284 research outputs found
A very brief review of the life and work of neuroscientist, physician, psychoanalyst, inventor, animal rights activist and pioneer in dolphins, isolation tanks and psychedelics John C Lilly 1915-2001.
Lilly was one of the greatest scientists and pioneers on the limits of human possibility but after his death a collective amnesia has descended and he is now almost forgotten. His Wiki is good but inevitably incomplete so here are a few missing details and viewpoints. Lilly was a generation (or more) ahead of his time. He is almost single-handedly responsible for the great interest in dolphins (which led to the Marine Mammal Protection Act in the USA and helped to found the animal rights movement). In 1958 he noted that the brains of elephants and cetaceans were larger than ours, that we should not abuse them and that it was one our most important projects to communicate with them. He invented sensory isolation tanks (at NIMH in 1954) and used them extensively with and without powerful psychoactive drugs at a time when it was thought that either the brain would shut down or one would go insane if external stimuli were eliminated. He created methods for implanting electrodes in mammal brains and was planning to do it to himself. He was one of the first to make serious use of computers in bioscience research and created the hardware and software to make the first attempts to communicate with dolphins. He self experimented with dangerous physiological investigations in high altitude medicine for the military during WW2, took LSD with dolphins and movie stars, submitted himself to the rigors of various forms of yoga and of Arica training, and taught classes at Esalen. He was a computer pioneer who forsaw the rapid advances in A.I. and it's inevitable clash with humans. He was the first one to investigate the bizarre psychedelic ketamine (" vitamin K "), and his results (published in the two last chapters of his book `The Scientist`) are still the best data on the dose/effect relation of any psychedelic on one person. It cured his lifelong daily migraine headaches (see http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/UFOs/Gorightly.htm). And all this happened before most of us were born! He had courage, honesty and integrity that is rare anywhere and almost nonexistent in science. His goal was to find the ultimate truth about everything and he went about as far as anyone ever has. He had little patience with the stupid and hypocritical games one has to play to fit into monkey society. Of course the reaction of the establishment was predictable. He left the NIMH and was never given any government or academic support for the last 35 years of his life. His paper and comments at a conference on sensory deprivation were removed from the published version. He was not invited to government sponsored symposia on dolphins (he had refused to help develop them as weapons), though he clearly knew more about them than anyone in the world. He liked to live and work on the edge and few could keep up with him, as his books make clear. If you have read some of his other books it will be much easier going. He was a pioneer in consciousness research and pushed the boundaries of our understanding of who we are and what we might become. Among other things he catalogs the various states reached by drugs, meditation, and isolation, tries to determine their significance, and suggests how to use them. I very briefly review and comment on his life and work.
Those interested in all my writings in their most recent versions may download from this site my e-book ‘Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization Michael Starks (2016)- Articles and Reviews 2006-2016’ by Michael Starks First Ed. 662p (2016).
All of my papers and books have now been published in revised versions both in ebooks and in printed books.
Talking Monkeys: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071HVC7YP.
The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle--Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071P1RP1B.
Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st century: Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0711R5LG
Using Semialgebraic Parametric Analysis by Metaprogramming in Portfolio Optimization
One classic problem in quantitative finance is portfolio optimization, which consists of assigning weights to assets in a portfolio to maximize one’s expected return while keeping the level of risk at a desired level. This problem can be modeled as a linear program (LP), using a risk aversion parameter mu. For a given single value of mu, the LP can be solved using any standard LP solver. In this work, however, the problem is considered parametrically: the optimal solution is sought for every possible value of mu. This describes how weights to the portfolio assets would be assigned from the timid investor to the bold. This is accomplished by applying the novel technique of semi-algebraic parametric analysis by metaprogramming (SPAM). Demonstrated in this talk is the method of applying SPAM to a textbook example of portfolio optimization. Generated in this way are numerical and symbolic representations of the solution set as well as a graphical representation of these results
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John Lilly, The Mind of the Dolphin, and Communication Out of Bounds
In this essay I develop a systems-theoretical observation of John Lilly’s cybernetics of communication in his 1967 work The Mind of the Dolphin. The eight-year-old project that The Mind of the Dolphin recounts for public consumption details his aspiration to achieve an unprecedented breakthrough beyond companionate communion to fully abstract linguistic communication across species boundaries. Between 1959 and 1968 Lilly wagered and lost his mainstream scientific career largely over this audacious, ultimately inconclusive bid to establish and document for scientific validation “communication with a nonhuman mind.” In that effort, however, he mobilized the best available tools, a cutting-edge array of cybernetic concepts. He leaned heavily on the information theory bound up with first-order cybernetics and operated with heuristic computational metaphors alongside the actual computers of his era. As I will elicit through some close readings of his texts, in that process Lilly also homed in on crucial epistemological renovations with a constructivist redescription of cognition that may have influenced and motivated his colleague Heinz von Foerster’s more renowned formulations, arriving in the early 1970s, of a second-order cybernetics
Tighter, Neater, Safer C and C++
Report published in the Proceedings of the National Conference on "Education and Research in the Information Society", Plovdiv, May, 2016Constructs are presented for alternative — tighter, neater and arguably less
vulnerable — expression of frequently occurring patterns in C and C++ programming. We find
them useful in several ways, both in teaching and in participating in programming competitions.
Working programmers can also benefit from such or similar constructs.Association for the Development of the Information Society, Institute of Mathematics and Informatics Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Plovdiv University "Paisii Hilendarski
Static Computation and Reflection
Thesis (PhD) - Indiana University, Computer Sciences, 2008Most programming languages do not allow programs to inspect their
static type information or perform computations on it. C++, however,
lets programmers write template metaprograms, which enable programs to
encode static information, perform compile-time computations,
and make static decisions about run-time behavior. Many C++ libraries
and applications use template metaprogramming to build specialized
abstraction mechanisms, implement domain-specific safety checks, and
improve run-time performance.
Template metaprogramming is an emergent capability of the C++ type
system, and the C++ language specification is informal and imprecise.
As a result, template metaprogramming often involves heroic
programming feats and often leads to code that is difficult to read and
maintain. Furthermore, many template-based code generation and
optimization techniques rely on particular compiler implementations,
rather than language semantics, for performance gains.
Motivated by the capabilities and techniques of C++ template
metaprogramming, this thesis documents some common programming patterns,
including static computation, type analysis, generative programming, and the
encoding of domain-specific static checks. It also documents notable
shortcomings to current practice, including limited support for reflection,
semantic ambiguity, and other issues that arise from the pioneering nature of
template metaprogramming. Finally, this thesis presents the design of a
foundational programming language, motivated by the analysis of template
metaprogramming, that allows programs to statically inspect type information,
perform computations, and generate code. The language is specified as a core
calculus and its capabilities are presented in an idealized setting
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