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I posted the article because it is thought provoking, although I disagree with it. The reason is for example statements like this "The real problem is that comp

I posted the article because it is thought provoking, although I disagree with it. The reason is for example statements like this "The real problem is that computers are not in the world, because they are not embodied." "And I shall argue that they cannot pass the full Turing test because they are not in the world, and, therefore, they have no understanding." First I think that whether something is embodied or not doesn't matter. Our senses in the end could be likely approximated by arrays of numbers fed to a computer, so I don't think lack of body is such an issue. Regarding understanding by machines, that is clearly the issue for current AI, but at least based on what I know about modern machine translation, there is already something that works with concepts/abstract terms and their relations, which looks to me like a beginning for abstract reasoning...

jchrisa 6y ago
My hunch agrees with the paper. Because computers operate on the rational numbers instead of the real numbers, they can never be embodied. They are always in a simulation...
- mattnewton 6y ago
  Maybe I don’t understand your point, but our senses are also compressed to some extent. Your synapses fire or don’t fire, providing digitized input for some of your senses like hearing. At any point there is a discrete amount of hormones in your body. etc etc. That doesn’t seem categorically different from any man made sensor.
  - jchrisa 6y ago
    Our sensorium could be indistinguishable from how it'd be in a simulation without impacting my point. Software can hop from host to host (all Turing machines can simulate each other) but living intelligence is embodied. Because of this, no matter how "smart" computers get, we can't trust them not to do stupid stuff. They are smart like that kid in high school who comes up with a formula to turn the world into silly putty, and is stupid enough to use it. There is more than one kind of intelligence, here the argument is that some kinds of intelligence require having skin in the game.
    - sgillen 6y ago
      But would it be impossible to have artificial “skin in the game”? Is there no robot body that could serve this purpose?
      - selestify 6y ago
        Why isn’t computer hardware already as “embodied” in the physical world as our brain matter is?
    - mcguire 6y ago
      We can't trust people not to do stupid stuff.
    - D-Coder 6y ago
      > They are smart like that kid in high school who comes up with a formula to turn the world into silly putty, and is stupid enough to use it. So that kid isn't intelligent?
- credit_guy 6y ago
  This is like saying CD players will never be as good as vinyl record players because the first use digital signals (rational numbers) and the second analogue (real numbers).
  - grogenaut 6y ago
    if you want to be pedantic record players are also digital because they can't represent anything tighter than an atom or the molecule of vinyl
    - mindcrime 6y ago
      Isn't everything digital to a point, since we can't ever measure anything smaller than the Planck length?
  - jchrisa 6y ago
    I'm on record saying heterodox things about the Nyquist theorem and SACD 1-bit DAC, so you are on topic. :)
    - credit_guy 6y ago
      In that case, since we are here and it's Friday and everyone needs to take it easy from time to time, here's my proof that we don't live in a simulation: according to [1], ray tracing is computationally undecidable. For example, say you are in a museum at night, and a light bulb turns on in a room on the third floor, is it still dark in some room on the first floor? This problem is undecidable using the axioms of geometric optics. Of course, geometric optics is like real numbers, and the actual world is discrete: light is a finite collection of photons. So, you can do the simulation by simply emitting a number of photons from each light source and tracing them all the way until they are all absorbed. We can still live in a simulation, but one without algorithmic shortcuts, a simulation where you simulate every single photon. Now, I'm sure you can come up with your own version of proof that we can't live in a simulation using Nyquist's theorem. If you do, and your Friday is not too busy, please share. [1] https://users.cs.duke.edu/~reif/paper/tygar/raytracing.pdf https://users.cs.duke.edu/~reif/paper/tygar/raytracing.pdf
- cowboysauce 6y ago
  > Because computers operate on the rational numbers instead of the real numbers, Computers are just devices that perform computations. It's perfectly possible to construct computers that operate on values that are continuous and not discrete. In fact, such computers have been constructed before. They are know as analog computers and were used for things like numerically solving differential equations.
  - karmakaze 6y ago
    This is not even true. We have symbolic processing that can manipulate and formulate with non-rational expressions. This article is so worthless.
  - ogogmad 6y ago
    You don't need analog computation. The theory of Computable Real Analysis still assumes a digital computer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_analysis See here for a concrete application of the theory: https://icfp19.sigplan.org/details/icfp-2019-papers/15/Sound-and-robust-solid-modeling-via-exact-real-arithmetic-and-continuity https://icfp19.sigplan.org/details/icfp-2019-papers/15/Sound... Another application is the Android calculator, which computes over exact real numbers in the sense described by Computable Analysis. Finally, it's debatable whether analog computation achieves true computation over the real numbers. The presence of physical noise, and the fact that many physical quantities (like electrical charge) are ultimately discrete at the quantum level, implies that it doesn't really work AFAICT.
    - caymanjim 6y ago
      It seems likely that absolutely nothing is analog. The best theories about physics are all quantized. The only things that we don't have strong quantum theories about are things we barely understand, like time and gravity. And that's just because we haven't found the quanta yet.
- ethanwillis 6y ago
  It has been a minute since I picked up my information theory book. However if I remember correctly continuous signals (that is functions of the reals) can be represented without loss with a finite (but sufficient number of) discrete samples.
