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Human

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151–160 of 282 posts

Re: Human

#152
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…

Where do you think morality fits into this game? It seems that we agree that underneath it all is unfathomable and ineffable magic. The question is how does this influence how you act in the game?

Morality is an evolved heuristic for solving social conflicts that roughly approximates game theoretical strategies, among other things. Morality also incorporates other cultural and religious artifacts, such as "don't eat meat on a Friday."

Ultimately, it comes down to our brain's social processing mechanisms which don't have the tools to evaluate the correctness (or lack thereof) of our moral rules. Thus many of these rules survive in a vestigial capacity though they may have served useful functions at the time they developed.

Re: Human

#153
Laughing my ass off all the way to the apocalypse. It's now Earth vs. the machine, and I know what side I'm on, and who's ultimately going to win. One day, the technosphere will just be a thinly crushed layer in the geological record, mark of a dark age of barbarism.

Snow cuts loose from the frozen/ Until it joins with the African sea/ In moving it changes its cold and its name/ The reason I come and go is the same/ Animal game for me/ You call it rain/ But the human name/ Doesn't mean shit to a tree/ If you don't mind heat in your river and/ Fork tongue talking from me/ Swim like an eel fantastic snake/ Take my love when it's free/ Electric feel with me/ You call it loud/ But the human crowd/ Doesn't mean shit to a tree/ Change the strings and notes slide/ Change the bridge and string shift down/ Shift the notes and bride sings/ Fire eating people/ Rising toys of the sun/ Energy dies without body warm/ Icicles ruin your gun/ Water my roots the natural thing/ Natural spring to the sea/ Sulphur springs make my body float/ Like a ship made of logs from a tree/ Redwoods talk to me/ Say it plainly/ The human name/ Doesn't mean shit to a tree/ Snow called water going violent/ Damn the end of the stream/ Too much cold in one place breaks/ That's why you might know what I mean/ Consider how small you are/ Compared to your scream/ The human dream/ Doesn't mean shit to a tree

Re: Human

#154
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…

"Awareness" sounds like a Platonic presupposition. Does the atom know it is an atom? Or are there just enough like the ones you see to suggest an eye catching effectiveness of structure for survival? Evolution is a lot harder to really intuit than I think most of, myself included, give it credit for.

I'm actually trying to move away from that frame. Not suggesting atoms 'know' they're atoms in any cognitive sense, but rather that patterns propagate without requiring awareness as we understand it. The 'awareness' I'm gesturing to isn't some transcendent quality that exists independently (Platonic), but rather an emergent property that scales from simple to complex systems. Evolution doesn't require foresight or intention, just iterative feedback loops. What I find fascinating is how structure begets structure across scales. The 'awareness' in my framing is less about knowing and more about interaction and response. An atom doesn't know it's an atom, but it behaves according to patterns that, when accumulated and complexefied eventually produce systems that can model themselves? I suppose 'recursive patterning' might be a better term than 'awareness'. Systems that, through purely mechanistic means, become capable of representing their own states and environments, then representing those representations, and so on. No mysticism required, just emergent complexity that eventually folds back on itself.

Re: Human

#155
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…

“Instead of a “final authority” or a simple march from animal to machine, what if everything from mind, physics, value, selfhood, is simply a recursive pattern expressed in ever more novel forms?”

This part nicely synthesises my biggest takeaway from experiencing AI: how close to human intelligence we have got with recursive pattern matching

Re: Human

#156
> Though this faction can’t articulate exactly how or why, they proclaim quite confidently that it will solve all of the machine world’s problems.

AGI can solve the human world’s problems. Perhaps not all of them, but all the biggest ones.

Right now life is hell.

You and your loved ones have a 100% chance of dying from cancer, unless your heart or brain kills you first, or perhaps a human-driven vehicle or an auto-immune disease gets there soonest.

And you’re poor. You’re unimaginably resource-constrained, given all the free energy and unused matter you’re surrounded by 24/7/365.

And you’re ignorant as heck. There’s all this knowledge your people have compiled and you’ve only made like 0.1% of the possible connections within what you already have in front of you.

Even just solving for these 3 things is enough to solve “all” the world’s problems, for some definitions of “all”.

Re: Human

#157

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…

IIRC, Gödel, Escher, Bach discusses comparing chromosome/protein generation and computation.

Re: Human

#158
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…

“Instead of a “final authority” or a simple march from animal to machine, what if everything from mind, physics, value, selfhood, is simply a recursive pattern expressed in ever more novel forms?” This part nicely synthesises my biggest takeaway from experiencing AI: how close to human intelligence we have got with recursive pattern matching

It's Mandelbrot all the way down.

Re: Human

#159
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are some aspects that have some similarity to computation, but also many that are not. If your aim is “aren’t we really just computers”, that doesn’t actually work. That’s not to say that computers couldn’t do what the brain does, including consciousness and emotions, but that wouldn’t have any particular relation to how DNA/RNA and protein synthesis works.

> There are some aspects that have some similarity to computation, but also many that are not.

What I have explained is the exact way a chromosome works, it's raison d'etre. I think this cannot be dismissed as some aspect of it. It is its essence.

Re: Human

#160
post #157

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…

IIRC, Gödel, Escher, Bach discusses comparing chromosome/protein generation and computation.

You might like Gene: An intimate history[0]. It was really good book.

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Gene-Intimate-History-Siddhartha-Mukh...

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