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Sigh...where's Eliezer when we need him? :) It is just there, in that last step, that Kurzweil invokes a fallacy. In general, if you have two different kinds o

Sigh...where's Eliezer when we need him? :) It is just there, in that last step, that Kurzweil invokes a fallacy. In general, if you have two different kinds of machines, and you want to program each to compute the same result -- upper bounds on the program size on machine tell you nothing about the the upper bounds on the other machine. Right on, upper bounds on program size do not directly translate from one machine to another. So we can't set a hard bound, and we always need to speak about information content relative to a given machine - too few people have noticed this. However, science doesn't give up when hard bounds prove impossible. There's always statistics to fall back on. And statistically speaking, we can absolutely translate information content claims across machine boundaries if we're careful, as long as we have no reason to believe that the machine in question is somehow "special". A priori, knowing nothing else about machines A or B, we would expect that if we observe an upper complexity bound on an algorithm relative to machine A, there's better than a 50/50 shot that the same upper complexity bound will also hold relative to machine B (it's greater than 50% because it's almost certain that our observation did not pick out the best theoretical upper complexity bound). As good Bayesians, exactly how this all translates into a best estimate for the bound relative to machine B depends on a lot of stuff (all our prior distributions - in fact, in cases like this talking about upper bounds is silly, it's far better to talk about the distribution of upper bounds, but I digress). But it's simply wrong not to adjust your complexity estimates relative to machine B in some manner based on an observation of machine A, unless you know something special about machine A that differentiates it from all machines in such a way that it's well-suited to express the algorithm under consideration. So I ask you this: do you know a fact about "zygote machines" that makes them much better suited to constructing intelligence algorithms than most other machines? Do you have some reason to suspect that their dynamics are more likely to lead to intelligent computations than, for instance, normal computers? Because otherwise, Kurzweil is a hell of a lot closer to the "right" estimate than you are. (Edit) FWIW, I posted a more detailed argument elsewhere in this thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1621053 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1621053) that more carefully boils Myers' claim down to just about the same question I asked you.

Eliezer 16y ago
I endorse this reply. EDIT: I endorse all of ewjordan's other replies too. There's no need for me here.
dasht 16y ago
ewjordan: That's beautiful. Let me sort it out slightly and offer a counter argument or at least response to part. So, we agree that Kurzweil's "information theory" snobbery is wrong. His real argument is "C'mon... look, the genome's small. Under a microscope the brain looks like it has many parts but very regularly arranged. How hard can it be? Trillions of lines? Please!" That's not an information theory argument. That's a vague, hand-wave argument to an underspecified but compelling-sounding conclusion. "Reverse engineer the brain." "Build something similar." WTF could possibly happen that would prove him wrong? How exactly could Kurzweil's "predictions" here be falsified? Put another way, if he changed his rebuttal to Meyers to be "I made no substantive argument or claim. Myers responded as if I had. Therefore Myers has erred." -- I could accept that. It then does raise the question of why Kurzweil was not more explicit about making no substantive argument or claim but that's a separate matter. It's moot because Kurzweil isn't making that rebuttal. To your statistical argument, which is quite interesting... I think the meat of your case is here: So I ask you this: do you know a fact about "zygote machines" that makes them much better suited to constructing intelligence algorithms than most other machines? Rather than quibble over what "intelligence algorithms" mean I am going to pretend you said "human brains or things very similar to such". The answer is "Yes, I know quite a few facts that strongly support the hypothesis that human zygotes are, among the machine-like entities in the world, uniquely well suited to building human brains -- and very difficult to replace by any substantially different kind of machine." At this point I would basically just repeat Myers' argument, perhaps adding in more specific but randomly selected details. If you want to rescue Kurzweil by leaving the abstract "information theory" b.s. he offered and looking at the specifics -- then we've gone full circle. Kurzweil doesn't understand the brain. Now there is an exception to all this. A different way of looking at it. I think that if you scrape off layers of hype and clouds of obfuscation, Kurzweil will consider himself to be proved correct if, in say 20 years, -- and just for example: You can buy a box that has at least stereo video inputs and that, using an artificial neural net, does exquisitely accurate facial recognition. Or that can look at visualization of architectural CAD drawings -- millions of variations per hour -- and select a few with a high percentage chance of being pleasing to most people. Or that, in combination with the tactile-feedback neural net, can manipulate agonizingly capable microscopic tools for very delicate surgeries or for building nanotech or ... I think it's f'ing obvious that (unless civilization fails - not out of the question) we have all that in 20 years and maybe sooner. I think that was f'ing obvious about 30 years ago, and to some, pretty clear even before that. I don't think those devices count, in any reasonable way, as "reverse engineering the brain" but I guess they count as "reverse engineering a few select aspects of useful computational tricks that brains do in real time, quite efficiently". I don't think those inevitable advances offer much support to Kurzweil's "exponential" technology - they are straight up incremental, boringly predictable advances. I don't think they're a real challenge to ordinary human predictive powers: we've seen this stuff coming for decades. Don't even get me started on how "the singularity" is dangerous, meaningless, new-age clap-trap. But, Kurzweil dresses up such banal observations to make it sound like, any day now, massive machine mega-brains will take over the world. Hopefully they'll love us and kindly upload our consciousness and..... So it is, to repeat my original point, with some delight that I take on Kurzweil's "information theory" sniping at Meyers.

