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> It’s not sorcery, it’s “magic” – in the sense of being a parlor trick, something that seems baffling until you learn the underlying method, whereupon it becom
by nkozyra 5y ago
> It’s not sorcery, it’s “magic” – in the sense of being a parlor trick, something that seems baffling until you learn the underlying method, whereupon it becomes banal.
I think part of the problem is the belief that human or animal intelligence is somehow more mystical.
People who think like this will see an ML implementation solve a problem better and/or faster than a human and counter "well, it's just using statistical inference or pattern recognition" and my response is "so?" Humans use the same processes and parlor tricks to understand and replay things.
Where humans excel is in generalizing knowledge. We can apply bits and pieces of our previous parlor tricks to speed up comprehension in other problem spaces.
But none of it is magic. We're all simple machines.
- xnyan 5y ago>simple machines. Ooof. Premed dropout here, so admittedly not an expert in human biology but this is a wild statement. A neuron is simple in the same way a transistor is simply a silicon sandwich doped with metals. A parlor trick is something that once you understand, is straightforward to implement on your own. Are you arguing that anyone now or in the foreseeable future could simply recreate the abilities of a human? If so, what evidence could you show me to support that?
- nkozyra 5y agoI'm arguing that animal or lesser intelligence is built around hundreds of thousands of parlor tricks operating in a complex ensemble. There's a bias toward the marvel of human intelligence that causes some people to dismiss ML for the same underlying reasons we don't try to put a square peg in a round hole after infancy. Side note: disagree all you like but starting a rebuttal with "oof" is the kind of dismissive language that lets people know you'll be taking a very reductionist approach in your reply.
- nicoffeine 5y ago> I'm arguing that animal or lesser intelligence is built around hundreds of thousands of parlor tricks operating in a complex ensemble. Until ML/AI can perform a single one of those parlor tricks without the constant direction of human intelligence, there’s no reason to stop marveling.
- staticman2 5y agoWe are not "simple machines" we are the result of 3.7 billion years of evolution. We are the most complex known thing in the universe. We are far more complicated than anything we can hope to make in the forseeable future, if ever.
- sorokod 5y agoYou and every living organism around you, was hammered out by the same evolutionary process.
- jmull 5y ago> We're all simple machines. Great. Prove it. Build the simple machine that acts as a human does. Should be simple, right? Personally, I don't think there's any magic. But it's not "simple" either.
- heavyset_go 5y agoObligatory "Your brain is not a computer"[1] reference. [1] https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-informati...