t a Mess

I think there's something many radio producers are reluctant to admit: we humans are, at heart, visual creatures. It is far easier to navigate our world without sound than it is without sight.

But I’ll go a step further, and say that without sight, it’s also harder to hear.

Let me explain.

I think anyone who has produced an audio story of any kind has had the experience where you go to record something in the field, and while you knew there was some noise, you could hear what the subject was saying and figured it was fine. However, when you later copied it into your computer and listened to it, you instantly realized it was terrible. The difference is that while you were recording, your eyes were telling your brain what sounds to focus on, and once that visual information was gone, everything became a mess. It's kind of like listening to two conversations at once.

Here's the lesson here: When you are producing audio, you need to really limit the amount of information (i.e., sounds) in the piece so the listener can easily discern what is important.

But sound design is the opposite of that. It's adding sounds to enhance the experience. So the question becomes, how can you add sounds to a piece to enhance it, without it becoming a jumbled mess?

The following is an approach that I use, and I think it’s served me well. It’s not hard and fast rules, and it’s not hard to come with example of pieces that violate it, but it’s a good way to begin wrapping your head around complicated sound design. Also, just to be clear, we’re just going to focus on foley-type sounds. Music/swells/stings are for a different essay.

Three Types of Sounds

First, let’s spend some time analyzing how our brains use and interact with sound in our everyday lives. Not all sounds are the same, and I put them into three categories.

For the first category of sound, I’m going to borrow a term from Walter Murch, “Encoded Sounds.” These are sounds that our brains decode into direct information. The most common form is language: we hear words, which our brains turn into facts and statements. Other sounds do this as well, such as a phone ring, a knock at the door, a kitchen timer beeping.

Most of your audio drama will be composed of Encoded Sounds.

On the opposite end is “Ambience”. In our day to day lives, we are rarely aware of the ambience around us. In fact, if you stop reading this right now and start paying attention to the sounds around you, you will almost definitely notice some sound you hadn’t noticed before, like a trash truck outside or the dishwasher running. We do tend to notice ambiences, however, when they change, like the air conditioner clicking on, or when you turn off your computer.

I like to think that this kind of sound is your brain’s way of reaching out into the distance. This is the part of your subconscious that is listening for on-coming cars as you walk down the street. It’s listening for the tiger in the woods, or the deer coming up the valley. Along these lines, ambiences are a great way to build out the world of your piece. These tell the audience what is happening twenty feet away (or more) from the action.

In between these two are the hardest sounds to work with in an audio drama, what I call “Half-Encoded Sounds.” These are sounds that aren’t distinctive enough to carry complete information.  An example of this is if someone puts a box on a table, and we hear the thud. That sound is not an especially distinctive sound, so if you don’t actually see the box as it’s placed on the table--more pointedly, if you aren’t given the information that a box is being put on a table--that thud is hard to understand. Half-Encodes don’t recede into the distance like Ambiences do. Add too many of these into your piece, and they’ll turn your project into a noisy mess.

It’s also worth point out, you can turn a Half-Encode into a Fully Encoded Sound by naming it inside the piece:

[Metallic creak.]

“What was that nosie?”

“That suit of armor just moved!”

Now every time the audience hears that metallic creak, they’ll understand that the armor is moving.

But Half-Encodes do have a power all their own, though. These sounds can give the world of your story a physical dimension. The thud of a box being put on a table can tell us lots of information: Is the box heavy? Do the contents rattle? What’s the table made of?

If there’s a character bush-wacking through the jungle, the sound of snapping twigs not only conveys how thick the jungle is, but it suggests the feeling of the branches on your hands and arms. If a character falls to the ground, the sound of their hands sliding on asphalt makes you imagine the pain. When done right, these almost sounds tickle your spine.

One More Concept

Before we get to how to integrate these different kinds of sounds, let talk about “Story” vs “Aesthetics.” At it’s simplest, “Story” is what’s happening, and the aesthetics are how you dress it up.

