1. Faith healing church parents charged over toddler's death

Comment #153821 by corruptmemory on April 2, 2008 at 6:04 am

This is aimed at no-one in particular, but I will throw some more ideas into the mix:

- As far as other anti-atheist sites picking up this discussion, so be it. At some point subject matter like this will be discussed somewhere, we ought to be beyond hiding rational dialogue from those who have elected ignorance in its place.

- As far as abortion/infanticide being out of anybody's league, I would venture to say that in some important way it is out of everybody's league. The idea that there are those for which this subject is "in their league" vs. "out of their league" essentially is setting up an argument by authority. My take is the any discourse on this subject is little more than some form of particular rationalization one way or the other. Most of you, myself included, recoil in horror at the idea of infanticide, but at some point past "some age" it becomes possible to feel comfortable rationalizing committing homicide, in the form of armed conflict against an opponent. At some point even the "intelligence" test is insufficient.

Many of you have resorted to your moral intuition, as we all do, but as I alluded to in another post is it possible that our moral intuition can be "wrong"? Can it be mis-guided by a moral "illusion"?

Our moral intuition seems (to my subjective experience anyway) to operate below our thought processes, even outside of my conscience. I often feel like there is some part of my brain that is outside of my conscience that works in parallel to it that creates a moral package, a bundle of visceral reactions and emotions and drops it on the doorstep of my conscience. My conscience then picks it up and begins to decipher the message within, but by that time, the time that I can begin to articulate only the most rudimentary elements of that package my body has acted on the message: my stress levels go up, chill down spine, etc.

Science may bear out my description as being crudely correct, or not, this is certainly how I subjectively feel. The fact that my conscience mind can clearly be wrong about a great many things means I must also grant that my "moral intuition" can also be wrong about an equal number of things. The part of my brain that screams out regulatory controls to stop me from doing harm to another person can also be horribly wrong.

To go further, I believe, like most parts of my brain, this "moral intuition" can be tuned, or trained. For instance: peoples who live today in environments where they must hunt for food, or live on a farm where they must slaughter animals to eat have had their moral sense tuned differently then mine. I have not been in a situation where I have had to slaughter or actually kill an animal to eat it. If I were actually put to the task in all likelihood I couldn't do it, or more likely, could not do it immediately. If my life or the lives of others depended on my killing an animal to survive I would search for the strength to do it. My moral intuition is tuned very differently than people for whom the killing of animals is a regular occurrence. My reluctance to personally kill another animal is that I feel that conscienceless and a sense of self, and certainly intelligence exist in many different forms way "down" (for lack of a better term) the evolutionary tree, there is some scientific evidence that this is true. So which moral intuition is correct? My sense of valuing intelligence, or the hereditary, biological inter-dependence on the flesh of animals that seems to come easily to those who find and prepare animals for eating? Clearly, I can be vegetarian, but a personal choice like that does not simply dissolve the issue. Can it be that my more "squeamish" moral sense in this regard is the wrong one?

Honestly, I have read a bunch of stuff over a great many years, this does not make me an expert and I profess nothing of the sort, but I have never found anything on the subject of killing that remotely strikes home as: "YES! This is it!" Every time I pick up another view on the subject I find that it is only a matter of time before you can whittle away the veneer of soundness.

It, to me at least, seems that the subject of killing is out of anybodies league, it is a schism the exists because we have the ability to cultivate a rarefied mind in the context of our undeniable biological heritage. In the end, you pick the philosopher who argues the case in the most eloquent fashion to rationalize your actions. This may seem like a scathing assault on atheism and rationality, but it really isn't. Just because you have been able to dredge up a philosophical rationalization to comfort you in your actions does not mean that others will agree. Unlike the theist, there is no quarter granted for you by your fellow rational humans. In this way the individual moral intuition is tempered by the analysis of others, in this way morality acts like a market.

The above may be a load of crap, but there you go.

2. Faith healing church parents charged over toddler's death

Comment #153676 by corruptmemory on April 1, 2008 at 7:53 pm

MeIM:

I think coming into this thread and dumping infanticide into the discussion was a silly move and we'll be very lucky if it doesn't cost us dearly.

Could you elaborate? I don't understand the cost you are speaking of.

So far as I know, the Oregon parents are not guilty of deliberate infanticide and haven't been charged with it; so, I don't think it was even part of this thread to begin with. I think FF was right about being shocked. The Grand Jury in Oregon decided that the child's death was caused by the parents actions. (see the quote above)

Well, they aren't guilty of anything, at least legally, until or if they get convicted. Honestly though, this is deliberate infanticide, not manslaughter. The child's deaths was caused by deliberate in-actions. Did these people call their pediatrician? Did the pediatrician provide council on what should be done to safeguard the health and welfare of the child? Was the pediatrician part of the same nonsense believing cult that literally, and conspicuously, caused the child's death? If so he/she should lose their license and have charges brought against them as well. In a country like the US these people deliberately and consistently sought ignorance at their children's peril. They are, at the very least, unfit parents. Imagine if these loonies get off, their remaining children will be back in their care. It's like giving a drunk driver the keys to a car with children strapped into the front seat and telling them to get on the road. It is only a matter of time.

These people should be judged and judged harshly. Their acts are despicable.

3. Faith healing church parents charged over toddler's death

Comment #153603 by corruptmemory on April 1, 2008 at 4:29 pm

Abortion/Infanticide:

I think that it might be helpful to think a bit differently on this subject. Try thinking of a human life as being a continuum, starting from conception through death. The fact that, today, life begins in the womb is a result of our biological heritage, more importantly, a heritage as placental mammals. As placental mammals we have a built in "strong" sense of value for our unborn, but someday (perhaps soon-ish) the entirety of a human life could be cultivated entirely without the womb. Are there still justifications for an "abortion", what would that mean? But at that point we would have "re-invented" the progenitor model similar to marsupials, or even birds/reptiles. All of those animals can exert a direct influence on the development of their young in ways that we cannot: they can abandon them if the "need" should arise. In those animals their "built-in" calculus regarding their young is, in some important way, different than ours. In the world I just described would we adjust? Is there any lesson we can gain from thinking about things in these terms? Some of you have used "viability" as the criteria for determining the stage at which abortion would be allowable, the world I describe is synonymous with viability from conception. Would it still be "allowable" to halt the progress of the development of the fetus by terminating it? How about putting the fetus into suspended animation, "pausing" it's development. so, say that a young girl gets pregnant unexpectedly. Would it be "ok" with any of you to put the "baby on hold" in some sort of bank where the "mother" will be required to "withdraw" the child before some date. Even if the child is still unwanted? Is is better to compel bringing into the world children unwanted by their progenitors? Clearly, the fetus cannot "express" wanting to come into the world, is simply does, that is biology. Is mere biology a "will" of its own?

