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Dude, You Broke the Future (2017)

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Re: Dude, You Broke the Future (2017)

#111

Post by pdonis »

benlivengood wrote: post #107
pdonis wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They literally do. None of the things you describe make corporations magically able to do things without the group of people that make up the corporation doing things.

Limited liability allows companies to take risks that no sane individual or group of individuals would take on their own. Limited liability is precisely the factor that lets corporations act as agents instead of extensions of individual or group human goals.

> Limited liability allows companies to take risks that no sane individual or group of individuals would take on their own.

No, limited liability allows people to use corporations as a tool, which includes misusing them to take risks that should not be taken.

> Limited liability is precisely the factor that lets corporations act as agents instead of extensions of individual or group human goals.

No, limited liability is the factor that lets people use corporations to further goals that benefit them, including goals that are harmful to society as a whole.

It's still people doing things, not corporations as magical agents independent of people. Thinking of a corporation as doing nefarious things as a separate agent from the people running it just distracts attention from the actual problem, which is people who want to do nefarious things misusing whatever tool they can.

Re: Dude, You Broke the Future (2017)

#113

Post by free_rms »

fiblye wrote: post #76
free_rms wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh. Most of the mainstream media ran headlines predicting 99% chance of a Hillary win and a few of them sniped at Nate Silver for giving Trump a 30% chance (stupid tech bros). A single contrarian take doesn't undermine that trend.

The 99% number so often paraded as a sign of failure wasn't a 99% chance of being president. It was a 99% chance of winning the popular vote. That prediction was correct, and by a decently large margin. But losers often become president because of the electoral college (it's happened 5 times already), and losers will continue to benefit for years to come.

It was a conditional probability of Trump winning a bunch of states he was behind in, naively projected as if they were independent. It turned out they all swung the same way, and those probabilities were not independent.

Re: Dude, You Broke the Future (2017)

#114

Post by ALittleLight »

tomazio wrote: post #99
ALittleLight wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What error?

That one went right over your head.

No, I don't think so. I think my response went right over yours.

The comment is trying to mirror my criticism - "I read the first part, found an error, and stopped". My response is trying to highlight that, in fact, their response does not mirror mine because I had actual errors that I pointed out that motivated me to stop reading, whereas that comment did not (apparently).

In other words, if I had actually made substantive errors in my first sentence or so, it might make sense to stop reading. I'd have already demonstrated that my thinking wasn't very clear. If that was the case though, then it would be an invalid criticism of my reasoning (read a bit, saw an error, stopped) because that comment author would be following the same paradigm. On the other hand, if I didn't actually make any substantive errors in the first sentence or so my post, then the criticism is still invalid, because, while I actually pointed out substantive errors in the OP, this comment doesn't point out substantive errors in my comment.

Re: Dude, You Broke the Future (2017)

#115

Post by Ygg2 »

hwillis wrote: post #23
Ygg2 wrote: post #16

> nastiest ideas in Presybterian Protestantism. And if you follow Charlie's reasoning, that simpler parts, can't lead to a highly advanced intelligence, you come to conclusion intelligence is derived from a divine soul. Intelligence isn't as uncommon as we think, but it takes long time to emerge.

> if you follow Charlie's reasoning, that simpler parts, can't lead to a highly advanced intelligence, you come to conclusion intelligence is derived from a divine soul. Thats an absolutely ridiculous interpretation. Asserting that our current "simple parts" are still very far from AGI is nowhere even close to asserting that intelligence is immaterial. Its very, very obvious that there are myriad possible leaps we mi…

> Thats an absolutely ridiculous interpretation. Asserting that our current "simple parts" are still very far from AGI is nowhere even close to asserting that intelligence is immaterial.

Not really what it says. Look at following passage:

> AI singularity as a narrative, and identify the numerous places in the story where the phrase "... and then a miracle happens" occurs, it becomes apparent pretty quickly that they've reinvented Christianity.

The phrase "miracle happens" , to me is suspect. Intelligence rose many times in various creatures. There is nothing miracle about something that rose multiple number of times.

Are Singularists wrong? Yes. They confuse saturation for exponential curves; current neural networks are far cry from actual neuron networks, and their time scales reflect more their fear of death than any sensible timeline.

If Charlie wants to criticize Singularists, there are plenty of valid reasons. Them being cult like is the least important one.

Re: Dude, You Broke the Future (2017)

#116

Post by aaron695 »

nemothekid wrote: post #83

Comparing Corporation to Sci-Fi super AI's is missing the point I think. I don't think the author literally believe corporations are AGIs, he starts with the point that corporations are "old, slow AIs". The article starts from a single argument - we have to be careful with AIs that are smarter than us, because if we don't instruct them carefully, we will end up in a paperclip maximizer situation. From there I take aw…

> I don't think the author literally believe corporations are AGIs

In the video questions section he confirms he means literal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3172&v=RmIgJ64z6...

