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Human

quarter--mile.com

91–100 of 282 posts

Re: Human

#91

Why are emotions so special? they're just algorithms like any other. Emotions aren't what make humans different than machines. feeling something is similar to an LLM model reacting to a prompt a certain way. Just because chatgpt is trained to not "feel" anything (to avoid controversial output) doesn't mean LLMs can't feel things like we do. self-awareness, self-training, adaptability, original thinking, critical thin…

> Why are emotions so special? they're just algorithms like any other. That's a pretty bold claim. There's uncountable inputs. It's like trying to accurately predict the weather - chaos theory or something. Emotions are "essentially" gas exchange, but the areas and rate or whatever are not standardized across humans.

Emotions are not inputs, they are outputs first. we process information using internal algorithms that we developed as a result of our life experience and genetic coding and the result is an emotional verdict over some input. That emotional verdict is presented to our decision making algorithms as input, we can ignore it or act on it.

I have neither experienced or observed anything about human emotions that indicates they are in any way chaotic, random or unexplainable. We have beliefs, memories and experiences. emotions always use these variables and produce some output. Not only are emotions deterministic, but they are used by any number of people, from spies, to advertisers, to state-level disinformation propagandists to manipulate large numbers of peoples reliably.

Re: Human

#92
> The machines had a good idea of what humans wanted at this point, and so they put vast green forests and big tall mountains onto the planet; they engineered warm sunsets, and crisp cool rain showers on hot afternoons. It was beautiful.

The point of all this is to liken "machines" to a very traditional image of God, and of the rest of nature to God's gift to man.

Machines aren't part of life. They're tools. The desire, or fear, of AGI and/or singularity are one and the same: it's an eschatological belief that we can make a God (and then it would follow that, as god's creators, we are godlike?)

But there is no god. We are but one animal species. It's not "humans vs. machines". We are part of nature, we are part of life. We can respect life, or we can have contempt for all life forms except our own. It seems modern society has chosen the latter (it wasn't always the case); this may not end well.

Re: Human

#93

Imperfection and randomness is a strength (that's why evolution doesn't make perfect copies, you might end up with the random mutation that protects you from the next pandemic) you could imagine that machines need human intelligence to think outside the box

Or, more accurately, accidents of irrationality

Re: Human

#94
”What do you get if you multiply six by nine? 42”

For the uninitiated, a famous comedy science fiction series from the 1980s — The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams — involves a giant, planet sized machine built by extra-terrestrials.

They already knew the answer to “the life, the universe, and everything” was the number 42. What they didn’t know — and what the machine was trying to find out — was what is the question?

The machine they built was Earth.

It has to be said that not only was Adams way ahead of us on this joke, he was also the star of the original documentary on agentic software! Hyperland (1990): https://vimeo.com/72501076

Re: Human

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disrespectful? Of whom? It's a work of fiction. There's really no need to find something to offend you wherever you look.

of other animals but yeah I'm not sure that was the right word, just seems wrong. basically humanism seems like racism but towards other species. I guess speciesist?

This is a rather new stance, history books may one day label it as enlightened (I believe they will). We are not there though, and your stance is not obvious to the majority of people. I do experience that this is sentiment is growing. I personally see it as the moral high ground (both from the animal well-fare as the environmental perspective), whereas I didn't only a couple of years ago.

Re: Human

#96
post #7

Doesn't really make much sense. It states that this is a purely mechanistic world with no emotion. So why would a machine be "bored" and wish to create a human?

Yea, not really. It also writes:

"Some among the machine society see this as potentially amazing...Others see it as a threat."

That sounds like a human society, not machine society.

But what really is a machine society? Or a machine creature? Can they actually "think"?

A machine creature, if it existed, it's behaviour would be totally different from a human, it doesn't seem they would be able to think, but rather calculate, they would do calculation on what they need to do reach the goal it was programmed.

So yes, the article is not exactly logical. But at least, it is thought provoking, and that's good.

Re: Human

#97
post #51

What this thread keeps surfacing, and so much discussion around this stuff generally right now, from speculation about the next phase of intelligence, the role of pattern, emotion, logic, debates over consciousness, the anthropocentrism of our meaning-making...is that we are the source of reality (and ourselves). Instead of a “final authority” or a simple march from animal to machine, what if everything from mind, ph…

Out of curiosity-what brought you to this perspective on life? This view of the universe dreaming itself into existence, was it shaped more by philosophy, spirituality, a specific tradition like Buddhism, or just personal exploration?

Re: Human

#98
Are cells not computers in some way? We are made of cells and cells work with chromosomes. Chromosomes are coded with ATGC pairs and each triplet is capable of creating proteins.

And the activation and deactivation of some triplet happens on response to presence of proteins. So, chromosomes are code and input and output is proteins. So, if our fundamental building blocks are computable in nature, what does it make us?

Re: Human

#99
post #92

> The machines had a good idea of what humans wanted at this point, and so they put vast green forests and big tall mountains onto the planet; they engineered warm sunsets, and crisp cool rain showers on hot afternoons. It was beautiful. The point of all this is to liken "machines" to a very traditional image of God, and of the rest of nature to God's gift to man. Machines aren't part of life. They're tools. The desi…

Modern society? I am not sure. Genesis 1,28 "... Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

Christianity is responsible for a huge part of the human superiority complex.

Re: Human

#100
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we assume that the many worlds interpretation has a basis in reality, then we can consider the following metaphysical angle. The evolution around us is our world line with the physical laws we are familiar with. And indeed the natural and inevitable progression of this world line is a machine world, just like a massive star inevitably collapses into a black hole, at least under our physical laws. However in the MW…

> And indeed the natural and inevitable progression of this world line is a machine world, Would you mind clarifying your line of reasoning for suggesting this? Second: quoting wikipedia - "The many-worlds interpretation implies that there are many parallel, non-interacting worlds." If the multiple words are non-interacting, how could one world observe a large scale extinction event corresponding to the other world l…

It's the assumption that in our world, a machine civilization is an almost certain end. This might explain the Fermi paradox that we haven't seen other civilization in the universe: each builds an AI that decides to go radio offline for self-preservation.

As for MWI, I'm assuming that the world lines may split, or fork in Unix terms. What causes such splits is an open question. The splits cannot be detected with certainty, but can be guessed by side effects. Here I'm making another guess that inhabitants of MWI must be in one world line only, so when a split happens, inhabitants choose one of the paths, often unconsciously based on their natural likes and dislikes. But what happens to their body in the abandonded branch of MWI? It continues to exist mechanically for some short period of time, and then something happens to it, so it's destroyed, i.e. its entropy suddenly increases without the binding principle that has left this branch of MWI. In practice, one half of inhabitant would observe a relatively sudden and maybe peaceful extinction of the other half, while that other half simply continued their path in the other world line. And that other half will see a similar picture, but mirrored. Both halves will be left wondering what's just happened.

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