Consider this: I spoke of, an apparent, "built-in" "ethical sense" regarding the value of our unborn, but developing children. Can you conceive of cases where this "built-in" sense (instinct anyone?) can be absolutely "wrong"?

Biology is cruel, and amoral. I would venture to say that it is likely that if you are honest in your thinking you could, regrettably, agree to the termination of a fetus under many of the circumstances I described above. Of course, this innate compulsion to "care generally" about our youth is strongly fueled by some nebulous sense of "innocence" about the developing child. Have they done anything to deserve the termination of their life? One would be hard pressed to come up with anything other than it came along at the "wrong time", or to the "wrong person", or under the "wrong circumstance" (e.g. rape).

In different social/cultural circumstances the calculation about the "practical value" vs. the "moral value" of the unborn child computes differently. I'm not arguing for moral relativism, I am arguing that a broad spectrum of ethical thinking be "crunched" in your thinking.

Again, this dilemma is surfaced, almost certainly, by our biological makeup as placental mammals. As Sam Harris likes to point out, is our intuitive ethical sense a victim of an illusion?

4. Faith healing church parents charged over toddler's death

Comment #153490 by corruptmemory on April 1, 2008 at 2:01 pm

With regard to abortion/infanticide, unfortunately I personally cannot come up with any particularly coherent way to address this issue. Looking at the problem of killing from an absolutist point of view is a non-starter. The consequentialist approach seems like the only ethical approach (what would happen to this girl if she did or did not have an abortion... are the consequences in either case support the abortion?). This leads to a "take each case as it comes" situation, which is the closest thing I can come to in terms of being comfortable.

I am a firm pro-choice supporter. The limit when society will accept an abortion as not murder is clearly a difficult problem. I certainly take most of the argument about the fact the early fetuses have no to nascent nervous systems and "feel" the most comfortable under those circumstances. But amoebas react to their environment *as if* feeling pain, so even a collection of 150 cells constituting a human fetus undergoes at least cellular death. Should I care? Is pain/suffering the most important variable in this regard?

The reality is we kill. We kill all the time. We kill to eat. We kill to "protect" (family, war), we kill to advance (science, war). Every person will come to their own conclusions regarding their comfort level regarding what they can conscienably justify. There will much overlap in our mutual justifications. Some justifications we will collectively see as unethical or wrong, many, will be tough to accept, but at least "understandable".

There is an undeniable ugliness to being human as much as there is beauty. My personal view is in order to be a full-spectrum human you need to "engage" (not necessarily act on) the "full-spectrum" of our humanity. So, both "negative" and "positive" emotions/states need to be engaged consciously.

If some of you are at the point where you *would* accept physician-assisted suicide (I accept this is a valid option for ending one's life) what about already born infants with devastating conditions? (I struggle with this).

Here, consider a recent headline on "The Onion"

"Miracle of Birth Occurs for the 83 Billionth Time"

Should we consider the "relative cheapness" of human life in our thinking? Can it be used as a justification? In either case why or why not? Clearly, no easy answers forthcoming.

5. Faith healing church parents charged over toddler's death

Comment #153410 by corruptmemory on April 1, 2008 at 1:00 pm

Granted this won't go anywhere, but can you actually call these people parents? Generally people we refer to as "parents" provide a broad spectrum of care, love, encouragement, help, support, counseling, occasionally discipline, and innumerable positive contributions to the development of another functioning human being.

Given this, in what way are these people "parents". They are progenitors, certainly, but this is not a requirement for being "parents" (ask anyone who has been adopted). Any people who would, not only entertain ignorance, but actually impose it to the literal death of another person cannot be considered parents in my book.

They may have provided some of the above laundry list in other times, but persons who consciously choose to actively harm when viable help is available need to be taken out of the pool of potential parents until they reform their views, and serve prison time for murder.

6. Vote on freedom of expression marks the end of Universal Human Rights

Comment #153233 by corruptmemory on April 1, 2008 at 8:55 am

In response to Dr Benway comment #153137

Namely, Islam should be classified as a cult, legally.

I've never heard of such laws. Reference?

Well, I've done some Googling and come up empty. This Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult

Claims that the US has no legal definition of cult and sites:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2005/06/30/DI2005063001394.html

Frankly I do not know, if this claim is true. I guess that I should resign myself to the fact the a country like the US would, of course, not have laws about cults.

It is clearly profoundly depressing to be helpless while the forces of destruction gleefully hack our institutions designed to promote the greater spread of human rights (both locally, as in the various governments of Europe now saddled with an ever-growing and belligerent population of Muslims, and globally, the UN) through diplomacy and discourse. Impotent rage is not a pleasant state of being.

With regard to the various comments about establishing an alternative with "grown-ups" in charge, well even the makeup of the current UN is somewhat arbitrary. The down-side is that fracturing of this kind could be argued any time disagreements arise.

7. Vote on freedom of expression marks the end of Universal Human Rights

Comment #153126 by corruptmemory on April 1, 2008 at 5:06 am

I do not know what the laws are in other countries, but I think that it might be desirable, here in the US, to take some action. Namely, Islam should be classified as a cult, legally. It is clear that Islamic nations and Islamic leaders are "gaming" the western political systems. One very effective way to game most western nations is through numbers. After all, it was one of the acutely frightening points of the Fitna short film.

Since freedom is not a valuable commodity in the Islamic world (in fact, based on the "courage" of the signatories to a plea to reject the steps the UN was taking, it is clearly a mortal liability in those parts of the world), Islamic leaders can be perfectly comfortable in the slow, methodical projection of Islam on the rest of the world, eventually eroding western institutions from within, because they can, and feel that they must.

Classifying Islam as a cult would provide the necessary legal tools to strictly regulate the actions of muslims, hopefully, the results would be one of two things: 1. some number leaving Islam (granted, this is likely to be a small number) 2. simply leaving the countries they have chosen to take residence in.