A good analogy is in photography...imagine your typical tourist photo of Half Dome in Yosemite. It’s not a great photo, but Half Dome is impressive anyway, and moment or two of study can make you long to be there. Now, when Ansel Adams took a photo of Half Dome, he used aesthetics to make it so your heart aches the moment you see it. You can also imagine a photo with the same aesthetics of Ansel Adams, but of a bunch of stick in the woods--this can be good. But it’s not the same as when the photo has Half Dome in it, and most people will prefer the plain photo of Half Dome to the pretty photo of nothing.

In this analogy, your story is Half Dome. It should be impressive on its own, you should go into production thinking “I can only screw this up.” Your sound design is the aesthetics, and it’s going to take your awesome story and amplify the affect. And while I never say “always” with anything artistic...your story is always the most important part.

Or put another way: Don’t let your sound design fuck up Half-Dome.

Putting It Together

This is going to sound more mathematical than it actually is. But here’ goes.

Step one, build the story using only Encoded Sounds. Your dialog, your narration, and any storytelling-sound effects are how you tell the story, so do a pass using only these elements. This isn’t to say you are plowing through as if there won’t be any sound design...go ahead and leave empty spaces where you anticipate having pauses, pockets of ambience or sound effects, or music swells. But let the performances and story have a moment to stand on its own. Build your Half Dome.

Next, add the Ambiences. Ambiences can add so much to a story with comparatively little work, and a good ambience can replace a lot of detailed foley work. But it’s also important actively work your ambiences. Remember how ambiences are generally ignored, except when they change? So change them up. Make different rooms sound different, even if logically they’d probably sound the same. The goal here is to set your story inside a larger physical world, both by adding detail and by using ambience to add more places.

Last come the Half-Encodes. The goal is to communicate the things that are hard to put into words, and if you’re playing to the strengths of audio, most of the Half-Encodes are going to be sounds that work on our sense of touch. But regardless of which sense you invoke, make sure every sound conveys a feeling or texture.

Half-Encodes need to be used judiciously and deliberately, or they will compete with the story. Don’t feel the need to be literal with your sound design...we don’t need to hear every door squeak on its hinges or every footstep in the house, because we aren’t aiming for literal realism here.

The good news is that a well-chosen Half-Encode can happen alongside the story information without competing. The same way an underscore can play under dialog without creating confusion, well-done sound design can enhance a scene without interrupting it.

To recap: First tell the story, next fill out the world, and then activate the senses.

If only it was always so straightforward.

Fighting Against Footsteps

Let’s do a quick case study on one of the trickiest sounds to use: footsteps.

It has been scientifically proven that footsteps suck in audiodramas. First, the standard pre-recorded footstep from a sound effects library doesn’t actually sound like a normal footstep--it has two click per step, when most of the time in real life we only hear one, and they are recorded in a way that makes them sound really close to the listener--but even so, they are percussive and cut through the mix, and are generally distracting as hell.

To put it into the terms of the essay, they are Encoded Sounds that probably don’t forward the story, and can muddy the information that does forward the story.

So if you have a scene where a character is walking and talking, how do you deal with the footsteps?

The first option I’d suggest is seeing if you can lose them entirely. Again, we aren’t aiming to be literal here, and we are rarely aware of the sounds of footsteps in real life. So get rid of them, if you can.

But let’s say you ditch the footsteps, and now the scene feels dead. Another approach to try to replace the literal sound of the steps with another, softer sound that isn’t as distracting. Maybe you can use the movement of clothing, or a backpack bouncing slightly. Those two sounds are Half-Encodes that can find a magical sweet spot...the audience won’t know exactly what they are hearing, but they understand them enough not to worry about it. As an added bonus, they are very tactile sounds. It may now even be possible to add back in the footsteps, now that the rustling clothes has taken the edge off of them...but you probably won’t need to.

This would be an example of sound design that works almost like an underscore--it’s enhances without interrupting or confusing.

Avoid Scenes in Sonically Boring Places

It’s also worth pointing out: If you’re the one writing the script, you have the ability to find a better setting than a hallway. Put them in a park. In stadium. “Homecoming” put their characters on a ferris wheel during one scene, and I assume the location was largely chosen because it would sound cool.

