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He writes: "Nothing about neuroscience, computation, or philosophy prevents it. Thinking is an emergent property of activity in networks of matter. Minds
by armitron 10y ago
He writes:
"Nothing about neuroscience, computation, or philosophy prevents it. Thinking is an emergent property of activity in networks of matter. Minds are what brains – just matter – do. Mind can be done in other substrates."
Yet the rest of his post is obsessed with "building" minds or AGI and tries to extrapolate based on that premise. There is a school of thought that views AGI as an emergent cybernetic process, "a metasystem-transition" [1]. This has roots all the way back to the concept of "Noosphere" that comes from Teilhard/Vernadsky [2]. Even if one does not feel aligned with such ideas, it is intellectually dishonest to posit AGI solely as the product of directed human engineering.
It is far more likely in my view, that AGI will be a Black Swan event and
therefore all attempts to place it on a time scale, fraught with peril.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasystem_transition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasystem_transition
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoThere are also schools of philosophy where minds are not just matter.
- Filligree 10y agoNone of which ever explain why computers can't do the same whatever-it-is as flesh can.
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoBecause they claim that the mind is not just flesh. I mean, if you want to disagree, feel free. But at least understand what the claim is that you're disagreeing with.
- Filligree 10y agoNo, I got that. But why can't computers be not just silicon? If natural selection can blunder into exploiting unusual physics, why can't we do so deliberately?
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoOne more time: The claim is that minds are not just physics. Claiming that we could use unusual physics doesn't address the issue. The idea that the physical universe is all that exists is so deeply ingrained that it's really hard to get people to even see that they're thinking inside a box...
- Filligree 10y ago"Physics" is our word for "The rules that the universe follows". So what are you proposing, exactly? That it doesn't follow rules?
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoThat there is more that exists than the physical universe. In short, God. If God exists, if God is someone rather than something (a "he" rather than an "it"), and if God made humans in his image, then human personality can be real. It can be more than just a property of the atoms that make us up. This may sound like a bunch of mystic woo. But I argue that it is the only thing that explains our observations of ourselves. No matter how much our theories say that we are just matter, that our personality is just the impersonal plus complexity, we still live - cannot avoid living - as if we were persons, not just machines. Why is that? I assert that our experience of personality is evidence that materialistic theories are inadequate.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- kobeya 10y agoThese philosophies are irreconcilable with physical law.
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoIf there were a physical law that proved that there is only physical law, you would have a valid argument. What there is, instead, is an assumption. A presupposition. If you will, a philosophical stance.
- kobeya 10y agoI'll stick to debating science, not religion, thank you.
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoYou can't help it. You made a religious claim when you said, "These philosophies are irreconcilable with physical law." (Or at least a philosophical claim, but philosophy and religion fundamentally answer the same questions, though they do so in different terms.) But you can't help it in a wider sense. You seem to have a view that science tells you the real truth about reality, but that is not a scientifically-provable view. It's a philosophical or religious (in the wider sense) view.