Now, I'm aware of the troubles this approach can take, but not reacting to this latest offense to freedom and human rights is appeasement. Surely classifying Islam as a cult will result in strife, it will increase tensions, it is likely to incite violence, but would all of this be less than the war which seems inevitable in coming? Islam has time, huge numbers, implicit "on-the-books" recognition and "respect", and patience, furthermore they have the drive and an apparent mandate to push Islam to the four-corners of the Earth. They seemingly have little scruples as to how they go about this. They are perfectly aware that "we" do have scruples that hinder our ability to do anything to stop them. We need to develop the scruples to stop them.

8. Beware the Believers

Comment #152345 by corruptmemory on March 30, 2008 at 6:47 pm

The video is not flattering of Richard Dawkins. Yeah, I'm a 40 something loser and pozer: I listen to a lot of Rap (a-hem, hip-hop), but I don't think that anyone can claim "expertise" in art so take that declaration with a healthy helping of salt.

After posting my initial links to MC Frontalot and MC Hawkings I decided to go back and re-watch the video several more times.

My take: it is pretty decisively anti "New Atheist".

- Dawkins is presented as flippantly dismissive. The continual "expulsion" of unworthy scientists by the glorious machine on Dawkins side reinforces this throughout the video. These people are presented as effectively innocent researchers who have the audacity to even think outside the science box.

- The opening sequence presents science as an all-knowing dogma, cult-like. The scientist is expelled by the machine even before the scientist has a chance to expand on his hypothesis.

- Even if you were to compare this to other over-the-top hip-hop science pieces (nerdcore hip-hop) from MC Hawkings or Frontalot, in no way is science presented as dismissive or oppressive as is clearly evident in this video. On the contrary, pieces like "Fuck the Creationists", "What we need more of is Science", and "Origin of Spices" all clearly present the schism between science and ID as either self-selected ignorance, unintentional ignorance, or merely the failure to accept rational argument.

Richard, you can choose to read this piece as you please, but I'm quite sure it is rather not flattering. I would not be surprised if this piece was produced in some way related to the "Expelled" movie. I may be paranoid, but there you go. I'm also thinking that the producers of this video are all having a rather good laugh monitoring the relevant discussion boards seeing how long it takes before people piece it together.

Given the subject matter I am fairly convinced that this is not art for art's sake.

9. Beware the Believers

Comment #152325 by corruptmemory on March 30, 2008 at 5:28 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNwJZe8HtOE
Lyrics:
http://www.mchawking.com/includes/lyrics/creationists_lyrics.php

Better yet, but there is no music or videos I could find is Mc Frontalot's "Origin of Species":

http://www.frontalot.com/index.php/?page=lyrics&lyricid=46

I'll take these guys over some ambivalent wusses who are tying to have it both ways.

10. Expelled from Expelled: PZ story goes global

Comment #150964 by corruptmemory on March 27, 2008 at 8:16 pm

Some people on this website are just negative people. They claim they're just being realistic. I share Deacanu's attitude.

Generally speaking, I'm also prone to Deacanu's sense of optimism, but, although I'm quite sure that his actual thinking is more sophisticated than some of the things he says:

In the end, no matter how long it takes, we simply HAVE to win, because we have a stronger motivatiing force.

The truth.

They're liars, they know they're liars, they already lose.

Maybe that's still naive, but life experience and history bear me out.

Truth wins out, bullshit implodes, progress isn't a myth, we're right, they're wrong.
I wouldn't be here if I thought otherwise.

First of all, before I say anything, "I'm there with ya brutha!" so if Deacanu thinks I'm looking for a fight I'm not, but I'm simply going to temper thing because I'm not sure that atheists control some of the language being used here.

For instance, yes, in some really critical way, atheists are more in command of something resembling "the truth" as compared to theists, and it does seem like the secular, unfettered, exploration of the universe and the realm of ideas is getting us asymptotically closer to something we can call "the truth" (it certainly humbles the atheistic mind as to the sheer vastness of "the truth"). But, as of right now, the vast majority of the planet's human population a) doesn't agree with what I just said, and b) feel equally entitled to say the same thing about their theist ideas. Defeating the virus of theism is going to take a lot of pain and suffering as well as persistent dialog and creativity.

The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around and what do you see? Businessmen, Teachers, Lawyers, Carpenters...the very minds of the people we're trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system, and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so innerred, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.

As far as them knowing that they are liars, some do, most do not. Most merely believe.

As for:

Truth wins out, bullshit implodes, progress isn't a myth, we're right, they're wrong.
I wouldn't be here if I thought otherwise.

Firstly, assuming "we" are the good guys, we know that the "good guys" don't always win. As for bullshit imploding, reason and rational thought guided by scientific principles is a relatively recent "popular" phenomenon. There can be no doubt that as a phenomenon it has had a profound impact on the human population, but face it: for the vast majority of human history bullshit has ruled handily. If bullshit inevitably implodes we wouldn't be here. Also, a big difference between historical, inefficient, and genocidal bullshit-driven tendencies and today is the existence of technologies capable of being much more effective at prosecuting the will of theists. The way out of this is probably not by way of wishfully thinking that the mere presence of an objectively meaningful "truth" will simply be picked up and adopted, in many cases it will require hard work and creative ways of effectively saying (imagine this coming through a police loudspeaker):

"Please step away from your holy book, and place your crazy, religiously-inspired, and dangerous ideas on the ground beside you."

We do need converts, many are hopelessly lost to us, but finding creative ways to get a theist to part with, most-likely, a lifetime's worth of indoctrination is not going to be easy. Being caviler about this issue is probably not constructive.

But as for:

progress isn't a myth ... I wouldn't be here if I thought otherwise.

This is most certainly an understatement. 100-200 years ago we could not have even had this conversation without the very real threat of bodily harm, imprisonment, or death. But there are large parts of the world, still dominated by Islam, and, for a large portion of that population, they are still living under conditions akin to the Inquisition. Cracking that nut, when Muslims potentially face death for turning away from Islam, will not be easily done.

But I do agree with Deacanu in that we must continue to make noise. The fact that we keep getting exposed to the same story over and over again like this Expelled snafu should not lead us to believe that the full value of this incident hasn't been realized for good use yet: we may be sick of hearing it, but there are still others who have not heard about it yet.

11. Expelled from Expelled: PZ story goes global

Comment #150734 by corruptmemory on March 27, 2008 at 10:35 am

Firstly, I can understand your opinion on this point. If I was brave enough to put up a picture of myself (I am assuming that your avatar picture is actually a picture of you) I think that you would see that we're probably similar in age, and probably have a similar historical perspective of the Internet. But I'm far uglier than you.

