7 ms·

Hypothesis: bitcoin is well-modeled as an emergent superintelligence optimizing for btc instead of paperclips. If so, we've got a problem.

by leot 9y ago

reilly3000 9y ago
How would you test to see if that is the case?
- leot 9y ago
  Not sure. One problem is that there isn't another super-AI to compare it against.
visarga 9y ago
Just like any meme, it is optimized to self-reproduce and grow.
- leot 9y ago
  Most memes lack the ability to self-modify while preserving the thing they're optimizing for.
  - bduerst 9y ago
    What is the thing Bitcoin is optimized for again?
    - visarga 9y ago
      Mining coins (and hype).
  - zaarn 9y ago
    Memes don't self-modify but they do definitely evolve over time and the more successful results survive and the less successful ones are forgotten (die). Most of the time they also preserve what they optimize for, see; cute cat pictures.
- mynewtb 9y ago
  And drop from popularity soon after.
wavesounds 9y ago
Bitcoin is like the monster that escaped our lab and is rampaging the city and nobody can stop it because people have "invested" $130 Billion dollars into it and so they won't let it die.
- junkscience2017 9y ago
  Exactly. Bitcoin is in a mania phase...on good news, it rises...on bad news, it also rises! Even when BTC and it's infrastructure and supporting entities are subverted...it rises! It will be too big to fail and we will close a school somewhere to bail out the value of a string of ascii.
erikpukinskis 9y ago
I'm intrigued by the metaphor, but your referents are not very clearly stated... By "Optimizing for BTC" do you mean optimizing for the highest number of transactions? You can't mean total BTC outstanding because that's pegged to an equation. And in terms of the "intelligence" are you referring to the protocol itself, or the human/machine apparatus around it that's trying to make money? On the face of it, it doesn't seem particularly different the the "emergent superintelligence" optimizing for USD, but I like your idea of looking for emerging fixed incentive structures as a place for AIs to run amok.
- leot 9y ago
  Hey Erik :) -- I recall you telling me to think of bitcoin itself as a kind of startup. Clarification: I should have said "optimizing for value of BTC". Not protocol, the emergent system that has as its goal the maximization of the value of BTC.
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    oh hai :)
drdeca 9y ago
It may be useful to model it as an agent, but I quite doubt that it is more useful to model it as a superintelligent agent than it is to model it as an agent of some lesser intelligence. The governments of the world could, at great cost to themselves, but not beyond what they could withstand if necessary, I think, destroy bitcoin. If bitcoin was a superintelligence, I think it would have dealt with that already? Just because something can be modeled as an intelligent agent in some respects doesn't mean that it has extreme intelligence. The agent that is bitcoin is only one part of the agent which is the market. People mine bitcoin because they want to, often because they want to profit monetarily. They profit monetarily because people want bitcoin. People want bitcoin for a variety of reasons, but mainly for either speculation, or for ease of certain types of monetary transactions. If we say that bitcoin wants btc to be mined, what does gold want? Does gold want gold to be mined? I realize that there are of course differences, and important ones, but I'm not sure why they contribute much to bitcoin being modeled as intelligent. I suppose that the possibility of bitcoin changing as a system in a way that people agree on might change something, but I'm not sure how much. If bitcoin were truly optimizing for the amount of bitcoin in existence, and was able to modify itself to this end, why wouldn't it remove the block reward halving feature? No, instead, the rate of bitcoin production mostly aligns with the originally intended schedule. The difficulty is adjusted over time in order to keep the time between blocks relatively constant. The incentive for miners is not "If you use more computational power, the (expected value of the) amount of bitcoin produced will be greater, and you will get that extra amount.". It is "If you use more computational power, the amount of bitcoin produced will be the same, but you are likely to get a larger proportion of it.". It doesn't act by incentivizing people to take actions which cause there to be more bitcoin (uh, on the margin I mean). As incentivizing people is the only way that it acts, it therefore doesn't act to maximize the amount of bitcoin produced. So, it is not an agent acting to maximize the amount of bitcoin produced.
- leot 9y ago
  The hypothesis is that it's maximizing the value of BTC, not the number.
  - drdeca 9y ago
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
How might the perverse instantiation of a blockchain-based superintelligence play out? (The simple case, of a Bitcoin-mining superintelligence run amok, converges with the classic storyline of a universe turned to computronium.)
- leot 9y ago
  Yeah. The advantage is that there's a human in the loop, and value is driven by human desire for it. I don't know the endgame, but consider if the rational decision of any investor becomes, with high confidence, to convert most of their money to bitcoin. What happens to the rest of the economy?
AgentME 9y ago
I think you could say that about most concepts that profit people who adopt them. Capitalism is an emergent superintelligence optmizing for profits instead of people. Which might or might not be useful to consider.
drngdds 9y ago
How is bitcoin like a superintelligence?
- jacobush 9y ago
  We humans step in to do the thinking and optimization for it, by way of greed. End result - more paperclips. (Or TW/h spent on mining machines.)
vzcx 9y ago
Close, but the emergent superintelligence is no less than capital itself, "[invading] from the future [in order to] assemble itself entirely from the enemy’s resources." Creating bitcoins is merely a subgoal, developed as a means to propagate more freely between regions controlled by hostile agents.
dmezzogori 9y ago
This hypothesis has achieved both maximum fun and maximum anxiety.

