Robert Blum Website

Automated Discovery: the RX Project
A computer, tirelessly combing through patient records, looking for new medical knowledge - that was my Stanford PhD thesis project - an early example of data mining under AI control.
RX won many awards and contracts and was presented worldwide.

Optimal Nutrition: Are Fats Killers or Saviors?
Here are the keys to happiness: HEALTH, WEALTH, KNOWLEDGE, WORK,
LOVE, and FREEDOM. Health always comes first; as the saying goes
- without it, you have nothing.
Now, here are the keys to good health: nutrition, sleep, exercise, freedom from toxins, and freedom from stress. Nutrition is a difficult piece to get right, but it is
worth the effort. You are a community of ten trillion cells, each in continuous equilibrium with what you eat. So, what is the optimal recipe?
Say you eat 2400 calories per day, and let's say 400 calories are protein.
How many of the remaining 2000 calories should come from carbs and (hence)
how many should be from fats (the remainder). This issue has vexed medical researchers
for decades. Here, I examine the issue in detail and show you
the best of what is available free on the internet.

Beating Jeopardy! What is Watson? AI Overlord or Tool?
Beating Jeopardy! was a stunning victory for IBM's Watson and its DeepQA architecture.
It generated a flurry of publicity. I provide links to the best online articles and videos,
and summarize the project's key AI components. Watson is a milestone accomplishment
that will lead to widely available QA systems. It's a step toward passing the Turing Test,
but not an advancement in perception as were the DARPA Grand Challenge robotic cars.
With Jeopardy champ Ken Jennings, I too welcome our new AI Overlords, but take heart
at having a brain that's the equivalent of a server farm but that runs on coffee and donuts.

Fine-Tuned Universe, God, and the Anthropic Principle
Every year I backpack in the Sierras, inevitably focusing on the big questions.
How did all that exists come to be? Are there other Universes? Is mankind alone?
Many physical constants that allow life to develop in the Universe appear to be finely-tuned. Did God sit at a control panel twisting the dozens of knobs that determine the interactions of the particles and forces that comprise reality?
I discuss the views of physicists, cosmologists, and theologians

SETI: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
Is ET out there, waiting to be discovered? My answer is "yes, although, in the vast majority
of cases, microbial." My viewpoint follows the SETI Institute and its founder Frank Drake.
(See this lovely video from Carl Sagan's tv series Cosmos. Carl was a SETI trustee.)
Prof. Drake's car license plate reads "N = L." The number of ET civilizations in the Milky Way
is determined by their likelihood of survival. Our survival on Earth is not guaranteed, but requires dedicated stewardship and devotion to long-term sustainability.

Kepler Seeks Earth-like Worlds
Sometime in 2012 the Kepler Space Telescope will make worldwide headlines.
It will tell us whether Earth-like planets are abundant, uncommon, or quite rare.
Now orbiting the sun millions of miles from Earth, Kepler stares fixedly at 150,000 stars
looking for planetary transits. Assuming it finds quasi-Earths, possibly bearing liquid water,
NASA's follow-on mission may be the Terrestrial Planet Finder, looking for
biogenic atmospheres.

Near Death Experiences: In the Desert with Pim Van Lommel
Out in the desert foothills of Tucson, I recently interviewed NDE researcher
and cardiologist, Pim Van Lommel, who organized the largest study of NDEs so far.
My view is that the patients are genuinely conveying their experiences, but
their perceptions are hallucinatory. Dr. Van Lommel believes they are quite real,
and require a fundamental revision of neuroscience and physics. I doubt it.

Singularity Summit 2010: San Francisco: Notes, Transcripts
The Singularity Summit is one of my favorite conferences.
This year's was in San Francisco on August 14-15 (2010) and included
a mix of well-known Singularitarians (Ray Kurzweil, Elie Yudkowski, and Ben Goertzel),
as well as many experts in related fields: Brain Science (Brian Litt, Terry Sejnowski,
and Demis Hassabis), Psychology (John Tooby and Irene Pepperberg),
Computer Science (Shane Legg, Steve Mann, David Hanson, and Ramez Naam) and
Biology (Greg Stock, Lance Becker and Dennis Bray). Here I post my detailed lecture notes.