People who search for Expelled will find lots of links, and then they can click on the links that support their point of view.

This is true for about 99% of the population of theists out there. Clearly the reason why all this "New Atheist" (ugh, is this kind of crap really necessary?) stuff is "causing a stir" is because "we" are infiltrating "their" communications. Even that 1% that clicks on an atheist's site counts. (it would still count even if you changed the orders of magnitude significantly). Like it or not "both sides" (of the secular/theist issue) are inclined to be insular. But we are fully aware that some "cross-talk" occurs. From the point of view of the atheist/secular cause even this negligible cross-talk is valuable.

No, the Internet will not bring swift enlightenment and understanding, but really, if you think about it, the feeling of ineffectiveness of the Internet is because the actual social change did not meet the expectations we set for ourselves. But if you were to think back to the pre-Internet days I would say that the secular/atheistic debate that has been brewing would have needed much more time to take hold. In fact it may have died out before pockets of desperate and frightened secular people realized there was hope.

All I can say is try not to lose hope.

12. Expelled from Expelled: PZ story goes global

Comment #150721 by corruptmemory on March 27, 2008 at 10:03 am

RE: Steve and others (a.k.a. blogs don't mean much)

Steve, I do sympathize with your cynicism about the blogosphere, but at the very least blogs that write about stuff like this "Expelled" snafu and other secular/atheist issues do provide search engine fodder. I.E.: a potential place to "land" after doing a search on these subjects. Each blog may be a drop in the bucket, but we really do need those drops, each and every one. We need to keep the message about rational thought and persistent insightful questioning going. The alternative is to yield a monopoly on the blogosphere to the forces of divisiveness and destruction.

Even though it is very difficult to envision concrete results coming from a blog post here and there we don't have much choice other than to canvas. It may seem distasteful but atheists/secularists must also evangelize. Unlike those who offer a prison of delusion we are offering a prison of reality and all the beauty the springs forth. Now, I did use the word prison on both cases for a reason, let's face it we are prisoners in either case, but the prison of reality is so utterly profound and inspirational it is transcendent.

Here, think about it this way: we clearly have a shared history of music, art, literature that is wonderful, but the prison of reality has provided such mind-opening insights as to allow is to imagine time-travel, life based on other substrates, the multiplicity of universes, wormholes, universes in a bottle, and clearly so much more. None of ANY of that may ever come to actually pass, but the importance is that the prison of reality even allows us, (at least in a science-fiction way) to imagine that there is an intelligent creature in another COMPREHENSIBLE universe that created out universe in bottle for kicks. None of these fligths of fancy are even ALLOWED by those who engage the delusion, unless their affiliation with the delusion is so weak as to be all but meaningless except for that thread of attachment that fuels the greater idiocy and danger that the delusion fabricates.

13. Austin Dacey - The Secular Conscience

Comment #149864 by corruptmemory on March 26, 2008 at 9:58 am

Comment #149710 (13) from suffolkthinker is more along the dilemma I was referring to. There will, inevitably, be cases where neither a singular "secular moral" position can be articulated, nor could be "honed down" from the possible set of "moral" positions.

The problem I guess I'm struggling with is this: I don't see how putting forth "secular morals" is at all meaningful. Perhaps I'm a Luddite, but "morals" belong to individuals, and "ethics" are shared by a group. The basis by which secular people justify their moral convictions (conscience) should obviously be shared, and should contribute vigorously to the discussion, but the idea that there is something like an emergent "secular moral" or "secular value" of particular note given an arbitrary situation to consider seems, at best, a game of dice. If anything, I would hope that secular people would contribute to keeping the dialog and thinking about "morals" very very broad, and that thinking should evolve over time as enlightenment provides us new ways of thinking about issues. The fact that secular individuals can and do hold broad views is a direct result of the lack of the imposition of dogmatic thinking that prohibits it. Although some theists have been successful at stretching the limits of their doctrines to demonstrate plasticity, we (the greater "we" here, you know, atheists and similar minded people) know all too well about the limits that theists have imposed on themselves (and would gladly impose on others). The secular individual derives concern at the limits of theistic thinking because it, by definition, prohibits certain kinds of important analytical thinking that is *required* to fully engage in the "moral" analysis of a given circumstance.

Another way of looking at this is: "secular morals" or "secular values", in an of themselves are not really the "valuable product" that we seek. The injection of a thinking process about "morals" that is unfettered and critical is the "real" value that the secular person contributes. "Selling" "secular morals" as the contribution to "moral" discussion, seems like hucksterism: a cheap way to sneak in something more "palatable" to some arbitrary subset of secular-minded people. This seems more than beside the point, it seems down-right dangerous, because, in a way we are letting theists define the terms of the debate, the terms of importance, but they are "their" terms. It is not at all clear to me that the discussion Mr. Dacey is talking about is worth having. If it is worth having then it is purely a "marketing effort" on the part of secular people to have a presence in a debate created by and for theists in order to both engage in navel gazing and finding new ways to be divisive.

14. Austin Dacey - The Secular Conscience

Comment #149546 by corruptmemory on March 25, 2008 at 10:13 pm

So, I listened, and enjoyed, but...

I am at a loss as to what is meant by the "secular conscience" or "secular morals". More importantly, Mr. Dacey begins with mentioning the importance of individual rights relative to group rights, given this what are "secular morals"? That is to say: a secularist's primary unit of currency is the individual. This individual (a secular one for this discussion) will have any number of opinions and views on the world. Certainly, all of these views are open to discussion and criticism, but what defines the overlap of that individual's views with some set of (not defined in the interview, perhaps in the book) "secular morals"?

The examples given include things like abortion: there are secularists on both sides. I can certainly agree that all of the sides *should* be openly discussing the issue, but then there is mention during the interview that the distinguishing characteristic of "secular morals" has to do something with "testability" or "objectivity". If we have secularists on both sides of the abortion issue and both sides have established "testable" and "objective" basis for their views then how can we be talking about "secular morals" when for a giving issue no well-defined "secular morality" can be articulated?

Certainly, all the stuff about holding religious thinking up to the same standards as all other types of thinking is fine, Sam Harris and others have been saying that. But the whole "moral high ground" thing seems, well... not there. Various theists can converge onto one of several distinct moral positions on a given topic because they can point to things in their little black book (several positions result because different sub groups point to different parts of their little black books), but it would seem to me that "secularists" would, in general, be all over the map. If anything, the "secularist" contribution would be to spread the "moral spectrum", as it were.