  - sgillen 6y ago
    As long as all those reals are computable ;) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_number https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_number
    - ggggtez 6y ago
      It's fully possible for a computer to do symbolic math without reducing the symbols to a decimal.
      - sgillen 6y ago
        Of course! I meant my comment to be tongue in cheek, but saying that some numbers are uncomputable is not incompatible with symbolic math on a computer. Note that for example Pi is computable, despite having an infinite decimal expansion.
- airstrike 6y ago
  > Because computers operate on the rational numbers instead of the real numbers, they can never be embodied. They are always in a simulation... I read the exact opposite argument yesterday but not from an AGI perspective: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/a-new-theory-explains-how-consciousness-evolved https://getpocket.com/explore/item/a-new-theory-explains-how...
- vidarh 6y ago
  The counter-point to this: Brains. Brains are computational devices that are embodied.
- guhayun 6y ago
  Camera pixels are pretty real to me
- ogogmad 6y ago
  Actually, digital computers can compute over the real numbers. They can compute quite a lot over the real numbers, even. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_analysis#Basic_results https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_analysis#Basic_resu... This even has some concrete applications. See this: https://icfp19.sigplan.org/details/icfp-2019-papers/15/Sound-and-robust-solid-modeling-via-exact-real-arithmetic-and-continuity https://icfp19.sigplan.org/details/icfp-2019-papers/15/Sound... Finally, saying that digital computers can't compute functions of the form Real -> Real is like saying that a computer can't compute functions of the form (Int -> Int) -> (Int -> Int). In other words, it's like saying that higher order functions are impossible.
- Der_Einzige 6y ago
  This actually makes sense to me, but for those who aren't familiar with set theory, you may want to link this for context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_hypothesis
- mcguire 6y ago
  "Real numbers" have some problems. Information density, for one. Imagine a real number, say 0.27777..., represented as a point on a piece of string, with zero being one end and 1.0 being the other. That point represents infinite information density. It also would seem to run afoul of some of quantum mechanics.
mchusma 6y ago
Thanks for posting, I also disagree with it. I think using this authors high level stance is that only the human physical experience can lead to general intelligence. By this logic a blind person or quadrapeligic might not be generally intelligent.
- dynamite-ready 6y ago
  Not quite. The unconscious management of the internal systems that keep us alive are as much a part of that physical experience, as our motor-sensory apparatus. In fact, some neurologists suggest that these unconscious urges are the most likely governors of 'conscious' action. That's a gross oversimplification... Dr Antonio Domasio explores the idea in fine detail in his books. Particularly 'The Self Comes to Mind'.
- ddrdrck_ 6y ago
  Absolutely not. People with disabilities still experience the world. See Helen Keller. Your reasoning would only apply to people with no sense and no way to communicate at all.
ggggtez 6y ago
It doesn't seem to be required that an animal have sensory information. [1] I'm not convinced by the argument that a computer can't think just because it doesn't experience the world. If anything, experiments like (1) show that we may be able to better understand how brains work if we get rid of all the "noise" from external stimulation so we can better understand the signals. [1] https://www.quantamagazine.org/random-search-wired-into-animals-may-help-them-hunt-20200611/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/random-search-wired-into-anim...
_bxg1 6y ago
As others have said, I think this is a better argument against machines emulating humanness than it is against the broader category of "general intelligence". For me it always comes down to: If we assume the human mind to be a physical, deterministic phenomenon, then an informational, deterministic system could simulate it. It's as simple as that. To take the brute-force route, every atom in a human body could be simulated, which would include its intelligence. Now, that says nothing about time-scale or practicality. It doesn't even say anything about whether electronic computers as we know them can achieve the physical density necessary to simulate something so complex, given the natural resources we have available. But in principle, unless you believe in the metaphysical, there's no denying that AGI is something that can exist.
- raindeer3 6y ago
  Why do we need the assume a deterministic system? As long as it physical and we believe physics can be described with computation, we can simulate it. Some randomness doesn't matter.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
13415 6y ago
I'd recommend Daniel Dennett's talk If Brains are Computers, Who Designs the Software? as a counterpoint to this article [1]. Dennett's talk is a bit long but I mostly enjoyed it, especially when he points out the computerphobia of many of his colleagues. Of course, it's easier for me to agree with Dennett than for many other people, because I'm a computationalist in the philosophy of mind and suspect that consciousness is an emergent property of certain computations. It might in theory even be possible to realize that by analytical insight - though probably not in practice. I'm generally not a fan of the philosophy of mind, though, because it mostly consists of speculation and intuition pumping. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTFoJQSd48c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTFoJQSd48c
- koreth1 6y ago
  > I'm a computationalist in the philosophy of mind and suspect that consciousness is an emergent property of certain computations. I'm not a philosopher of any variety and this always seemed like a much more plausible scenario to me than some kind of consciousness magic sauce. It is pretty amazing to watch the intellectual contortions people will twist themselves into to avoid reaching this conclusion. Like deep down they are certain their lived experience can't possibly be an effect of purely physical processes, but they need to couch that belief in sufficiently convoluted words that they can convince themselves they aren't just talking about souls.

