Sunday, October 04, 2015

Gunnison Colorado Balloon Rally with Raul

July 4, 2011
Hiking above nearby Crested Butte.
gunnison2.jpg
Start of the drive back West. Stopping on road from Gunnison to Hotchkiss.



Earlier Balloon Adventures: Colorado 2004, Utah 2007.

Steep Ravine Cabins

April 2012, Mt Tam State Park

Watching sunset with guys from neighboring cabin
sunset1.jpg
sunset2.jpg
Walking by the shore
Twilight
Sunset
Morning view from the cabin
More photos from the trip, courtesy of Bill:
ravinetopdown.jpg
ravineuptocabins.jpg
ravinercabin.jpg
ravinerocks.jpg
ravinebeachrocks.jpg
ravinegang3.jpg
ravinewalk.jpg
ravinelog.jpg
Walking up Steep Ravine Trail, courtesy of Horton:
steeprav1.jpg
steeprav2.jpg
steeprav3.jpg
steeprav4.jpg

steeprav5.jpg

My One Memorable Chess Game

From the 1985 San Francisco Class Championship


White: Cha
Black: Resnick

1.  e4    e5
2.  Nf3    Nc6
3.  Bc4    Nf6
4.  Ng5    Bc5?!

This is called the Wilkes-Barre Variation, named for a city near my hometown of Havertown PA. It may be unsound, but has definite shock value. One point is that after the tempting 5. Nxf7, Black gets an attack with 5. ... Bxf2+, 6. Kxf2 Nxe4+ and 7. ... Qh4.

5.  Bxf7+  Ke7
6.  Bd5    Qe8

At this point, my friend and fellow player Michael walked by and did a double-take. He thought I had mixed up my King with my Queen!

7.  Nc3    d6
8.  Nb5    Rf8
9.  Nxc7   Qg6
10. d3?    Bxf2+!

White can't take the Bishop, because of 11. Kxf2 Nxd5+ and 12. ... Nxc7.

11. Kf1    Bg4
12. Qd2    Be3!

Again, the Bishop is poison: 13. Qxe3 Nxd5+.

13. Qe1    Nxe4+
14. Nf3    Rxf3+!
15. gxf3   Bh3+
16. Ke2    Nd4+
17. Kxe3   ...

Or 17. Kd1 Nf2+

17. ...    Qg5+
18. Kxe4   Bf5# mate

Free Sudoku for Excel

Here's a little Sudoku game I designed for MS Excel. It will generate games for you to play, or solve games that you enter, and offer hints on request.

DOWNLOAD EXCEL SUDOKU GAME

When downloading the file and opening in Excel, if you get a security warning, choose to "enable content" in order for the game to function.

Correspondence with Ray Kurzweil



From: Stuart Resnick [mailto:sresnick2@comcast.net]
Sent: Sunday, June 04, 2006 6:42 PM
To: ray@singularity.com
Subject: Buddhist perspective of Consciousness


I'm writing regarding your debates with John Searle and others regarding the
nature of consciousness, specifically whether biological entities alone can have
this property, or whether a sufficiently complex machine could have it also. For
instance, from page 468 of "The Singularity is Near": "I agree [with Searle]
that chairs don't seem to be conscious, but as for computers of the future that
have the same complexity, depth, subtlety, and capabilities as humans, I don't
think we can rule out the possibility."

My assumption, from reading the book and from hearing you at the recent
conference at Stanford, is that you're aware that Buddhism has a perspective to
offer on this matter, but that you haven't personally studied this perspective
much. I'm writing to communicate this perspective in a few paragraphs, with the
thought that it might be of some interest to you, and because it would be
interesting for me to hear your response to it.

(Throughout, I'm using "Buddhism" to mean not the popular religion in South East
Asia etc, but to the more esoteric teaching pointed to in the "Diamond Sutra"
etc, and transmitted in the Zen tradition.)

Buddhism uses the word "consciousness" as follows. If a factory makes animal
crackers out of dough, you could say that "dough" is a name for the substance
common to all the animal crackers, regardless of their differing names and
forms. In the same sense, Buddhism uses "consciousness" as the name for the
substance of all things without exception. Though this definition may seem
somewhat different from the one you use, it's still adhering to the
understanding that "consciousness" is a synonym for "what you're experiencing
right now."

According to the view of "consciousness" assumed in your debate with Searle,
you could doubt that it's a property of a chair. But you'd hardly doubt that a
chair appears IN consciousness. And in fact, anything you could possibly
perceive, experience, or imagine appears in consciousness. For instance, if you
can "imagine" something, it's (by definition, by both definitions) in
consciousness. You could speculate, "A long time ago, a universe existed in
which consciousness had not yet arisen." That speculation itself would be one
more thing appearing in consciousness.

To say "consciousness is the ultimate substance" is a way of expressing this
conclusion that all things appear in consciousness. It follows that
"consciousness" has meaning only as a name for this substance. That is: since
nothing could be outside of consciousness, there's no meaning to the idea of
"having" or "not having" consciousness. So the Buddhist view is: the very idea
that there are things that "have consciousness" (i.e. "sentient beings") is
along the lines of a dream, a delusion, or mere jugglery conjured up by some
magician.