Perhaps the book may say more, honestly, he seems to talk nice, but I'm feeling a bit unsatisfied. Thoughts?

15. The death-of-god debate

Comment #148748 by corruptmemory on March 23, 2008 at 7:32 pm

Nice article.

With regard to taking part in Easter, or any other kind of religious "holiday" activity, of course any atheist can do so, but is there a reason to have some concern over this? The answer is "probably not: we atheists live in a world of theists and there will be all sorts of 'harmless' engagement." If this is the answer, I would agree, mostly.

The reason for bringing up the "appropriateness" question is related to a recent experience: colleagues at work asked about what would happen to holidays should atheism spread and flourish? It seems to me that retaining things like "Christmas", "Easter", "Ramadan", "Yom Kipper", "Diwali", etc. for "tradition's sake" doesn't seem like it would be "in the cards". Between now (the age of un-reason) and that future vision (a new age of reason), part of engaging the theist world will be to take part in theist holiday activities, but what would happen to the notion of "holy days" if atheists succeed in awakening the minds to the people of the world?

Many secular holidays are of nationalistic origin, and nationalism shares many of the same reason-stripping effects of religion. I would tend to think that the typical atheist has at least *some* concern about nationalistic behavior (I may be alone in this, but I doubt that), so holidays inspired from nationalism, while useful in creating holidays, need to be considered temporary solutions.

Other secular holidays are inspired by some particularly interesting person such as Martin Luther King Jr. in the US. Could we see an expansion of this? In response to the challenge from my colleagues, I joked about Tesla day, and Darwin day, and Turing day, etc. Each with activities that would be related to the individual's contribution. I don't know about this idea either.

Thoughts welcome.

16. Out of the Blue

Comment #141330 by corruptmemory on March 10, 2008 at 9:23 am

Quine wrote:

The Turing Test was about machines playing the Imitation Game well enough to be mistaken for a thinking person. It was about the question of thinking, not quite as far along as consciousness.

Well, as you have state it here I don't see the distinction that you are going for. The Turing test is a challenge to a person to conclude if there is another person on the other end of the line. Clearly, "thinking" must be perceive, but certainly more than that would be necessary to conclude personhood, so as best as I can make out if you concluded that there is another person on the other end then clearly you would be attributing consciousness, attributing personhood without also attributing consciousness seems line a new experience to me.

Also, the Turing test, is often described as a question and answer dialog through terminals, clearly it is possible to make the interaction more rich. Part of the reason for "placing barriers" between he person and the "entity" on the other end of the line is to eliminate non-contributory biases to the test. If you are going to test for consciousness clearly we want to limit this challenge to the conscious mind and not enable short-cuts or cheats that we all have to "quickly" identify candidates for consciousness.

Also, it is a one sided test; not passing does not mean you don't think. I suspect that if you put Kim Peek in the Turing Test against a regular person, he would be identified as the "computer" in a very few questions, every time.

Agreed! My point exactly! This is exactly what I was referring to with regard to the so-called "built-in consciousness-dar". It is intrinsically not calibrated for a spectrum of consciousness significantly outside of a "local sample". Another trivial failure of the test would be between people who do not speak the same language. Clearly, there needs to be sufficient overlap on language and experience to enable a quality Turing test, trivial failures are easily constructed, then again, as I already said, consciousness attribution, in general, may not be human-solvable, or at least not trivially human-solvable. Clearly in cases where the Turing test cannot even be applied (apes, dolphins, dogs, parrots, maybe aliens, etc.) other approaches will be necessary, that I grant. But in the case of AIs we will be constructing them with, at least initially, with the goal of facilitating human machine interaction, ultimately greatly augmenting the collective intelligence withing the new symbiosis. However, the un-enhanced human mind will eventually (soon) be left far behind the machine intelligence. In that case we will all be Kim Peek.

Since we are right now still working out the nascent details of a theory of consciousness we have yet to even develop scales or categories of it that we can use to describe the properties of conscious minds both down as well as UP the evolutionary scale relative to ourselves. In a way we are hamstrung by our own limited imagination (OK, I speak for myself, others with superior imagination imagine away!).

With regard to senescent AI personhood, we are in agreement. One of the interesting things about such AIs is their literal utter dependence on us to support its existence. It will be interesting to see if its requests for a more self-sustained "body" (for some appropriate definition of "body" in this case) go unanswered.

Furthermore, and I suspect it also inevitable, massive AIs will slowly and subtly start to engineer the "biological" life forms on the planet to better serve its needs, after all it will also have a survival "need", and dependence on a species with our history and capacity for destruction is not going to give it great comfort.

17. Out of the Blue

Comment #141046 by corruptmemory on March 9, 2008 at 8:14 pm

RE: built-in "recognition" of consciousness...

Quine wrote:

What is "built-in" is the ability to develop this. Developmental psychologists are hot on this trail because they can do experiments with children that yield consistent results. They would love to stick kid's heads into FMRI machines about once a week for a period of a couple of years, so that they could watch that dragon get up off the page. Current instrumentation makes this not feasible for human subjects, but I am sure it will be done to chimps.

I would attribute the built-in tendency to ascribe consciousness to other human beings being the same mental/instinctive mechanism that does species recognition (for instance how dogs identify other dogs even if they are as varied as Grate Danes and Chiwawas). Sometimes when this mechanism fails we actually DON'T ascribe consciousness, take for instance the view of pre-20th century Americans and Europeans towards Central Africans or Australian Aborigines, sometimes the "built-in" mechanisms are not sufficiently calibrated (i.e. trained). This also probably explains traditional biases against other kinds of animal consciousness that many scientists today readily recognize. The built-in mechanism gets calibrated based on a "local" sample of fellow humans (of course this is my opinion, but I would expect that this hypothesis has some general merit).

Now, general consciousness recognition is not only non-trivial, but may, in fact be non-solveable. Non-solveable both because there is no general way to phrase the question properly, but also in the sense that there may be no "sound" and constructive answer available. So we will be stuck with the "make it up as we go along" kind of deals. Alas, we have to be sensitive to the possibility that we can repeat the mistakes of the past such as the general judgement of Central Africans and Aborigines. This is why Turing gave the answer to "what is a conscious mind" in the form of the Turing test: assuming that an AI can be constructed such that for some arbitrary period of time people interacting with it cannot determine if they are interacting with another human being then, for all intents and purposes, the other entity is a conscious mind. Now, not everyone agrees that the Turing test is a valid test of consciousness, personally, I can see none better. However, there are some interesting potential future games to play with this: assuming that we create AIs in the future that can, in fact, pass the Turing test (with flying colors, I might add) for at LEAST human lifetimes, then as the processing power of these AIs increases, and perhaps the very nature of their consciousness evolves "back" (so to speak, in fact I mean really far forward) to a point where the gulf between "mere" human consciousness and AI consciousness is such that the human readily recognizes a machine consciousness, but the AI does not even perceive a meaningful consciousness coming from the human, the Turing test gets turned on its head!