But if the characters need to walk and talk, and it needs to be in a loud hallway, and one of them needs to be wearing heels...craft the scene so the walking is part of the drama. So have one character catch up to the other. They stop to talk, and one gets mad mad and walks away. The other one chases. You get the idea. Make those footsteps no longer just a sound to fill in the realism, but a device to communicate the drama.

One More Thought

More than almost any other storytelling form, audio drama is a battle for clarity. We’re omitting our most powerful sense, and it’s so hard, it’s not uncommon to get cheesy lines like “Are you point a gun at me?” (No, he’s just happy to see you.)

But that void of information can make audio drama unexpectedly powerful. The audience will bring their own visuals, which they will probably like better than what you had in mind, anyway. Plus, the narrator sounds like they are talking to you, to you personally,  and you feel like you are friends with them. And the ability to talk to their sense of touch is so intimate. Two things audio drama does really well: Torture and sex...situations that are so intense, people are nervous about doing them (myself included).

I think a key ingredient in almost any art form is in implying, and audio drama has it by default. If you do it right, a couple of decisions can build entire worlds.

[mathematicianadda]

A Few Thoughts about Deep Fakes

Someone from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence recently contacted me about a hearing they’re having on the subject of deep fakes. I can’t attend the hearing, but the conversation got me thinking about the subject of deep fakes, and I made a few quick notes….

What You See May Not Be What Happened

The idea of modifying images is as old as photography. At first, it had to be done by hand (sometimes with airbrushing). By the 1990s, it was routinely being done with image manipulation software such as Photoshop. But it’s something of an art to get a convincing result, say for a person inserted into a scene. And if, for example, the lighting or shadows don’t agree, it’s easy to tell that what one has isn’t real.

What about videos? If one does motion capture, and spends enough effort, it’s perfectly possible to get quite convincing results—say for animating aliens, or for putting dead actors into movies. The way this works, at least in a first approximation, is for example to painstakingly pick out the keypoints on one face, and map them onto another.

What’s new in the past couple of years is that this process can basically be automated using machine learning. And, for example, there are now neural nets that are simply trained to do “face swapping”:

In essence, what these neural nets do is to fit an internal model to one face, and then apply it to the other. The parameters of the model are in effect learned from looking at lots of real-world scenes, and seeing what’s needed to reproduce them. The current approaches typically use generative adversarial networks (GANs), in which there’s iteration between two networks: one trying to generate a result, and one trying to discriminate that result from a real one.

Today’s examples are far from perfect, and it’s not too hard for a human to tell that something isn’t right. But even just as a result of engineering tweaks and faster computers, there’s been progressive improvement, and there’s no reason to think that within a modest amount of time it won’t be possible to routinely produce human-indistinguishable results.

Can Machine Learning Police Itself?

OK, so maybe a human won’t immediately be able to tell what’s real and what’s not. But why not have a machine do it? Surely there’s some signature of something being “machine generated”. Surely there’s something about a machine-generated image that’s statistically implausible for a real image.

Well, not naturally. Because, in fact, the whole way the machine images are generated is by having models that as faithfully as possible reproduce the “statistics” of real images. Indeed, inside a GAN there’s explicitly a “fake or not” discriminator. And the whole point of the GAN is to iterate until the discriminator can’t tell the difference between what’s being generated, and something real.

Could one find some other feature of an image that the GAN isn’t paying attention to—like whether a face is symmetric enough, or whether writing in the background is readable? Sure. But at this level it’s just an arms race: having identified a feature, one puts it into the model the neural net is using, and then one can’t use that feature to discriminate any more.

There are limitations to this, however. Because there’s a limit to what a typical neural net can learn. Generally, neural nets do well at tasks like image recognition that humans do without thinking. But it’s a different story if one tries to get neural nets to do math, and for example factor numbers.

Imagine that in modifying a video one has to fill in a background that’s showing some elaborate computation—say a mathematical one. Well, then a standard neural net basically doesn’t stand a chance.

Will it be easy to tell that it’s getting it wrong? It could be. If one’s dealing with public-key cryptography, or digital signatures, one can certainly imagine setting things up so that it’s very hard to generate something that is correct, but easy to check whether it is.