Eliezer 16y ago

I endorse this reply. EDIT: I endorse all of ewjordan's other replies too. There's no need for me here.

dasht 16y ago

ewjordan: That's beautiful. Let me sort it out slightly and offer a counter argument or at least response to part. So, we agree that Kurzweil's "information theory" snobbery is wrong. His real argument is "C'mon... look, the genome's small. Under a microscope the brain looks like it has many parts but very regularly arranged. How hard can it be? Trillions of lines? Please!" That's not an information theory argument. That's a vague, hand-wave argument to an underspecified but compelling-sounding conclusion. "Reverse engineer the brain." "Build something similar." WTF could possibly happen that would prove him wrong? How exactly could Kurzweil's "predictions" here be falsified? Put another way, if he changed his rebuttal to Meyers to be "I made no substantive argument or claim. Myers responded as if I had. Therefore Myers has erred." -- I could accept that. It then does raise the question of why Kurzweil was not more explicit about making no substantive argument or claim but that's a separate matter. It's moot because Kurzweil isn't making that rebuttal. To your statistical argument, which is quite interesting... I think the meat of your case is here: So I ask you this: do you know a fact about "zygote machines" that makes them much better suited to constructing intelligence algorithms than most other machines? Rather than quibble over what "intelligence algorithms" mean I am going to pretend you said "human brains or things very similar to such". The answer is "Yes, I know quite a few facts that strongly support the hypothesis that human zygotes are, among the machine-like entities in the world, uniquely well suited to building human brains -- and very difficult to replace by any substantially different kind of machine." At this point I would basically just repeat Myers' argument, perhaps adding in more specific but randomly selected details. If you want to rescue Kurzweil by leaving the abstract "information theory" b.s. he offered and looking at the specifics -- then we've gone full circle. Kurzweil doesn't understand the brain. Now there is an exception to all this. A different way of looking at it. I think that if you scrape off layers of hype and clouds of obfuscation, Kurzweil will consider himself to be proved correct if, in say 20 years, -- and just for example: You can buy a box that has at least stereo video inputs and that, using an artificial neural net, does exquisitely accurate facial recognition. Or that can look at visualization of architectural CAD drawings -- millions of variations per hour -- and select a few with a high percentage chance of being pleasing to most people. Or that, in combination with the tactile-feedback neural net, can manipulate agonizingly capable microscopic tools for very delicate surgeries or for building nanotech or ... I think it's f'ing obvious that (unless civilization fails - not out of the question) we have all that in 20 years and maybe sooner. I think that was f'ing obvious about 30 years ago, and to some, pretty clear even before that. I don't think those devices count, in any reasonable way, as "reverse engineering the brain" but I guess they count as "reverse engineering a few select aspects of useful computational tricks that brains do in real time, quite efficiently". I don't think those inevitable advances offer much support to Kurzweil's "exponential" technology - they are straight up incremental, boringly predictable advances. I don't think they're a real challenge to ordinary human predictive powers: we've seen this stuff coming for decades. Don't even get me started on how "the singularity" is dangerous, meaningless, new-age clap-trap. But, Kurzweil dresses up such banal observations to make it sound like, any day now, massive machine mega-brains will take over the world. Hopefully they'll love us and kindly upload our consciousness and..... So it is, to repeat my original point, with some delight that I take on Kurzweil's "information theory" sniping at Meyers.