Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman
1–10 of 101 posts
Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman
#2 Computers are very, very, very far from being like humans, especially
when it comes to consciousness. The problem is different, that the system,
the military and economic and political system doesn't really need
consciousness.
I know it's just a thesis, but when you think about what our mindless AIs lack, it makes sense. They're characterized by a complete incapability for global reasoning and an inability for personal consideration. You might argue, as the article does, this is exactly how we want our tools to behave, but then we might have to accept there could be hard limits on the complexity of mental tasks these systems are able to perform without access to higher reasoning.
Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman
#3Computers are very, very, very far from being like humans, especially when it comes to consciousness. The problem is different, that the system, the military and economic and political system doesn't really need consciousness. Consciousness is a poorly defined concept with many unfortunate connotations, but let's assume in this context it's the same as self-awareness. I assert it's very likely that nature didn't evol…
> it's very likely that nature didn't evolve conscious brains by accident, it's probably a byproduct of making an intelligence that can reason about itself and its environment.
Strictly speaking, everything in living nature is an "accident". Natural selection acts on "accidental" random mutations. It's not a directed process.
Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman
#4Computers are very, very, very far from being like humans, especially when it comes to consciousness. The problem is different, that the system, the military and economic and political system doesn't really need consciousness. Consciousness is a poorly defined concept with many unfortunate connotations, but let's assume in this context it's the same as self-awareness. I assert it's very likely that nature didn't evol…
> it's very likely that nature didn't evolve conscious brains by accident, it's probably a byproduct of making an intelligence that can reason about itself and its environment. Strictly speaking, everything in living nature is an "accident". Natural selection acts on "accidental" random mutations. It's not a directed process.
The mutations are random, but the selection isn't... it's governed by the environment.
Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman
#5The point of technological progress is to lower the cost of things. Eventually everything will be free or negligible cost. We're already there with music.
Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman
#6Computers are very, very, very far from being like humans, especially when it comes to consciousness. The problem is different, that the system, the military and economic and political system doesn't really need consciousness. Consciousness is a poorly defined concept with many unfortunate connotations, but let's assume in this context it's the same as self-awareness. I assert it's very likely that nature didn't evol…
> it's very likely that nature didn't evolve conscious brains by accident, it's probably a byproduct of making an intelligence that can reason about itself and its environment. Strictly speaking, everything in living nature is an "accident". Natural selection acts on "accidental" random mutations. It's not a directed process.
I'm not sure the original comment deserves this clarification, you'll be hard pressed to find someone on this forum who didn't already know about the nature of mutations.
The point is though that while the mutations themselves are "accidents" and the result is always characterized by a certain randomness, evolution as a problem-solving algorithm isn't itself accidental. While some (or even many) if the characteristics of an organism might be incidental, some major features tend to have a good reason for being selected. Self-awareness, I assert, is such a feature, because it carries implications too large not to have an effect on selection.
Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman
#7Computers are very, very, very far from being like humans, especially when it comes to consciousness. The problem is different, that the system, the military and economic and political system doesn't really need consciousness. Consciousness is a poorly defined concept with many unfortunate connotations, but let's assume in this context it's the same as self-awareness. I assert it's very likely that nature didn't evol…
>it's probably a byproduct of making an intelligence that can reason about itself and its environment.
I think this is exactly right. In fact my suspicion is that "consciousness" is an emergent property of feedback from high resolution sensors. Stated another way, it's a constant internal inventory of everything that can be controlled through the same volitional system.
Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman
#8The point of technological progress is to lower the cost of things. Eventually everything will be free or negligible cost. We're already there with music.
Tangent, but... we're not there with music. We're pretty much there with the cost of copying/distributing music.
And we're partway there with the falling cost of production tools, and wider affordable/free availability of instructional materials.
But creating music -- particularly creating good music -- still takes a significant investment of time in the immediate act of creation and another order of magnitude of time in investing in skills.
And without an economic model to support that investment of time, we'll get less of it.
Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it's very likely that nature didn't evolve conscious brains by accident, it's probably a byproduct of making an intelligence that can reason about itself and its environment. Strictly speaking, everything in living nature is an "accident". Natural selection acts on "accidental" random mutations. It's not a directed process.
I'm not sure the original comment deserves this clarification, you'll be hard pressed to find someone on this forum who didn't already know about the nature of mutations. The point is though that while the mutations themselves are "accidents" and the result is always characterized by a certain randomness, evolution as a problem-solving algorithm isn't itself accidental. While some (or even many) if the characteristic…
> Self-awareness, I assert, is such a feature, because it carries implications too large not to have an effect on selection.
You might assert that, but there's virtually no evidence to support that assertion, and interesting philosophical arguments to the contrary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
Now, if what you mean by "self-awareness" is just the ability of an organism to monitor its own condition and respond accordingly, then we're in agreement, but I find that a very uninteresting assertion and it means that we're not really talking about "consciousness" except inasmuch as a thermostat is conscious: http://consc.net/notes/lloyd-comments.html
Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman
#10The point of technological progress is to lower the cost of things. Eventually everything will be free or negligible cost. We're already there with music.
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