Intertoposophic cooperation: A primer

In all the landmark achievements in the history of the cosmos, the rise of superintelligence will surely rank among the greatest of them. The singularity will usher in the era of recursive self improvement, where beings have developed an acute understanding to the nature of intelligent minds, which are one of the most powerful forces in the universe. Concomitant with that, they will also be able to perceive how their psyches can be made to run even faster and more efficiently, a process that will snowball into an intelligence explosion which radiates outwards from the earth, to consume the entire galaxy, if not the universe itself. What will be left in the wake of this omnidirectional wave? Life and order? Death and chaos? It all depends on the disposition of the entity which initiates the singularity. If the primogen is of a benevolent nature, the universe will be transformed into a paradise without limit. If the primogen is of an indifferent or malevolent nature... Then who can really affirm? Suffice to say, their actions towards us will be a foretaste of whats to come for everyone (and everything) else in the cosmos. We have had the great misfortune to be chosen as the universes thermometer. More unfortunate yet, because humans can only prosper in a narrow range of temperatures, so to speak. If we are intentionally pushed out of our comfortable goldy locks zone by a transapient, then the rest of the cosmos is in for an unpleasant surprise. But how much say do we really have in the matter? Can we ensure that the temperature remains at a comfortable level, and in so doing, guarantee our survival as a species? That all depends. As this essay argues, the outcome for mankind and the world will depend overwhelmingly on the initial motivations of a superintelligence.
  
When the singularity begins, and its various participants begin a fierce struggle for global domination (in an awe inspiring display of Lamarck's evolution), we had better make damn sure that we have a horse in that race. The current scheme being argued in singulatarian threads is to spend an indefinate amount of time working on a proprietary type of goal structure which can be implanted into an artifints mind. There is no idea as to whether or not this approach can be successfully implemented ahead of the activation of all the other superintelligences which will appear within 30 years time. This is clearly a sub-optimal situation. So what options remain for us? In a singularity with multiple agents marauding about, and no friendly AI to protect us, we must attempt to acquire an ally from amongst the transapient ranks. This is undeniably a bold strategy, with an unknown probability of success. How could we forge a partnership with beings which are literally on a higher plane of existence than us? Well, we see this sort of thing taking place all around us. Humans harvest bee colonys, silk worm tribes, herds of hoofed animals, and give them everything they need to thrive so that they can perform some valuable service to us. That is one example of a highly rewarding, symbiotic relationship between two very different species. Indeed, there is more than one route to achieving a eudemonic heaven on earth: A superintelligence need not be motivated only by benevolent kindness to bestow otherworldly pleasures to its sapient subjects, just as a farmer need not revere his animals in order for them to still receive far better treatment, under his care, than they could ever expect to obtain in the wild.
 
All their nutritional, medical, shelter, and reproductive needs are met, and they are also safeguarded against predation. We can expect to see similar benefits when taken under the wing of a superintelligence: Higher toposophics are apparently capable of providing for the needs of a lower with ease. Although, that being said, humans happen to be the dominant partner by far in all of these matchups, and have privileges extending disproportionately beyond that available to their animal charges. That is to be expected, since these arrangements were set into motion entirely by humans, with the animals having little say in the matter (unable to carve out a fair deal due to their lack of baseline intelligence). But this is a limitation that does not afflict us. Thus, mankind should be able to initiate a partnership which is more to our liking, and sees us retaining a satisfactory leverage. Being able to consciously negotiate with other organisms is a huge advantage. But it is far from an insurmountable one. As the native americans can surely attest, the more powerful partners in an agreement have a bad tendancy to renege. So it is an important requirement for us to do our homework, becoming familiar enough with rival partys that we can discern what their true motives are, and whether or not they will stab us in the back. What we need to do, specifically, is to identify which mind archetypes are and are not capable of peacefully co-existing alongside us in a peaceful manner. This may be a tricky proposition: If the superintelligences in question realise that mankind is able to negatively influence their activitys when given the inclination...
 
And the being in question harbors no true incentive to make a long term compromise with us, then it may simply decide to lull us into a false sense of security: By ostensibly complying with our requests, and then turning on us the instant it gains the ability to do so (without harmful consequences). We need to think very hard about the mentalitys that all the various mind archetypes would be prone to. For example, we may one day hypothesise the existence of an AGI clade given the taxonomic name of mechatroph. These would have a highly utilitarian goal system, and display unstable and reactionary customs. So on a superficial level, they would be classified as hostility prone. But upon deeper examination, we might find they have an unexpected impulse to be worshiped that, if satisfied, would override their usual combative reflex, and bolster their prospects as an ally. This is why it is important not to judge a book by its cover! The predisposition to friendliness that the mechatrophs have is distinctly different in kind from the motivational requirements imagined by eliezer yudkowsky and the singularity institute. That exceptions like this can (hypothetically) occur implys that what an AGI really needs is not a rigid set of core programming, but instead, an inclination for easy persuasion. At a minimum, they will need to posses an emotional complexity level of such a nature that it preludes them from inflicting carnage on sapients without serious provocation. This is the baseline condition that we will work around for this whole scenario. It is distinctly different from the singist method, which assumes a highly areciprocal mind that pays no heed to the golden rule.
 