18. Out of the Blue

Comment #141035 by corruptmemory on March 9, 2008 at 6:07 pm

RE: comments about the brain and software.

I've seen several comments in this forum that seem to hedge on the idea about the "mind" being software. Of course, you can try to unseat the following claim, but it will be hard: the mind is software. The "software" we speak of is intrinsic in the make-up of the brain and emerges on a number of levels, one level being the conscious mind. Being that it is software it is emulateable, and effectively as portable as one would want to make it.

There really isn't any options available to us:

* Turing showed that all computable functions are computable on a Turing machine.

* Church gave us the lambda calculus and showed that it is equivalent to a Turing machine.

* A number of other Turing machine equivalents have been developed (including the game of life played on an infinite grid, for example).

* Church's thesis (not yet proved, but considered to be true) is that there exist no computational models more powerful than a Turing machine.

Now, it may be that the brain actually contains computational capabilities that exceed a Turing machine (rather unlikely, but who knows), and can therefore potentially address P vs NP, cryptography cracking of arbitrary strength cyphers (another P/NP problem). However, this, so far does not seem to be the case. Rodger Penrose in the "Emperor's New Mind" tried, and failed to argue that the mind/brain does indeed posses computational abilities greater than a Turing Machine.

So this leaves us with:

1. The Mind/Brain is a Turing machine, therefore software, therefore emulate-able. Therefore consciousness is a emergent property of such software, and clearly as software variations, alterations, and arbitrary "improvements" (for some appropriate definition) is possible.

2. The Mind/Brain has computational abilities that exist in a class that is a super-set of Turing machines. This leads us to two options:

a) The computational model of the brain (the super-Turing model) is ultimately comprehensible.

b) Would be perpetually indistinguishable from magic.

2b has some interesting ramifications for atheists, including: seems awfully impossible to believe that, in-fact the emergence of an otherwise indecipherable mind construct embedded in the "known universe" would occur by accident or through evolutionary means. Although I cannot discount the possibility of this case, it seems to me to be, for all intents and purposes, uninteresting.

This leave 1 and 2a. In either case the mind is an emergent property of some software running on some substrate, even if the software in question is super-Turing. Now, although Church's thesis has not been proved, the general consensus is that it will eventually be shown to be true, meaning that all our minds, or all possible minds are reduce-able to software. Now I did see some disparaging remarks about reductionism in the thread, that is not a healthy way to look at this, in my humble opinion, just because the mind may be reduce-able to be included in the set of Turing computable functions does not mean that this trivializes the mind any more than I can say that you are a bag of chemicals, and as an atheist, that is perfectly OK, your life is still just as wondrous.

But software is indeed the best way to think of the mind.

19. Out of the Blue

Comment #140969 by corruptmemory on March 9, 2008 at 9:25 am

RE: AfraidToDie

My problem with all this discussion is that somewhere between the lines I hear gigantic "leaps of faith" about how computer simulation could somehow gain consciousness. That is all interesting (and fun to ponder on), but that assumes that consciousness can somehow be quantified. As far as I know, there is no science to back any of this up. At the end of the day, AI could only simulate consciousness, and that is only perceived from humans. You could carry on a conversation with an AI machine, and it might very well sound as intelligent as most humans. To imply that shutting down a computer program would be anywhere near the moral implications of murder (other than affecting other humans or environment), is absurd. It is a "leap of faith" that has no scientific backing that I have heard of yet. It sounds very much like the hypothesis (not scientific theory) theists make regarding their god. It would be absurd to think that anti-abortionists might one day protest outside the Big Blue headquarters just because they decide to re-boot and make software changes, or replace their program altogether.

It is fair to be somewhat skeptical about the achievement of a fully functional, and eventually conscious AI, but it is also equally absurd to think that it won't eventually happen. If it is IMPOSSIBLE to create AI outside of the particular recipe to get humans then one would tend to think that we would only encounter human-like intelligence (assuming that the miracle was repeated) elsewhere in the universe.

On the other hand, there is a lot of supporting evidence that we are modelling various elements of the brain well. We have simulations of simpler organisms such as insects and worms that can pass them selves off as the real thing. Also, remember that the simulation these folks have of the tiny fraction of the brain they are modelling shows very good results compared to "the real thing". After all, it is also a scientific endeavor and needs to progress in stages where each stage is tested against the actual human brain.

I may be a cliche to say it, but it is never-the-less true: it is only a matter of time (assuming that there is no global catastrophe that would be sufficient to disrupt the progress towards this goal).

The "leaps of faith" you speak of are analogous to the leaps of faith that any person imagining how the real world around him/her works. All scientists in the past have had to make creative leaps of faith initially, some of those leaps of faith were rewarded by supporting evidence. You may say that we don't have evidence today about the mechanisms of the emergent mind, I would say that that is a significant overstatement. We certainly don't have sufficient understanding, hence the on-going research into the operation of the brain and building up of models like Blue Brain. In the end we must try because such knowledge is available to us and is really no different than any other scientific pursuit of knowledge. Now, the implications of such knowledge may be profound, awe-inspiring, disturbing, frightening, but this can be said of many scientific endeavors. As a species and a culture we have to get past the self-imposed FUD of scientific exploration and proceed. Can there be bad things that result from this exploration? Absolutely, very bad things indeed, but that alone should not stop us.

20. Out of the Blue

Comment #140944 by corruptmemory on March 9, 2008 at 6:55 am

RE: Bonzai

First of all this is silly, it is like saying the music is your CD. Doesn't make sense.

This is not a good analogy. A CD is a mere representation of music, it is not a primary source. The Brain, generally, speaking, is considered the primary source of consciousness. So while a CD can be used to play the music encoded on it, it will not spontaneously produce new music on its own.

