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AGI is Mathematically Impossible 2: When Entropy Returns

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Re: AGI is Mathematically Impossible 2: When Entropy Returns

#181

Post by fc417fc802 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #157
fc417fc802 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this cannot be reached algorithmically > humans can (somehow) do this Is this not contradictory? Alternatively, in order to not be contradictory doesn't it require the assumption that humans are not "algorithmic"? But does that not then presuppose (as the above commenter brought up) that we are not a biochemical machine? Is a machine not inherently algorithmic in nature? Or at minimum presupposes that humans are mo…

> Alternatively, in order to not be contradictory doesn't it require the assumption that humans are not "algorithmic"? But does that not then presuppose (as the above commenter brought up) that we are not a biochemical machine? Is a machine not inherently algorithmic in nature? No, computation is algorithmic, real machines are not necessarily (of course, AGI still can't be ruled out even if algorithmic intelligence i…

> No, computation is algorithmic, real machines are not necessarily

As the adjacent comment touches on are the laws of physics (as understood to date) not possible to simulate? Can't all possible machines be simulated at least in theory? I'm guessing my knowledge of the term "algorithmic" is lacking here.

Re: AGI is Mathematically Impossible 2: When Entropy Returns

#182

Post by quotemstr »

This paper is an attempt to Euler the reader.

See https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/10/getting-eulered/

> There is an apocryphal story about the visit of the great atheist philosopher Diderot to the Russian court. Diderot was quite the clever debater, and soon this scandalous new atheism thing was the talk of St. Petersburg. This offended reigning monarch Catherine the Great, who was a good Christian woman ... so she asked legendary mathematician Leonhard Euler to publicly debunk and humiliate Diderot. Euler said, in a tone of absolute conviction: “Monsieur, (a+b^n)/n = x, therefore, God exists! What is your response to that?” and Diderot, “for whom algebra was like Chinese”, had no response. Thus was he publicly humiliated, all the Russian Christians got an excuse to believe what they had wanted to believe anyway, and Diderot left in a huff.

---

The brain is a physical object and governed by the same laws that govern any other machine. Therefore, AGI, whatever that is, is possible in principle. To argue otherwise is to just assert unfalsifiable Cartesian dualism, i.e. souls.

The argument in no way proves, "mathematically" or otherwise, any property of AGI. The author's comments on the thread are, charitably, dense and obscure --- but I'm not feeling charitable, so I'm going to say they're evasive and Euler-y.

I don't think it's worth anyone's time to understand or deconstruct the argument in detail without some explanation of why the brain can do something a machine can't that isn't just "because souls".

Re: AGI is Mathematically Impossible 2: When Entropy Returns

#183

Post by moomin »

JonChesterfield wrote: post #170

The state machine with a random number generator is soundly beating some people in cognition already. That is, if the test for intelligence is set high enough that chatgpt doesn't pass it, nor do quite a lot of the human population. If you can prove this can't happen, your axioms are wrong or your deduction in error.

I’m beginning to feel like the tests are part of the problem. Our intelligence tests are all tests of specialisation. We’ve established LLMs are part of the problem. Plenty of people who would fail a bar exam yet still know how many Rs there are in strawberry, could learn a new game just by reading the rules, know how to put up a set of shelves.

Re: AGI is Mathematically Impossible 2: When Entropy Returns

#184

Post by vidarh »

nialv7 wrote: post #119
ICBTheory wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? 1. Basically because physical laws obviously allow more than algorithmic cognition and problem solving. (And also: I am bound by thermodynamics as my mother in Law is, still i get disarranged by her mere presence while I always have to put laxatives in her wine to counter that) 2. human rationality is equally limited as algorithms. Neither an algorithm nor human logic can find itself a path from Newton to Einste…

If by algorithmic you just mean anything that a Turing machine can do, then your theorem is asserting that the Church-Turing thesis isn't true. Why not use that as the title of your paper? That a more fundamental claim.

The lack of mention of the Church-Turing thesis in both papers suggest he hasn't even considered that angle.

But it is the fundamental objection he would need to overcome.

There is no reasonable way to write papers claiming to provide proofs in this space without mentioning Church even once, and to me it's a red flag that suggests a lack of understanding of the field.