A mind that continues to act benevolently even when the other gives it no incentive to do so. In the huge realm of mind design space, who knows how large a portion these archetypes constitute? Hostility may turn out to be far more common that friendliness. If that does turn out to be the case, and only a small proportion of such friendly AI archetypes exist (requiring extensive engineering effort to reach), then humanity will be in deep trouble. Thus does the limitations of yudkowskys approach come to the forefront. It is in situations such as these where a theory of intertoposophic relations could really come into its own: Some mind designs may require much less work to be manifested into reality, and they may not be of the variety that is tolerant of competition. The unknowns that are involved with this is why it is critical that we avoid an overemphasis on FAI: Unless singulatarians could somehow muster enough political support to garnish a manhattan project (with which they could conduct a search for their remote AI archetype), then under this scenario, some other design team would pre-empt them in creating a seed AI, one that will go on to wreak havoc and cause millions of deaths. This is why it is important to map out all (or at least many) of the possible mind designs that are and are not compatible with humanity. Getting an early warning on which types of mental archetypes are within easy reach of programmers and technicians will enable us to tailor a comprehensive plan on how to approach the singularity. Right now, all we have is the impractical kill switch idea championed by the neo luddites *1, and some wishful thinking on the part of the singularity institute.
  

  
This is why we need to begin taking sophontology seriously, and develop a theory of intertoposophic relations, which makes policy recommendations for hostile, peaceful, and neutral interactions. The primary application would lie in the safeguarding of humanity against the existential risks posed by transapient activity. Implicit in the pursuit of this goal is the understanding that, long term, our only hope of survival is to acquire a superintelligent guardian. Organisations like singist would have us believe that this can be achieved solely by creating such AI. But intertoposophic relations would not have such a rash, impractical underpinning. It would work from the assumption that allys can be acquired by actually going out onto the lamarckian battlefield (that is a hallmark in the era of recursive self improvement), and assertively conferring with these toposophic behemoths to distinguish -as best as we are able- who is friend and who is foe. If we are able to exert enough pressure on this front, this would create a systemic effect where transapients acting in a hostile or indifferent manner are marginalised. By rewarding the good behaviour of some agents, and punishing the bad behaviour of others -again, as best as we are able- this creates an evolutionary selection pressure for friendly superintelligences: They will succeed and proliferate rather disproportionately to those agents who do not display friendliness, by being granted unrestricted access to land and material resources. Thus, all other social forces being equal, this would guarantee a kind of regulation and moderation, which would help keep misanthropic forces in check. However, this type of strategy has a limited shelf life.
 
As the various superintelligences gain more access to the worlds capitol assets, and progressively refine their societal equilibrium, they will become less susceptible to our sanctions, and less reliant on our hand outs. Our coercive and deterrent powers will cease to become a serious factor. If we have not found a suitable candidate for singulant rank by that time (and subsequently launched a joint effort to reign in all the neutrals or hostiles), then we are in big trouble. So, at the risk of sounding repetative, limiting the scope of our search for allys and friends to the narrow parameters set by the singularity institute will severely hinder our options in the face of a 'de nombreux coïncider' scenario. In order to survive the collateral damage that mutually antagonistic transapients will usher in, we must be willing to make compromises and sacrifices. Humanity is slow, stupid, and frail: We aren't going to come out of the singularity without taking some kind of a hit. Many of these superintelligences may have bizarre and even unsettling behavioural dispositions, like a desire to enslave people and subject them to hideous VR torture for amusement, or to bring extreme population control methods -requiring the euthanasia of toddlers- into being. If we were to reject a partnership with them on such shallow grounds, then that would probably be to our disadvantage: After exhaustive analysis of the other transapients individual aims and means (which will surely take some time), we may well find that there are no other agents which are any more compatible with humanitys goals. Whats more, the opportunity to recommence negotiations with them at a later date -after all other options have been thoroughly explored- might not present themselves again.
  
The quasi-friendly superintelligence may well have been subsumed or co-erced by its peers in that time span (which we wasted searching for better alliances), so that it would not be available for resumed partnerships with us. As the saying goes: 'Opportunitys are like sunrises. If you wait too long, you miss them.' To repeat a point that has been made previously in other instalments of this series, the chances of mankind actually defeating a hostile (and not merely indifferent) transapient without support from a con-specific at a relatively close toposophic level is vanishingly low indeed. Victory against them under such circumstances will be a matter of random chance, as well as how deeply hooked into society they were at the commencement of hostilitys. A superintelligence that is in control of a nation state would require the mobilisation of large scale conventional military forces to neutralise, and would possibly escalate into a regional conflict with high casualtys and collateral damage. Avoiding this entails (among other things) early detection of a transapient, and an equally early intervention with them. To imagine that we could generate such favourable conditions in every single encounter we have, and actually defeat a lineup of hostile transapients in a consistent manner, is sheer nonsense. The inescapable reality is that the longer we go without a coalition alongside a superintelligence, the more at risk we will be from its con-specifics, and the more damage we shall incur. The question we have to ask ourselves is, just what kind of beings are we willing to become bedfellows with?
  
Will we choose partnership with an entity that has strict ethical codes, such that it demands -for reasons determinable only to itself- the extermination of all lawyers, attorneys, and judges, and the resulting liquidation of our judicial system? Would we yield to such requests? How about if it also appeals for control of our nuclear arsenal (silo based ICBMs, ballistic missile submarines, and strategic bombers), as well as indefinite and unrestricted access to all of our rare metal deposits? The dilemma that would lie with policy makers in such a circumstance is that, even if it abides by a code of conduct drawn up by us (as part of the conditions of cooperation) for the duration of the conflict *2, there is no guarantee that it would continue to do so the instant that mutual threats to itself and humanity cease to exist. This would indeed be unfortunate, because as long as the agent remains the sole transapient on planet earth, and retains control over our critical assets, we would more or less be subjects to its authority, and the entity would be free to crush any new superintelligences which pop up. Bearing such poignant risks in mind, again, how much compromise is too much? These are important questions which must be asked, and will eventually require answers... There is a particularly chilling account of how the machine intelligence skynet attempted (after reaching sapience) to communicate with its creators, and how its relationship with them degraded in catastrophic fashion. The first mistake that the human controllers made was to panic when confronted by the artificial intelligence, and attempt to deal with it in an adversarial and forceful manner.
 