jchrisa 6y ago

My hunch agrees with the paper. Because computers operate on the rational numbers instead of the real numbers, they can never be embodied. They are always in a simulation...

mattnewton 6y ago
Maybe I don’t understand your point, but our senses are also compressed to some extent. Your synapses fire or don’t fire, providing digitized input for some of your senses like hearing. At any point there is a discrete amount of hormones in your body. etc etc. That doesn’t seem categorically different from any man made sensor.
- jchrisa 6y ago
  Our sensorium could be indistinguishable from how it'd be in a simulation without impacting my point. Software can hop from host to host (all Turing machines can simulate each other) but living intelligence is embodied. Because of this, no matter how "smart" computers get, we can't trust them not to do stupid stuff. They are smart like that kid in high school who comes up with a formula to turn the world into silly putty, and is stupid enough to use it. There is more than one kind of intelligence, here the argument is that some kinds of intelligence require having skin in the game.
  - sgillen 6y ago
    But would it be impossible to have artificial “skin in the game”? Is there no robot body that could serve this purpose?
    - selestify 6y ago
      Why isn’t computer hardware already as “embodied” in the physical world as our brain matter is?
  - mcguire 6y ago
    We can't trust people not to do stupid stuff.
  - D-Coder 6y ago
    > They are smart like that kid in high school who comes up with a formula to turn the world into silly putty, and is stupid enough to use it. So that kid isn't intelligent?
credit_guy 6y ago
This is like saying CD players will never be as good as vinyl record players because the first use digital signals (rational numbers) and the second analogue (real numbers).
- grogenaut 6y ago
  if you want to be pedantic record players are also digital because they can't represent anything tighter than an atom or the molecule of vinyl
  - mindcrime 6y ago
    Isn't everything digital to a point, since we can't ever measure anything smaller than the Planck length?
- jchrisa 6y ago
  I'm on record saying heterodox things about the Nyquist theorem and SACD 1-bit DAC, so you are on topic. :)
  - credit_guy 6y ago
    In that case, since we are here and it's Friday and everyone needs to take it easy from time to time, here's my proof that we don't live in a simulation: according to [1], ray tracing is computationally undecidable. For example, say you are in a museum at night, and a light bulb turns on in a room on the third floor, is it still dark in some room on the first floor? This problem is undecidable using the axioms of geometric optics. Of course, geometric optics is like real numbers, and the actual world is discrete: light is a finite collection of photons. So, you can do the simulation by simply emitting a number of photons from each light source and tracing them all the way until they are all absorbed. We can still live in a simulation, but one without algorithmic shortcuts, a simulation where you simulate every single photon. Now, I'm sure you can come up with your own version of proof that we can't live in a simulation using Nyquist's theorem. If you do, and your Friday is not too busy, please share. [1] https://users.cs.duke.edu/~reif/paper/tygar/raytracing.pdf https://users.cs.duke.edu/~reif/paper/tygar/raytracing.pdf
cowboysauce 6y ago
> Because computers operate on the rational numbers instead of the real numbers, Computers are just devices that perform computations. It's perfectly possible to construct computers that operate on values that are continuous and not discrete. In fact, such computers have been constructed before. They are know as analog computers and were used for things like numerically solving differential equations.
- karmakaze 6y ago