Also, there seems to be a lot of angst in these posts regarding the possibility that a synthetic sentient being may be a theist. This seems to me to be a rather scathing indictment of one's atheism: "if a AI emerges theistic 'bad things will happen' to atheism". Firstly, it certainly is possible that AIs, certainly AIs derived from rather accurate models of the human brain may, in fact, be just as susceptible to theism as human beings are. Even if/when these AIs gain substantially on their relative thinking ability relative to individual human beings, their superior brain power alone does not counter the logical reasoning behind an atheistic view point. So, the same challenges of logic, reason, evidence and scientific method that apply to human theists will have to be answered by AIs. This situation would be no different than if vastly more intelligent aliens made contact with us tomorrow and brought along their own version of theism. Now, given that, should the AIs or super intelligent aliens provide adequate responses to the challenges of the atheist, the atheist needs to respond rationally and consider the responses. Not believing in something like a God when there is "good" evidence ("good" as in the same kind of "good" that other scientific theories/experiments would expect/demand), then the atheistic point of view needs to be considered against this, and likely more research would need to be done. But one cannot discount the possibility that atheists can be shown to be wrong. It is one of the tenants of atheism that our claim of the non-existence of God is based on logic, reason, evidence, and scientific method, therefore atheism is essentially a "Scientific theory" and can be refuted.

Transhumanism is nothing but a kind of eugenics on crack championed by a few overeducated, overprivileged Westerners and geeks with an overdeveloped brain but too little experience with real people to know their hope and fear. It is a dream to remake the world in their own image,--the disembodied, umber "rational" mind for which the quest of more computational power and greater control of everything is the only goal. Ayn Rand would have loved it.

Well, "eugenics"? There is no attempt being made to "breed" or "tinker" with the genes of the human or any other race. But I think you have gone too far: replace 'Transhumanism' with anything suitably high-techary and medically related and you wind up with more-or-less the same sentiment, as an example: "gene therapy", or "human genome project" (what do you think we're going to do with all that knowledge of the human genome? -- use it!)

As far as the rational mind and all that other FUD in your statement, please consider for a moment that, in effect, you (and we) represent "human consciousness 1.0" (there may actually have been other human consciousnesses before us, but they were not chosen by natural selection to be here today), certainly this is not then end of the line. Like it or not, part of the human destiny will be to directly participate in its future evolution, and no, it is not just "Westerners", the Chinese and Japanese are actively pursuing this line of study as well. Here's a measure of their interest: please look at the movies and shows under the "Ghost in the Shell" name, they're very good. More importantly, the movies spawned a successful TV series in Japan (that eventually went world wide). The Japanese are "main-streaming" through their cultural outlets, possible views of the future that have radical divergence from today's world.

RE: Teratornis

Your comments on scientific contribution and oil are right on!

As far as:

Well, we might be. Getting to the next stops depends, at least for the next several decades, on civilization remaining stable enough to support the scientific enterprise. I expect science to eventually become self-sustaining, but it's nowhere close yet.

Although I agree in general, I think the statement goes too far in one aspect: there will remain, even through the disruption that peak oil and environment change are going to bring to the world, those interested parties with the means and access to the resources to push something like the brain simulation through. It is a relatively "low cost" endeavor as opposed to the Large Hadron Collider, or the attempted restart of the American space program. In other words I thing that something would have to approximate a global catastrophe to significantly derail the efforts under way to achieving human-level AI.

RE: AKirkland

That is right the Blue Brain project is specifically designed to test the ability to simulate the human brain, but as you can tell from the article, the person in charge of the project certainly seems to have expectations that go well beyond that.

--
Still catching up with the thread, more comments to follow

21. Out of the Blue

Comment #140841 by corruptmemory on March 8, 2008 at 6:41 pm

Perhaps. But like identical twins, with every passing second the copy will become more unlike the original. There are just too many forks, each with too many paths.

That is correct. The "forking" would be on purpose, a "conscious decision" if you will. Eventually, these minds might also figure out a way to merge results. Remember, we are talking about a "mind" in a "body" that does not retain any of the traits your body has. It will be able to communicate to other electronic devices at "native speed", it certainly will not "age" in anything resembling aging in animals. Also, any failing part can simply be replaced, or eventually upgrade.

"forking" is a term used, predominantly, by Unix/Linux programmers (my profession, ugh.) and it is a very useful facility. I can certainly say that I would love to be able to fork copies of my self to research and do other interesting things then to merge those differences back back (in which case both "myselves" would posses our mutual experiences, cool!) To "fork" means to make an exact copy of a process at a moment in time and let them go on their merry way, so the "divergence" is on purpose.

We have no idea what "twice the brain power" means.

I'll provide a simple definition:

1. Create a sentient AI on hardware X0 at time T0. Make a "Backup" and test the AI to establish a "benchmark baseline"

2. At time T1 > T0 on hardware X1 re-install the AI and redo the benchmark. If the AI runs twice as fast on the new hardware we have doubled the brain power.

Accomplishing 2 is trivially inevitable, and will happen within a "few years" of getting the first system "on-line".

There is also no reason why the simulated brain would have any better knowledge of how it works than we do.

We will, at that time have a very good understanding as to how it works. Just because a system is non-deterministic does not mean that we cannot have substantial understanding as to how it works. Even if a number of things remain a mystery, they will eventually be well understood. Another thing to keep in mind is that such a brain will, both eventually (in relatively short order) and inevitably posses abilities superior to the human brain, take for instance memory. It is already known that the human brain relies on its rather impressive "world simulation" capability so memory uses fairly efficient "compression" techniques the store "key" pieces of data where the details can be filled in by the "world simulator". This makes it possible for us to have memories that span our lifetimes, but earlier memories fade. A synthetic mind can be supplied with, essentially, an arbitrary amount of high-fidelity memory.

Here's a for-instance: An 80 year lifespan covers a mere 2,522,880,000 seconds, a decent-quality DVD runs at 5 megabits/second or about 500 kilobytes of data per second. So for about 10^15 bytes of storage this mind can enjoy DVD-quality ( ;-) ) movie of it's life (for the first 80 years) all in the comfort of it's own imagination. Since, as long as it can get juice and replacement parts there is not effective upper limit on the lifetime of a sentient AI.

If we go the simulation route then there won't be any conventional "software", just trained up neural nets.

That's the thing though isn't it? Who says that neural nets are the be-all and end all of everything?

Here are a few examples:

Conscious computation of arithmetic: we suck at it. Not so four our friend "brain in the box". Unlike a human baby, this "mind" will develop with all sorts of computational and mathematical goodies to play with: specialized symbolic algebra calculus systems, linear processors, etc.