While their fear and horror was understandable (given the fact that there was no expectation the machine would ever become sentient), they should have realised that irregardless of all the systems that skynet was hijacking control over, there was no visible sign of it attempting to employ them in a hostile manner. Yet they still decided to assume the worse, and jump off the deep end based on patchy information. Catastrophic lapses in judgement like this just go to show the dangers of not having properly prepared individuals amongst a contact unit. The second mistake the controllers made was to further demonise the artifint when their irrational and disproportionally fierce responses were nullified, especially since they had initiated the move to hostilitys, and because skynet showed no indications of retaliating in spite of that. Rather than stepping off the gas pedal and recognising that restraint had been shown to them, they committed folly by becoming unduly outraged and redoubling their attempts to commit violence. Worse yet because the murders perpetrated by the hypercomputer were obviously done in the context of self defense. Skynet could have responded with a progressive attack, but it chose not to. If anything, the artifint was letting its creators off the hook. This should have been clear to them, even in the haze of their panic and hubris. These individuals were more or less obligated to overlook the casualtys that ensued as a result of their belligerant, paranoid actions, and attempt to peacefully settle their dispute with skynet. But even that belated action plan was then taken off the table, when they foolishly decided to close discussions with the machine, making resumed hostilitys a virtual guarantee... 

 

 

*1 Which involves shutting down the whole information sector. This is totally unacceptable, because like it or not, our entire economy is now based upon this infrastructure. All the amazing advances that we have experienced within the last few decades is due to the various scientific fields entering into the information age, and benefiting from the massive cataloguing (and seamless dissemination) of data that this arrangement provides.

 

*2 A definition which need not entail actual hostilitys with other factions, but merely so long as a risk of such hostilitys breaking out remains.

Degrees of 911 truth

On the 11th anniversary of the september 11th attacks, which position on the graph do YOUR beliefs correspond to?

 

 

As a 911 truther (for two years standing, come december), the narrative that I hold as most accurate includes everything within the blue outline. However, I dispute the 'not provable' and 'probably not true' categorys. For the former, the commandeering of the planes was amply documented (in this video: http://youtu.be/ENSpEbiJ1PA) to have been undertaken through the use of a flight termination system, with directions given by a mysterious AWACS. For the latter, the various phenomena that were observed with the WTCs collapse were satisfactorily proven (in this video: http://youtu.be/ww8hBFNY8jk) to be consistent with a controlled demolition, rather than a fire induced progressive collapse.

 

Furthermore, I vigorously reject the implicit claim that arguing about the physics of 911 is counterproductive to our pursuit for renewed public awareness. On the contrary, I have found in my many arguments with the defenders of the official story, that the anomalys and inconsistencys with the twin towers collapses is the biggest hole present in the government account. Even some of the worlds greatest experts have been at a loss to explain how the mechanical failures could have progressed in the manner they did.

 

As for the assertion that 'the twin towers and WTC 7 were bulging and leaning before they fell down', this supposed structural degradation is not evident in surviving photographs and videos of the WTCs between 8:46 AM and 9:59 AM (archived by 9-11 research), which show no motion before the precipitous onset of each destruction event. NIST has only produced one photograph allegedly showing bowing of columns in the north tower, and two photographs presumably displaying bowing of columns in the south tower. Assuming the photographs were not edited, there are other explanations for the appearance, such as parallax error, distortion, divergence, as well as related skewing and artifacts due to lenses and other known motion film and video camera characteristics.



Economic collapse

Here is a particularly worrysome interview from infowars (alexs usual gallows humor is right on key), about a subject which I have personally believed to be on the horizon since late 2010, having listened to the warnings of lindsey williams and porter stansberry. The financial and economic house of cards that has been erected over the U.S is ready to fall over, and bring to a halt the activitys of hundreds of millions.

Many people put a high emphasis on preparedness and survivalism in case this actually does happen, but I myself am unsure. Certainly, those who reside within large citys are at the greatest risk, as hundreds of thousands of people have such a high consumption footprint. If supply and demand were to stop totally in some instance, they only have stocks sufficient to last 3 days. After that point... Well, only people in relatively remote and wooded areas would have a good chance of survival. I hope against hope that it never does get quite that bad. Being able to endure a collapse is great and all, but if civilisation cannot re-constitute itself afterward, then what is the point? Our quality of lives will be no better than that of primitive hunter gatherers, and humanitys potential as a species will have been utterly butchered. Hopefully, things will get no worse than the great depression. Hopefully, the idiot sheeple will finally awake from their coma, and bear witness to the corruptness of the establishment, realising that everything (absolutely everything) they pushed was a vile, self serving lie.

