7 ms·

There’s one major distinction between humans and animals: language. Not like “me want banana” language like in apes but like fully “ideas within ideas within id

by alecst 5y ago

There’s one major distinction between humans and animals: language. Not like “me want banana” language like in apes but like fully “ideas within ideas within ideas” language, with recursion and case and noun classes and all that. It’s incredible. It’s astonishing. We are like gods compared to other animals. And ever since we have had language (not even that long — ~50k years or so) we have been using it to tell stories about ourselves that separate us more and more from the rest of the world. As if all of the beautiful things that make us human stemmed from symbolic reasoning. And yet we see every day: jealousy in chimps, maternal love in cows, play in dogs, compassion in elephants, frustration in cats, curiosity in pigs. The story that we tell ourselves about our specialness gives us a moral free pass to treat animals how we want. Which is why I think these articles tend to polarize. It’s because the implication is that if animals are really so much like us, we’ll have to come up with a much better justification for treating them how we do. For now our reasons have hinged on their supposed lack of ability to feel emotion (or even pain!). In the future it might well be because they cannot symbolically reason. We have to have some reason, in the end, for treating animals the way we do, or otherwise face a moral crisis. I do wonder how the pre-humanist humans felt about this, like tribal people. I know they had few qualms about killing animals but at the same time assigned human qualities to them. It might have been that surviving without meat was simply impossible, which is an argument one could not easily make today.

