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Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

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Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#111

Post by mamcx »

scrollaway wrote: post #74
ccccc0 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that Global Civilization is nothing but living!

I read a comment on HN a while back arguing that today's companies are essentially human-powered AIs. It made me think quite a lot -- large companies especially take a lifeform of their own. They tend to mostly care for themselves. Actions are taken "for the company" without any one person being actively aware of why. Higher-ups have some form of backdoor access to the direction the company takes; a symbiotic relatio…

Kind of ironic to think that exist something like 7 billon of IA around, but the judgment about them is mostly

meh.

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#112

Post by danieltillett »

carterehsmith wrote: post #109
danieltillett wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has been incredibly strong selection pressure for babies being able to get down the birth canal - the death rate in child birth pre-modern times was something like 10%. The human brain is about as big as you can make it and still reproduce. What we would expect when you have strong selection for two competing forces (smaller head size and greater intelligence) is for the brain to shrink in size and become more…

When we look at the baby-in-a-birth-canal problem, you can obviously go two ways: smaller baby head (and torso) or wider birth canal. Apparently Neanderthals had wider pelvis _and_ larger heads/brains. So they kind of picked the #2 route.

The problem with pelvis expansion is it is hard to select for widening of the pelvis without upsetting walking and running. Development is hierarchical and bones are lower down in the heirachy than brain size.

In regards Neanderthals I would not be surprised if it was wider pelvis that allowed for them to have larger brained babies. This is a fascinating area.

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#113

Post by ChoHag »

kordless wrote: post #49
sixQuarks wrote: post #10

I don't see the correlation. The author is talking more about systems. The difference with AI is that it will have all of the knowledge within a system and thus be able to make incredible connections between disparate fields of knowledge. On a separate note, I had an interesting thought about AI as I was looking at a cool architectural photo. I would love to design a building, but I don't know a thing about it. It wo…

Why does AI have to have access to all information? Seems a bit wasteful, resource wise, if you ask me.

TCP's not that resource-intensive.

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#114

Post by grahamburger »

DonaldFisk wrote: post #107
tempestn wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And more generally, I would say it just depends on the quality of the AI. There is no fundamental reason why such a system would have to recommend only similar music. It could try contrasting music, and build a picture of what aspects of the music you like. It could draw conclusions to recommend seemingly different genres which nonetheless share some commonality that might make them appeal to you. It could also occas…

The algorithms used to make musical recommendations do statistical analysis on numerical ratings given by different people to different songs. They typically know nothing about music, as musical knowledge is understood not to improve their results. I wouldn't call them AI - they're neither knowledge-based systems nor neural networks.

I don't think that that's true for Pandora: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Genome_Project

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#115

Post by dredmorbius »

bogomipz wrote: post #108
dredmorbius wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Space alien cats don't need qualifications. Nor do they claim them. As others have noted, Eno's piece is a poor rewrite of I Pencil , itself a poorly reasoned propaganda piece. Crooked Timber has an excellent deconstruction of that: http://crookedtimber.org/2011/04/16/i-pencil-a-product-of-th... The one at Freakonomics is weaker sauce but also pretty biting: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/i-pencil/ I've pointed to s…

"Your assumptions as to my familiarity or otherwise with Eno's works place you on the rather precarious precipice of a domain in which I am and insist privileged expertise of obvious nature." That is one poorly formed run-on sentence. What does that even mean? That's sounds as though it came out of a babble generator. Is that an AI joke? "You've also focused on the irrelevant element of my argument, though if anythin…

It means I know my life, my experiences, my tastes, and my thoughts, far better than you.

Don't even try to claim primacy of such knowledge. Not of me, not of anyone.

(Now, if someone's saying one thing and doing another, point that out. But a person owns and has priviledged access to what rattles within their own skull.)

The economics I cited and referenced is most decidedly not pop. I've got my own thoughts on some matters, those aren't what I'm presenting here.

You're also now going all ad-hom on Freakonomics. I didn't say that Freakonomics is right. I'm presenting it as a valid argument, in place of constructing a similar one from whole sauce for your entertainment. The point isn't that either source are authorities, but that I've read and agree with the reasoning.

