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Human

quarter--mile.com

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Re: Human

#101

Post by DeusExMachina »

> Perhaps you, a human, read this and think: Well, this world sounds kind of boring. Some of the machines think so, too.

> Most of the machines got bored of the project. But, all of a sudden, things began to get interesting.

> The result was like nothing the machines had ever seen. It was wonderful

> Machine society began obsessing over this development.

> The machines were impressed. And a bit scared.

Boredom, interest, wonder, obsession, being impressed and scared are all emotions that the machines in the story should not be able to experience.

Re: Human

#102

Post by Piraty »

tonyhart7 wrote: post #57
irjustin wrote: post #30

Related but an aside - Lately I've really been wondering if Skynet actually is the next evolution. That humans, like all animals before us, are a stepping stone and there is actually no avoiding machine overlords. It happens to literally every existence of life across the universe because the final emergent property of energy gradients 100% leads to pure logic machines. At least Fermi's paradox helps me sleep better…

Terminator reminds the DOD that they would never make this but what about China,Russia,Iran etc??? if integrating "Skynet" can improve their military capabilities then they would do it

One china company actually named its surveillance software "Skynet" [1]

[1]: https://youtu.be/CLo3e1Pak-Y?t=380

Re: Human

#103

Post by layer8 »

rottc0dd wrote: post #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…

Physical systems are computable only in approximation. And quantum uncertainty throws another wrench into it. We also know that arbitrarily small rounding errors in the computation can lead to arbitrarily large differences with the actual system down the road. No, cells are not computers (in the sense of the Turing model). (However, that doesn’t mean that one can’t still consider them to be mechanistic and “soulless”.)

Re: Human

#104

Post by autonomousErwin »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #101

> Perhaps you, a human, read this and think: Well, this world sounds kind of boring. Some of the machines think so, too. > Most of the machines got bored of the project. But, all of a sudden, things began to get interesting. > The result was like nothing the machines had ever seen. It was wonderful > Machine society began obsessing over this development. > The machines were impressed. And a bit scared. Boredom, inter…

I thought this too, but I imagine it's a bit of pathetic fallacy for the reader's benefit else it would be (ironically) quite a boring read for us from the machine's perspective.

Re: Human

#105

Post by neom »

hn111 wrote: post #97
neom wrote: 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?

For the past I guess 20 years of my life now, I've been intently using most of my free time to explore 3 main areas distinctly: quantum mechanical processes, spiritual philosophy, entheogens. I explored them all quite separately as deeply as I've been able to find the time for through following their individual curiosities, however over the past 5 years of reflection, taking a lot of time off, battling myself, they started to come together in concert, and the more I zoned out on this with very basic Himalaya Buddhism, it's where I landed.

Re: Human

#106

Post by keybored »

bfung wrote: post #32

Enjoyed the read, has a similar vibe to Asimov's The Last Question ( https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/thelastq.html )

Similar vibe is one way to put it.

Re: Human

#107

Post by bambax »

lynx97 wrote: post #99
bambax wrote: 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.

Yes but at the time Genesis was written, humanity didn't have the means to destroy life at scale. And in the New Testament, "killing the fattened calf" (Luke 15,23) is an incredibly rare event, something one does only when something remarkable happens.

Also, in the Middle Ages in Europe (granted, a very small window in place and time) animal life was much more respected than today.

Re: Human

#108

Post by ithkuil »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #101

> Perhaps you, a human, read this and think: Well, this world sounds kind of boring. Some of the machines think so, too. > Most of the machines got bored of the project. But, all of a sudden, things began to get interesting. > The result was like nothing the machines had ever seen. It was wonderful > Machine society began obsessing over this development. > The machines were impressed. And a bit scared. Boredom, inter…

indeed, but ultimately this story is written by a human who while trying to imagine a world with "Just machines, bolts and screws, zeros and ones. There is no emotion. There is no art. There is only logic" cannot quite do so.

It's very hard to do so. It's so deeply wired in us. It's part of the mechanism of our brain. We appeared to be equipped with whatever it takes to feel existential dread and we feel whenever our thought wander to the possibility of humanity no longer being there. I hear people feel that when thinking about the heat death of the universe too.

Re: Human

#109

Post by rottc0dd »

layer8 wrote: post #103
rottc0dd wrote: post #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…

Physical systems are computable only in approximation. And quantum uncertainty throws another wrench into it. We also know that arbitrarily small rounding errors in the computation can lead to arbitrarily large differences with the actual system down the road. No, cells are not computers (in the sense of the Turing model). (However, that doesn’t mean that one can’t still consider them to be mechanistic and “soulless”…

I meant to say in the way that there is well defined set of alphabets (A, T, G, C) and each triplet of these alphabet is responsible for specific protein to be created and combination of such protein make each cell what it is. (There are 20 different proteins for humans and we have four alphabets coming in triplets. So, if it was pair or quadreplets responsible for proteins, it would have too much or too little. They are not perfect but given the condition, there is some balance)

A single alphabet change in specific places can cause genetic defects like sickle cell anemia. And activation of which one has to generate protein (execute) is dependent on presence of certain things encoded as proteins again.

And viruses when enter a cell, the cell starts to execute viral genetic material. Even if these are not exactly Turing compatible, do they not mimic many aspects of computation?

Re: Human

#110

Post by killerstorm »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #101

> Perhaps you, a human, read this and think: Well, this world sounds kind of boring. Some of the machines think so, too. > Most of the machines got bored of the project. But, all of a sudden, things began to get interesting. > The result was like nothing the machines had ever seen. It was wonderful > Machine society began obsessing over this development. > The machines were impressed. And a bit scared. Boredom, inter…

Jürgen Schmidhuber introduced curiosity/boredom mechanisms as a way to improve learning in reinforcement learning environment:

https://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/curiositysab/curiositysab.h...

This mechanism can be formalized.

> Zero reinforcement should be given in case of perfect matches, high reinforcement should be given in case of `near-misses', and low reinforcement again should be given in case of strong mismatches. This corresponds to a notion from `esthetic information theory' which tries to explain the feeling of `beauty' by means of the quotient of `subjective complexity' and `subjective order' or the quotient of `unfamiliarity' and `familiarity' (measured in an information-theoretic manner).

This type of architecture is very similar to GAN which later became very successful

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