Look at HN as an AI, you can ask a very complex question and get a very complex answer, it's AGI.

4chan can send humans out to do its real world physical bidding. It can literally get people shot.

These are very complex AI's.

Re: Dude, You Broke the Future (2017)

#117

Post by hoseja »

aaron695 wrote: post #116
nemothekid wrote: post #83

Comparing Corporation to Sci-Fi super AI's is missing the point I think. I don't think the author literally believe corporations are AGIs, he starts with the point that corporations are "old, slow AIs". The article starts from a single argument - we have to be careful with AIs that are smarter than us, because if we don't instruct them carefully, we will end up in a paperclip maximizer situation. From there I take aw…

> I don't think the author literally believe corporations are AGIs In the video questions section he confirms he means literal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3172&v=RmIgJ64z6... Look at HN as an AI, you can ask a very complex question and get a very complex answer, it's AGI. 4chan can send humans out to do its real world physical bidding. It can literally get people shot. These are very complex AI's.

There is a difference between AI and a meme I think. AI is understood to run on computers, memes run on human brains. Corporations, nations, 4chan are memes, not AI.

I just think this is a really neat idea.

Re: Dude, You Broke the Future (2017)

#118

Post by aaron695 »

hoseja wrote: post #117
aaron695 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think the author literally believe corporations are AGIs In the video questions section he confirms he means literal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3172&v=RmIgJ64z6... Look at HN as an AI, you can ask a very complex question and get a very complex answer, it's AGI. 4chan can send humans out to do its real world physical bidding. It can literally get people shot. These are very complex AI's.

There is a difference between AI and a meme I think. AI is understood to run on computers, memes run on human brains. Corporations, nations, 4chan are memes, not AI. I just think this is a really neat idea.

Ignoring Charlie Stross's definition, I would normally call HN emergent behaviour over AI.

Perhaps off topic, but clearly memes have also changed our hardware.

Old memes like religion will have definitely changed our evolution aka DNA and probably to make our DNA fit better with the meme.

Corporations perhaps don't have long enough on a person lineage to make the change, but it'd be interesting to investigate.

Re: Dude, You Broke the Future (2017)

#119

Post by kaibee »

hoseja wrote: post #117
aaron695 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think the author literally believe corporations are AGIs In the video questions section he confirms he means literal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3172&v=RmIgJ64z6... Look at HN as an AI, you can ask a very complex question and get a very complex answer, it's AGI. 4chan can send humans out to do its real world physical bidding. It can literally get people shot. These are very complex AI's.

There is a difference between AI and a meme I think. AI is understood to run on computers, memes run on human brains. Corporations, nations, 4chan are memes, not AI. I just think this is a really neat idea.

> There is a difference between AI and a meme I think.

Yes, I agree.

> AI is understood to run on computers, memes run on human brains.

This, I disagree with. I think the difference is something more like, "virus vs bacteria/multicellular organism", however both run on human brains.

Memes are more virus-like. Small data-payloads, only goal is to replicate and spread as fast as possible, lots of mutation.

This is not what corporations/nations are. They are far larger and more slow-moving, much more complex, with various immune systems, defense mechanisms, and goals.

Both only exist in/run on the "human brain" computational substrate, but the "corporation" is a distributed AI while memes are just viruses spreading from machine to machine. If all of humanity died tomorrow, Amazon and memes would both cease to exist.

Re: Dude, You Broke the Future (2017)

#120

Post by jaekash »

aaron695 wrote: post #116
nemothekid wrote: post #83

Comparing Corporation to Sci-Fi super AI's is missing the point I think. I don't think the author literally believe corporations are AGIs, he starts with the point that corporations are "old, slow AIs". The article starts from a single argument - we have to be careful with AIs that are smarter than us, because if we don't instruct them carefully, we will end up in a paperclip maximizer situation. From there I take aw…

> I don't think the author literally believe corporations are AGIs In the video questions section he confirms he means literal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3172&v=RmIgJ64z6... Look at HN as an AI, you can ask a very complex question and get a very complex answer, it's AGI. 4chan can send humans out to do its real world physical bidding. It can literally get people shot. These are very complex AI's.

> Look at HN as an AI

Look as a Human as an AGI, oh wait sorry, words have meanings and neither a Human or multiple humans satisfy the definition of AGI.

> 4chan can send humans out to do its real world physical bidding. It can literally get people shot.

4chan can't satsify the definition of AGI though, guess we found it's fatal flaw.

> These are very complex AI's.

Only if you take AI to mean whatever you want it to mean to make this claim valid.

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