Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET • Hacker News Board

Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#231

Post by sixQuarks » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 7:56 PM UTC

eridius wrote: post #201

unclebucknasty wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I assume you'll agree that we'll still be able to observe what it does do and understand that it's doing it No. To make that leap, I must assume the conclusion. I cannot know that I'll be able to observe what it does, because I don't know what it will do (or whether I can even perceive the dimension in which it does it for that matter). Secondly, the word "understand" is subjective. I assume that Musk meant the wor…

I had a really long reply written, but before posting I went to try and find the source of the Elon Musk paraphrased belief, and I can't find it. I don't know where sixQuarks got it from, but without knowing what the source is, it's hard to second-guess what Elon Musk was actually trying to say (or whether he even said it at all). That said, ignoring the Elon Musk bit, even if a superintelligent A.I. figures out how…

Here is the source: http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-raddest-m...

And here is the actual paragraph:

"One topic I disagreed with him on is the nature of consciousness. I think of consciousness as a smooth spectrum. To me, what we experience as consciousness is just what it feels like to be human-level intelligent. We’re smarter, and “more conscious” than an ape, who is more conscious than a chicken, etc. And an alien much smarter than us would be to us as we are to an ape (or an ant) in every way. We talked about this, and Musk seemed convinced that human-level consciousness is a black-and-white thing—that it’s like a switch that flips on at some point in the evolutionary process and that no other animals share. He doesn’t buy the “ants : humans :: humans : [a much smarter extra-terrestrial]” thing, believing that humans are weak computers and that something smarter than humans would just be a stronger computer, not something so beyond us we couldn’t even fathom its existence."

Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#232

Post by eridius » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 8:28 PM UTC

sixQuarks wrote: post #231

eridius wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a really long reply written, but before posting I went to try and find the source of the Elon Musk paraphrased belief, and I can't find it. I don't know where sixQuarks got it from, but without knowing what the source is, it's hard to second-guess what Elon Musk was actually trying to say (or whether he even said it at all). That said, ignoring the Elon Musk bit, even if a superintelligent A.I. figures out how…

Here is the source: http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-raddest-m... And here is the actual paragraph: "One topic I disagreed with him on is the nature of consciousness. I think of consciousness as a smooth spectrum. To me, what we experience as consciousness is just what it feels like to be human-level intelligent. We’re smarter, and “more conscious” than an ape, who is more conscious than a chicken,…

Thanks. It looks like that's a lot more applicable to the Michio Kaku scenario than it is to superintelligent A.I., because the question is whether we can comprehend the existence of aliens, not whether we can understand the technology that a superintelligent A.I. might create, or even understand its motives (comprehending the existence of some other intelligent entity is not the same as understanding what the entity wants or why it does what it does).

Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#233

Post by sixQuarks » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 10:18 PM UTC

eridius wrote: post #232

sixQuarks wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the source: http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-raddest-m... And here is the actual paragraph: "One topic I disagreed with him on is the nature of consciousness. I think of consciousness as a smooth spectrum. To me, what we experience as consciousness is just what it feels like to be human-level intelligent. We’re smarter, and “more conscious” than an ape, who is more conscious than a chicken,…

Thanks. It looks like that's a lot more applicable to the Michio Kaku scenario than it is to superintelligent A.I., because the question is whether we can comprehend the existence of aliens, not whether we can understand the technology that a superintelligent A.I. might create, or even understand its motives (comprehending the existence of some other intelligent entity is not the same as understanding what the entity…

yeah, it's quite interesting. Up until I read this, I simply assumed advanced intelligence could be beyond our grasp, but the more I think about it, the more I feel Elon is correct.

Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#234

Post by unclebucknasty » Wed, Jul 22, 2015, 9:20 PM UTC

sixQuarks wrote: post #233

eridius wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. It looks like that's a lot more applicable to the Michio Kaku scenario than it is to superintelligent A.I., because the question is whether we can comprehend the existence of aliens, not whether we can understand the technology that a superintelligent A.I. might create, or even understand its motives (comprehending the existence of some other intelligent entity is not the same as understanding what the entity…

yeah, it's quite interesting. Up until I read this, I simply assumed advanced intelligence could be beyond our grasp, but the more I think about it, the more I feel Elon is correct.

I guess I'm not clear on what "beyond our grasp" means to you. Does it mean that you can't even comprehend that it exists? Or does it mean that you can't wrap your mind around what it does, what its motivations are, etc?

Because, your parent seems to be saying the former (that we could comprehend that it exists, but wouldn't understand its motives, etc.).

But that's a non-statement. I don't think there's much question that we'd be able to perceive anything that our senses can detect. And, an ant can grasp that an object exists (and, for instance, that it needs to traverse it), even if it understands nothing about its purpose, who built it, etc.

So, it would seem that the only sensible intent in this statement by Musk (and the interpretation that you, but not your parent, seem to support) is that we would have a better understanding of this alien super-intelligence than an ant would of us, simply because we'd crossed some imaginary and arbitrary intelligence threshold, defined by Musk.

It's a comforting (and very human-centric) thought, but I don't think it's true. Considering "infinite intelligence", there is some point along the continuum wherein our relative intelligence to a super-intelligence is akin to an ant's to ours. So, I don't see any reason why we'd better understand the motives, etc. of such a super-intelligence than an ant would ours. To make that statement is to define the bounds of the super-intelligence based on ourselves and our own boundaries, which is to say that it involves completely circular reasoning.

Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#235

Post by johnchristopher » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 9:29 PM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #174

johnchristopher wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll juste leave this quote here: "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"

Let me add: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U

I enjoyed that ! Thank you.

Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#236

Post by sumitviii » Fri, Jul 24, 2015, 12:15 AM UTC

tripzilch wrote: post #219

sumitviii wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to make logingone's argument but here's a better one: All maths done till ~1600 AD could have been done in 50 years, if you see it from perspective of a civilization which has a stable existence. And forgetting all abstractions, stability of surrounding civilizations is basically a random phenomenon. And I'm sure maths done in physics departments is beyond understanding of 80% people outside it, let alone…

Okay, but there's still a difference between: 1. Knowledge that is potentially within our understanding, as humans, even if it takes a few centuries. 2. Knowledge that would require a few millions of years, because we'd need to evolve beyond our current level of intelligence, similar to what chimps, as a species, would need to do if they were to really understand theoretical physics (that is, assuming chimps would in…

How do you think Newton would have reacted if someone said "Pentaquark" in front of him? Think he would have understood when just the word was said? Musk is talking about Newton getting all of modern physics when all he has heard is two undergrads chat on Hacker News.

Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#237

Post by rybosome » Fri, Jul 24, 2015, 9:35 PM UTC

nicboobees wrote: post #227

rybosome wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citizens of London would likely have felt the same way if they learned about Michael Faraday's experiments with electricity which were funded by the Royal Society, given that electricity was considered a party trick at the time. A government which spends public money on scientific exploration is doing its job to guard society against the cost of lost discoveries.

"the cost of lost discoveries"? Things will get discovered eventually, by people who are passionate about them.

That's not necessarily true; some leaps are so obvious that it was only a matter of time before someone got to them, but there are critical jumps which are not so simple. If Newton hadn't invented Calculus, it's impossible to predict when another soul would have...so it's a damn good thing that he was supported by the Royal Society.