Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We know a ton about the brain but so little about the mind itself. We still don't have definitive answers to what consciousness is, why it's here, what's useful for, etc. Some people debate whether the mind exists at all. Also, there's still very little understanding of the difference between the conscious and unconscious mind. One of the really, really bad consequences of the Cold War was the scientific divide bet…
Well, there are other ideas. As science leads you to believe that your consciousness is nothing at all (according to your description), bible based christianity tells you that your conscious is part of your soul, which is the part of you that lives forever. It is independent of your body, which will eventually be replaced with a perfect body.
AI
251–260 of 317 posts
Re: AI
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
We know a ton about the brain but so little about the mind itself. We still don't have definitive answers to what consciousness is, why it's here, what's useful for, etc. Some people debate whether the mind exists at all. Also, there's still very little understanding of the difference between the conscious and unconscious mind. I think building an artificial consciousness is going too far. Artificial intelligence is…
> We know a ton about the brain but so little about the mind itself. We still don't have definitive answers to what consciousness is, why it's here, what's useful for, etc. Some people debate whether the mind exists at all. Also, there's still very little understanding of the difference between the conscious and unconscious mind. One of the really, really bad consequences of the Cold War was the scientific divide bet…
Compared to Russia, and most of the former soviet block, the US is a fairly religious place. In most of the "importance of religion" surveys we rank in the ~50% "yes" category whereas Russia is consistently ranked as one of the least religious places on Earth. (See http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Importance_of_religion_by_cou...). It seems only natural that the US would have a lot of metaphysical threads woven thru its work on conciousness.
Re: AI
#253Building AGI in Common Lisp if anyone wants to help.
Re: AI
#254Many people see Artificial General Intelligence as a panacea. The idea is, "We'll create artificially intelligent scientists who will solve all of our other problems for us!". I think that future generations will look back on this as a modern version of alchemy. If blogs had existed centuries ago I'm sure that people would have called the transmutation of metal the most important trend of their time. This isn't to de…
>The most important trend today is collecting massive amounts of data and using them to make accurate predictions.
Does it strike you odd that humans have real trouble doing this? We are not good with 'big' data. Maybe from a large population things can be inferred, but why are we programming computers to do things we can't? Did the goalposts move? (yes)
I do think AGI lacks the incompleteness that's seemingly required of everything real. With no constraint (humans have many: low wattage, 8hr GC cycles, fairly static network structure..), it's too perfect a goal.
Re: AI
#255If anyone is interested in AI, I highly recommend joining Less Wrong, a community started by AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky. He started the community to convince people to focus on the "friendly AI problem". [1] I actually recommend that everyone read LW, but especially if you're interested in AI. [1] In a nutshell, the friendly AI problem is: assume we create an AI. It may rapidly become more intelligent than us, i…
Yudkowsky is a megalomaniacal dilettante. Sure, there are some interesting ideas at Less Wrong. But don't get sucked into believing that Yudkowsky has the one and only truth, as the majority of the community there believes.
Does MIRI have a single real AI researcher, yet?
Also, as I say down the page, Friendly AI is a silly research project at this stage of AI knowledge. It's like trying to figure out how to make horseless carriages safe before you have an internal combustion engine, or even know what one is. It's an interesting thought experiment, but one that is probably unsolvable before we know a little bit more about what an AI will look like (an emulated human brain? Something else?)
Re: AI
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the AI is more intelligent, I'd prefer it take over anyway, even if it gets rid of us. When you have a child, do you want the child to stay at home and do what you say forever? Or do you want the child to succeed as much as possible? I want the latter.
One of the major realisations from reading Less Wrong is taht Intelligence and Goals/Desires have nothing to do with each other. An AI might be much more intelligent, but it has a goal system that basically says: "Make as many paperclips as you can". Everything it does will be with the singular purpose of making more paperclips. Not music, math, sport, culture or anything else that we think of as good. Not "help save…
If our approach to AI is to model the human brain (i.e. passing the Turing test), this probably won't happen.
Friendly AI is a silly research project at this stage of AI research. It's like trying to figure out how to make horseless carriages safe before you have an internal combustion engine, or even know what one is.
Re: AI
#257I'm a strong A.I hobbyist, and I just put up a website for my basic abstract algorithm: genudi. The website's implementation of the algo revolves around having a conversation with a computer. Currently in limited release, you can request a Pioneer account from there: http://www.genudi.com
An example is worth a thousand words, take a look at this conversation with a strong AI machine: http://www.genudi.com/share/27/Dialog
Re: AI
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We know a ton about the brain but so little about the mind itself. We still don't have definitive answers to what consciousness is, why it's here, what's useful for, etc. Some people debate whether the mind exists at all. Also, there's still very little understanding of the difference between the conscious and unconscious mind. One of the really, really bad consequences of the Cold War was the scientific divide bet…
I think that's another possible narrative for the mind but it's certainly not hard science. There's no concrete data showing where the mind is in our bodies or what part of the brain creates it. Psycology can't answer questions like where does the mind come from or what is experience. It's an interesting narrative though and I'll check out those books.
> Psycology can't answer questions like where does the mind come from or what is experience.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this. Of course it can, that's the whole purpose of psychology (and, more fashionably, neuroscience of course). To me that sounds like saying science can't answer these questions. Do note that when I say "psychology" I mean strictly the scientific areas of whatever comes in the bag labelled "psychology". Due to historical accidents the term acquired a lot of BS pseudo-scientific baggage, and it's really a shame those things can detract from a wealth of valuable hard results honest scientific psychology uncovered.
The answer that developmental cognitive psychology, at least the theory I'm referring to, gives is that "the mind" comes from the only place it can come from: neural processes and the way they hook into environmental interactions of the organism (social and physical). The key to understanding what gives rise to "consciousness" is in understanding the role of language acquisition in broader cognitive development. The point where a child utters it's first words is neither the beginning nor the end of this extremely nuanced process. In my first post I took it for granted it's understood that this is not just armchair speculation, it's based on empirical data. As any good scientific theory it's far from complete, maybe in some details is inaccurate but it's certainly infinitely better that an endless philosophical debate (with strong religious, or in the best case idealist, undertones) on what the mind is and where it comes from.
Re: AI
#259Computers are actually pretty good at being creative already. That's not the hardest problem to solve...
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/nature-and-technology/rise-r...
Re: AI
#260Sorry to be negative; Sam Altman is a great guy and had plenty of valuable insight before, but his take here is infantile at best. When people accuse PG of speaking in very authoritative terms, it doesn't bother me. It's a writing device. But here Sam is doing the same trick, with the difference that I know the field he talks about well enough to see the poor logic transitions. My take: don't imitate PG's style on areas where you are not deeply knowledgeable.