4 ms·
Here's one thing I've never gotten about singularity folks: why the assumption that human ego / personality will persist into post-human evolution? It's easy
by wheels 16y ago
Here's one thing I've never gotten about singularity folks: why the assumption that human ego / personality will persist into post-human evolution?
It's easy enough to buy into a reduction of the basic singularity tenants: a) that we'll understand and be able to model the brain at some point, and b) that at that point evolution can proceed on, well, non-evolutionary time scales.
But it's always seemed to me like that step will have a tragic quality to it as well: that's the day humans become just animals. I don't know why a post-human intelligence would feel a need to preserve human individuals or the human concept of self any more than we feel the need to preserve gerbil personalities.
- thunk 16y ago> It's easy enough to buy into a reduction of the basic singularity tenants ... I don't even get that far. It may be the case that it's impossible to model the brain to a sufficient level of detail to manufacture conciousness. It may even be the case that our brains are doing something non-computable to produce consciousness, in which case we have to give up on Turing-equivalent machines entirely and move to something that more closely resembles our physical brains. At that point Singularity-scale intelligence depends on the creation of some big-brained biotech Frankenstein, which doesn't scale nearly as well, and seems different enough to require a new name. We just don't know.
- IsaacL 16y agoI think that's partially the reason why some singularity folks focus on "friendliness" - they see it as quite possible that a superhuman intelligence would be a threat to us, for the reasons you state.