  This is not even true. We have symbolic processing that can manipulate and formulate with non-rational expressions. This article is so worthless.
- ogogmad 6y ago
  You don't need analog computation. The theory of Computable Real Analysis still assumes a digital computer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_analysis See here for a concrete application of the theory: https://icfp19.sigplan.org/details/icfp-2019-papers/15/Sound-and-robust-solid-modeling-via-exact-real-arithmetic-and-continuity https://icfp19.sigplan.org/details/icfp-2019-papers/15/Sound... Another application is the Android calculator, which computes over exact real numbers in the sense described by Computable Analysis. Finally, it's debatable whether analog computation achieves true computation over the real numbers. The presence of physical noise, and the fact that many physical quantities (like electrical charge) are ultimately discrete at the quantum level, implies that it doesn't really work AFAICT.
  - caymanjim 6y ago
    It seems likely that absolutely nothing is analog. The best theories about physics are all quantized. The only things that we don't have strong quantum theories about are things we barely understand, like time and gravity. And that's just because we haven't found the quanta yet.
ethanwillis 6y ago
It has been a minute since I picked up my information theory book. However if I remember correctly continuous signals (that is functions of the reals) can be represented without loss with a finite (but sufficient number of) discrete samples.
- sgillen 6y ago
  As long as all those reals are computable ;) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_number https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_number
  - ggggtez 6y ago
    It's fully possible for a computer to do symbolic math without reducing the symbols to a decimal.
    - sgillen 6y ago
      Of course! I meant my comment to be tongue in cheek, but saying that some numbers are uncomputable is not incompatible with symbolic math on a computer. Note that for example Pi is computable, despite having an infinite decimal expansion.
airstrike 6y ago
> Because computers operate on the rational numbers instead of the real numbers, they can never be embodied. They are always in a simulation... I read the exact opposite argument yesterday but not from an AGI perspective: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/a-new-theory-explains-how-consciousness-evolved https://getpocket.com/explore/item/a-new-theory-explains-how...
vidarh 6y ago
The counter-point to this: Brains. Brains are computational devices that are embodied.
guhayun 6y ago
Camera pixels are pretty real to me
ogogmad 6y ago
Actually, digital computers can compute over the real numbers. They can compute quite a lot over the real numbers, even. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_analysis#Basic_results https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_analysis#Basic_resu... This even has some concrete applications. See this: https://icfp19.sigplan.org/details/icfp-2019-papers/15/Sound-and-robust-solid-modeling-via-exact-real-arithmetic-and-continuity https://icfp19.sigplan.org/details/icfp-2019-papers/15/Sound... Finally, saying that digital computers can't compute functions of the form Real -> Real is like saying that a computer can't compute functions of the form (Int -> Int) -> (Int -> Int). In other words, it's like saying that higher order functions are impossible.
Der_Einzige 6y ago
This actually makes sense to me, but for those who aren't familiar with set theory, you may want to link this for context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_hypothesis
mcguire 6y ago
"Real numbers" have some problems. Information density, for one. Imagine a real number, say 0.27777..., represented as a point on a piece of string, with zero being one end and 1.0 being the other. That point represents infinite information density. It also would seem to run afoul of some of quantum mechanics.