Hypothesis: bitcoin is well-modeled as an emergent superintelligence optimizing for btc instead of paperclips. If so, we've got a problem.

by leot 9y ago

Hypothesis: bitcoin is well-modeled as an emergent superintelligence optimizing for btc instead of paperclips. If so, we've got a problem.

reilly3000 9y ago

How would you test to see if that is the case?

leot 9y ago
Not sure. One problem is that there isn't another super-AI to compare it against.

visarga 9y ago

Just like any meme, it is optimized to self-reproduce and grow.

leot 9y ago
Most memes lack the ability to self-modify while preserving the thing they're optimizing for.
- bduerst 9y ago
  What is the thing Bitcoin is optimized for again?
  - visarga 9y ago
    Mining coins (and hype).
- zaarn 9y ago
  Memes don't self-modify but they do definitely evolve over time and the more successful results survive and the less successful ones are forgotten (die). Most of the time they also preserve what they optimize for, see; cute cat pictures.
mynewtb 9y ago
And drop from popularity soon after.

wavesounds 9y ago

Bitcoin is like the monster that escaped our lab and is rampaging the city and nobody can stop it because people have "invested" $130 Billion dollars into it and so they won't let it die.

junkscience2017 9y ago
Exactly. Bitcoin is in a mania phase...on good news, it rises...on bad news, it also rises! Even when BTC and it's infrastructure and supporting entities are subverted...it rises! It will be too big to fail and we will close a school somewhere to bail out the value of a string of ascii.

erikpukinskis 9y ago

I'm intrigued by the metaphor, but your referents are not very clearly stated... By "Optimizing for BTC" do you mean optimizing for the highest number of transactions? You can't mean total BTC outstanding because that's pegged to an equation. And in terms of the "intelligence" are you referring to the protocol itself, or the human/machine apparatus around it that's trying to make money? On the face of it, it doesn't seem particularly different the the "emergent superintelligence" optimizing for USD, but I like your idea of looking for emerging fixed incentive structures as a place for AIs to run amok.

leot 9y ago
Hey Erik :) -- I recall you telling me to think of bitcoin itself as a kind of startup. Clarification: I should have said "optimizing for value of BTC". Not protocol, the emergent system that has as its goal the maximization of the value of BTC.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  oh hai :)

drdeca 9y ago

It may be useful to model it as an agent, but I quite doubt that it is more useful to model it as a superintelligent agent than it is to model it as an agent of some lesser intelligence. The governments of the world could, at great cost to themselves, but not beyond what they could withstand if necessary, I think, destroy bitcoin. If bitcoin was a superintelligence, I think it would have dealt with that already? Just because something can be modeled as an intelligent agent in some respects doesn't mean that it has extreme intelligence. The agent that is bitcoin is only one part of the agent which is the market. People mine bitcoin because they want to, often because they want to profit monetarily. They profit monetarily because people want bitcoin. People want bitcoin for a variety of reasons, but mainly for either speculation, or for ease of certain types of monetary transactions. If we say that bitcoin wants btc to be mined, what does gold want? Does gold want gold to be mined? I realize that there are of course differences, and important ones, but I'm not sure why they contribute much to bitcoin being modeled as intelligent. I suppose that the possibility of bitcoin changing as a system in a way that people agree on might change something, but I'm not sure how much. If bitcoin were truly optimizing for the amount of bitcoin in existence, and was able to modify itself to this end, why wouldn't it remove the block reward halving feature? No, instead, the rate of bitcoin production mostly aligns with the originally intended schedule. The difficulty is adjusted over time in order to keep the time between blocks relatively constant. The incentive for miners is not "If you use more computational power, the (expected value of the) amount of bitcoin produced will be greater, and you will get that extra amount.". It is "If you use more computational power, the amount of bitcoin produced will be the same, but you are likely to get a larger proportion of it.". It doesn't act by incentivizing people to take actions which cause there to be more bitcoin (uh, on the margin I mean). As incentivizing people is the only way that it acts, it therefore doesn't act to maximize the amount of bitcoin produced. So, it is not an agent acting to maximize the amount of bitcoin produced.

leot 9y ago
The hypothesis is that it's maximizing the value of BTC, not the number.
- drdeca 9y ago

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

How might the perverse instantiation of a blockchain-based superintelligence play out? (The simple case, of a Bitcoin-mining superintelligence run amok, converges with the classic storyline of a universe turned to computronium.)

leot 9y ago
Yeah. The advantage is that there's a human in the loop, and value is driven by human desire for it. I don't know the endgame, but consider if the rational decision of any investor becomes, with high confidence, to convert most of their money to bitcoin. What happens to the rest of the economy?

AgentME 9y ago

I think you could say that about most concepts that profit people who adopt them. Capitalism is an emergent superintelligence optmizing for profits instead of people. Which might or might not be useful to consider.

drngdds 9y ago

How is bitcoin like a superintelligence?

jacobush 9y ago
We humans step in to do the thinking and optimization for it, by way of greed. End result - more paperclips. (Or TW/h spent on mining machines.)

vzcx 9y ago

Close, but the emergent superintelligence is no less than capital itself, "[invading] from the future [in order to] assemble itself entirely from the enemy’s resources." Creating bitcoins is merely a subgoal, developed as a means to propagate more freely between regions controlled by hostile agents.

dmezzogori 9y ago

This hypothesis has achieved both maximum fun and maximum anxiety.