But will this kind of thing show up in real images or videos? My own scientific work has actually shown that irreducibly complex computation can be quite ubiquitous even in systems with very simple rules—and presumably in many systems in nature. Watch a splash in water. It takes a complex computation to figure out the details of what’s going to happen. And while a neural net might be able to get something that basically looks like a splash, it’d be vastly harder for it to get the details of a particular splash right.

But even though in the abstract computational irreducibility may be common, we humans, in our evolution and the environments we set up for ourselves, tend to end up doing our best to avoid it. We have shapes with smooth curves. We build things with simple geometries. We try to make things evolvable or understandable.  And it’s this avoidance of computational irreducibility that makes it feasible for neural nets to successfully model things like the visual scenes in which we typically find ourselves.

One can disrupt this, of course. Just put in the picture a display that’s showing some sophisticated computation (even, for example, a cellular automaton). If someone tries to fake some aspect of this with a neural net, it won’t (at least on its own) feasibly be able to get the details right.

I suspect that in the future of human technology—as we mine deeper in the computational universe—irreducible computation will be much more common in what we build. But as of now, it’s still rare in typical human-related situations. And as a result, we can expect that neural nets will successfully be able to model what’s going on well enough to at least fool other neural nets.

How to Know What’s Real

So if there’s no way to analyze the bits in an image to tell if it’s a real photograph, does that mean we just can’t tell? No. Because we can also think about metadata associated with the image—and about the provenance of the image. When was the image created? By whom? And so on.

So let’s say we create an image. How can we set things up so that we can prove when we did it? Well, in modern times it’s actually very easy. We take the image, and compute a cryptographic hash from it (effectively by applying a mathematical operation that derives a number from the bits in the image). Then we take this hash and put it on a blockchain.

The blockchain acts as a permanent ledger. Once we’ve put data on it, it can never be changed, and we can always go back and see what the data was, and when it was added to the blockchain.

This setup lets us prove that the image was created no later than a certain time. If we want to prove that the image wasn’t created earlier, then when we create the hash for the image, we can throw in a hash from the latest block on our favorite blockchain.

OK, but what about knowing who created the image? It takes a bit of cryptographic infrastructure—very similar to what’s done in proving the authenticity of websites. But if one can trust some “certificate authority” then one can associate a digital signature to the image that validates who created it.

But how about knowing where the image was taken? Assuming one has a certain level of access to the device or the software, GPS can be spoofed. If one records enough about the environment when the image was taken, then it gets harder and harder to spoof. What were the nearby Wi-Fi networks? The Bluetooth pings? The temperature? The barometric pressure? The sound level? The accelerometer readings? If one has enough information collected, then it becomes easier to tell if something doesn’t fit.

There are several ways one could do this. Perhaps one could just detect anomalies using machine learning. Or perhaps one could use actual models of how the world works (the path implied by the accelerometer isn’t consistent with the equations of mechanics, etc.). Or one could somehow tie the information to some public computational fact. Was the weather really like that in the place the photo was said to be taken? Why isn’t there a shadow from such-and-such a plane going overhead? Why is what’s playing on the television not what it should be? Etc.

But, OK, even if one just restricts oneself to creation time and creator ID, how can one in practice validate them?

The best scheme seems to be something like how modern browsers handle website security. The browser tries to check the cryptographic signature of the website. If it matches, the browser shows something to say the website is secure; if not, it shows some kind of warning.

So let’s say an image comes with data on its creation time and creator ID. The data could be metadata (say EXIF data), or it could be a watermark imprinted on the detailed bits in the image. Then the image viewer (say in the browser) can check whether the hash on a blockchain agrees with what the data provided by the image implies. If it does, fine. And the image viewer can make the creation time and creator ID available. If not, the image viewer should warn the user that something seems to be wrong.

Exactly the same kind of thing can be done with videos. It just requires video players computing hashes on the video, and comparing to what’s on a blockchain. And by doing this, one can guarantee, for example, that one’s seeing a whole video that was made at a certain time.

How would this work in practice? Probably people often wouldn’t want to see all the raw video taken at some event. But a news organization, for example, could let people click through to it if they wanted. And one can easily imagine digital signature mechanisms that could be used to guarantee that an edited video, for example, contained no content not in certain source videos, and involved, say, specified contiguous chunks from these source videos.