If "consciousness" is understood as a property that can be had or not had, then
it's my suspicion that your debate with Searle is one of those issues that isn't
resolved and can never be resolved. This doesn't make the debate wrong or
useless. But it might also be of some use to draw your attention to the Buddhist
view also, since it provides a perspective in which the issue is resolved already.

I'll appreciate any thoughts you have to offer.

Sincerely,

Stuart Resnick

####################

From: Ray Kurzweil
To: 'Stuart Resnick'
Sent: Sunday, June 04, 2006 4:32 PM
Subject: RE: Buddhist perspective of Consciousness

Stuart,

Is that the picture of you levitating? Looks pretty good. I have dreams like
that.

I am familiar with Buddhist ideas about the nature of consciousness and have
read a good deal of this literature, which I appreciate and think has much
merit.

At the risk of oversimplification, the Buddhist tradition that you allude to
regards consciousness as the fundamental reality. These other things about
which we speak, such as chairs and philosophies and ideas are phenomena that
occupy our consciousness. They don't have a reality separate from our conscious
experience of them. I have noted in my writings that there is a congruence
between this perspective and interpretations of quantum mechanics that says
much the same thing. In this formulation, physical reality does not actually
manifest itself until a conscious entity "observes" it, that is until it becomes
a conscious experience. Otherwise is just a possibility not an actual
manifestation.

In Age of Spiritual Machines, I drew an analogy to the simulation of reality in
a computer game. It may appear that the portions of the world that are off
screen exist, but in actuality they are never rendered (and thus don't really
exist) until they are on screen, that is until we until there is conscious
experience them. In other words, there is no reality other than what is
(consciously) experienced.

While I believe that this is a valid perspective, I would caution against taking
the logical implications of this to the extent of denying the validity of the
question "is it conscious?" as applied to various entities (such as people,
animals, machines...).

This question may seem logically inconsistent with the perspective articulated
above, but at this level of abstraction, language and logic can fail us.

This very question is at the heart of human morality and by extension ethics and
law. Because we consider other humans to be conscious (at least those act
conscious), it is immoral and illegal to cause suffering to other humans or,
more seriously, to extinguish that consciousness altogether. Our (collective)
position regarding animals is much more ambiguous, and the issue at the heart of
the animal rights debate boils down to whether or not these "entities" are
conscious.

I happen to believe that animals, at least the more evolved ones, are conscious,
but this is far from a universal position (among humans). We will have the same
issue with machines. There is not much debate about this issue with machines
like the common toaster, or even the much more complex contemporary personal
computer. But there will be a real issue with the machines that I am projecting
will exist in a few decades, that will actually be more human-like than animals.

Best,

Ray

####################

From: Stuart Resnick [mailto:sresnick2@comcast.net]
Sent: Mon, 05 Jun 2006 23:24:54 +0000
To: ray@singularity.com
Subject: Buddhist perspective of Consciousness

Ray:

Many thanks for your response. Yes, that's me levitating at the top of my
personal web page. I have found through experience that I can achieve much
more in this endeavor using my spiritual powers AND a trampoline than I can
with spiritual powers alone.

Things are so simple before you bring up morality, ethics, and law, and so much
less simple afterwards. Still, there's a Buddhist principle that speaks to this.
It's possible to find an absolute perspective which sees "I" as just thinking.
When this isn't the case, in the relative perspectives, one can adopt the
direction of expanding the "I." In other words, if you start out considering
only your own body as a conscious entity worthy of compassion, you can move
towards expanding this consideration to your family, then to your friends, your
community, your country, your planet, and to numberless sentient beings in
infinite world-systems.

In the absolute world, the issue of consciousness is already resolved. In the
relative world of morality etc, it's never resolved, but there's the opportunity
in each new moment to move towards expansion. It appears that this is indeed the
direction you're following, so thanks, keep up the good work.

While my personal karma is such that I have no interest in living forever, your
words have had an effect on me. I'm now resolved to stay alive at least till I
can watch CNN televise the congressional hearings on whether to give voting
rights to strong AI machines. Lawmakers will have to face the fact that once
they give machines the vote, there will be nothing stopping them from
replicating themselves to get multiple votes. We have the same problem with
humans, but since our replication is so much slower and less perfect, we've been
able to avoid the issue so far. Should be interesting.

Yours,

Stuart


Autobiography of a Boo Boo

A Mini-Memoir of Spiritual Adventures

Links on this page lead to blog posts from 2007. They’re an attempt to make sense of the decades I’ve spent pursuing meditation and The Big Questions of Life. They touch on experiences with childhood ponderings, academic and personal philosophizing, psychedelic trips, and traditions in the spiritual sub-culture, including the “Siddha Yoga/SYDA” organization founded by Swami Muktananda (which I followed 1979-84), and the Korean-style “Kwan Um School of Zen” founded by Zen Master Seung Sahn, aka Dae Soen Sa Nim (with which I’ve been involved 1988-present). I focus on what’s led to my continuing fascination with Zen, particularly how I was stunned by my first retreat with this school.

As a preface to the memoir, this post summarizes the Zen practice I do currently:

·      Practice

Here are the chapters of the memoir itself, which I’ve collectively entitled “Autobiography of a Boo Boo.”

·      2: India
·      3: Zen Master
·      4: Finger in Socket
·      5: Sitting
·      6: Smile
·      7: Like Space
·      8: Buddhism
·      9: Why?