q1w2 5y ago
Studying AI has given me a lot of perspective of human intelligence. It's pretty incredible the way that a system that was designed as a basic input/output sensory/reflex system has gotten so complex that we still cannot model it with supercomputers. The numbers of connections and configurations of neurons is staggering, and still well beyond the neat matrix-array-based of modern AI. ...but at the core, I've come to realize that we continue to be stimulation based creatures. What we think at any given moment is a product of what we were thinking a moment before and the sensory stimulus we are constantly receiving. It occurs to me that when we create an AI that surpasses us, that that AI will likely create a fundamentally different way of thinking. Something not based on external stimulus and the churning of our thoughts - but something more purposeful and ordered. And THAT entity will be the ultimate output of humanity. We cannot imagine what it will do, or what it will do with us (probably nothing - it will probably just leave the Earth). ...but I also imagine that we are not the first in the universe to create such an entity, and so there must be other massive timeless entities in space. Perhaps they live in the darkest parts of the universe, in quiet contemplation, or perhaps they search for each other to resist cosmic expansion. Perhaps they peacefully merge, or collaborate, or war with one another on billion-year timescales. It's a great mystery that will forever be beyond our level of intelligence. Unless, of course, the AI wants to upload us and bring us along for the ride. ...but that notion is probably just wishful thinking and hubris. It would be like us keeping a pet fungus in our pocket so it can enjoy a day at the office.
- medstrom 5y ago
  You start out well with the first three paragraphs, but I don't get how you can decide it will 'probably' leave the Earth, let alone with such a high degree of confidence as saying 'probably'. Why wouldn't it make an army of bots to start converting all the matter in the solar system and beyond into more computing substrate or whatever else it finds useful?
  - majormajor 5y ago
    Many sorts of intelligence are social creatures, so - especially for a hypothetical AI created by a us - I would expect it to seek out stimulus and social relationships. In the happy sorts of sci-fi, that gives us something like the Culture from Iain Banks; it could also be a "replace the humans with other AI" situation. I doubt we see it in our lifetimes, though.
  - q1w2 5y ago
    You're right, I cannot say "probably". Although your notion that it converts our solar system into a computing machine, doesn't preclude it from leaving thereafter. I suppose there are three possibilities. 1. It leaves the Earth, and either remains limited in size or expands in a more advantageous solar system(s). 2. It stays on the Earth forever, permanently limiting its computational capacity. 3. It expands to include sub-entities that both stay and leave in some cosmic distributed computing organism. I suppose the three possibilities above can be reduced to one fundamental question: Will the AI expand to be interstellar/intergalactic in nature, or will it remain limited? Is there a fundamental unending utility to ever-greater computing power? ...and, if so, would there be detectable signs of such expanding computers in the cosmos? This last question is important both for our own forecasting of the future, but also to interpret inter-AI-entity relations, because presumably if AIs do NOT get along in space, they likely hide signs of their existence. One thing I'm convinced of - organic meat bags are not the future of space-faring intelligence.
- kingkawn 5y ago
  Anything invoking “ultimates” is a fever dream of people who have lost sight of life for an obsession
jdavis703 5y ago
I see nothing immoral in a bear eating a human. It’s just being a bear. But just like any other social animal, as humans we’re of course going to kill that bear so it stops eating us. It has nothing to do with us being superior than a bear. We just don’t want to die like any other animal! And as humans I see nothing wrong with eating other animals (outside of animal cruelty, e.g. factory farms). As animals, we naturally eat each other. If there is something immoral about this, does that mean a rabbit is morally superior to a fox?
- cjrd 5y ago
  A fox eats a rabbit out of necessity. In our modern economy, people don't need to eat animals; it's usually a matter of convenience, taste, and tradition. But in all reality, we can get by quite comfortably without doing so.
  - wcarron 5y ago
    There is no moral obligation to abstain from meat, whatsoever.
    - etcet 5y ago
      Speak for yourself, I feel a strong moral obligation not to eat meat or otherwise support industries which exploit animals. Reducing suffering is a moral imperative.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - jdavis703 5y ago
        If you believe you should reduce suffering, it would be better for you to quickly kill a chicken and eat it. Otherwise, a cat, bird of prey or other animal might kill that chicken. And cats are cruel killers that slowly torture their prey before eating them.
stremrn8 5y ago
wcarron 5y ago
There's nothing immoral with eating things. Why would there be? The other posters' rabbit-fox example is a great point. I also strongly reject the idea that we need 'our specialness' to 'justify eating things and how we treat them'. I don't need justification beyond: 'That thing is made of meat. I can eat meat. I'm going to kill it and eat it'. There is no moral crisis. Things die. Things get eaten. Just 2 days ago, I caught 2 mice that had been living a nice life in my attic (because I was lazy for a few weeks). I drowned them in a bucket. Is there a moral crisis there? No. They were vermin, living where I decided they cannot (because I live in that space). There is no difference between that and a scorpion killing small spiders trying to spin webs in its burrow. I also think you've touched on something: We created distinctions that 'separates us more and more from the rest of the world'. If what you say is true, then they're simply illusory. If humans are so like animals (indeed we simply are the apex animal), an attempt to force morality onto our natural impulses and diets is absurd. Therefore, killing and eating anything we can reasonbly digest is a natural behavior of the human animal. Returning to the rabbit-fox example... well, clearly you can see meat-moralilizing falls apart in a hurry.
- Stupulous 5y ago
  This is a fascinating twist to me. Human exceptionalism is what lets us justify not eating other animals- if we're not special then there is no reason we should be held to a different standard. I have encountered many conversations with the opposite premise and it never occurred to me that it should be reversed. Thanks for the new perspective.
  - wcarron 5y ago
    Anytime. Total aside, I think it's funny that many 'classic herbivores' like deer, horses, moose, etc, will absolutely eat other animals if the opportuntiy presents it. Vegetarians and vegans have chosen a dietary extreme that even the animals they strive to protect/save/whatever don't display.
- mbil 5y ago
  'That thing is made of meat. I can eat meat. I'm going to kill it and eat it' I am made of meat -- hopefully we don't cross paths!
theoriu234 5y ago
> We are like gods compared to other animals. The linguistic ability of most Humans is at the level of GPT3 - probably why statistical approaches work so well in NLP.
leafmeal 5y ago
More about language, apparently, not all languages have that "ideas within ideas within ideas" property you were talking about. The Pirahã language of an indigenous people in Brazil is the counter example. This New Yorker article talks about it and the fascinating effects it had on the field of linguistics. Before its discovery most linguists, Led by Chomsky, believed having recursion in our grammars set humans apart from all other animals. Pirahã showed this might not be the case. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/the-interpreter-2 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/the-interprete... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language
Melatonic 5y ago
I always wonder how the hell I would think or solve even simple problems without language. It seems extremely foreign.
burrows 5y ago
> There’s one major distinction between humans and animals: language. Not like “me want banana” language like in apes but like fully “ideas within ideas within ideas” language, with recursion and case and noun classes and all that. It’s incredible. It’s astonishing. We are like gods compared to other animals. Does emoting about a claim make it true somehow?

