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> But we neither know how to engineer the drive that is built into all animate complex systems, nor do we know how to mimic evolutionary pressure, which we do n

by a-dub 5y ago

> But we neither know how to engineer the drive that is built into all animate complex systems, nor do we know how to mimic evolutionary pressure, which we do not under- stand and cannot model (outside highly artificial conditions such as a Petri dish). In fact, if we already knew how to emulate evolution, we would in any case not need to do this in order to create intelligent life, because the complexity level of intelligent life is lower than that of evolution. This means that emulating intelligence would be much easier than emulating evolution en bloc. Chalmers is, therefore, wrong. We cannot engineer the conditions for a spontaneous evolution of intelligence. this is the thing i've always sort of loved about philosophy. they just kinda make shit up, provide their own definitions that are rooted in a bamboozling by use of flowery language, and then once they've stated all their definitions with their conclusions baked in, they hop, skip and jump down the path which now obviously leads to the conclusion they started with. it's kind of like a form of mathematics where they define their own first principles in each argument with the express purpose of trying to build the most beautiful path to their conclusions. it really is a beautiful form of art, like architecture for ideas.

Rd6n6 5y ago
You can’t pick your favourite bad argument and ridicule an entire field. You are incidentally using ideas from several different old, influential philosophies to even formulate Luther comment Philosophy includes questions like “how do we decide whether something is true or trustworthy,” or “what constitutes a good or a bad way to make a case for something.” If you’re going to throw philosophy out, you can’t question anything any more
- imbnwa 5y ago
  Science used to be called 'natural philosophy'
- threatofrain 5y ago
  Philosophy may refer to the specific branch in academia and its current practice, as opposed to any philosophical inquiry. Every field already pursues their own philosophical inquiry, and yet philosophers and mathematicians are in separate departments. Such is the current practice and organization of academics. If we were to consider mathematics and computer science as part of philosophy, then we might say that as a mode of inquiry, philosophy has had great success in achieving multidisciplinary consensus and international impact. But if we were to consider philosophy as a specific branch of academic organization, then we might be disappointed at the fruits emerging from that field.
  - a-dub 5y ago
    to bring it full circle and tear apart the original argument above, one could argue that the relatively simple laws of logic from philosophy give rise to all of digital computing (like... what is directly expressed in digital logic design). yet the emergent complexity of all computerdom is far beyond the complexity of the basic rules of logic coming from philosophy. more to the point here, computer science and mathematics are very similar to philosophy in that authors invent a set of abstractions and then construct rules for how they interact in a self-consistent manner.
    - threatofrain 5y ago
      Relating computer science and mathematics to philosophy is already a fair and understandable argument. Yet, as separate divisions of professional academic labor, why do the fruits they bear look so different in terms of their ability to generate frameworks for multi-disciplinary consensus and international impact?
      - a-dub 5y ago
        computer science, mathematics, science and many other technical fields borrow logic and formalized reasoning from philosophy and subsets of those fields have direct applications in the system of production, therefore i think that's why they're elevated in terms of perceived impact. i've always sort of seen pure philosophy as an art for exercising rhetorical and general reasoning skills, which then seem to have the most natural applications in fields like law and politics. i think where it can go sideways is cases where philosophers will attempt to apply reasoning to premises or fields that they don't fully understand. that said, as we march into the post truth era, perhaps philosophy will have another moment to shine as a framework for training reasoning skills in an uncertain world.
- a-dub 5y ago
  fair, it's the first step towards trying to construct formalism around reasoning... but then it often jumps off into the abstract based on synthetic premises... that's when it makes the leap to art. and who said anything about ridicule? art is important! perceptive exercises and exploration of ideas strengthen our skills for reasoning.
Atreiden 5y ago
Funny, that's the exact reason I hate philosophy. And I say this as someone with a BA in it. I thought of it initially as a useful way to model the abstract, the hypothetical, and the integrity our own ideas and perceptions. But so many philosophers tried to use their arguments to prove things about the world. Like a less powerful form of economics, which itself is based on the "if we model X this way, Y" mindset. I like your conceptualization of philosophy as art. I'll probably to refer to it that way hereon.
- mistermann 5y ago
  I think of it a bit like science vs scientific thinking (that isn't constrained to actual science and logic) that one encounters on the internet. The problem is not with philosophy, it is with humans.
dandotway 5y ago
The excerpt you quoted is perfectly meaningful. They are saying an evolutionary process that produces intelligent life is more complicated ("has more moving parts") than the intelligent life forms thus produced. How could this not be true? An intelligent life form may have hundreds of billions of neurons and trillions of cells, but the evolution that produced said life form involved untold zillions of complex life forms over billions of years. There are over 10-to-the-power-of-30 microbes on planet earth right now, evolving in ways currently beyond the understanding of any computational biologist. Although computer scientists can use genetic algorithms inspired by evolution to "breed" better backgammon algorithms, this is quite a few orders of magnitude simpler than emulating a true evolution of intelligent biological life. The point is intelligent biological life forms are less complicated than the "factory" that produced them.
- alanbernstein 5y ago
  > They are saying an evolutionary process that produces intelligent life is more complicated ("has more moving parts") than the intelligent life forms thus produced. How could this not be true? The whole field of emergent complexity exists to answer questions about this. Questions which only exist because there are many situations where "this" is evidently not true.
- dnautics 5y ago
  It begs the question though. The argument is: Assume you can't make artificial intelligence without the stimuli of the real world's processes. Since a single human is less complicated than the real world, therefore you can't make artificial intelligence.
- a-dub 5y ago
  > They are saying an evolutionary process that produces intelligent life is more complicated ("has more moving parts") than the intelligent life forms thus produced. How could this not be true? because we don't know enough about evolutionary processes nor intelligent life to make statements like that, and "more complicated" is completely ill-defined. how do we know that evolution isn't simply a few basic rules, a lot of randomness and a lot of time?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deeviant 5y ago
Philosophy has never even been accidentally right about anything regarding artificial intelligence, which is impressive since it seems like every philosopher and his dog felt the need to opine on AI since the inception of the idea.

