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Human

quarter--mile.com

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Re: Human

#261

Post by lancekey »

neom wrote: post #51

What this thread keeps surfacing, and so much discussion around this stuff generally right now, from speculation about the next phase of intelligence, the role of pattern, emotion, logic, debates over consciousness, the anthropocentrism of our meaning-making...is that we are the source of reality (and ourselves). Instead of a “final authority” or a simple march from animal to machine, what if everything from mind, ph…

Scott Adams has an imaginative novella on this called God’s Debris[0]. I read it years ago (when it was free).

I remember enjoying it and liking the takeaway if not the full premise - “we are the universe trying to understand itself”.

[0] - https://web.archive.org/web/20130121195252/http://www.andrew...

Re: Human

#262

Post by tcgv »

neom wrote: post #51

What this thread keeps surfacing, and so much discussion around this stuff generally right now, from speculation about the next phase of intelligence, the role of pattern, emotion, logic, debates over consciousness, the anthropocentrism of our meaning-making...is that we are the source of reality (and ourselves). Instead of a “final authority” or a simple march from animal to machine, what if everything from mind, ph…

> Humans aren’t just a step on a ladder to “pure logic,” nor are machines soulless automatons.

Nope. Machines are soulless automations. LLMs are algebra at scale, there’s no solid evidence to suggest otherwise.

The capacity LLMs have to mimic human reasoning should not be mistaken for actual human reasoning (which, to be fair, we don’t even fully understand).

PS: I’m considering a definition of “soul” that includes anything spiritual, emotional, or conscious.

PPS: I’m open (and eager) to change my view based on solid evidence :)

Re: Human

#263

Post by piyuv »

vasco wrote: post #121

If the machines thought it was boring they wouldn't be acting as machines and it wouldn't be so boring in the first place. Later on the machines also "obssess" about following the news of the humans on the new EARTH, but again, they wouldn't. If they are boring machines they wouldn't be bored. I feel like this is too much of a plot paradox for the story to make sense to me, but it's still entertaining.

Also, climate change is not “introduced”, it’s 100% human-made.

Re: Human

#265

Post by cosmojg »

aesch wrote: post #227
bix6 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“If the universe is information at play” I’ve thought of it more as energy at play but I like this perspective as well. What can I dream up next is also fascinating as this current science / tech worldview feels like it will persist forever but surely it will be overshadowed at some point just as other paradigms before it have been.

Are we entirely sure that energy and information aren't the same thing, or if they aren't the same thing they are both highly overlapping echoes of some more fundamental concept? Or maybe they are two sides of the same coin?

They are related by Landauer's Principle: E=k×T×ln(2), where E is the energy required to erase 1 bit of information, k is the Boltzmann constant, and T is the temperature of the system storing that 1 bit of information.

Information is physical. It is inextricably tied to the physical degrees of freedom of the system storing it. Per Landauer's Principle, erasing information is an irreversible process that increases the entropy of the environment, and this increase in entropy is the dissipation of energy. With that in mind, I would argue that you are correct, energy and information are in fact two sides of the same coin.

Re: Human

#266

Post by bdelmas »

Great read. At first I thought it would be about a blog 100% made by a human with 0% AI content and how we are already reading partially generated content by AI and soon fully generated, and where a full 100% human blog (or any media/content) will become extremely rare...

Re: Human

#267

Post by Ozymandias-9 »

Geste wrote: post #177
neom wrote: post #51

What this thread keeps surfacing, and so much discussion around this stuff generally right now, from speculation about the next phase of intelligence, the role of pattern, emotion, logic, debates over consciousness, the anthropocentrism of our meaning-making...is that we are the source of reality (and ourselves). Instead of a “final authority” or a simple march from animal to machine, what if everything from mind, ph…

I wish I could come up with such thoughts on my own. But then, maybe I wouldn't be impressed that much by other people. From just a random soul on the internet : if ever you have the time to take this thought and expand it (how you came to it and some implications), I would read/pay whatever came out of it. Thanks you for sharing this.

+1 on this.

Re: Human

#268

Post by rambojohnson »

neom wrote: post #51

What this thread keeps surfacing, and so much discussion around this stuff generally right now, from speculation about the next phase of intelligence, the role of pattern, emotion, logic, debates over consciousness, the anthropocentrism of our meaning-making...is that we are the source of reality (and ourselves). Instead of a “final authority” or a simple march from animal to machine, what if everything from mind, ph…

this sounds largely like spiritualizing technology without wrestling with its material consequences. There’s something slippery about invoking “awareness” as both subject and substrate without ever pinning down whose awareness, under what conditions, and to what end.

"now is your shot at particpating" in what exactly? merely existing? you techno-mysticism types spook the hell out of me.

Re: Human

#269

Post by sidkhuntia »

wagwangbosy wrote: post #33
sidkhuntia wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why so? What are your thoughts on this?

I guess it depends on what you mean by emotions. If you mean emotion as a state of consciousness then you would have to prove that consciousness is not an emergent property of matter and that CPU's don't have this property. Consciousness is hard to debate though since its pretty metaphysical in nature and there's no real argument against solipsism, so all argumentation starts with the axiom that all awake adult human…

I agree with you in this. Machines having survival instincts would qualify as intelligence for me. Its the same as having emotions, you need to have strong emotions for your self for survival.

Re: Human

#270

Post by littlestymaar »

killerstorm wrote: post #173
littlestymaar wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is interesting, gp's point still stand as the text explicitly says “There is no emotion” in the world of machines.

The language of reward mechanism can be translated to language of emotions. Emotions is something humans experience and understand on innate level, they are qualia. If a reward structure is translated to our language we can get a better intuitive understanding. E.g. a direct negative reward associated with undesired states is often called "pain". E.g. if you want robot to avoid bumping into walls you give it a "pain"…

What you've written doesn't change anything to the fact that there's a contradiction in the author's writing. And as ithkuil said in another comment[1] it's not surprising at all that such a contradiction would occur in a work of fiction written by a human, because we are first an foremost emotional beings and we cannot really imagine how would a society of purely rational beings would be.

I don't really understand why you want to pretend that there's no inconsistency in a piece of fiction, by invoking pseudo-technical arguments that are entirely foreign to the said piece of fiction.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43992932

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