by alecst 5y ago

q1w2 5y ago

Studying AI has given me a lot of perspective of human intelligence. It's pretty incredible the way that a system that was designed as a basic input/output sensory/reflex system has gotten so complex that we still cannot model it with supercomputers. The numbers of connections and configurations of neurons is staggering, and still well beyond the neat matrix-array-based of modern AI. ...but at the core, I've come to realize that we continue to be stimulation based creatures. What we think at any given moment is a product of what we were thinking a moment before and the sensory stimulus we are constantly receiving. It occurs to me that when we create an AI that surpasses us, that that AI will likely create a fundamentally different way of thinking. Something not based on external stimulus and the churning of our thoughts - but something more purposeful and ordered. And THAT entity will be the ultimate output of humanity. We cannot imagine what it will do, or what it will do with us (probably nothing - it will probably just leave the Earth). ...but I also imagine that we are not the first in the universe to create such an entity, and so there must be other massive timeless entities in space. Perhaps they live in the darkest parts of the universe, in quiet contemplation, or perhaps they search for each other to resist cosmic expansion. Perhaps they peacefully merge, or collaborate, or war with one another on billion-year timescales. It's a great mystery that will forever be beyond our level of intelligence. Unless, of course, the AI wants to upload us and bring us along for the ride. ...but that notion is probably just wishful thinking and hubris. It would be like us keeping a pet fungus in our pocket so it can enjoy a day at the office.

medstrom 5y ago
You start out well with the first three paragraphs, but I don't get how you can decide it will 'probably' leave the Earth, let alone with such a high degree of confidence as saying 'probably'. Why wouldn't it make an army of bots to start converting all the matter in the solar system and beyond into more computing substrate or whatever else it finds useful?
- majormajor 5y ago
  Many sorts of intelligence are social creatures, so - especially for a hypothetical AI created by a us - I would expect it to seek out stimulus and social relationships. In the happy sorts of sci-fi, that gives us something like the Culture from Iain Banks; it could also be a "replace the humans with other AI" situation. I doubt we see it in our lifetimes, though.
- q1w2 5y ago
  You're right, I cannot say "probably". Although your notion that it converts our solar system into a computing machine, doesn't preclude it from leaving thereafter. I suppose there are three possibilities. 1. It leaves the Earth, and either remains limited in size or expands in a more advantageous solar system(s). 2. It stays on the Earth forever, permanently limiting its computational capacity. 3. It expands to include sub-entities that both stay and leave in some cosmic distributed computing organism. I suppose the three possibilities above can be reduced to one fundamental question: Will the AI expand to be interstellar/intergalactic in nature, or will it remain limited? Is there a fundamental unending utility to ever-greater computing power? ...and, if so, would there be detectable signs of such expanding computers in the cosmos? This last question is important both for our own forecasting of the future, but also to interpret inter-AI-entity relations, because presumably if AIs do NOT get along in space, they likely hide signs of their existence. One thing I'm convinced of - organic meat bags are not the future of space-faring intelligence.
kingkawn 5y ago
Anything invoking “ultimates” is a fever dream of people who have lost sight of life for an obsession

jdavis703 5y ago

I see nothing immoral in a bear eating a human. It’s just being a bear. But just like any other social animal, as humans we’re of course going to kill that bear so it stops eating us. It has nothing to do with us being superior than a bear. We just don’t want to die like any other animal! And as humans I see nothing wrong with eating other animals (outside of animal cruelty, e.g. factory farms). As animals, we naturally eat each other. If there is something immoral about this, does that mean a rabbit is morally superior to a fox?

