HyperAgents: Self-referential self-improving agents

It is significant that if machine-intelligence can improve itself, then there's obviously a transition point at which the bulk of innovation shifts from being done by human minds to being done by machine minds - and if nothing else that's a "phase" transition in technological progress, namely that the future of technological development is no longer the product of human innovation but of our created machines, hopefully acting according to our desires.

The technological singularity is that: the pace of innovation separates from the ability of human minds to keep up with understanding it. We can barely predict our own innovation: we would be unable to usefully predict innovation happening by alien intelligences operating faster then we can think.

Now of course where that line exists, or if it's even plausible, are separate questions (there's a reasonable argument that physical manufacturing is likely to be a serious limiter for a good long time still at the very least).

This is the hand-waving I am talking about right here. We've stepped up from some kind of self-reproducing wave-like patterns in some combination of mediums/fields and somehow moved passed "understanding" and onto its consequences.

Is your position that subjectivity is emergent or inherent? Either requires some kind of defense, either empirically or rationally.

Implying that we are a bunch of waves appreciating waves caused by gravity is poetic but it breaks down in the "appreciating" part. None of your examples of cyclic recurrence (river floods, moon cycles, etc.) lead to understanding, knowledge, experience or awareness.

This criticism doesn't suggest that rhythmic cycles, stability in wave-like systems, gravity, loss-minimization or any other part of your system are wrong. It suggests that there is something missing in either their combination or some additional missing piece.

There is a point, perhaps some region of a gradient/spectrum, where gravity and it's effect on wave-like fields manifests as subjectivity/understanding/experience/awareness. You are just hand waving past that implying it is "necessary". In that way, you are assuming rather than explaining.

I see attention itself as exhibiting wave-like structures. On one end there is the totally holistic, the systemic view in which there is an opening up of possibilities. On the other end is the totally reductionistic, the atomic view in which there is particular discernment between options. Attention seems to shift between these two modes, not as a naive binary but across a spectrum like we have been discussing.

In my view, neither view is privileged. In fact, I make an even more radical hypothesis that it is the motion between these polls that is the interesting feature of attention. At some points we focus on details, at other points we focus on systems - the defining feature is not the scope of attention at any particular time but its change over time.

What I note in your comments is a strong tendency towards either the massive systemic or the miniature atomic (the far extremes of the poles of attention). My push back has been towards the middle ground between them, towards the point at which awareness arises within your system. It is like you are zooming along a wave and slowing down at the top (universal scale) and bottom (atomic scale) but rushing through the mean (human scale).

Another way to say this, I don't believe either a systemic model nor a reductionist description will be adequate to describe how systems (or atoms) become lifelike. I believe the description will involve some oscillation between these perspectives, and that the most fruitful region to explore will be the region roughly at human scale, the place where we see the most advanced life.

However, your points about loss minimization and gravity are well worth further study and I thank you for bringing them to my attention.