The Bewilderness

Moore's law marches for a while yet

I decided to eavesdrop on Moore's Law and check that the doubling had not eased, halted or reversed; the potential scenario for any law. Well, some people are drooling over the latest chips, and x-core processors. Extreme ultraviolet lithography is viewed as the best short-term bet for continuing the trend. And if this continues:

Then we could be carrying round teraflops by the end of the decade on our mobiles. The world would be at our fingertips .

Slow growth or no growth

Volatile sentiment continues to prey upon the pundits. Despite the drip-drip feed of news for ravenous perma-bears, we have occasional flashes of sunlight illumination potential uplands that are never reached. This is one of those days.

The market swings from the current focus on 'double dip' (best viewed as the exhaustion of the stimulus card and reassertion of the deleveraging process). At one end is negative growth and deflation, at the other is very very slow growth and deflation. There is too much emphasis on growth and not enough on the pain needed to sweat out the debt.

We are still in the sauna and governments are pouring more water on the coals.

"Sensitive Jobs": Iranian Mekquake plods forward...

Avoiding all of the hype over the new Singularity game on Google news, the concept of the Singularity continues to find new permutations. Iran likes to wrap itself in the flag. Reminiscent of other countries that felt behind the curve, Iran celebrated the 'development' of a sub-Asimo robot.

How many nuclear centrifuges does Iran have? That's academic. Always showing off its tech might, the Islamic republic now has a bipedal robot that can walk around like a person, albeit at sub-human speeds. It's the latest volley in the humanoid arms race pushing us all toward the Singularity. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad showed off the terrifying humanoid at an event over the weekend marking Iranian industrial prowess. A state-run newspaper report said the automaton is designed for work in "sensitive jobs" but did not elaborate.

The robot has no capabilities in sound or vision. Yet, it is presented as a working, useful model which can provide help in "sensitive" jobs, whatever they are. Mobile statues perhaps....

The desire to emulate and surpass the West pervades this faux morality tale. Catching up with native resources is not sufficient for the Iranian authorities. Ahmadinejad requires a symbol of success: one that is intrinsically useful, a hallmark of oppressive regimes that prize utility above research.

Grow your own, no need to import from abroad

A new report from the Centre for Social Cohesion confirms that most Islamist terrorism in Britain is based on radicalised individuals from the United Kingdom. The report does not allow a dominant interpretation to emerge: over twenty years, the Islamist terrorists derive from all parts of the Muslim world, sourcing from East and North Africa or South Asia. The terrorists can be either unemployed and on benefits or university graduates. The complexity of recruitment and motivation are laid bare, denying that moronic connection of poverty and violence that some on the Left use to patronise nd justify evil.

The history of such terrorist activities also reveals that the state attack on civil liberties has had zero effect in detecting or preventing this problem..

The Punjabi quiet does not last...

The Punjabi Taliban have struck again in Lahore, using two suicide bombers to target worshippers at a renowned Sufi shrine. This represents a further incursion of extremism in the formerly quiescent province.

Even with the evident problems of a military mutilating its own country and an elite that has proven unable to muster a strategic interest, Pakistanis perfer the conspiracy to the truth:

Investigators said they had recovered the heads of both suicide bombers, but there was no claim of responsibility. The Lahore commissioner, Khusro Pervaiz, blamed the attack on a "conspiracy in which locals are being used" – a euphemism often used to point the finger at neighbouring India. Some Lahore residents blamed the attacks on the US, saying its drone attacks in the frontier were provoking militants, while others suggested the Ahmadi community – which has no history of organised violence – was taking revenge.The most likely culprits, however, come from within Punjab. A network of hardline madrasas scattered across the province, mostly in the southern belt, is home to thousands of religious extremists.

There is plenty of work on how the rush to modernity has created a culture of extremism in Pakistan, prone to believe that an enemy is undermining the state and placing the purity of Islam above other values. This is a spiral, ominously quiet for a while, that is coming to the fore and strengthened by the war-weariness of the West's defeat.

Cult of singularity

I was not the only one to find Horgan's simplicity and unwillingness to critically engage with the concept of the Singularity rather depressing. Aaron Saenz is also quick to take Horgan to task but does warn that Kurzweil's role as principal spokesman for the Singularity runs the risk of a misperception as a 'cult of personality'. That certainly makes it much easier to stifle debate under the general label of cult. Who would want to be grouped with the Raelians?

The other, more fatal message for Kurzweil, is one shared by a wider range of critics like Michael Anissimov: that he is overconfident and runs the risk of making predictions. It woudl be an absurd outcome for the Singularity if it was vulgarised to a series of predictions, equivalent to some 21st century Seventh Day Adventist sect.