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The Singularity in Our Past

cscs.umich.edu

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Re: The Singularity in Our Past

#41

Post by eru »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #17
cicada wrote: post #4

Confusions like this are the reason why I favor the intelligence explosion flavour of the singularity ( http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/schools ) -- there's no confusion as to whether we've already had one. The industrial revolution, while revolutionary, did not improve on the intelligence that invented it. The single most important part about the singularity is that the technology does improve on the intelligence t…

The industrial revolution, while revolutionary, did not improve on the intelligence that invented it. ...typed the person into his quantum-mechanically-mediated instantaneous conversation with ten thousand of the best-educated technologists on Earth. You're going to have trouble convincing me that Google doesn't make me more intelligent. You're also going to have trouble convincing me that, say, cheap printing and ch…

> ...typed the person into his quantum-mechanically-mediated instantaneous conversation with ten thousand of the best-educated technologists on Earth.

Are you referring to HN?

Re: The Singularity in Our Past

#42

Post by mechanical_fish »

eru wrote: post #41
mechanical_fish wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The industrial revolution, while revolutionary, did not improve on the intelligence that invented it. ...typed the person into his quantum-mechanically-mediated instantaneous conversation with ten thousand of the best-educated technologists on Earth. You're going to have trouble convincing me that Google doesn't make me more intelligent. You're also going to have trouble convincing me that, say, cheap printing and ch…

> ...typed the person into his quantum-mechanically-mediated instantaneous conversation with ten thousand of the best-educated technologists on Earth. Are you referring to HN?

Yes and no. HN is the proximate host of the conversation. But HN is linkable and indexed by Google, so if you make a sufficiently interesting comment it really does have the potential to be read by everyone with an Internet connection and a reading knowledge of the language it is in.

Re: The Singularity in Our Past

#43

Post by wazoox »

eru wrote: post #40
wazoox wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were seeing it as not sustainable, while we're actually seeing the first hiccups. As you may now know, finally the EIA admitted in its latest report that peak oil already occurred : http://www.iea.org/w/bookshop/add.aspx?id=422 quote :"If governments put in place the energy and climate policies to which they have committed themselves, then our analysis suggests that crude oil production has probably already peak…

Who cares about oil? Oil is important for moving vehicles, but not so much for global energy consumption, like say, electricity.

Yeah sure. Oil makes up 38% of global energy consumption. Fossil fuels makes about 80% of global energy consumption. Electricity is NOT a primary energy source, and basically you don't know what you're talking about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2004_Worldwide_Energy_Sour...

Re: The Singularity in Our Past

#44

Post by gjm11 »

VladRussian wrote: post #38
gjm11 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The top manifestations of that ability were Inquisition, Hitler, Stalin, etc... You may consider them the "top manifestations". I don't think many other people would. For my part, I'd put Bach and Shakespeare and Newton and Gauss higher up than Hitler on a list of top manifestations of the capacity for abstract thought. > whenever there is a patch of technological progress it is most visibly expressed through new t…

>You may consider them the "top manifestations". I don't think many other people would. For my part, I'd put Bach and Shakespeare and Newton and Gauss higher up than Hitler on a list of top manifestations of the capacity for abstract thought. you don't get it. Bach and Shakespeare and Newton and Gauss were just 4 people. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot were just leaders of millions. These millions were expressing and impleme…

So "top manifestations" now turns out to mean "manifestations involving most people" and "Hitler" now turns out to mean "WW2 and the Holocaust". Well, fair enough.

Now, why exactly should WW2-and-the-holocaust be regarded as a "top manifestation" of the capacity for abstract thought? I mean, sure, lots of people and lots of effort were involved, but that's just an artefact of the way you happen to have chosen to carve up the world -- with WW2-and-the-holocaust as a single item. If we take, say, "medicine" as a single item (which seems to me just as reasonable) then the number of people involved is very much larger, the net change in utility probably also much larger, and the amount of abstract thought involved also much larger.

In any case, why focus on single events? Imagine something that has the following consequences. (1) Two events, in each of which 1000 people die premature and nasty deaths. (2) A sustained change lasting for ten years, as a result of which 100000 people (independently, on separate occasions) avoid premature and nasty deaths. Then if you focus on "top manifestations" you might say that the top two are those two events in which people die. But the net benefit -- which surely matters more -- is large and positive. (Note for the avoidance of doubt: I am not making any pronouncement on whether bringing this thing about would be morally justified, which is an entirely different question from whether on balance it's a good thing. No person brought about the human capacity for abstract thought.)

Re: The Singularity in Our Past

#45

Post by eru »

wazoox wrote: post #43
eru wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares about oil? Oil is important for moving vehicles, but not so much for global energy consumption, like say, electricity.

Yeah sure. Oil makes up 38% of global energy consumption. Fossil fuels makes about 80% of global energy consumption. Electricity is NOT a primary energy source, and basically you don't know what you're talking about. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2004_Worldwide_Energy_Sour...

Sorry, I should have made myself more clear: Oil is the most useful thing for driving vehicles. Apart from that, we have good substitutes for all other energy use cases, like generating electricity.

Coal and nuclear power can last for quite some time. See `Sustainable Energy without the hot air' for some numbers. (It's available online.)

We don't have the necessary capacity of say nuclear reactors ready at the moment. But that's an inconvenience of a few years at most. (Thanks for the link!)

There may be peak oil, but no reason for peak energy.

