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AGI is far from inevitable

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Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#241

Post by [deleted] »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #238
castigatio wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a bit like coming up with words to expand on the concept of poop. Poop is a necessary and useful word. It describes something you get on your shoe. Or something you may have to suddenly rush out to do. However if I became so intensely immersed in the world of poop that I needed to invent new words to describe the subtleties of it - you might not admire my efforts or where I choose to place my attentio…

So you don't see the value in differentiating between (valuable) manure, (human) wastewater (which can be tested for public health), stool samples, the concept of bullshit, scatting, guano, pet feces, diarrhea, etc? You think those should be all the same word? What a narrow worldview.

[deleted]

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#242

Post by [deleted] »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #238
castigatio wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a bit like coming up with words to expand on the concept of poop. Poop is a necessary and useful word. It describes something you get on your shoe. Or something you may have to suddenly rush out to do. However if I became so intensely immersed in the world of poop that I needed to invent new words to describe the subtleties of it - you might not admire my efforts or where I choose to place my attentio…

So you don't see the value in differentiating between (valuable) manure, (human) wastewater (which can be tested for public health), stool samples, the concept of bullshit, scatting, guano, pet feces, diarrhea, etc? You think those should be all the same word? What a narrow worldview.

[deleted]

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#243

Post by castigatio »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #238
castigatio wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a bit like coming up with words to expand on the concept of poop. Poop is a necessary and useful word. It describes something you get on your shoe. Or something you may have to suddenly rush out to do. However if I became so intensely immersed in the world of poop that I needed to invent new words to describe the subtleties of it - you might not admire my efforts or where I choose to place my attentio…

So you don't see the value in differentiating between (valuable) manure, (human) wastewater (which can be tested for public health), stool samples, the concept of bullshit, scatting, guano, pet feces, diarrhea, etc? You think those should be all the same word? What a narrow worldview.

It was a silly example - though not intended as serious. I agree - the distinctions you describe are useful. So what about the utility of increasingly granular description of oppression? Can you point me to the utility of these?

The people creating new generative AI models are inventing new words. I think their topic of research and the new words they are creating have high utility.

The authors of this paper on the other hand appear to me to not be applying discipline and rigour to solving hard problems. They are however trying to associate the words they have created in a discipline with little objective utility - with the words of a discipline that has high utility.

This strikes me as annoying and absurd. Why try to make the crossover unless you are trying to catch some shine off of a discipline that is getting a lot of well-justified attention?

I'm still waiting for Ilya to publish his first paper on gender studies..

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#245

Post by smokedetector1 »

anon84873628 wrote: post #237
smokedetector1 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason materialism is so popular among tech people that it's almost considered foolish/primitive/superstitious to think any other way. Why is that? Is it the fact that programming is a god-like experience that gives one the illusion the mind is as comprehensible as the complex program I wrote in Java? Or is it a shared personality trait of people that get into tech, that they are disconnected from an experie…

I would call the shared personality trait "pragmatism". Since tech people generally recognize that the preponderance of the evidence points towards a purely physical explanation for the human brain. Even considering the hard problem of consciousness, there's no compelling reason to believe it can't have a physical basis, or can't be replicated in other complex systems. Going back to the original comment, the perspect…

> preponderance of the evidence

Theres evidence for the fact that the human brain affects consciousness.

What is the evidence that the brain causes consciousness?

As far as I can see, the only evidence people can produce is a general sense that science has successfully produced materialist explanations for everything it has tried to, and will continue to do so successfully forever.

However the reality is:

- Science has, up til now, failed to make even the slightest progress on the origin of consciousness.

- Science does not even claim to attempt to answer all questions about the human experience.

Therefore, the belief that science will, at some point, explain consciousness is not an inherently rational position, it is based on a sort of faith that science will succeed and apply everywhere. It masquerades as rational because of the materialist bias.

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#246

Post by dfilppi »

User23 wrote: post #45
godelski wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but LLMs do solve problems that people thought were extremely difficult to solve ten years ago. Well for something to be G or I you need them to solve novel problems. These things have interested most of the Internet and I've yet to see a "reasoning" disentangle memorization from reasoning. Memorization doesn't mean they aren't useful (not sure why this was ever conflated since... Computers are useful...), but it's…

We don't really have the proper vocabulary to talk about this. Well, we do, but C.S. Peirce's writings are still fairly unknown. In short, there are two fundamentally distinct forms of reasoning. One is corollarial reasoning. This is the kind of reasoning that follows deductions that directly follow from the premises. This of course includes subsequent deductions that can be made from those deductions. Obviously comp…

[dead]

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#247

Post by kbelder »

smokedetector1 wrote: post #245
anon84873628 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would call the shared personality trait "pragmatism". Since tech people generally recognize that the preponderance of the evidence points towards a purely physical explanation for the human brain. Even considering the hard problem of consciousness, there's no compelling reason to believe it can't have a physical basis, or can't be replicated in other complex systems. Going back to the original comment, the perspect…

> preponderance of the evidence Theres evidence for the fact that the human brain affects consciousness. What is the evidence that the brain causes consciousness? As far as I can see, the only evidence people can produce is a general sense that science has successfully produced materialist explanations for everything it has tried to, and will continue to do so successfully forever. However the reality is: - Science h…

- Science has, up til now, failed to make even the slightest progress on the origin of consciousness. - Science does not even claim to attempt to answer all questions about the human experience.

Similar argument could be made about every other subject that science has explained, prior to science explaining it. This is just an argument from the gaps.

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#248

Post by kbelder »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #159
avazhi wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happy for you to cite some thinkers who are on record as saying it’s impossible. I’ll wait.

Not the OP, but Searle of Chinese room fame came up with the aforementioned argument to demonstrate just that.

I find it amazing that the Chinese room is considered a serious argument by so many. Unless you believe in mysticism, it's refuted by pointing to your own head.

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#249

Post by smokedetector1 »

kbelder wrote: post #247
smokedetector1 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> preponderance of the evidence Theres evidence for the fact that the human brain affects consciousness. What is the evidence that the brain causes consciousness? As far as I can see, the only evidence people can produce is a general sense that science has successfully produced materialist explanations for everything it has tried to, and will continue to do so successfully forever. However the reality is: - Science h…

- Science has, up til now, failed to make even the slightest progress on the origin of consciousness. - Science does not even claim to attempt to answer all questions about the human experience. Similar argument could be made about every other subject that science has explained, prior to science explaining it. This is just an argument from the gaps.

Wait wait.. I thought nothing is allowed besides rigorously-justified scientific inference. But you've made your position unfalsifiable - there is literally nothing you believe science can't touch, even if it has failed so far to make progress. Is there anything you could imagine that would make you reconsider? Sounds unfalsifiable to me, and many would say that makes your theory logically unrigorous.

I like to call your belief system "science of the gaps." You have no evidence that science can touch the question, but you have faith it will, but worst of all you believe that your faith is superior to other well thought-out theories, which you dismiss automatically as foolish superstition.

Look up refutations of materialism to learn more.

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#250

Post by kbelder »

xpuente wrote: post #184

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.", -- 1895, Lord Kelvin, president of the Royal Society

At the time, that was trivially disprovable by referring to a bird.

Now, people are making the same proclamation about AGI, and it's still trivially disprovable in the same manner.

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