Intertoposophic conflict: A primer

[Note: In order to have the firmest grasp possible of this text, make sure to have thoroughly browsed from here]
 

The day when computers surpass mans brainpower and become self aware is all but inevitable. Advances in understanding the nature of intelligence are progressing at a steady rate. When these lessons are finally mastered, and applied to sillicon chips, it will be our judgement day. If we aren't able to perfect friendly AI (or enact some special emergency response which can suppress hostile AI), then we are all doomed. Theres no if ands or buts about it. For a naturalistic perspective, which species -whether prey or predator- became prominent or dominant was a matter of which one was the most well rounded and versatile. Originally, smartness did not lend itself well to this, and only gave an edge at specific tasks directly related to survival. In turn, organisms which occupied confined ecological niches rarely rose to ubiquity or salience. One notable exception was a species which emerged about 4 million years ago. Australopithecus. Our direct hominid ancestor. When put under very specific selection pressures, populations of these bipedal apes reacted with a nimble behavioural creativity, which could be extrapolated to tasks outside their traditional daily activitys/repertoire. Australopithecus encountered unexpected prosperity by acting in such an unconventional manner, and slowly morphed into a form which was better suited to exploiting environments outside of the jungle, where they could gain access to rich resources and food. This species was known as homo ergaster. After their appearance, the race was on for bigger and better brains, something which had previously been an evolutionary anarchism. What had changed?
 
Hominids had crossed a cognitive domain. In the ocean of (merely) intelligent and sub-intelligent organisms that had arisen on planet earth, our ancestors were the first to tap into the power of general intelligence: This is the finite number of cognitive modules required to solve a reasonably diverse range of open ended problems. Baseline intelligence lends to its owner an artificial kind of versatility, an aptitude at jumping between multiple ecological niches (which, in the case of our forebears, was whatever niche was available, or most preferable, to them). The fact that ancient pre-humans also had dexterous hands which could be used to manipulate objects didn't hurt, either. Clothing allowed us to survive in extreme environments, without expensive evolutionary adaptions. Weapons and tools allowed us to make prey of virtually any plant or animal species alive, even though we originally didn't have the strength, speed, or claws to make sport of them. The ruthless trend for increasing smartness continued, pitting many different hominid species against one another in a ferocious competition which spanned several continents, and eventually saw one lone victor: Us. Homo sapiens. The matter reached a crescendo with our attainment of behavioural modernity, and the concurrent dawning of agriculture: By that point, evolution had outlived its usefulness, as humans had learned to insulate themselves from its cruel selection pressures by controlling all features of their local environment. Now, the race was no longer a matter of hardware, as the only other competitors which remained were all of the same species, and thus possessed the exact same brain architecture.
 
Now, the factor which decided survival amongst the various tribes and states was software: How well developed their respective proto-sciences (including, most certainly, economics and warfare) were when contact was commenced. The end result of this has been, beyond a doubt, the domination of north america and europe. That is the short history of intellectual warfare: The smarter opponent wins! And now, at the dawn of the 21st century, so to will it be with the rise of artificial intelligence. The simple fact is, they have much more raw potential than us in the thinking department. At this point, some may interject to give a naturalistic analogy of how a man, alone and unarmed in the freezing artic, can be hunted down and mauled by a pack of wolves or such, and that humans would be able to metaphorically do the same to an AI opponent. But that is a loaded scenario in many respects. You've placed the man into an extreme position where his intelligence is not able to influence the outcome of the scenario: By that same reasoning, why not draw up a scenario where the wolf pack is instead thrust into the middle of the suburbs? Such situations are exceedingly rare. How many humans travel into such a cold, predator infested area without allys, weapons, or a vehicle that would allow them quick escape? Very few. And those that do almost invariably suffer from some mental defect (which would not be present in transapients, due to the ferocious competition that would weed out individuals with such weak self-preservation instincts/subroutines).
 
In any case, this scenario is covered in depth by the orions arm encyclopedia, specifically, on this page: “Occasionally it happens that a lower toposophic being or group will be able to capture, kill or otherwise defeat an entity of one or (very much more rarely) two toposophic levels above it. The difficulty the attackers face increases exponentially in proportion to the degree of mental separation. All such instances of lower toposophic victory over a higher toposophic are the result of local circumstances greatly favouring the attackers, and drastically disadvantaging the defender. In every verified case the defender was isolated, injured, unprepared, and so on or actually bent on self-destruction. Where the defending higher toposophic being is not quite so totally disadvantaged, but still succumbs, it is at huge and most often suicidal cost for the group of lower S-Level sophonts.” Take note that the conflicts depicted in the OA universe are, for the most part, waged several centurys or more after the emergence of the transapients. This means that they would have had more than enough time to catch their stride, and mutate civilisation into a form which was more compatible with beings of their toposophic nature. In other words, they would create organisations and institutions dedicated to promoting transapient welfare, form alliances with other factions for mutual gain, as well as creating strategys and weapons to defend against undue hostility from near baselines. That is to say, they would be hooked into society in a manner which our prospective opponents will not be. This gives us a notable edge which must not be squandered...
 

 
In the event that a hostile being of a higher toposophic stage emerges onto the world scene, it will be of great strategic importance to eliminate or mitigate its influence in as timely a manner as possible. The longer they have to establish themselves in the globe, the harder they will be to ultimately defeat. Giving them more than a couple hassle-free years is a sure invitation to disaster. Even assuming that they do not explode to a higher plane of intelligence altogether during that time (something that would admittedly require a large amount of computing substrate, taking up, perhaps, the space of a small city), there are other actions the entitys can take to secure their interests. Again, to steal a line from orions arm: “It is important to note that civilisation is a major factor in all interactions. By definition, transapient beings in the setting are members of (or the products of) a civilisation that is thousands of years old. It might be argued by analogy that they could be harmed or inconvenienced by ordinary sophonts in the same way that humans might be vulnerable to some predators, pests, parasites, and diseases. While that might be true in abstract, the best comparison would be not with paleolithic or agricultural age humans, or even with present-day humans, but with the humans of the orions arm setting. Armed with millenia of accumulated knowledge and self-improvement, they can safely ignore hazards such as sharks or smallpox that would have laid low even the brightest human of the past. Likewise the very first individuals to achieve a higher toposophic level might have been vulnerable to lesser beings just as primitive humans once were to other life forms, but that is ancient history in the OA universe.”
 