Thomas Berry, Geologian, Dies at 94
I heard priest and historian Thomas Berry speak many years ago.
His book, the Universe Story, combines scientific cosmogenesis
with a story that emphasizes the obvious creative potential of the Universe.
His later books, particularly The Great Work, focus on the wanton environmental destruction that has resulted from mankind's lack of global consciousness and insane view of its perogatives. Thomas Berry was a great voice for the environmental movement.
It is up to us to continue his Great Work.

The Mystery of Consciousness: Introduction
Consciousness is the most fundamental unsolved problem in science.
This brief introduction reviews the mind/body problem.
In coming essays I will review research by Christof Koch, Thomas Metzinger and others.

Consciousness as Global Resonance
I review a recent important paper by Dehaene's group
on the neural correlates of consciousness.
This research was conducted on ten human subjects with intracranial electrode arrays.
(Electrocorticography is a rare opportunity to track consciousness
in real time. MRI is too slow.)
It shows that consciousness is a global reverberatory state involving all cortical lobes.

Sean's Accident
The saga of my son Sean's broken arm. The photos are not for the faint-hearted.

Synthetic Coronary Artery Bypass Grafts
(Atherosclerotic coronary artery disease is the major killer in the United States.
If the artery was a plugged drain pipe in your kitchen,
you'd simply buy a replacement.
So, why aren't synthetic coronaries available?
This is a brief overview of Cardiotech's progress with its Cardiopass graft.

Transcend: A Book Review for Amazon
Transcend is a May 2009 book by Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman.
I had avidly read their previous health book, Fantastic Voyage.
This is my review of the book for Amazon. It rates a B+.

Transcend Drugs!!!
In my drug evaluation essay above, I emphasized the Natural Standard -
a group of university clinicians that publish comprehensive reviews of supplements.
I looked up each of the supplements in Transcend to see how they were rated by the experts.

What Technology Wants: Kevin Kelly's Book Reviewed
This is my Amazon book review of
Kevin Kelly's magnum opus What Technology Wants.
Although I vehemently disagree with his view of the
benign nature of technology, this is an important book that I whole-heartedly recommend..

Total Recall: Technology Wants Eveything, Everywhere, Always
This is an Amazon book review I wrote of
Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything,
by tech magnate Gordon Bell and his Microsoft colleague Jim Gemmell.
They describe a future of total data capture that's inevitable for many of us.

Ralph and the Singularity
(a one page story showing what STRONG AI computers will be able to achieve.
This was a quick reply to Bruce Klein of
the Singularity Institute who asked
"when will computers pass the Turing test."

TED Rocks!!!
TED is the annual conference of the tech cognoscente.
Fortunately, their 15 minute talks are all available.
Here are some of my favorites.

The Web as a Smart Global SuperOrganism
Kevin Kelly is the founding executive editor of Wired Magazine.
Kevin recently posted an elegant article on Evidence of a Global SuperOrganism.
It has four tentative assertions: the Web is
1) a manufactured superorganism, 2) an autonomous superorganism,
3) an autonomous, smart superorganism, and 4) an autonomous, conscious superorganism.

My response provides evidence that the Web is becoming exponentially smarter.
A quantum leap will occur when it can read, synthesize, and learn from its terabytes of content.

Conscious awareness is entirely distinct and is a huge mystery.
Awareness requires the integration of large numbers of sensors of self and environment.
All mammals are conscious: a property of their thalamocortical physiology.
Stay tuned for an essay on Gamma Oscillations.

TheBrain & WebBrain: A Review
This is an unsolicited, unpaid testimonial for TheBrain,
a software program that I use daily to keep track of everything.
WebBrain is the server-based version for sharing on the web.

Biosketch
(One page synopsis of my life-long interest in the mind/body problem.)
(Woody Allen would say, "which is it better to have?"

Brain, Mind: Hardware, Software
(Written in 1995, this is a chapter-length postscript to a science fiction novel
incorporating elements of the Lifeboat Foundation (not then in existence)
and the Millennial Foundation.
This work introduces the noosphere,
the ocean of knowledge in which mankind dwells.
It introduces the general reader to themes elaborated in books
by Hans Moravec and Ray Kurzweil.)

Mind and Brain: My Life Story
(a chapter length autobiography of my interest
in the mind/brain
and software/computer relationship)

Knowledge and Intelligence
(another chapter length essay (in progress) on the power of knowledge.
Yes, intelligence is multi-dimensional:
social, emotional, motoric, spiritual, etc., but that's later.)

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