Nicholas Maxwell of University College London believes* that wisdom is "...the capacity to apprehend and create what is of value..." A.s.a. H. does just that.**
* Can the World Learn Wisdom?, Philosophy Now: The Ultimate Guide to Theory of Knowledge, Anja Pubs., 2021. ** See, for example, R. Jones, Trans. Kan. Acad. Sci. vol. 109, # 3, 2006, page 254 and vol. 124, # 1-2 , 2021, page 146 and my blogs of 21 Sept. 2010, 27 Aug. 2010, and 19 Feb. 2011.
In his lectures The Meaning of Relativity* Einstein stated that "the inert mass...increases when ponderable masses approach ..." So one would expect that when two masses are close to one another their masses increase slightly and when they are further apart their masses decrease slightly. If this is true one could oscillate a pair of masses transversely (say in the y direction) and using a third mass pull on them axially (say in the x direction) when they are close together and push on them when they are far apart. This cycle might produce a net motion of the whole system of masses in the x direction. It's assumed that momentum is conserved through the coupling with more distant matter. Of course the effect, if real, may be too tiny to be detectable. Also, Mach's principle might simply be wrong; at least this particular version of Mach's principle. My "x-files" contain papers from several authors proposing other sorts of Machian space drives.**
* The Meaning of Relativity, Princeton University, 1922, page 97.
** See, for example, Making Starships and Stargates, J. F. Woodward, Springer, 2013.
I've been asked to give a presentation on "my work." I could do a general review of AI. I did that for Washburn's "science night" in Topeka in 2017. Alternatively, I could do a review of fusion energy work. If I were to present my recent work in philosophy the following abstract on Alternate Realities might be appropriate. This might go some ways toward explaining current American politics. The basis of the divide goes deeper than just crazy Donald's lies and Fox "News'" radicalizing indoctrinations.
With the desire to have a richer interaction with the environment I have ordered parts for a 19 degrees of freedom humanoid which I would also hope to heavily instrument.
Nearly 40 years ago in Alabama we had a lab with a dozen or so PCs in it. I don't think we ever had all of them working at once. My colleagues at ESU tell me that in the student University Physics lab they typically have maybe half of the computers working at any given time. My blog of 14 December 2015 shows the architecture for embodied A.s.a. H. AI experiments involving 3 PCs and 2 microcontrollers. This operated fairly reliably using commodity hardware. As we move to a larger number of processors, however, we have had issues with reliability. We may have to replace each single processor with 2 or 3 processors in order to provide a backup, as is done on spacecraft, for example.
The latest edition of Lego mindstorms, the 51515 programmable hub, may be less useful than the NXT and EV3 were.* I have not found much documentation but it does not appear you can daisy chain them. There are also only 6 I/O ports (though one might use multiplexers). Fortunately, having determined what range of actions (accelerations, etc.) caused breakage to Legos I can now use nonLego bots and register (virtual) pain or injury whenever any such limits are exceeded. I have also moved on to things like the Raspberry Pi and the BrickPi, PiStorms, sense HAT, and other HATs.
* And currently it can not be purchased independent of the mindstorms robot inventor set.
I was hired at Emporia State to be half time Physics and half time Computer Science. Initially I taught introductory computer science classes, Fortran programming, digital electronics, and computer interfacing as well as physics courses.* My research was in physics (plasma/fusion energy) but some of it was computational work, both hardware and software. After a few years there was a reorganization and Computer Science went with the Math Department while Physics went with Physical Sciences. At that point I went full time with Physics. For a few more years I taught digital electronics and computer interfacing as well as physics courses. My research became more computational.** Eventually Computer Science was transferred from the Math Department over to the Business School. In recent years I have taught purely physics courses while my research has become computer science/artificial intelligence.*** The computer interfacing became robotics research.
I have suggested to admin that this may be my final year. Admin has also proposed retiring the Physics Major at Emporia State.
* See my website, www.robert-w-jones.com, under "teacher."
** See my website, www.robert-w-jones.com, under "publications."
*** See this blog for the last 10 years.
