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"You might as well argue that since heavier-than-air-flight is a search problem over an effectively infinite, high-dimensional landscape of possible machines -

"You might as well argue that since heavier-than-air-flight is a search problem over an effectively infinite, high-dimensional landscape of possible machines - and that since it took evolution billions of years to produce birds, we have little chance of stumbling upon a working design for a wing." Tired analogies between AI and flight are dead-ends. Until we have identified AI-side components of the analogy that corresponds to "air", "wing", "lift" &c., the analogy is empty and unproductive. IOW these analogies neither get us off the ground nor do they take us anywhere.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Also, flight took very little to evolve - it happened separately for birds, mammals, lizards, insects. In less than billions of years.
- olalonde 11y ago
  Amazingly, the eye also evolved 50 to 100 times independently (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye).
  - jameshart 11y ago
    As for the subject of this discussion, you could have quite the debate about how many times intelligence has evolved independently.
jameshart 11y ago
I'm not making an analogy between AI and flight, I'm refuting an analogy between 'evolving' and 'inventing' solutions using flight as a counterexample.
- giardini 11y ago
  Whatever. Unfortunately, in doing so you have used the "AI is analogous to heavier-than-air-flight" meme. Please discard it, it's an albatross to discussion. Or to be more precise, it is a lead balloon - it never gets off the ground; it's a red herring. IOW you've chosen a poor and annoyingly wrongheaded counterexample. Now try and digest that.
  - Nevermark 11y ago
    If you use an argument and someone provides a single counter example, then your argument is false. That's it. You can continue arguing your conclusion or view, but you need to find another argument to support it. The fact that humans could invent super-flight despite not being able to build a bird means that the argument that we cannot build a super intelligent machine because we don't yet know how to make ourselves biologically more intelligent, is not a good argument.
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      [deleted]

JoeAltmaier 11y ago

Also, flight took very little to evolve - it happened separately for birds, mammals, lizards, insects. In less than billions of years.

olalonde 11y ago
Amazingly, the eye also evolved 50 to 100 times independently (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye).
- jameshart 11y ago
  As for the subject of this discussion, you could have quite the debate about how many times intelligence has evolved independently.

jameshart 11y ago

I'm not making an analogy between AI and flight, I'm refuting an analogy between 'evolving' and 'inventing' solutions using flight as a counterexample.

giardini 11y ago
Whatever. Unfortunately, in doing so you have used the "AI is analogous to heavier-than-air-flight" meme. Please discard it, it's an albatross to discussion. Or to be more precise, it is a lead balloon - it never gets off the ground; it's a red herring. IOW you've chosen a poor and annoyingly wrongheaded counterexample. Now try and digest that.
- Nevermark 11y ago
  If you use an argument and someone provides a single counter example, then your argument is false. That's it. You can continue arguing your conclusion or view, but you need to find another argument to support it. The fact that humans could invent super-flight despite not being able to build a bird means that the argument that we cannot build a super intelligent machine because we don't yet know how to make ourselves biologically more intelligent, is not a good argument.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]