Under what pretense? Funding terrorism? Tor, Ter, not too much a stretch I guess. Seriously, they can't do a thing to stop Tor funding without resorting to breaking or seriously misapplying their own laws. I don't think they'll go that far.

I really hate to dox someone, but I believe I've found out who Bennett is: http://youtu.be/G0tljvD49RU

All I can say is, if you're going to show up at his front door or make rape threats, you do so at your own peril.

Finally the world has a way to give their respective government a mighty middle finger after all the bullshit that's been going on lately. I hope they get millions from every corner of Earth.

Pride has held us back since we were first capable of feeling it. The inability to admit to being wrong because the evidence offends one's vanity has always plagued science and every other part of our culture and personal relationships.

Considering how little we understand life mechanically, much less life as mind bogglingly complex as a human, it's no surprise that we currently have no answer outside the realm of philosophy and general description. If "materialism" is what can be directly or indirectly observed by people, unfortunately there's no escaping that without divine intervention.

I think a lot of people, particularly atheist scientists, would be so surprised they'd immediately fall to their knees and ask God for forgiveness. Ironically I'd be overjoyed to discover we all had souls. Unfortunately the smell prevents me from believing it.

Life is extremely efficient, from the micro to the macro scale. To attempt to recreate even a simple organism using current technology (including a purely logical recreation in silicon) would be like building a modern supercomputer out rocks and sticks. When you speak of "free will" being recreated, you've pretty much chosen the highest possible level of what we'd consider a property of advanced life. What excited me about the article is that it suggests instead of tackling the mountain it may be more fruitful to attack a single grain of sand first. Perhaps once we understand a grain of sand, we can start working our way up to the higher and more complex relationships and functionality.

For example, rather than trying to create AI using programming, try reverse-engineering a single-celled organism's molecular composition and chemical processes. If that can be understood completely it provides a starting point for how to reproduce and modify it. Being able to "run" a bacterium in a simulated environment, and later being able to create one physically, is the first step toward truly understand how life works as a machine. Until we have that kind of understanding, the idea of creating real intelligence or artificial life will be confined to cheap imitations which work nothing like the real thing. If we don't understand how a human works as a massive ongoing chemical reaction, we have zero chance of creating one out of gears and silicon.

Emulating the connectivity and functionality of neurons is pretty awesome, but it would seem the next logical step would be to map and interpret how memories are stored and processed, as well as organ feedback (skin, smell, glands). What's really interesting about this is that it shows, at least to some degree, that a simple brain can be reproduced using mathematical relationships (programming) and "run" with a I/O feedback loop. As far as the philosophical stuff, I think eventually we'll be forced to accept that life is a type of machine and that the "ghost" is an illusion emerging from its complexity. Other than better neuroscience, the main thing holding us back is pride.

That's what I was thinking too, until I realized someone would have to go up there and hit the power button to bring it out of hibernate. Dammit.

Is that like the geek's version of "hold my beer"? Holy shit.

Unit Nazis per hour. :)

While we seem to be advancing technologically at an exponential rate, it seems culturally we're advancing at a snail's pace. I wonder how long it'll be before this divide is so vast it swallows us whole. It's like little kids with a gun; they know what it is and what it does, yet invariably someone ends up getting shot. What I can't figure out is if our misuse of technology is out of ignorance or malice.

Nah, I think that's just what melee combat looks like. Games are pretty violent these days.

I must be losing it, as earlier today I interpreted at first glance "Study Shows How Humans Can Echolocate" as "Study Shows How Humans Can Eat Chocolate" and now "Crowd-Sourced Experiment To Map All Human Skills" as "Crowd-Sourced Experiment To Map All Human Skulls". Haven't even cracked my first beer yet...maybe that's the problem.

It's not success itself, but what was done to achieve it.

I heard some other Italian guy mention something about seeing canals up there, so who knows! I'll anxiously be awaiting the Mars One crew's report on the matter.

Being deliberate and careful is most always the right way to pursue any complex or risky endeavor, however there are times when saying, "Fuck it. Let's do this," actually works. Christopher Columbus comes to mind. Of course the trip to and existence on Mars is a hell of a lot tougher than what Columbus pulled off. I can't see any way for a permanent outpost on Mars to be accomplished without sending an absolute shitload of automation there first. You'd need a fully-functional living environment with at least two levels of redundancy for critical systems, all remotely tested once in place, before the first human even begins the journey. Otherwise you are Columbus, but this time chances are your faith will end up killing you.