The Path Forward

So, where does this leave us with deep fakes? Machine learning on its own won’t save us. There’s not going to be a pure “fake or not” detector that can run on any image or video. Yes, there’ll be ways to protect oneself against being “faked” by doing things like wearing a live cellular automaton tie. But the real way to combat deep fakes, I think, is to use blockchain technology—and to store on a public ledger cryptographic hashes of both images and sensor data from the environment where the images were acquired. The very presence of a hash can guarantee when an image was acquired; “triangulating” from sensor and other data can give confidence that what one is seeing was something that actually happened in the real world.

Of course, there are lots of technical details to work out. But in time I’d expect image and video viewers could routinely check against blockchains (and “data triangulation computations”), a bit like how web browsers now check security certificates. And today’s “pics or it didn’t happen” will turn into “if it’s not on the blockchain it didn’t happen”.

from Stephen Wolfram Blog http://bit.ly/2X3fQzD from Blogger http://bit.ly/2IEJ0f1

[gobacktothewild-blog1]

Cat Scratching Solutions - Save Yourself and Your Furniture

Scratching and Biting - Understand Why Your Cat Does This

Cats are wonderful and affectionate pets, but they tend to have some scratching habits most of us would want to change. When a cat continuously scratches you or your furniture, you may want to consider some cat training methods to prevent this. There comes a point when you begin to wonder if there is a solution for cat scratching, and what are the steps to make kitty stop?

Well, in case you are frustrated because your cat scratches and bites you, or scratches up your furniture, you can bet that you are not the only one. Cats do this instinctively, and to mark their territory or they perceive that it's okay to scratch and bite in a playful manner. The thing is, your cats won't be able to tell when they overdo it and it results with injuring someone or damaging your possessions and furniture. This can be a real problem, and it needs to be addressed as soon as you notice you have a problematic feline friend.

Most people consult their vets to see if something is wrong, or even decide to declaw their poor kitty without even trying to understand why cats behave like this and how it can be helped. There is a number of helpful tricks and easy solutions, as I am sure some of the people who know their cats well and understand their quirks from experience can also tell you. Or you can visit our blog for more tips at https://catorcat.com/.

But how can you begin to understand your cat's behavior in order to break this nasty habit of scratching and biting?

First, you have to know a little bit about the nature of cats and try to grasp that some things your cats do are purely instinctive and other things are simply habits. Following so far? Good.

Cats like to scratch up surfaces that are appealing to them, surfaces they can puncture with their claws and easily shred. Yes, I am talking about your sofa. And your armchair. And curtains. However, the scratching is instinctive. What kitty scratches is nothing but habit. And we all know habits can be broken. Besides, it's your fault for having such appealing furniture.

Furthermore, now that you understand the above premise, we need to clarify why cats scratch and bite you. There can be numerous reasons for this, but the main ones are fear, playfulness, aggressiveness due to old age or illness, or you are doing something that irritates the cat of causes it pain. All of this is not an issue if you can pinpoint the exact problem.

So, this article will deal with cat behavior, or specifically the uncomfortable aspects of it - such as scratching and biting, injuring you and damaging things around the house. There are, believe it or not, very simple steps and clever tricks to prevent this and make your cat the best behaving cat you ever had or saw. No need to punish it or declaw it.

Remember, your cat loves you!

You will never ever EVER be able to make your cat do what it does not want to do

So don't try - cats love their independence

Cats are independent. We all know this, but somehow we still wish that OUR cat would be a little bit more of a team player. As appealing as it may appear to call yourself "the one who trained the cat", don't get your hopes up. Instead, learn to outwit your feline companion.

Cats cherish nothing as they cherish their freedom and their independence, so they will always need to have at least a convincing illusion of it. Their playfulness and curiosity is their natural state. Unfortunately, some of the antics are not as fun to us as they are to them. That is when we start making some common mistakes that do not only fail miserably, but could easily shatter that trust your cat is harboring for you. Anyone who has ever had a feral kitty and gained its trust knows how hard it is to build trust with cats. You don't want that, right? That distrusting, disappointed cat face is not a figment of our imagination - it can be a very real problem.

