4 ms·
To put it real lightly, it's a real stretch to make any kind of analogy between the human brain does work and the way that semiconductor based processors do wor
by yowlingcat 7y ago
To put it real lightly, it's a real stretch to make any kind of analogy between the human brain does work and the way that semiconductor based processors do work. The author's reference to Stephan Wolfram's idea of universality (developed in a prior essay) seems unfortunate:
>“The key unifying idea that has allowed me to formulate the Principle of Computational Equivalence is a simple but immensely powerful one: that all processes, whether they are produced by human effort or occur spontaneously in nature, can be viewed as computations.”
To borrow a metaphor from a recent HN thread about an eponymous paper called "How to recognize AI snake oil" [1], there's an "incomplete and crude but useful breakdown" on you can apply towards AI problems: genuine and useful progress in perception, imperfect but improving work in automating judgment, and fundamentally dubious attempts to predict social outcomes.
Let's think about where the idea of a theory of mind based on computational complexity to determine "smartness" lands -- it's certainly not stimulus detection, it's certainly not automating judgment, but it is about predicting or modeling social outcomes. I would say that this application Wolfram's idea is fundamentally dubious. Because of this, it's hard for me to say that the premise, argument or conclusion of this essay is anything but fundamentally dubious.
To at least leave a useful suggestion: this essay is missing an adequate definition and exploration of what "smart" is, why it's a facet of human nature and history, and what issues the concept causes. To the author, I'd recommend starting off by building a better foundation there before jumping to conclusions that are hard to take seriously.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21577156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21577156
- trishankkarthik 7y ago1. ?? You do realize there are self-appointed geniuses who actually make this kind of arguments, right? 2. That snake-oil AI paper guy, right though he may be here, you know he's jealous of Bitcoin, right? Wrote a whole academic paper trying to justify how Bitcoin wouldn't exist w/o academia. If he was so smart, why didn't he write Bitcoin himself? 3. If this was so obvious and you're so smart, why didn't you write it yourself?
- yowlingcat 7y agoAre you seriously asking me why I didn't write something which I just told you is a worthless thing to spend time writing about? Probably because I think it's a worthless thing to spend time writing about. I'm not sure what you're trying to prove here. Look, just because I don't buy your argument doesn't mean I buy the premise that "genius" exists the way it's constructed in society. I find that pretty fallacious too, but for different reasons. I don't think you're going to get to the core of why genius is a flawed concept with a strained analogy to computational complexity (which doesn't work) rather than by digging into historical context. I think if you focus on that, you'll probably make more progress on coming up with something interesting to say.