A cart with an LCD display which uses NFC or RFID to sense which items are placed in it and automatically displays a running total. Checking out is as simple as swiping a credit card. No need for cashiers.
Smart shopping cart
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Category Archives: Ideas
Diaphragm FES for ALS
Though restoring control of every muscle in the body to patients with ALS is far too invasive for current technology to suffice, electrodes on the motor strip and pons, connected to receivers in the lungs and diaphragm seem like they would suffice to prevent further deaths from the disease. And perhaps even tracheotomies.
Is there some reason I’m missing that this wouldn’t work? Because if I can’t find one, I may very well partner with a neurologist and pursue it. I certainly have the neuroinformatics and signal processing backgrounds; I know that this scope and granularity of FES is currently well within the range of what is technologically possible.
Piezoelectric Keyboard
You can actually make a keyboard which returns power to the computer when a key is hit, making it a generator rather than consumer of electricity. Wired only.
Locus of Value
There is an analogue of the locus of control applicable to morality: there are some who look externally for their values, seeking them in shared communal experiences, culture, economics, politics, or religion. There are others who seek to develop their values internally, through integration of their senses, individual experiences, thoughts, and feelings. The different characteristics of these sources of morality lead to different behaviors, life priorities, social associations (and identities), and leisure activities. Externally derived morality concerns itself with collecting and integrating social perspectives, while internally derived morality emphasizes introspection and expression of the self.
Warning: Self-actualization may lead to pwnage.
There is a trait which must be coupled to self-actualization: self-*realization*. It is not enough to see what one’s full potential is – one must also find an effective means of expression and self-transformation to see that potential accomplished. This is very hard, and is probably necessary for an actualized state to remain stable.
…Because otherwise the world will pwn you 🙂
Social movements as Fisherian Runaway
Social networking, for instance, is a good example of an analogue to Fisherian runaway: the desire for the trait and the trait itself coevolve, until everyone has social because everyone wants social, rather than because it adds any functionality, value, or relevance. I suspect most social movements, and in fact traditions, are like this.
A thought on evolution and genetic algorithms
The key to creating an “intelligent” genetic algorithm is giving it “competition” from other genetic algorithms which also “evolve”. The most “intelligent” evolutionary behavior is seen when one organism exerts a selective pressure on another, not when the fitness function is static.
The Return
Each life is a small infinity,
isometrically embedded in local linearity,
subsumed in transfinite cardinality,
by the manifold of time.
The Peak Experience and the Shadow Peak
While self-actualization sits at the top of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as the ideal to be achieved, even within the model it is not the pinnacle of human development: self-actualized individuals are prone to what Maslow refers to as “peak experiences”, which in a very simplified way can be described as feelings of overwhelming possibility and interconnectedness in which new ideas and values form.
A deeply disturbing realization came my way today: the process by which both Hitler and the Unabomber came to their deranged beliefs is strikingly similar to the generally positive peak experience. These “shadow peaks” provoke the same reevaluations of worldview, yet the result is something twisted and inhumane. I believe that the risk of this is accentuated with a highly negative environment, despite the fact that a negative environment can also provoke more stable individuals at a high level of development to positive peaks.
!Intelligence
Humanity’s primary selective advantage is not intelligence, but our social structure and intellectual *variance*. Every individual does not replicate every other individual’s discoveries; rather, one unusually bright person discovers something novel and shares it, enabling everyone else to benefit as well. This is part of our evolutionary heritage.
This explains a huge amount of human behavior which appears irrational under the assumption that intelligence is humanity’s primary selective mechanism. This is both why people tend to have an altruistic streak and why stupidity still exists. It is why tradition still exists, and thus why religion was naturally selected for and culture evolves. It is why war is made on a *group* rather than individuals – it is why genocide is practiced. It is why capitalism works (it provides an individual incentive to further foster this behavior). It is why the masses behave not like sheep, but like dogs, and why a very large number of people can be persuaded by individual demagogues and movements.