And just hang onto that cloth you're about to hand me, I've little need of it.

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#116

Post by ArkyBeagle »

atemerev wrote: post #39

As a curious software engineer, I have a basic familiarity on where heating oil comes from (I remember my first sci-pop book with a section on basics of oil processing), where nuts are grown, basics of food industry supply chains, and every other example covered. My knowledge might be rudimentary and without much detail, but I try to cover all bases, and when I discover some area of human knowledge I genuinely know n…

There is such a thing as "rational ignorance". It's all about the cost benefit analysis.

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#117

Post by stalcottsmith »

clarkmoody wrote: post #30
pygy_ wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For your first scenario economic growth must be fueled by a proportional growth in energy consumption. Fossil and Nuclear fuels exist in finite quantities, and the rate of sunlight that hits earth is more or less constant. Most people would still starve as fields would be repurposed to produce fuel.

Not necessarily. Or rather, the growth of wealth could double every few months. And this wealth effect could be due to massive reductions in labor costs by employing AI, leading to increases in standard of living as the price of good plummets. I haven't looked at charts for the economy as a whole, but I bet certain kinds of technology provide nonlinear benefits for linear growth in energy consumption. Think about one…

The general price of goods plummeting would be seen by most modern economists as something of a disaster -- so occupied are they with engineering inflation. I don't think any mainstream economists have models or theories of economic development or social organization that would take us to a Kardashev level 2 civilization.

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#118

Post by ArkyBeagle »

tambourine_man wrote: post #80
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #47

> I read once that human brains began shrinking about 10 thousand years ago and are now as much as 15% smaller than they were then. Timeline's a bit off, but the science is still a shocker: > Over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human male brain has decreased from 1,500 cubic centimeters to 1,350 cc, losing a chunk the size of a tennis ball. The female brain has shrunk by about the same proportion. h…

I find that scary. A huge collection of specialists makes for a pretty fragile species.

Networks of specialists is more robust than disorganized bands of generalists. You don't have to go too far back in human history to find food insecurity and disease dominating all other problems.

You get rid of those through specialization.

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#119

Post by ArkyBeagle »

e12e wrote: post #88
TeMPOraL wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Indeed. I fear AI that stops being dependent on people. Such systems are still far off, I believe. But I don't see why we couldn't intentionally or by accident create a new form of life that could out-compete us, and in the end make us extinct. Since the line between AI realized in a machine and systems in general is kind of thin and blurry, one could argue that the economy is about to become such a system. If auto…

Absolutely. Just as we are (in my opinion) a result of emergent systems (evolution) - the systems we build should be expected to have emergent properties. And there are other systems we are beholden to (and impact) such as the biosphere and the climate. Criticism of capitalism is often misunderstood, or misconstrued as "conspiracy theory" - while what it often is, is just pointing out the most likely and apparent eme…

Some of the things attributed to capitalism have nearly nothing to do with capitalism itself. I'm starting, for one, to think that there's probably less concentration of wealth and power than we think. Bill Gates is a heck of lot wealthier than was JP Morgan, but Morgan had a lot more concentrated power and wealth than Gates.

Not to quibble, I just think our analysis is deeply flawed.

Re: Just A New Fractal Detail In The Big Picture (2015)

#120

Post by ArkyBeagle »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #60
campground wrote: post #33

This is similar to a thought I've had for some time now; That artificial intelligence is most likely to emerge - rather than be explicitly designed - from our increasingly complex, interconnected, self-regulating systems and institutions. We will be no more aware of, or able to converse with it, than the bacteria in our guts are aware of us. Also, artificial intelligence is the wrong term. We have artificial intellig…

>> What we are talking about is a new, higher form of real intelligence. Which if the author is right and our brains have already been shrinking means that within a few hundred years, there won't be any humans left - just "higher intelligence". I've never understood people's naivety thinking we're always going to be at the top of the evolutionary ladder. At some point, we will be replaced and humans in whatever form…

I think termites and fungii are above us on the evolutionary ladder - they're more by count and by mass.

If we cease, we had a good run.

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