cjrd 5y ago
A fox eats a rabbit out of necessity. In our modern economy, people don't need to eat animals; it's usually a matter of convenience, taste, and tradition. But in all reality, we can get by quite comfortably without doing so.
- wcarron 5y ago
  There is no moral obligation to abstain from meat, whatsoever.
  - etcet 5y ago
    Speak for yourself, I feel a strong moral obligation not to eat meat or otherwise support industries which exploit animals. Reducing suffering is a moral imperative.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - jdavis703 5y ago
      If you believe you should reduce suffering, it would be better for you to quickly kill a chicken and eat it. Otherwise, a cat, bird of prey or other animal might kill that chicken. And cats are cruel killers that slowly torture their prey before eating them.

stremrn8 5y ago

wcarron 5y ago

There's nothing immoral with eating things. Why would there be? The other posters' rabbit-fox example is a great point. I also strongly reject the idea that we need 'our specialness' to 'justify eating things and how we treat them'. I don't need justification beyond: 'That thing is made of meat. I can eat meat. I'm going to kill it and eat it'. There is no moral crisis. Things die. Things get eaten. Just 2 days ago, I caught 2 mice that had been living a nice life in my attic (because I was lazy for a few weeks). I drowned them in a bucket. Is there a moral crisis there? No. They were vermin, living where I decided they cannot (because I live in that space). There is no difference between that and a scorpion killing small spiders trying to spin webs in its burrow. I also think you've touched on something: We created distinctions that 'separates us more and more from the rest of the world'. If what you say is true, then they're simply illusory. If humans are so like animals (indeed we simply are the apex animal), an attempt to force morality onto our natural impulses and diets is absurd. Therefore, killing and eating anything we can reasonbly digest is a natural behavior of the human animal. Returning to the rabbit-fox example... well, clearly you can see meat-moralilizing falls apart in a hurry.

Stupulous 5y ago
This is a fascinating twist to me. Human exceptionalism is what lets us justify not eating other animals- if we're not special then there is no reason we should be held to a different standard. I have encountered many conversations with the opposite premise and it never occurred to me that it should be reversed. Thanks for the new perspective.
- wcarron 5y ago
  Anytime. Total aside, I think it's funny that many 'classic herbivores' like deer, horses, moose, etc, will absolutely eat other animals if the opportuntiy presents it. Vegetarians and vegans have chosen a dietary extreme that even the animals they strive to protect/save/whatever don't display.
mbil 5y ago
'That thing is made of meat. I can eat meat. I'm going to kill it and eat it' I am made of meat -- hopefully we don't cross paths!

theoriu234 5y ago

> We are like gods compared to other animals. The linguistic ability of most Humans is at the level of GPT3 - probably why statistical approaches work so well in NLP.

leafmeal 5y ago

More about language, apparently, not all languages have that "ideas within ideas within ideas" property you were talking about. The Pirahã language of an indigenous people in Brazil is the counter example. This New Yorker article talks about it and the fascinating effects it had on the field of linguistics. Before its discovery most linguists, Led by Chomsky, believed having recursion in our grammars set humans apart from all other animals. Pirahã showed this might not be the case. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/the-interpreter-2 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/the-interprete... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language

Melatonic 5y ago

I always wonder how the hell I would think or solve even simple problems without language. It seems extremely foreign.

burrows 5y ago

> There’s one major distinction between humans and animals: language. Not like “me want banana” language like in apes but like fully “ideas within ideas within ideas” language, with recursion and case and noun classes and all that. It’s incredible. It’s astonishing. We are like gods compared to other animals. Does emoting about a claim make it true somehow?