Re: The Singularity in Our Past

#46

Post by VladRussian »

gjm11 wrote: post #44
VladRussian wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You may consider them the "top manifestations". I don't think many other people would. For my part, I'd put Bach and Shakespeare and Newton and Gauss higher up than Hitler on a list of top manifestations of the capacity for abstract thought. you don't get it. Bach and Shakespeare and Newton and Gauss were just 4 people. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot were just leaders of millions. These millions were expressing and impleme…

So "top manifestations" now turns out to mean "manifestations involving most people" and "Hitler" now turns out to mean "WW2 and the Holocaust". Well, fair enough. Now, why exactly should WW2-and-the-holocaust be regarded as a "top manifestation" of the capacity for abstract thought? I mean, sure, lots of people and lots of effort were involved, but that's just an artefact of the way you happen to have chosen to carv…

>that's just an artefact of the way you happen to have chosen to carve up the world ... >In any case, why focus on single events?

I just picked these noticeable acute periods from the _continuous_ history of human violence as mere illustrative examples.

While only few practice medicine, majority of the people do have ideas about what "valid and just" violence can be applied to what group of other people, and as result they either directly participate or support violence performed on their behalf. So in my view, major combined reasoning activity of human species brains, ie. performed activity integrated over participants (think "top" command), is the reasoning supporting the various acts of violence.

Vs. the actual consequences - my numbers look differently than yours. May be one Einstein or Mozart resulted in even more lives saved than medicine. It doesn't change the fact that for each hour of Mozart's brain developing music there are several orders of magnitude more hours cumulatively spent by others at the same time reasoning for violence.

An the reason being here is that human species got evolutionary advantage by being able to strike first with overwhelming power. Lions don't try to exterminate hyenas and hyenas doesn't try to exterminate lions. They peacefully coexist until paths of specific lions and hyenas cross over specific zebra. Humans are unique in their ability to reason that exterminating others they would potentially have more zebras to themselves and that the "others" may have the same reasoning, and thus "either we or they". Thus we have, again just for mere example, tutsi and hutu.

Re: The Singularity in Our Past

#47

Post by gwern »

T_S_ wrote: post #19
gwern wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OK now what sequences would you like to present to the algorithm for training? Ones from the environment? Great, but those will take time to collect. Simulated ones? It takes a lot of knowledge to generate good ones. With AIXI and variants, since they are universal predictors, it doesn't really matter what sequences you supply so long as they have some connection. Heck, just your algorithm access to an email server…

| Heck, just your algorithm access to an email server or something. Then my dog will find the bone faster than AIXI. See what I mean?

The computable versions of AIXI have such enormous constant factors that the indirection of email->real-world is as less than a grain of dust in the Ganges.

That indirection's constant factor cost might matter for any feasible AIXI-inspired AI, but since none has yet to be created or even designed, it's hard to say...

Re: The Singularity in Our Past

#48

Post by wazoox »

eru wrote: post #45
wazoox wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah sure. Oil makes up 38% of global energy consumption. Fossil fuels makes about 80% of global energy consumption. Electricity is NOT a primary energy source, and basically you don't know what you're talking about. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2004_Worldwide_Energy_Sour...

Sorry, I should have made myself more clear: Oil is the most useful thing for driving vehicles. Apart from that, we have good substitutes for all other energy use cases, like generating electricity. Coal and nuclear power can last for quite some time. See `Sustainable Energy without the hot air' for some numbers. (It's available online.) We don't have the necessary capacity of say nuclear reactors ready at the moment…

At the current building rate, we'll have soon less nuclear reactors. Even with a huge building effort it very much looks like nuclear will remain more or less as is.

Then there isn't that much U 235. We'll need thorium or fusion...

The coal outlook is very unclear. Some reliable sources says it will peak in 2025, 2050, 2100 or 2150. Then we'll have much EROI because of the necessity to capture CO2.

From what I know, we'll use much less energy quite soon individually, and not much more than we do nowadays globally.

Re: The Singularity in Our Past

#49

Post by eru »

wazoox wrote: post #48
eru wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I should have made myself more clear: Oil is the most useful thing for driving vehicles. Apart from that, we have good substitutes for all other energy use cases, like generating electricity. Coal and nuclear power can last for quite some time. See `Sustainable Energy without the hot air' for some numbers. (It's available online.) We don't have the necessary capacity of say nuclear reactors ready at the moment…

At the current building rate, we'll have soon less nuclear reactors. Even with a huge building effort it very much looks like nuclear will remain more or less as is. Then there isn't that much U 235. We'll need thorium or fusion... The coal outlook is very unclear. Some reliable sources says it will peak in 2025, 2050, 2100 or 2150. Then we'll have much EROI because of the necessity to capture CO2. From what I know,…

Thorium, fusion or fast breeders. The biggest cost of current nuclear fission reactors is in the initial capital outlay (and regulatory uncertainty). The price of Uran is low; if the price would go up, more reserves would surely be found.

I agree, that using coal on a large scale isn't a good idea. (That includes the current scale.)

I agree with all the actuals / current data with you. I just don't see that we will need to use less energy in the long run.

Re: The Singularity in Our Past

#50

Post by wazoox »

eru wrote: post #49
wazoox wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the current building rate, we'll have soon less nuclear reactors. Even with a huge building effort it very much looks like nuclear will remain more or less as is. Then there isn't that much U 235. We'll need thorium or fusion... The coal outlook is very unclear. Some reliable sources says it will peak in 2025, 2050, 2100 or 2150. Then we'll have much EROI because of the necessity to capture CO2. From what I know,…

Thorium, fusion or fast breeders. The biggest cost of current nuclear fission reactors is in the initial capital outlay (and regulatory uncertainty). The price of Uran is low; if the price would go up, more reserves would surely be found. I agree, that using coal on a large scale isn't a good idea. (That includes the current scale.) I agree with all the actuals / current data with you. I just don't see that we will n…

> I just don't see that we will need to use less energy in the long run.

I don't think we'll really have the choice :) It looks like thorium is at least 20 to 30 years away, and fusion... 50, 100 years, who knows ?

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