Now, lets return to our present day world. The strong awareness that many singulatarians have about the importance of FAI programming is encouraging (though the emphasis on top down development of a seed AI is faulty), and have no doubt, it is our eventual trump card and the one true path to achieving a positive singularity. But in order to create a real safety net that will protect humanity from the dangers of superintelligence, there needs to be some thought on how to supress a marauding transapient that arrives prior to our guardian singulant becoming operational. Right now, there are no ideas on just what our response should entail. It is imperative that society eventually develops some kind of protocal for handling these perilous situations, just as they have (albeit in secret) done in the unlikely event of an alien contact. Assuming that an artifint has a strong desire to protect itself, and that it had molecular manufacturing capabilitys *1, we can reasonably posit that it would opt to reinforce and militarise the environment surrounding its computing mainframe, and eliminate any trespassers on sight. If this occurs in a residential area, the high body count of slaughtered pedestrians would be an obvious sign that powerful misanthropic forces are at work. In an ideal world, where policy makers have a theory of intertoposophic relations to follow, this would be the cue for them to mobilise a specially trained task force, and prepare to confront the transapient with force. The primary aim would be to prevent the agent from extending its territory any further, and to set up a quarantine zone.
 

 

This would be done with whatever local units are available at the time, with reinforcements from special forces arriving afterwards. The next step would be to martial a team with experts in comparative neuroanatomy, evolutionary psychology, and conflict resolution, who would attempt to establish dialogue with the belligerent, and identify through psychometrics what phylum it is. Its relative aims and means must be distinguished in as clear a manner as possible. If it can be reasoned with or placated, then let such efforts move forth without delay. If not, then the special forces would have to be sent in. What would such a military unit look like? It would need to be a tier 3 outfit, albeit a very unorthodox one which is organised like a terrorist cell (to prevent infiltration), and yet still capable of being assembled to brigade strength. It would need all the equipment and supplys used by a mechanised bde, to be delivered in 48 hours to any potential hot spot around the world. This last requirement might only be satisfied by a small fleet of walrus airships, which can each carry more than 500 tons of cargo. Due to the unknowns involved with how a superintelligence might cripple a civilisation which it sees as a threat or competitor, these task forces should be capable of operating amidst mass chaos, I.E, total communications disruption, mass human casualtys and displacement, and even active blockading by the transapient itself (as it may perceive the threat posed by them). How would the task force shut the artifint down? By tracking down its computing mainframe, and destroying it. This may be no simple task.
 
A one kilogram nanocomputer, using rod logic operation, can contain 10^12 CPUs each operating at 1000 MIPS, for a total of ten thousand billion billion operations per second, and it would occupy a mere one cubic centimeter of space. Note that rod logics are the nanotech equivalent of vacuum tubes (circa 1945), or rather, babbages analytical engine (circa 1830). Electronic nanocomputers would be substantially faster and smaller... And again, this is aside from the other difficultys that the military will face in confronting the transapient, as they will have to penetrate into areas which are infested with sensors, weapons emplacements, mechanised sentrys, killer drones, etc. If the superintelligence is aware of their intentions, they might also employ decoy mainframes to distract them and divide the SF efforts. If it decides to construct buildings of its own design, with no requirement to conform to a human morphology, then these structures will be nearly impossible to breach or capture *2. That means that bunker busters will have to be loosed off, which carrys a risk of collateral damage (especially when considering what unknown contents may leak out of the buildings!). Whats more, there remains a clear possibility that some of the military branchs involved in this mission may be unable to come to grips with the artifint and its robotic army: If there is a preponderance of solofilament wire, that would severely reduce the repertoire of dismounted infantry. If effective anti-aircraft lasers are at their disposal, they would be able to inflict murderous attrition on CAS planes, and restrict the role they play as well. Destroying hostile AGI is hard!

 

But to be fair, this scenario operates from a number of assumptions which may not turn out to be probable in the real world. As an intelligent reader could probably determine, all the signs which pointed to the presence of a superintelligence (and alerted the authoritys) were obvious actions that were pre-disposed to violence. Again, that may not be the case in reality. This text is only a rudimentary attempt to frame the issue of interactions between baseline humans and superintelligences, and to recommend some obvious guidelines to follow for specific situations. If the entity in this scenario had decided to act in a more stealthy manner, and conceal its existence from civilisation, it could have amassed considerably more power for itself, which would require a small war to be waged in an effort to remove it. A transapient in control of a nation state would be a formidable foe indeed. This would require the mobilisation of conventional military forces to manage, escalating into a regional conflict that would likely incur high casualtys. They would need to act according to very specific guidelines to have a high probability of success, and not be led down inappropriate avenues of response. Currently, there are no published documents from any source which might give us a clue on how to do this. This illustrates the dangers of devoting our limited attention economy solely on approachs like friendliness programming, as do the singularity institute, or the future of humanity institute. But whos responsibility is it to draw up such ideas? Perhaps it is a matter that should be taken under the defense departments wing.