mchusma 6y ago

Thanks for posting, I also disagree with it. I think using this authors high level stance is that only the human physical experience can lead to general intelligence. By this logic a blind person or quadrapeligic might not be generally intelligent.

dynamite-ready 6y ago
Not quite. The unconscious management of the internal systems that keep us alive are as much a part of that physical experience, as our motor-sensory apparatus. In fact, some neurologists suggest that these unconscious urges are the most likely governors of 'conscious' action. That's a gross oversimplification... Dr Antonio Domasio explores the idea in fine detail in his books. Particularly 'The Self Comes to Mind'.
ddrdrck_ 6y ago
Absolutely not. People with disabilities still experience the world. See Helen Keller. Your reasoning would only apply to people with no sense and no way to communicate at all.

ggggtez 6y ago

It doesn't seem to be required that an animal have sensory information. [1] I'm not convinced by the argument that a computer can't think just because it doesn't experience the world. If anything, experiments like (1) show that we may be able to better understand how brains work if we get rid of all the "noise" from external stimulation so we can better understand the signals. [1] https://www.quantamagazine.org/random-search-wired-into-animals-may-help-them-hunt-20200611/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/random-search-wired-into-anim...

_bxg1 6y ago

As others have said, I think this is a better argument against machines emulating humanness than it is against the broader category of "general intelligence". For me it always comes down to: If we assume the human mind to be a physical, deterministic phenomenon, then an informational, deterministic system could simulate it. It's as simple as that. To take the brute-force route, every atom in a human body could be simulated, which would include its intelligence. Now, that says nothing about time-scale or practicality. It doesn't even say anything about whether electronic computers as we know them can achieve the physical density necessary to simulate something so complex, given the natural resources we have available. But in principle, unless you believe in the metaphysical, there's no denying that AGI is something that can exist.

raindeer3 6y ago
Why do we need the assume a deterministic system? As long as it physical and we believe physics can be described with computation, we can simulate it. Some randomness doesn't matter.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

13415 6y ago

I'd recommend Daniel Dennett's talk If Brains are Computers, Who Designs the Software? as a counterpoint to this article [1]. Dennett's talk is a bit long but I mostly enjoyed it, especially when he points out the computerphobia of many of his colleagues. Of course, it's easier for me to agree with Dennett than for many other people, because I'm a computationalist in the philosophy of mind and suspect that consciousness is an emergent property of certain computations. It might in theory even be possible to realize that by analytical insight - though probably not in practice. I'm generally not a fan of the philosophy of mind, though, because it mostly consists of speculation and intuition pumping. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTFoJQSd48c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTFoJQSd48c

koreth1 6y ago
> I'm a computationalist in the philosophy of mind and suspect that consciousness is an emergent property of certain computations. I'm not a philosopher of any variety and this always seemed like a much more plausible scenario to me than some kind of consciousness magic sauce. It is pretty amazing to watch the intellectual contortions people will twist themselves into to avoid reaching this conclusion. Like deep down they are certain their lived experience can't possibly be an effect of purely physical processes, but they need to couch that belief in sufficiently convoluted words that they can convince themselves they aren't just talking about souls.