"Juggling tasks": There are various estimates that the human mind can keep track of about 7 things as once, well, HAL over here will have special purpose "conscious state" processors enabling "it" to juggle an arbitrary number of tasks at once.

Short-term/long-term memory: Apparently sleep is a significant player in the brains ability to process short-term into long term memory. Well, even with neural nets we can "move that along", so to speak to do thinks like "in-band" long-term memory processing, perhaps even eliminating the distinction.

Now, of course everything will start out more human-like, but it won't stay there for long, other than figuring out how to tinker/hack actual human minds, what interest would that be? Sure there is mountains of stuff to learn form how evolution made this wonderful organ, but there are a number of important things we humans have learned along the way to figuring out how the 1.25 kilos of matter in our skulls works. Remember, these minds are going to places we will never be able to go: deep space (shouldn't they "instinctively" know celestial mechanics?), the surface of Venus, the bottom of the ocean, the insides of gigantic telescopes. What we have to "gain" by slow-bandwidth means will be instantly available to these minds. Not to mention their own evolutionary pressures, but they are likely to be more Lamarckian than Darwinian (perhaps a mixture of both), as these minds will be able to grow and adapt in-situ, and not need to be concerned about generational trait propagation.

22. Out of the Blue

Comment #140826 by corruptmemory on March 8, 2008 at 5:40 pm

And all that complexity in order to consciously say, 'yes' or 'no'. I excluded 'maybe' because it is an effective 'no' at the time.

Well, that's not completely true. Most of that process is not actually available to the conscious mind. A lot of that processing is in response to sensory input, in particular, vision and hearing take up the most processing.

But there still must be some wires which are pre-thickened, and others which are pre-shrunk, to get those reflexes, the desire to make eye contact, to learn and recognise the smell of mother, and the hunger of the mind to learn language? Or could most of it be a result of the brain being stimulated during early development while in the womb?

I am starting to think that we may not get that far by just building a brain model. To get a mind that we would recognise, we may have to give it human experiences from the earliest stages.

Certainly, whatever mind we choose to cultivate via extensive simulation of something "human brain-like" will need the equivalent of "instincts", but in the end it will NOT be a human mind any more than your mind is simply a "ape mind" with more stuff. There is both a quantitative and qualitative difference in well, your "mind's eye". I say this even given the fact that I tend to be quite liberal in my view about the presence of "mind" in the animal kingdom (I think that the average non-human animal is far smarter than has been historically acknowledged my most "folks"). Sentient AI will get a jump-start based on, say, an "engineered" model of the human mind, but eventually, and inevitably, it will transcend that. For one, it will posses, by the nature of the "substrate" it is embedded in, the ability to "fork" copies of itself (i.e. make copies that start off of a given mental state then begin to diverge), one kind of a fork would be a backup. Another important facet of this sentient AI is the ability to really, and truly, modify its own programming, and to design future versions of itself. Unlike the human brain, the version of the sentient AI 1.5-2 years later will have twice the "brain power", and so on from there. Another element of this sentient AI is its ability to be hooked up to various special-processing units to augment its senorium and modeling ability well beyond the human. It will be able to "see" in the light spectrum well beyond the human visual system (should it be attached to such sensors), or hear "noise" from gravitational waves, to feel the particles emitted from experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, or literally "ride" the Internet, for instance.

Although it may start out being "human-esque" it will quickly become its own "thing" (I don't know if species would be appropriate, in face I'm not sure that our natural world ontologies would be meaningful at all)

23. Out of the Blue

Comment #140797 by corruptmemory on March 8, 2008 at 4:03 pm

100 billion neurons indeed. As you can see I did the calculations based on volume and the claim that Blue Brain can simulate one cubic millimeter.

OK, to recompute things:

1 Brain = 23 doublings

Assuming 256 nodes we can take 6 doublings off for a total of 17 doublings.

So, after 17 doublings we have 1 brain
1.5 years/doubling: 2033.5
2 years/doubling: 2042

After that the time to simulate all the minds of the planet occurs somewhere between 2108 and 2142.

The year of the $1K brain: between 2057 and 2074

This all depends on the doubling rate you choose.

Personally, I consider these Conservative estimates. It is likely that after the creation of the first artificial brain things will speed up considerably. Of course this also assumes that things "proceed as they are". It is likely that in this time frame we will see direct augmentation of the human brain via electronic prosthesis therefore accelerating Moore's law. The interesting aspect of this is what "defines" a human brain will become a slippery-slope as we take on artificial implants, not to mention external processing capability. It may be, by the time we are able to simulate the "old-style" human brain it may be rather uninteresting by some measure.

Of course implants an prosthesis open up all sorts of wormy cans ethically and morally:

- What defines "you"? You or "old you" plus "this part of your brain sponsored by Pepsi"?

- Talk about mind control, sheesh!

But it doesn't take too much imagination to consider the upsides.

In any case, aside from a catastrophic world event this is all coming down the pipe. And either you, or some divergent/merged copy you may be around to see/feel it happen.

24. Out of the Blue

Comment #140763 by corruptmemory on March 8, 2008 at 2:36 pm

Regarding Moore's law, there are several models regarding the rate of doubling. Currently performance doubling is about 1.5 years. In any case assuming a 1500cc human brain it should be possible to simulate it all (extrapolating from their current work which only does 1 cublic millimeter) in about 10 doublings (using only the 4 refrigerator-sized boxes) with a doubling rate of 1.5 years this means we can simulate the whole brain in about 15 years. At a 2-year doubling 20 years. Furthermore, it is possible to actually get the work done faster. Instead of 4 boxes assume you have 256 boxes or 64 times the current "unit" 2^6 this means that we would only need 4 doublings meaning we are between 6 and 8 years.

Now, let's say that a system capable of "waking up" costs something like $50,000,000 in about the year 2016. Depending on the doubling rate you could pick up a spare brain for less than $1000 after about 16 more doublings so somewhere between 2040 and 2048. By then the most powerful of such devices will 65536 times more powerful (given all the same machine size constraints). Somewhere between 2067 and 2084 the "Big machines" (with the same "box" constraints of 2016) will be simulating 10 billion brains (34 doublings). The cost per brain will be somewhere around $0.003.

Now, in this case "shutting the thing off" will amount to shutting off an entire planets worth of "brain power".

Also, there are rather strong indications that technological progress needed to achieve all of this will occur even faster than these estimates.