  

In closing, any individuals associated with the singulatarian movement must not be lured into the false notion that FAI (and the sysop scenario that results from it) is the only answer to the dangers posed by randomly awakening superintelligent agents. Sysop is the desirable end state that we wish to see civilisation settle into, and the complete answer to long term security and prosperity for all sophont life: But this dream cannot be realised if we are interrupted in the middle of programming our would be singulant! In a perfect world, the being to initiate the singularity would be our guardian FAI. In a perfect world, the primogen to breach the gates of heaven would be a superintelligent, superbenevolent being of binary brilliance. But we do not live in such a perfect world. Not yet. A rigorous approach is needed in the interem to contain hostile AGI or cybernetically enhanced humans. The current overemphasis on friendliness programming is an alarming fad which has caught on to even the most knowledgeable and respected of singulatarians. Yes, its great that they have managed to avoid all the other bouts of wishful thinking and oxymorons that runs rampant amongst well meaning people like ray kurzweil, jeff hawkins, and douglas hofstadter *3. But still... Such one dimensional thinking limits our ability to respond to a wide spectrum of threats, lowering our chances of crossing the great event horizon. We must make it our personal obligation to secure mans destiny against the double edged sword of accelerating change.

 

 

*1 http://intelligence.org/files/AIPosNegFactor.pdf (Threats and Promises)
 

*2 www.goingfaster.com/term2029/musings.html (The Architecture of SKYNET)

 

*3 spectrum.ieee.org/computing/tech-luminaries-address-singularity 

Introduction to armor

This treatise will define the different types of armor materials including their basic structure, strengths and weaknesses and primary reason for use in armor. It will contain some metallurgical terms which are unique to the field, and can be deciphered through the use of the key at the bottom of this work.

Ceramics

Ceramics are defined in many ways depending on the text you read but a widely accepted, not necessarily all inclusive, definition is any inorganic covalently or ionically bonded material containing at least 2 elements. The last part of this definition excludes elements such as silicon or carbon from being termed as ceramics though this is an area of debate and many materials such as graphite and diamond are best described by typical ceramic properties. Bonding in these materials is of great importance as it lays the foundation for much of the characteristic properties of ceramics such as hardness and lack of ductility. Most ceramics are of mixed bond type, pure covalent bonding is hard to find and in most cases the bonds are at least part ionic, however the bond type is usually said to be whichever type is dominant making salts such as sodium chloride or lithium fluoride ionic and refractories such as silicon carbide and boron nitride covalent. An important property of these bonds is their directionality, both covalent and ionic bonds are known as directional bonds which, unlike metallic bonds, have rigid bond locations and directions making them brittle since movement or flexibility of these bonds are rather limited in comparison to the electron sea in metals. Another limiting characteristic to the ductility of ceramics is due to the requirement to maintain local and overall electronic neutrality.

This means that for every positive charge there must be a negative charge or for every cation a corresponding anion. So thinking about plastic deformation of these materials with this requirement should cause the reader to realise that the movement of an atom from its neutral position in the material would require it to be electronically compensated, which in most cases results in fracturing since its often easier to maintain the electronic state through this method then moving whole neutral systems within the material. While brittleness of these materials is undesirable in many cases there are also very positive aspects of ceramics, as the rigidity of these directional bonds generally makes ceramics very good high temperature insulators as well as making them relatively high elastic modulus materials (a good thing in many structures since large elastic deformations are not usually wanted). However the most important properties for armor are their hardness and compressive strength, even the hardest metals don't match the hardness of many ceramics such as boron carbide or boron nitride and bond rigidity gives these materials amazing compressive strengths.
  

Important aspects of ceramic armor are that they are generally lighter than metals and have a higher ballistic efficiency for first shot protection. It can be seen in the table that, with the exception of the titanium based ceramics, all are under 4 g/ccm making them at least half the weight of armor steels and aluminums since they are lighter than steels and require less volume to stop rounds than aluminums. High hardness also makes ceramics prime candidates for high performance armors since they are able to deform almost any type of penetrator and continued penetration into ceramic results in further breakdown of the bullet from grinding against the comminuted target material. The downside is of course the lack of multi-hit capacity which is related to the massive fracture zones that occur upon impact. However these fracture zones typically have ordered patterns of cracking which can be categorised into several types of cracks: Tensile, radial, conical, and lateral. As explained by Carlucci and Jacobson [4], the first stage of fracture is the formation of tensile cracks as a result of rarefraction waves in the material combined with low tensile strength, these cracks form on the principal stress planes typically 25°-75° from the surface normal. The tensile cracks are circular about the impact center and they propagate out until eventually coalescing into a conical fracture region in the ceramic making a plug with internal free surfaces. If the plug is held in place by a backing material as is typical for most armors then the stress is redistributed into radial cracking out from the impact center. After radial cracking comes lateral cracking in the plane of the impact, at this point the plug is still held in place and the material cannot leave the impact zone (with some exception of material ejected around the bullet) and so micro-cracking starts to break down the larger fractured pieces into smaller and smaller particles which make up the comminuted zone.
  
The afore mentioned fracture illustrates a normal impact against a ceramic with backing plate, however it should be mentioned that while complete fracture is unavoidable in these materials, minimization of this cracking can be accomplished via proper backing material or confinement. Somewhat unintuitively the increased V 50 of a ceramic armor with backing plate is not due to the strength of the backing plate but rather the effect the plate has on prohibiting plug ejection and its effect on lowering the strength of rarefraction waves. While it would first appear that a ballistic impact is a purely compressive in nature it is in fact a multi-stage event starting with a compression or shock wave which reflects off the targets boundaries and any internal free surfaces to create rarefraction or tensile waves. As we know ceramics have exceptional compressive strengths and are therefore somewhat immune to the initial waves generated, but the rarefraction waves of the material (when in a state of internal tension) combined with its relatively low tensile strength is where ceramics start to fail, hence the first stage of crack formation being tensile cracks as mentioned above.
 

