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Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

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Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

#11

Post by Retra »

narrator wrote: post #5

The 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.

>The point of technological progress is to lower the cost of things. Eventually everything will be free or negligible cost

This is a non-sequitur. Lowered costs doesn't mean everything will be (virtually) free. It could very well mean that some particular things are free, but when taken in aggregate, it is not.

In other words, a grain of sand may be free, but 50 million tons of sand is not, and creating and managing a single grain is a completely different problem from managing 50 million tons.

Technology doesn't lower just the cost -- it also increases the volume.

Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

#12

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Retra wrote: post #11
narrator wrote: post #5

The 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.

>The point of technological progress is to lower the cost of things. Eventually everything will be free or negligible cost This is a non-sequitur. Lowered costs doesn't mean everything will be (virtually) free. It could very well mean that some particular things are free, but when taken in aggregate, it is not. In other words, a grain of sand may be free, but 50 million tons of sand is not, and creating and managing…

Also it removes the variations. Who can build a new widget, when technology provides one that's almost as good for almost nothing? Why houses are made of prefab parts or cost 10X-100X to build custom.

And we don't get the best solutions. We get the ones that were lucky and first e.g. VHS vs Betamax.

Technology will see many things reduced to a handful of highly technical mass solutions. Transportation, health, energy, food, everything. The cost of doing something different in small batches will skyrocket.

Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

#13

Post by Retra »

ForHackernews wrote: post #9
fuligo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 conditi…

P-zombies are not an interesting philosophical argument anymore than "Angels dancing on pins" is an interesting argument.

Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

#14

Post by rivd »

fuligo wrote: post #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. 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…

The word "Consciousness" is almost like the word "God".

Many people seem to know what it is, no one can actually define it, and it has never been measured, located or proven to exist.

Maybe we should stop using it altogether.

Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

#15

Post by ForHackernews »

Retra wrote: post #13
ForHackernews wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 conditi…

P-zombies are not an interesting philosophical argument anymore than "Angels dancing on pins" is an interesting argument.

Parent comment is asserting that consciousness/self-awareness is an evolutionarily important feature, that consciousness is favored by natural selection.

P-zombies are vivid counterexample that points to the possibility of epiphenomenalism. There's no reason to believe that consciousness is a necessary feature for an organism to respond to its environment in a survival-enhancing way. In fact, there is some neurological evidence that suggests nerve impulses to take an action precede conscious awareness: http://www.consciousentities.com/libet.htm

Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

#16

Post by toomuchtodo »

rivd wrote: post #14
fuligo wrote: post #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. 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…

The word "Consciousness" is almost like the word "God". Many people seem to know what it is, no one can actually define it, and it has never been measured, located or proven to exist. Maybe we should stop using it altogether.

I wouldn't go that far. Consciousness is the result of algorithms properly functioning in my brain chemistry which allows me self-awareness.

Our brains process information in a certain way due to evolution, therefore, we are.

Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

#17

Post by jkaunisv1 »

I find it strange that he says we have no way of imagining what post-singularity would be like. I get his point, it's so different that we can't really get it. But we have ample science fiction that still explores the possibilities and gives us a starting point for imagining it.

Also surprised he doesn't mention basic income when discussing the decreasing value of the individual and the problems that could cause. He's identified some important problems but this interview was very high level and didn't seem to even touch on possible solutions. These are things society is already thinking of.

Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

#18

Post by ForHackernews »

rivd wrote: post #14
fuligo wrote: post #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. 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…

The word "Consciousness" is almost like the word "God". Many people seem to know what it is, no one can actually define it, and it has never been measured, located or proven to exist. Maybe we should stop using it altogether.

We should either stop using it, or at the very least own up to what it is we're [trying to] talk about: http://consc.net/papers/facing.html

Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

#19

Post by Retra »

ForHackernews wrote: post #15
Retra wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

P-zombies are not an interesting philosophical argument anymore than "Angels dancing on pins" is an interesting argument.

Parent comment is asserting that consciousness/self-awareness is an evolutionarily important feature, that consciousness is favored by natural selection. P-zombies are vivid counterexample that points to the possibility of epiphenomenalism. There's no reason to believe that consciousness is a necessary feature for an organism to respond to its environment in a survival-enhancing way. In fact, there is some neurologic…

P-zombies don't exist, so they are not a counterexample to anything. In fact, they cannot possibly exist, so they don't even point to the possibility of anything interesting.

>There's no reason to believe that consciousness is a necessary feature for an organism to respond to its environment in a survival-enhancing way.

The reason to believe this is that systems with "consiousness" are a strict superset of systems with "responding to the environment." They are not unrelated ideas, and in fact, the ability of an organism to survive is closely tied to this kind of behavior.

I have never heard anyone try to defend P-zomies unless they were simply unaware of what the word 'meaning' means, or how our words acquire meaning. If you know how this works, you should be able to easily see why P-zombies are a meaningless idea -- an incongruous hypothetical. (Like "what would we be talking about if I didn't exist?")

Same goes for Searle's Chinese Room argument. If you assume something that is impossible, it is easy to conclude any ridiculous thing you like. P-zombies are impossible. They are not anymore useful than any other self-contained contradiction.

Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

#20

Post by vinceguidry »

The thought of being able to abolish death as soon as you have a working BCI by running one's mind on silicon hardware is, if not ludicrous, at least really really far out. So, you hook your brain up to a computer, and get basic input and output. Great, you now have an upgraded keyboard / mouse. It doesn't get any better no matter how many capabilities you add. Direct memory access, changing the contents of programs on the fly, none of it will abolish death any more than being able to do by 'hand' does. The best you can do is create a really sophisticated program that will continue acting deterministically after the programmer goes away. You will live on in the same way Tolkien lived on after he died in his books.

You're not going to be able to abolish death until you can get neural networks to run at the speed of your current brain hardware and at similar capacity. In other words, you still have to be able to simulate a brain. To take the functions of the brain currently has, and get enough of them working electronically until you can start to build an identity on top of it.

Even once you do that, it won't feel like your brain without a lot of training, both on your artificial hardware and on your biological hardware. I envision an era where early adopters have hybrid consciousness, where we slowly incorporate an electronic identity with our biological one. Going from "This is my brain extension" to "this is another part of me, some of my thoughts are here, some of them are in this piece of hardware."

I suspect this will be a highly individual process that we will slowly gain mass competence with in a similar way we're doing with software now. We'll have to grow our ability to simulate neuronal processes and replicate our psychologies computationally. Even then, it will feel like an artificial prosthetic until you have enough capabilities to where if you suddenly lost the other side, you wouldn't feel trapped in the most hellish solitary-confinement prison ever devised.

Then after they're fully integrated, start prioritizing experiencing through the mind prosthetic. I suspect one would need many many years before cutting off the biological part wouldn't cause grievous trauma to one's sense of identity. Especially since our legal system will need a long time to figure out how to fit non-biological beings into society.

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