4 ms·

Do you believe in evolution? The process of human evolution is a tale of smarter and smarter animals coming from less intellegent ones. Also Humans can invent

by dejb 18y ago

Do you believe in evolution? The process of human evolution is a tale of smarter and smarter animals coming from less intellegent ones. Also Humans can invent chess algorithms that can beat the best chess player in the world.

aswanson 18y ago
I think his chief exception is the timetable laid out. He is not saying he doesn't believe in evolution. He disagress with someone's extrapolation, that is all.
- dejb 18y ago
  I was replying to a comment not the parent post. The one where the guy proposed that it would be impossible for humans to create anything smarter than ourselves. Sometimes the indentation on comments can be a little tough to keep up with.
tom_rath 18y ago
No, the process of human evolution is a tale of organisms adapting to their environment. There is no guarantee that human beings will evolve into something more intelligent. If the average person is granted the ability to manufacture their own reality without any need for earthy concerns, one might think evolutionary forces would push people into becoming marginally intelligent beings focused on decadence.
- dejb 18y ago
  No there is no guarantee. However in the past it is safe to say that, on average, the human evolutionary path involved an increase in intelligence. Whether that is 'the tale' I will leave to poetic license. I did this to disprove the notion that beings could not produce beings of greater intelligence in the parent post. To disprove a general statement you only have to show one contrary instance. Here is a link you may find useful http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic
  - tom_rath 18y ago
    Back at ya: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution Sexual activity aside, human creative activity did not 'produce beings of greater intelligence'.
    - dejb 18y ago
      > Sexual activity aside That was my point. That there exists a process (evolution) where greater intelligence can spring from lesser intelligence. I agree the mechanism is quite different but it demonstrates there is no fundamental obstacle to the process of increasing intelligence. Perhaps this is one of the mental leaps that creationists are not able/willing to make. Their belief in an ultimate intelligence producing lesser intelligences is at least logically consistent.
ars 18y ago
>Also Humans can invent chess algorithms that can beat the best chess player in the world. Except the machine is extremely stupid! It doesn't have any idea on how to play chess, it just tries every possibility one after the other until it finds a good one. That's ok for chess - it has well defined rules, and more importantly a fitness function. That's where all the work is - define a function to tell you if your permutation was a good one. But it doesn't work for AI, because there are no fitness functions there.
- dejb 18y ago
  > Except the machine is extremely stupid! It doesn't have any idea on how to play chess, it just tries every possibility one after the other until it finds a good one. It is also possible that each individual neuron in the brain is stupid! They don't have any idea of whatever task is being processed, human intelligence is just the result of random connections being made and reinforced by positive feedback. > But it doesn't work for AI, because there are no fitness functions there. I think it would accurate to say that the fitness functions are more difficult to define and perhaps they are not available at on such a constant basis. But if you are saying that there is no test for AI, you are just basically defining AI as an impossibility. I general I think that whenever a decision making process is automated it tends to lose it's mystic and people then view it less as intelligence and more as a dumb process. Yes chess is just a baby step but it does demonstrate that something that humans used to think of as a significant indicator of intelligence can be achieved.
  - ars 18y ago
    >But if you are saying that there is no test for AI, you are just basically defining AI as an impossibility. What I'm saying is that to evaluate AI you need I (artificial or otherwise). So I don't think random permutations will ever get you there, because if we ever manage to write the fitness function, we are almost there anyway. (And no one knows how to do that.) Maybe one day all of humanity will take part in the great AI race, and every person will help evaluate AI's to find the best one. I'm not sure it'll be enough though, you simply need far far too many permutations for it to ever work. It would be interesting to use say WoW as a test bed for AI, make sure it always joins a team and see how good you can make it (emphasize the helping other members of the team part). Then send it to second life. But, I still don't think it'll ever be enough. In particular it'll never be able to design for creativity.

by dejb 18y ago

aswanson 18y ago

I think his chief exception is the timetable laid out. He is not saying he doesn't believe in evolution. He disagress with someone's extrapolation, that is all.

dejb 18y ago
I was replying to a comment not the parent post. The one where the guy proposed that it would be impossible for humans to create anything smarter than ourselves. Sometimes the indentation on comments can be a little tough to keep up with.

tom_rath 18y ago

No, the process of human evolution is a tale of organisms adapting to their environment. There is no guarantee that human beings will evolve into something more intelligent. If the average person is granted the ability to manufacture their own reality without any need for earthy concerns, one might think evolutionary forces would push people into becoming marginally intelligent beings focused on decadence.

dejb 18y ago
No there is no guarantee. However in the past it is safe to say that, on average, the human evolutionary path involved an increase in intelligence. Whether that is 'the tale' I will leave to poetic license. I did this to disprove the notion that beings could not produce beings of greater intelligence in the parent post. To disprove a general statement you only have to show one contrary instance. Here is a link you may find useful http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic
- tom_rath 18y ago
  Back at ya: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution Sexual activity aside, human creative activity did not 'produce beings of greater intelligence'.
  - dejb 18y ago
    > Sexual activity aside That was my point. That there exists a process (evolution) where greater intelligence can spring from lesser intelligence. I agree the mechanism is quite different but it demonstrates there is no fundamental obstacle to the process of increasing intelligence. Perhaps this is one of the mental leaps that creationists are not able/willing to make. Their belief in an ultimate intelligence producing lesser intelligences is at least logically consistent.

ars 18y ago

>Also Humans can invent chess algorithms that can beat the best chess player in the world. Except the machine is extremely stupid! It doesn't have any idea on how to play chess, it just tries every possibility one after the other until it finds a good one. That's ok for chess - it has well defined rules, and more importantly a fitness function. That's where all the work is - define a function to tell you if your permutation was a good one. But it doesn't work for AI, because there are no fitness functions there.

dejb 18y ago
> Except the machine is extremely stupid! It doesn't have any idea on how to play chess, it just tries every possibility one after the other until it finds a good one. It is also possible that each individual neuron in the brain is stupid! They don't have any idea of whatever task is being processed, human intelligence is just the result of random connections being made and reinforced by positive feedback. > But it doesn't work for AI, because there are no fitness functions there. I think it would accurate to say that the fitness functions are more difficult to define and perhaps they are not available at on such a constant basis. But if you are saying that there is no test for AI, you are just basically defining AI as an impossibility. I general I think that whenever a decision making process is automated it tends to lose it's mystic and people then view it less as intelligence and more as a dumb process. Yes chess is just a baby step but it does demonstrate that something that humans used to think of as a significant indicator of intelligence can be achieved.
- ars 18y ago
  >But if you are saying that there is no test for AI, you are just basically defining AI as an impossibility. What I'm saying is that to evaluate AI you need I (artificial or otherwise). So I don't think random permutations will ever get you there, because if we ever manage to write the fitness function, we are almost there anyway. (And no one knows how to do that.) Maybe one day all of humanity will take part in the great AI race, and every person will help evaluate AI's to find the best one. I'm not sure it'll be enough though, you simply need far far too many permutations for it to ever work. It would be interesting to use say WoW as a test bed for AI, make sure it always joins a team and see how good you can make it (emphasize the helping other members of the team part). Then send it to second life. But, I still don't think it'll ever be enough. In particular it'll never be able to design for creativity.