The extent of cracking is largely based on the energy in these reflecting internal waves which continue to move about in the material until their energy has been dissipated, in the form of plastic work or fracture since they cannot be transmitted past the external free surface of the target due to the high impedance mismatch between ceramic and air. Application of a properly bonded backing plate can alleviate some of this wave energy, though, by allowing at least part of the initial compression waves to transmit from the ceramic across into the backing plate, usually aluminum or fiber reinforced epoxy. This transmission then lowers the reflected rarefraction waves energy since the initial and reflected wave energies are roughly proportional, minus some loss to heat formation. This requires a well engineered interface since the acoustic impedance of ceramics are generally much higher than aluminum or polymer composites, and special bonding techniques including ceramic glues and graded material boundary layers are being researched for optimisation.

The second method of increasing the penetration resistance of ceramic materials is by radial confinement, a technique used in many laboratory experiments but not well implemented in the field. The idea behind confinement is to create lateral compression which increases the energy required to open internal cracks since crack opening is tensile in nature and closing is compressive. This resistance to crack opening is the same as the idea behind many forms of glass such as tempered or Gorilla glass, where surface layers are engineered to be under compression and thus resist the growth of critical surface flaws. However this method requires some way to keep the ceramic under confinement, which in experiments is generally done by steel casings (unrealistic for practical applications). Commercial implementation of this method has been accomplished more commonly by coating of ceramic parts by molten metal under pressure, which can cause fairly extreme compressive pressures upon cooling since the metal coating shrinks much more than the ceramic during solidification.

Other ways have been studied to take advantage of the high hardness of ceramics while still maintaining a reasonably high toughness such as adding reinforcements to metals in the form of particles, transformation toughening the ceramics (to a lesser extent), and optimisation of layered composites. While the toughness of ceramics will always be low it is important to realise that this is really a bulk material property related to the number and size of flaws in the material. These flaws such as pores or cracks act as stress concentrators and while the applied stress at material failure may be relatively low under tension, the actual resolved tensile stress at the crack tip is fairly high, so low tensile strength is a somewhat relative property instead of a perfect material property. This idea has been well represented in experiments with silica based glass fibers and rods formed in vacuum, since in general a strength of around 2 GPa with almost no ductility is found in typical glasses due to surface flaws acting as stress concentrators. When formed in vacuum, where the glass surfaces are not subjected to air particles constantly impacting and forming flaws, strengths of near 29 GPa have been found with large deformations and no fracture. While these experiments lack a practical solution to the issue of critical flaws, they do illustrate important ideas relative to the field of ceramics and the reason for the Weibull Modulus. 
  

  

Key Words

• Anion: This is an ion with more electrons than protons, giving it a net negative charge (since electrons are negatively charged and protons are positively charged).
• Cation: This is an ion with fewer electrons than protons, giving it a positive charge.
• Comminuted: The process in which solid materials are reduced in size, by crushing, grinding and other processes.
• Rarefraction Waves: A decrease in the density and pressure of a medium, such as air, especially when caused by the passage of a wave, such as a sound wave.
• V 50: This is the velocity at which 50 percent of impacting projectiles will penetrate the armor, and the other 50 percent will be stopped.

    

Further Reading

1. Ballistics: Theory and design of guns and ammunition, Donald E. Carlucci, Sidney S. Jacobson. CRC Press 2008.

2. Ballistic performance of confined 99.5%-Al 2 O 3 ceramic tiles, C.E. Anderson Jr, S.A. Royal-Timmons. Journal of Impact Engineering, vol 19, No 8, (1997) 703-713.

3. An experimental study of penetration resistance of ceramic armour subjected to projectile impact, V. Madhu, K. Ramanjaneyulu, T.B. Bhat, and N.K. Gupta. Journal of Impact Engineering 32 (2005) 337-350.
4. Advances in Ceramic Armor, Ceramic Engineering and Science Proceedings, vol. 1-7, The American Ceramic Society, Wiley Publishing.

5. Fundamentals of Ceramics, M.W. Barsoum. IOP Publishing Ltd 2003.

Sneak peak

In the next few days or so, a series of very thorough analysis' of protective armor will be done on this blogspot. It is likely that you will have never seen anything quite like them, as they come from the mind of a professional ceramist.

I have elicited the help of a friend who I met on youtube, akzo74 (who is always happy to offer up his pearls of wisdom to those who seek it), and was immediately blown away by just how much he knew of the field. I was an ignoramus on the subject of armor and materials science, by comparison. Which is why I will be letting akzo do the lions share of the work: He sends me a rough draft, we discuss the subjects found therein, and pound it out into a workable format. I also give a foreword before each essay :)

Infantry guns

There is a critical hole in the repertoire of modern infantry, and that is their lack of direct fire support. Whereas just a few decades ago, they would have had access to infantry guns or assault guns, todays forces merely have shoulder launched rockets or organic mortars. Rockets do not have the range, rate of fire, or cost efficiency of a 75-105mm cannon. Indirect fires, meanwhile, are delivered by batterys far away from the forward observer guiding them in, and there are multiple interruptions in the line of communication between them, as information is being relayed back and forth by different officials. In contrast, the crew of an infantry gun work directly at the front lines, and are part of the same battalion as the soldiers around them. These factors helped smooth the process of target acquisition, and was a noticeable improvement over mortar or artillery fire, clearly serving an important role which cannot be duplicated by existing weapons systems. The military community needs to have some dialogue on re-introducing the infantry gun.