Re: AGI is Mathematically Impossible 2: When Entropy Returns

#185

Post by madaxe_again »

ICBTheory wrote: post #68
vessenes wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for this - Looking forward to reading the full paper. That said, the most obvious objection that comes to mind about the title is that … well, I feel that I’m generally intelligent, and therefore general intelligence of some sort is clearly not impossible. Can you give a short précis as to how you are distinguishing humans and the “A” in artificial?

Sure I can (and thanks for writing) Well, given the specific way you asked that question I confirm your self assertion - and am quite certain that your level of Artificiality converges to zero, which would make you a GI without A... - You stated to "feel" generally intelligent (A's don't feel and don't have an "I" that can feel) - Your nuanced, subtly ironic and self referential way of formulating clearly suggests th…

I think you’ve just successfully proven that general human intelligence indeed does not exist.

Re: AGI is Mathematically Impossible 2: When Entropy Returns

#186

Post by vidarh »

ICBTheory wrote: post #52
ffwd wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think humans have some kind of algorithm for deciding what's true and consolidating information. What that is I don't know.

I guess so too... but whatever it is: it cannot possibly be something algorithmic. Therefore it doesn't matter in terms of demonstrating that AI has a boundary there, that cannot be transcended by tech, compute, training, data etc.

Why can't it be algorithmic?

Why do you think it mustn't be algoritmic?

Why do you think humans are capable of doing anything that isn't algoritmic?

This statement, and your lack of mention of the Church-Turing thesis in your papers suggests you're using a non-standard definition of "algoritmic", and your argument rests on it.

Re: AGI is Mathematically Impossible 2: When Entropy Returns

#187

Post by cma »

moomin wrote: post #183
JonChesterfield wrote: post #170

The state machine with a random number generator is soundly beating some people in cognition already. That is, if the test for intelligence is set high enough that chatgpt doesn't pass it, nor do quite a lot of the human population. If you can prove this can't happen, your axioms are wrong or your deduction in error.

I’m beginning to feel like the tests are part of the problem. Our intelligence tests are all tests of specialisation. We’ve established LLMs are part of the problem. Plenty of people who would fail a bar exam yet still know how many Rs there are in strawberry, could learn a new game just by reading the rules, know how to put up a set of shelves.

If you rarely got to see letters and just saw fragments of words as something like Chinese characters (tokens), could you count the R's in arbitrary words well?

The bigger issue is LLMs still need way way more data than humans get tons what they do. But they also have many less parameters than the human brain.

Re: AGI is Mathematically Impossible 2: When Entropy Returns

#189

Post by vidarh »

quotemstr wrote: post #182

This paper is an attempt to Euler the reader. See https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/10/getting-eulered/ > There is an apocryphal story about the visit of the great atheist philosopher Diderot to the Russian court. Diderot was quite the clever debater, and soon this scandalous new atheism thing was the talk of St. Petersburg. This offended reigning monarch Catherine the Great, who was a good Christian woman ... so sh…

Agreed. To slightly nuance your last three paragraphs, if the brain exceeded the physical, and if this meant we could do something a computer cannot be made to do, then to prove AGI impossible "all" the proponents of such claims would need to do would be to prove that human brains can do a calculation that is not Turing computable.

Anything else short of disproving the Church-Turing thesis will come up short.

They could start by proving that computable functions outside the Turing computable is possible, because if they are not, their claims would fall apart.

But neither this paper, nor his previous paper, even mentions the Church-Turing thesis.

Re: AGI is Mathematically Impossible 2: When Entropy Returns

#190

Post by ccppurcell »

ICBTheory wrote: post #2

This paper presents a theoretical proof that AGI systems will structurally collapse under certain semantic conditions — not due to lack of compute, but because of how entropy behaves in heavy-tailed decision spaces. The idea is called IOpenER: Information Opens, Entropy Rises. It builds on Shannon’s information theory to show that in specific problem classes (those with α ≤ 1), adding information doesn’t reduce uncer…

I am sympathetic to the kind of claims made by your paper. I like impossibility results and I could believe that for some definition of AGI there is at least a plausible argument that entropy is a problem. Scalable quantum computing is a good point of comparison.

But your paper is throwing up crank red flags left and right. If you have a strong argument for such a bold claim, you should put it front and centre: give your definition of AGI, give your proof, let it stand on its own. Some discussion of the definition is useful. Discussion of your personal life and Kant is really not.

Skimming through your paper, your argument seems to boil down to "there must be some questions AGI gets wrong". Well since the definition includes that AGI is algorithmic, this is already clear thanks to the halting problem.

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