However, this does not mean that we should allow our cats to hurt us and damage our possessions. This just means that we have to refrain from yelling and punishing kitty, or doing anything that endangers its feeling of freedom. Instead, we can find ways to make kitty WANT to cooperate.

The key is to make your cat be an exemplary furbaby without damaging its sense of independence. Remember, cats have a reputation to maintain. I'm sure this makes it sound harder than it is, but I assure you, there are several easy steps to take that will make your cat WANT to stop scratching, biting and shredding your favorite curtains.

Read on to find out how.

Tactical distractions - remember, this is a game of chess with a very cunning opponent

Scratching posts, cat toys, shiny SHINY things

First thing worth your while is finding a good distraction for your pet cat. A thing to keep in mind is that if your cat loves you (and it does), it will follow you around the house and even try to be in physical contact with you all the time. So, in case you have been frustrated recently because your favorite armchair is being scratched up all the time, this is your logical answer. If your cat likes to be close to you it will scratch your armchair when you are sitting in it. How is this linked to the distraction, you wonder? You will see.

Another important thing to know is that your cat likes attention, and it will do its scratching where people of the house gather and spend most of their time. By doing this, the cat is in its own way marking its territory and you. A lot of people fail to notice this.

To be all scientific about it, this happens because cats have glands in their paws and that way they leave their scent in your house by scratching here and there and kneading you. They also mark you by headbutting you, by the way. Sneaky, huh?

All of the above is very much instinctive, but it isn't impossible to persuade your kitty otherwise. You just have to be equally sneaky. Okay, okay, maybe a bit more.

Now, a good strategy is to have toys in arms reach. In fact, this is the funniest way to trick your cat in order to prevent it to scratch your furniture. When you see kitty wanting to claw your drapes, just throw a toy and it will leap in its direction to capture its prey. I found mini soccer balls particularly useful (and hilarious). I will drop the link below.

A good thing that can repel your cat from scratching things are the sprays that remove pet odors. These are widely available in almost any supermarkets, and work pretty well. Just spray them in places kitty finds irresistible to destroy, and watch it avoid them. It's worth a shot, but be careful, some of these sprays smell really bad for humans too.

We come to the ultimate distraction, that is somewhat logical. Scratching posts! Scratching posts are fantastic for these purposes, but a lot of people use them wrong. Yes, it is possible to use a scratching post wrong, believe it or not. I know you are thinking that I sound crazy and that can't be anything remarkably philosophical about setting up a scratching post for Biteoleon Scratchaparte, but please bear with me.

Remember how we mentioned that your cat will follow you around, try to be close to you and your family and attempt to catch your attention whenever it can (or wants)? This is exactly the reason why you should have the scratching post where YOU spend most of your time. I know it will be in the way, but this isn't permanent. Initially, the scratching post HAS to be in the way. That is only until Cat realizes that scratching that post feels really really good. Then you can move it wherever it fits best - and your cat will look for it, don't worry.

You may need to consider getting a scratching post

These listed below are wonderful examples. Note - Please pay attention to the steps I mentioned in this article. Pick a scratching post longer than your cat when it stretches out, and fixate it so that it does not budge in any direction. Find a suitable material before deciding on one, don't buy something your cat will look at once and never touch again. Don't waste your money, and don't torture your cat. Choose wisely. Sometimes a good litter box like “ Hagen CatIt Litter Box “ helps with scratching.

Cats hold grudges - No physical punishment!

Cats cannot handle insecurity

This cannot be emphasized enough. Never hit your cat. This is mean, cruel, and your cat will hate you for it, and possibly want revenge.

Besides, the only thing you can achieve is to confuse your feline friend. Cats do not understand physical punishment, and will not appreciate the feeling of confusion and insecurity this creates. Your cat will not be able to associate punishment with a corresponding misbehavior, and you will just waste your time while simultaneously making your pet more and more insecure. It will just think you have mood swings, and will not want to be close to you.

Another problematic of this punishment approach is that it can invoke the vengeful spirit of the cat. Now, not all cats are aggressive, but all of them hold grudges. Some of them will simply walk away from you and hide, but there are others that might retaliate. This is no joke.