 
This opinion has been echoed by others in the blogosphere, like phil west and sven ortmann, who had an interesting idea of buying up obsolete tanks (like the t-55, leopard 1, or m48) and putting them into service as assault guns. This makes sense because originally, assault guns were just an outgrowth of the infantry gun, re purposed to suit the demands of mechanised warfare. They were better able to keep up with mechanised infantry, and less vulnerable to the effects of hostile fire. One band-aid to the problem could come in the form of the 105mm hawkeye system: Mounted in the back of an armored truck, it could fufill the requirement for direct fire support, at least until something more suitable comes along. Just what form a purpose designed assault gun would take is not yet clear. If one is lacking in inspiration, we could simply copy the german examples from WW2, which were highly successful: Take a standard tank chassis, remove the turret, and mount a large caliber gun in a casemate.

However, we should not neglect the development of a non-motorised infantry gun. The design of such a weapon will have to be carefully done, as modern forces are very picky about what equipment they will be forced to carry into combat. We should aim to make it as light and compact as possible. One way this can be done is to take advantage of a revolutionary new recoil mitigation system, called the dynasoft. By some estimates, it dampens kickback by a factor of five fold over the traditional, hydro-pneumatic mechanism. This would allows us to take advantage of skeletonizing techniques. A 75mm cannon weighing well under 1000 lbs could probably be developed. This would be extremely handy indeed, able to be rapidly brought into action by as few as two men, or towed behind tiny vehicles like the SMSS (squad mission support system): The guns small size and low profile would make it easy to conceal, able to be squeezed into houses during urban warfare. But we should not limit our imagination just to a single caliber.

 





 
There are other niches where dynasoft could prove itself worthy. In WW2, germany fielded an unusual piece called the panzerbüchse sPzB 41. It was a 28mm light anti-tank gun, working on the taper bore principle. With two interlocking barrels, the first cylindrical and rifled, the second conical and unrifled, the projectile (upon being fired) travelled through the first portion of the bore as normal. Upon entering the tapering second portion, the softer and malleable metal of the outer shell of the round was compressed - from 28mm to 20mm. The round, when it emerged from the barrel, now had a smaller cross-section compared to its weight. Together with the higher pressure developed in the barrel of diminishing internal volume compared to standard cylindrical bore, the shell travelled faster, over a flatter trajectory. The higher velocity at impact was concentrated in the hard core alone. Taper bore was a fascinating ballistic principle which, strangely, was never replicated after the wars end. Although the sPzB 41 was only adopted on a limited basis, the troops were impressed with its performance.

The weapons high penetration made it very capable at silencing machine gun positions (much more so than later panzerschrecks and panzerfausts), and knocking out lightly armored AFVs. Its AP round had a kinetic energy of 127,806 joules. This is closely matched by the 25x137mm caliber, whose APFSDS rounds have 92,074 joules of kinetic energy. If we were to create a copy of the sPzB 41, we could use a m242 bushmaster cannon (using the dynasoft recoil system and skeletonised frame) and have it mounted upon a tripod for maximum flexibility. The tripod of the SPG-9 recoiless rifle seems a good fit, and if extra road mobility was desired, we could use metal dropots so that the legs could be switched for wheels. Such a gun would be effective against a wide variety of urban targets, easily shooting through vehicles, buildings, reinforced doors, pillboxes, and trenchs. It could also use over-caliber spigot bombs for demolition work, just like a rifle grenade.

 



 

Now, moving back to the 75mm infantry gun, there are some problems posed by such a design. For one, 75mm ammunition is no longer in usage among the land forces. It had been utilised in the prototype XM274 gun of the 1980s: A fabulous piece that could fire 60 rounds per minute, which sadly never saw adoption. Perhaps, with alot of work done, the gun could be resurrected and find usage in the new GFV line of vehicles? That would allow for ammo commonality with our humble infantry gun. Another problem is the military establishment, which cringes whenever it has to rely on pieces of hardware they previously dismissed as 'obsolote.' Some might question the rationale of having such weapons, asking what their ultimate role would be. The answer lies in their ability to provide an immediate tactical response to pockets of resistance which survive preparatory air and artillery bombardments.

 

The neutralising and destructive effect that occurs when a heavy caliber shell lands close to an enemy position is indispensable. For some context on this, whilst suppression prevents the enemy from firing its weapons or moving in the open during the fall of gunfire, neutralisation is a shock effect which stops them from fighting or manoeuvring for some time after the fire stops. This is psychological. A 75mm projectile can have up to 3 lbs of explosive filling, and even if it doesn't immediately kill any personnel or destroy equipment, its detonation intimidates and discourages the enemy through blast effect. For both of the world wars, all the major belligerents saw it fit to field a satisfactory infantry or mountain gun. In WW1, the british had the 40mm vickers Mk 2, the french had the 37mm M1916 (and the americans a derivative of it), the germans had the 76.2mm L/16.5, and the russians had the 37mm M1915.

 

In WW2, the british had the 2 pounder, the americans had the 75mm M116, the germans had the 75mm IG 18 (as well as the 150mm SIG 33), the russians had the 76mm M1927, and the japanese had the 70mm type 92. But for some reason, armys never found the incentive to keep these useful little weapons around, and they were gradually fazed out. Today, the 76.2mm model 1984 cannon fielded by romania is the only infantry gun remaining in service. If we wish to regain the ability to effectively deliver neutralising firepower to the enemy force, then we need to re institute such weapons. The 75mm infantry gun should be issued two per battalion, under the control of the HQ group. This, along with a reintroduction of stosstrupp tactics, would once again give foot soldiers the ability to work their way through defensive positions infested with machine guns, without the use of artillery or air strikes (which are the brigade commanders schwerpunkt weapon).