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What have been the greatest intellectual achievements? (2017)

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Re: What have been the greatest intellectual achievements? (2017)

#71

Post by bombcar »

Jtarii wrote: post #42
yen223 wrote: post #23

Whoever figured out writing, all those years ago. The compounded effect of having knowledge recorded for generations to come - thereby unlocking all the other things mentioned on this list - surely should count for something.

I would assume writing evolved with humans over many thousands of years and wasn't just some big invention a guy came up with.

Hieroglyphics were probably generated over time (as they’re a simple progression from cave paintings) - but a standardized alphabet has to be, well; standardized by someone at a point in time.

Re: What have been the greatest intellectual achievements? (2017)

#73

Post by directorscut82 »

youoy wrote: post #70
directorscut82 wrote: post #65

One should also mention the creation of "God(s)" in any religion (sub)context. We are probably the only mammalian creature who delegated all his existential angst to an abstracted entity responsible for anything that it didn't make sense at the time. I think it is THE intellectual pinnacle of a brain trying to survive and process information full of null pointers without halting its programming:/)

Nicely written! I was thinking about this the other day. What is the benefit from your point of view of procesing information full of null pointers? (I know what the benefit of not halting its programming is :P)

De-referencing null pointers is the ultimate tilt but our NNs needed a way to explore just a tiny bit of unmapped memory without halting a.k.a go crazy, surrender to fear etc, probably because planning and anticipating for the next threat/unknown is their main role. It seems that we have devised a clever way of offloading the exact point of no return of our pcregister to handling by fantastical powerful creatures. What if the next crop does not deliver, crash danger alert -> praise a god. What happens when we die -> establish a religion based on afterlife benefits etc.

At the same time and while this jump command is now installed/available it allowed us to explore alternative solutions (medicine, technology etc). Since one can always transfers his main program's control to GOD section, it feels less risky to process methodically information full of unknowns and failures (the context now is "with the help of god we/one can deliver a solution"). This particular section throughout history controlled our lower instincts, maybe even made us more empathetic to other (unknown) humans instead of always perceive them as a threat but ultimately controlled all aspects of life and when misused delivered bloodshed and misery. What a weird section! I think at some point we should become brave enough and refactor/remove it, it served a purpose but now is not required/obsolete.

Re: What have been the greatest intellectual achievements? (2017)

#74

Post by Teever »

I actually had this 10 guy sort of thought last night:

There was a point where an organism became self aware, and then there was a point sometime after that where an organism realized that it was the first that had become self aware and all the implications of that.

To me that's a demarcation point in all of life -- the moment a creature realized that it was different from all the things that had come before it on the earth, whether they be non-living or living, as if there was a third category, living and self-aware.

I wonder if it considered it important to spread self-awareness or if it lamented that it had more important things to deal with like just surviving.

And what kind of organism was it -- was it a mammal? Or was it something that came before that?

Re: What have been the greatest intellectual achievements? (2017)

#75

Post by raptor99 »

GuB-42 wrote: post #66

Asking ChatGPT, I have: - The scientific method - Calculus - Einstein's Relativity - Darwin's Evolution And more generally: - The zero - Formal logic - The written language This is the kind of questions I think a LLM work well for, because people are going to have different opinions. I think that most of us will think about science, maths, etc... But what about, say, monotheism, Athenian democracy, banking and accoun…

Hmm, I wonder why that could be. Perhaps because most LLMs have ingested scads of utter online shit in, so guess what comes out.

Re: What have been the greatest intellectual achievements? (2017)

#76

Post by satvikpendem »

directorscut82 wrote: post #65

One should also mention the creation of "God(s)" in any religion (sub)context. We are probably the only mammalian creature who delegated all his existential angst to an abstracted entity responsible for anything that it didn't make sense at the time. I think it is THE intellectual pinnacle of a brain trying to survive and process information full of null pointers without halting its programming:/)

This is basically the argument laid forth by Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens.

Re: What have been the greatest intellectual achievements? (2017)

#77

Post by yen223 »

Hikikomori wrote: post #39
yen223 wrote: post #23

Whoever figured out writing, all those years ago. The compounded effect of having knowledge recorded for generations to come - thereby unlocking all the other things mentioned on this list - surely should count for something.

What about reading.

Imagine inventing reading before writing was a thing

"Me understand meaning from symbols"

"What are symbols?"

"Dunno"

Re: What have been the greatest intellectual achievements? (2017)

#78

Post by belviewreview »

throw0101a wrote: post #51

The lack of Aristotle is surprising: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle Not only his systemized thinking, but his metaphysics—especially since it got later taken up by Christianity/Catholicism. I doubt we would have gotten to Naturalism (and modern science) without his influence: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy) * https://old.maa.org/press/periodicals/convergence/mathematic...

I agree. And modern Western science and political thought has followed Aristotle far more than Plato. In particular, the parts of Aristotle's science that got thrown out was the result of following out his empirical method further than he was able to. We have also followed his empirical approach to political philosophy rather than Plato's Republic.

Re: What have been the greatest intellectual achievements? (2017)

#80

Post by arter45 »

directorscut82 wrote: post #73
youoy wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nicely written! I was thinking about this the other day. What is the benefit from your point of view of procesing information full of null pointers? (I know what the benefit of not halting its programming is :P)

De-referencing null pointers is the ultimate tilt but our NNs needed a way to explore just a tiny bit of unmapped memory without halting a.k.a go crazy, surrender to fear etc, probably because planning and anticipating for the next threat/unknown is their main role. It seems that we have devised a clever way of offloading the exact point of no return of our pcregister to handling by fantastical powerful creatures. Wh…

Wouldn’t you argue that lower instincts are not well managed by modern humanity, which means religion is still necessary? :)
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