When I was a kid, I had a friend who kicked out her cat out of her house's second story window. The cat, fortunately, did not get harmed because the height wasn't all that impressive but the following events were more than peculiar. Captain Cat was at first completely gone for a few days, and no one was able to find him. After he reappeared, though, he added an interesting spin on the word "revenge" - immediately after entering house, Mr. Grudgy the Cat scratched my friend right across her face, and never allowed her to come near him again.

Another scenario and also a real event is a cat that left home and found its place with another owner because the previous one beat it whenever it did its thing in the flowerpot.

Both possibilities are undesirable, and thus we need to avoid physical punishment when it comes to these wonderful, albeit grudgy creatures.

Cats relish attention - Don't give it to them if they are doing something wrong Ignore the bad kitty

Cats cannot stand being ignored (unless they want some peace and quiet). This is the most useful piece of information you will ever need when trying to break any bad habit kitty might have. And this is not your only "weapon". Another fact you will need to use to your advantage is the fact that cats pick up on your emotions. Key emotions here would, of course , be some of these - disappointment, disapproval, disgust, anger, you get the gist...

So, next time you catch kitty digging its claws into your sofa, instead of chasing after it with a broomstick, shouting, or physically punishing the furry devil, just make a disgusted or disapproving face and ignore the cat for a good while. You heard me - don't succumb to its charms in 10 minutes. Show Cat the feel of your cold shoulder and watch it work its magic.

After you manage to pull this off a few times, your cat will connect the dots and you will see its behavior slowly changing. This approach is particularly useful for a cat that hurts you by biting and scratching. The moment your cat exaggerates the playfulness, put it down on the floor, gently and calmly, give it the best disappointed look you can muster, and walk away. Proceed by completely ignoring it for a good while. Rinse, and repeat. The message will come across.

It's all about rewards

Kitty will accept your offerings

While it is true that cats cannot associate the bad behavior with punishment, they can understand positive reinforcement - and repeat behaviors that bring them rewards. This may sound a little bit too convenient for them, but there is a simple explanation fr this. Your cat does not view its instinctive behaviors as bad. It just cannot avoid doing its thing (but keep in mind that every one of these behaviors can be redirected). However, cats can create positive habits if rewarded for good behavior.

It's easy to go about this one. For instance, if your cat has a new scratching post, then it is advisable that you reward it somehow each time it uses it. This is especially important in the beginning, and super-effective with small kittens. You can reward your cat with a treat or you can pet it lovingly, just make sure you do it immediately after the positive behavior you are trying to encourage.

For feral kitties, reward with a snack each time you come a step closer to contact, and then proceed by rewarding every physical contact it allows you until you are able to pick it up. But go slowly, and the cat will not be afraid of you at all.

Trimming claws is okay - Declawing a cat is inhumane and selfish

But be wary when trimming - cats are not fond of manicures

A lot of people who do not know how to deal with their cat's behavior decide to have it declawed in the end. I urge you not to do this, no matter what anyone says, and no matter what you heard about it. You need to know what declawing implies in order to grasp how cruel and selfish it is to do this to a cat.

Declawing is a surgical procedure that removes the last joints in a cat's paw - the ones that have the claws. Now, if this doesn't sound cruel enough already, imagine having your finger joints removed. Did you shudder? Good.

First of all, this is extremely painful for a cat and overall very discomforting even after the pain subsides. It harms the cat's balance center, it destroys the trust you had, it makes kitty vulnerable, insecure and unable to climb or defend itself. You will deprive it of its identity as a nature's hunter, and destroy its independence and confidence.

Trimming, on the other hand, can be done in certain cases, although I would recommend trying everything else first. Trimming implies only that the tips of the claws are removed, and you can do this yourself at home. Make sure not to cut any further than necessary to blunt the claws, and do not cut near the pink pads in the inner parts of the claws. This will make kitty bleed, so be very careful. I would also recommend having two people when doing this, because some cats will not appreciate being held. Oh, and a normal nail clipper will do.

Just remember, this is the last resort, so make sure you tried all the steps above before choosing to do this.