by a-dub 5y ago

Rd6n6 5y ago

You can’t pick your favourite bad argument and ridicule an entire field. You are incidentally using ideas from several different old, influential philosophies to even formulate Luther comment Philosophy includes questions like “how do we decide whether something is true or trustworthy,” or “what constitutes a good or a bad way to make a case for something.” If you’re going to throw philosophy out, you can’t question anything any more

imbnwa 5y ago
Science used to be called 'natural philosophy'
threatofrain 5y ago
Philosophy may refer to the specific branch in academia and its current practice, as opposed to any philosophical inquiry. Every field already pursues their own philosophical inquiry, and yet philosophers and mathematicians are in separate departments. Such is the current practice and organization of academics. If we were to consider mathematics and computer science as part of philosophy, then we might say that as a mode of inquiry, philosophy has had great success in achieving multidisciplinary consensus and international impact. But if we were to consider philosophy as a specific branch of academic organization, then we might be disappointed at the fruits emerging from that field.
- a-dub 5y ago
  to bring it full circle and tear apart the original argument above, one could argue that the relatively simple laws of logic from philosophy give rise to all of digital computing (like... what is directly expressed in digital logic design). yet the emergent complexity of all computerdom is far beyond the complexity of the basic rules of logic coming from philosophy. more to the point here, computer science and mathematics are very similar to philosophy in that authors invent a set of abstractions and then construct rules for how they interact in a self-consistent manner.
  - threatofrain 5y ago
    Relating computer science and mathematics to philosophy is already a fair and understandable argument. Yet, as separate divisions of professional academic labor, why do the fruits they bear look so different in terms of their ability to generate frameworks for multi-disciplinary consensus and international impact?
    - a-dub 5y ago
      computer science, mathematics, science and many other technical fields borrow logic and formalized reasoning from philosophy and subsets of those fields have direct applications in the system of production, therefore i think that's why they're elevated in terms of perceived impact. i've always sort of seen pure philosophy as an art for exercising rhetorical and general reasoning skills, which then seem to have the most natural applications in fields like law and politics. i think where it can go sideways is cases where philosophers will attempt to apply reasoning to premises or fields that they don't fully understand. that said, as we march into the post truth era, perhaps philosophy will have another moment to shine as a framework for training reasoning skills in an uncertain world.
a-dub 5y ago
fair, it's the first step towards trying to construct formalism around reasoning... but then it often jumps off into the abstract based on synthetic premises... that's when it makes the leap to art. and who said anything about ridicule? art is important! perceptive exercises and exploration of ideas strengthen our skills for reasoning.

Atreiden 5y ago

Funny, that's the exact reason I hate philosophy. And I say this as someone with a BA in it. I thought of it initially as a useful way to model the abstract, the hypothetical, and the integrity our own ideas and perceptions. But so many philosophers tried to use their arguments to prove things about the world. Like a less powerful form of economics, which itself is based on the "if we model X this way, Y" mindset. I like your conceptualization of philosophy as art. I'll probably to refer to it that way hereon.

mistermann 5y ago
I think of it a bit like science vs scientific thinking (that isn't constrained to actual science and logic) that one encounters on the internet. The problem is not with philosophy, it is with humans.

dandotway 5y ago

The excerpt you quoted is perfectly meaningful. They are saying an evolutionary process that produces intelligent life is more complicated ("has more moving parts") than the intelligent life forms thus produced. How could this not be true? An intelligent life form may have hundreds of billions of neurons and trillions of cells, but the evolution that produced said life form involved untold zillions of complex life forms over billions of years. There are over 10-to-the-power-of-30 microbes on planet earth right now, evolving in ways currently beyond the understanding of any computational biologist. Although computer scientists can use genetic algorithms inspired by evolution to "breed" better backgammon algorithms, this is quite a few orders of magnitude simpler than emulating a true evolution of intelligent biological life. The point is intelligent biological life forms are less complicated than the "factory" that produced them.

alanbernstein 5y ago
> They are saying an evolutionary process that produces intelligent life is more complicated ("has more moving parts") than the intelligent life forms thus produced. How could this not be true? The whole field of emergent complexity exists to answer questions about this. Questions which only exist because there are many situations where "this" is evidently not true.
dnautics 5y ago
It begs the question though. The argument is: Assume you can't make artificial intelligence without the stimuli of the real world's processes. Since a single human is less complicated than the real world, therefore you can't make artificial intelligence.
a-dub 5y ago
> They are saying an evolutionary process that produces intelligent life is more complicated ("has more moving parts") than the intelligent life forms thus produced. How could this not be true? because we don't know enough about evolutionary processes nor intelligent life to make statements like that, and "more complicated" is completely ill-defined. how do we know that evolution isn't simply a few basic rules, a lot of randomness and a lot of time?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

deeviant 5y ago

Philosophy has never even been accidentally right about anything regarding artificial intelligence, which is impressive since it seems like every philosopher and his dog felt the need to opine on AI since the inception of the idea.