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I like your thinking but this still bothers me: > P(All intelligent life is organic | Our best knowldge) =~ 1 Even looking at ourselves, we are somewhat close

I like your thinking but this still bothers me: > P(All intelligent life is organic | Our best knowldge) =~ 1 Even looking at ourselves, we are somewhat close to AI and it’s a reasonable belief that we’ll have something smarter than us within a few decades. Why are non organic aliens so unlikely to you?

lm28469 6y ago
> we are somewhat close to AI and it’s a reasonable belief that we’ll have something smarter than us within a few decades. We've been saying that for the past 50 years or so now... We're always two years from self driving cars too. I wouldn't be so certain about AI, don't forget the 80/20 law, we got very good at pattern matching but we're faaaaar from general AI
mjburgess 6y ago
I equally think P(Inorganic AI) is also vanishing low. What the ad companies have been selling, and researchers peacocking, isn't "AI". It's a system of manipulating electrical abacus beads to follow patterns of interest to human observers. Has very little to do with building systems that have relevant intrinsic properties. A digital computer does not weight more in virtue of simulating weight. A simulation is just an ape moving a bead along a wire to aid in its thinking. Simulations are cognitive games that enable us to reason more clearly. Nothing obtains any properties in virute of being a computer. A computer is just a type of gaming we are playing with another physical system. Intelligence is an instrinic property of really-existing physical systems; largely having to do with the ability to physical adapt on small time scales (ie., the brain grows differently in response to bodily-environmental dynamics). And on large time-scales (ie., evolution provides for the "right material" over >billion years via adaption -- which is an organic process). Only organic material has demonstrated the relevant short-time and long-time properties for intelligence. Games with electrical switches are apt to fool an ape looking at an LCD screen into thinking "there really is a virtual world in there!". But there isnt: it's an illusion. The LCD screen only appears to show it because we have rigged the beads to disturb the liquid crystal of the screen so as to present this illusion.
- piyh 6y ago
  There is a virtual world in there though. There's rules, objects, processes and people to talk to. There can both fooled apes and a nested world to explore. Occasionally we take something out the simulation and interface it into the real world, or physically replicate the best virtual iteration. It might be low probability based on today's knowledge, but given that it's an option, that compute and algorithmic progress will continue to increase for the foreseeable future, those odds will continue to rise. The technosphere is the next abstraction that evolution will take place in and we've only had 50 years to get to know it. Give it 1000 years of civilization surviving and I can guarantee non-organic "life" will surpass all expectations.
- Loughla 6y ago
  >Intelligence is an instrinic property of really-existing physical systems Why are human brains real, which are just meat full of electricity, but computer brains cannot be real, which are just metal full of electricity? >Only organic material has demonstrated the relevant short-time and long-time properties for intelligence. I would argue: so far. We didn't start with Ultra-high-definition televisions. Grandpa had a tv that was barely discernible as a picture, and probably caused massive cancer. Now I have a high def screen in my pocket. >What the ad companies have been selling, and researchers peacocking, isn't "AI". I do agree with this, but I certainly do not know enough about it to speak intelligently. I guess what I'm saying is, your argument comes across as - we can't do it right now, so it must be impossible. That just smacks of being wrong.
  - mjburgess 6y ago
    > we can't do it right now, so it must be impossible Has nothing to do with anything I said. I said no systems have properties in virtue of being computers. Nothing is a program, let alone intelligence. >meat full of electricity Meat grows. Intelligence is just a strategy many animals have adopted as a means of rapid adaptation to their local environment. It is maximal in humans because our motor systems are maximally adaptive, to the extreme degree that we literally learn to walk. Each cell of the body is an entire universe of factories. And the body a synthesis of trillions providing a "terminator-2"-like plasticity from-top-to-bottom. Each of these trillion cells is capable of unimaginable scales of adaption, let alone the whole body. I have no idea why people suppose any of that is a purely formal "algorithm" which any old thing might do. Beads of wood, or electrical switches. I can only assume, like the people to watch films for the first time, we apes are easily fooled.

lm28469 6y ago

> we are somewhat close to AI and it’s a reasonable belief that we’ll have something smarter than us within a few decades. We've been saying that for the past 50 years or so now... We're always two years from self driving cars too. I wouldn't be so certain about AI, don't forget the 80/20 law, we got very good at pattern matching but we're faaaaar from general AI

mjburgess 6y ago

I equally think P(Inorganic AI) is also vanishing low. What the ad companies have been selling, and researchers peacocking, isn't "AI". It's a system of manipulating electrical abacus beads to follow patterns of interest to human observers. Has very little to do with building systems that have relevant intrinsic properties. A digital computer does not weight more in virtue of simulating weight. A simulation is just an ape moving a bead along a wire to aid in its thinking. Simulations are cognitive games that enable us to reason more clearly. Nothing obtains any properties in virute of being a computer. A computer is just a type of gaming we are playing with another physical system. Intelligence is an instrinic property of really-existing physical systems; largely having to do with the ability to physical adapt on small time scales (ie., the brain grows differently in response to bodily-environmental dynamics). And on large time-scales (ie., evolution provides for the "right material" over >billion years via adaption -- which is an organic process). Only organic material has demonstrated the relevant short-time and long-time properties for intelligence. Games with electrical switches are apt to fool an ape looking at an LCD screen into thinking "there really is a virtual world in there!". But there isnt: it's an illusion. The LCD screen only appears to show it because we have rigged the beads to disturb the liquid crystal of the screen so as to present this illusion.

piyh 6y ago
There is a virtual world in there though. There's rules, objects, processes and people to talk to. There can both fooled apes and a nested world to explore. Occasionally we take something out the simulation and interface it into the real world, or physically replicate the best virtual iteration. It might be low probability based on today's knowledge, but given that it's an option, that compute and algorithmic progress will continue to increase for the foreseeable future, those odds will continue to rise. The technosphere is the next abstraction that evolution will take place in and we've only had 50 years to get to know it. Give it 1000 years of civilization surviving and I can guarantee non-organic "life" will surpass all expectations.
Loughla 6y ago
>Intelligence is an instrinic property of really-existing physical systems Why are human brains real, which are just meat full of electricity, but computer brains cannot be real, which are just metal full of electricity? >Only organic material has demonstrated the relevant short-time and long-time properties for intelligence. I would argue: so far. We didn't start with Ultra-high-definition televisions. Grandpa had a tv that was barely discernible as a picture, and probably caused massive cancer. Now I have a high def screen in my pocket. >What the ad companies have been selling, and researchers peacocking, isn't "AI". I do agree with this, but I certainly do not know enough about it to speak intelligently. I guess what I'm saying is, your argument comes across as - we can't do it right now, so it must be impossible. That just smacks of being wrong.
- mjburgess 6y ago
  > we can't do it right now, so it must be impossible Has nothing to do with anything I said. I said no systems have properties in virtue of being computers. Nothing is a program, let alone intelligence. >meat full of electricity Meat grows. Intelligence is just a strategy many animals have adopted as a means of rapid adaptation to their local environment. It is maximal in humans because our motor systems are maximally adaptive, to the extreme degree that we literally learn to walk. Each cell of the body is an entire universe of factories. And the body a synthesis of trillions providing a "terminator-2"-like plasticity from-top-to-bottom. Each of these trillion cells is capable of unimaginable scales of adaption, let alone the whole body. I have no idea why people suppose any of that is a purely formal "algorithm" which any old thing might do. Beads of wood, or electrical switches. I can only assume, like the people to watch films for the first time, we apes are easily fooled.