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AGI is only inevitable if you subscribe to materialism. Basically it comes down to whether we are purely material beings or whether there are non-material aspec

AGI is only inevitable if you subscribe to materialism. Basically it comes down to whether we are purely material beings or whether there are non-material aspects to our mind. There are more than a couple non religious arguments for dualism, many are relatively recent, as dualism is enjoying a bit of a comeback in philosophical circles. The Chinese room and the red room a.k.a.Mary's room are simple enough thought experiments that can help you grok why dualism might be true. That being said, the most recent philpeople survey has 52% accepting materialism compared to 32% accepting dualism with the rest undecided, so academic philosophy does generally lean toward AGI. https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/all https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/all

foobarian 5y ago
There is some gray area in between where maybe AGI is dependent on some (material) mechanism that we haven't discovered yet, and hence can't be accomplished using present computational setups.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  Absolutely, the "inevitable" timeframe may be millenia for all anyone knows, it just means that we will eventually achieve it given enough time and resources.
simonh 5y ago
The Chinese room argument is a parlour trick that uses scale as a distraction. It posits a person in a room manipulating symbols to produce intelligent seeming outputs. It says, see, it’s absurd to think a person in a room with a stack of symbols could emulate intelligence. But let’s say the room contains many billions of people, it is the size of a planet, and it contains racks of many trillions of symbols, and it spends millions or billions of years to produce an output. That’s more like the scale of a sophisticated computer system, or a brain. Does that sound much like a man in a room with some symbols? No. Does it sound like that could do complex calculations and produce sophisticated and perhaps even intelligent outputs? Well, given enough time and scale, yes why not? The Chinese room is pure misdirection and it amazes me anyone falls for it. There’s really no actual argument there.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  I mean I agree, but a third of philosophers subscribe to dualism, so I wouldn't be so quick to write the whole thing off.
  - simonh 5y ago
    Dual meaning two, right? Material and non material. As far as I can tell not one of them can describe what the second non material thing in dualism is, or what any of its properties are. Even they seem to have no idea what they actually believe.
    - colinmhayes 5y ago
      They believe it's not possible to explain human consciousness as a purely physical concept. I don't see why they need to explain what it is that isn't material to make that claim.
      - simonh 5y ago
        I just want a coherent explanation of their belief. They’re the ones positing something non material, not me. I just what you know what it is they mean by that. Absent that, I don’t see how they can claim their belief is coherent.
        colinmhayes 5y ago
        I’m not especially well versed, but as I understand it they believe we don’t know the essence of the non material part and in fact it being unknowable is sort of the point. This sort of reminds me of the people who claim the Big Bang is incoherent because we don’t know what came before it. Why is I don’t know not good enough?
        simonh 5y ago
        I suppose that’s fair to a point. It’s just disappointing. The thing is this non material whatever can’t have properties. If it stores information, has state and has consistent behaviour then really it’s just a form of material (in the philosophical sense that it’s a part of the world), so it can’t have any of those. At which point, how does it even interact with the world at all? I mean if it influences the brain, then that mechanism of influence makes it part of the world, right? It makes it material. That’s where I find the idea incoherent. I don’t see how it can be both immaterial but also have material effects. Doing so makes it material, I think by definition. It means it must be part of material reality in that sense. Or at least I’d like to hear an argument why it doesn’t.
teraflop 5y ago
Dualism has always seemed like a complete red herring to me. Even if you assume dualism is true, and that human consciousness has some non-material basis, what reason is there to believe that an AGI couldn't also have a conscious mind with non-material aspects?
- techdragon 5y ago
  I see this from people who expect that quantum computing will be an essential component of building AGI… However a lot of these people are throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks when it comes to selling whatever quantum computing related tech or service they are working on. So it comes with a pile of skepticism from me. However the philosophical point of quantum computing being necessary if any of the “quantum dualist” type theories of consciousness turn out to be true.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  I don’t think dualism necessarily means AGI is impossible for the reason you pointed out. But it would definitely mean it’s not inevitable, the non material part may be something that is somehow unique to people.
  - eru 5y ago
    It depends a bit on what we mean by AGI. Even if dualism is true, and humans have something special, that doesn't mean that a paperclip optimizer is impossible. A paperclip optimizer would be very, very smart (in the sense of being able to solve problems and achieving its objective of turning the universe into paperclips), but would not have a consciousness.
riskneutral 5y ago
> Basically it comes down to whether we are purely material beings or whether there are non-material aspects to our mind. The current state of physics suggests that we really have no idea what the "material" universe really is, at any scale. There may well be aspects of physical reality that we have yet to even conceive of. Given that when we cannot even say what a lump of rock is truly made of, or what even the dark void of space is made of, it should be obvious that we cannot be certain at all about what consciousness is made of.
RealityVoid 5y ago
I'm sorry, maybe it's just my tiny monkey brain, but I see no rational reason why someone would even consider dualism to be a thought worth entertaining. We obviously know material changes affect mental functioning directly. So how the heck could that substrate exist if not at the physical level?
jltsiren 5y ago
Most of the confusion around the Chinese Room arises when people don't realize that "computer" and "computation" are not synonyms. Turing defined computation as I/O behavior. The Church–Turing Thesis states that as far as their I/O behavior is concerned, all sufficiently general computational mechanisms (computers) are equivalent. The Chinese Room Argument presents a stupid computational mechanism with I/O behavior equivalent to a human communicating in Chinese. Some people then conclude that because the Chinese Room is clearly not intelligent and "because all computers are equivalent", computers cannot be intelligent. But that requires leaving out the qualifications from the Church–Turing Thesis. But maybe there is more to computers than their external I/O behavior. Maybe intelligence is a property of the internal behavior of a system rather than its external behavior. Then there could be some computers that are intelligent and others that are not, even if they have the same external behavior.
Barrin92 5y ago
For the love of god can people stop abusing the Chinese room? Searle is a materialist, pretty hardcore one at that. What he wanted to show with the Chinese room is that simulation of intelligence and intelligence are not the same thing, that a machine, or even a human for that matter, can perform symbol manipulation without having any internal understanding of the thing they perform. It's an argument against functionalism (i.e. that a digital computer 'thinks' the same way as a human merely because it performs the same tasks), not an argument for dualism. (that mind and matter are ontologically dinstinct substances)
- Chris2048 5y ago
  But it doesn't. It totally fails to meaningfully define "understanding".
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    It defines it just fine. Understanding means grasping what a symbol refers to and what it represents conceptually, rather than just engaging in symbolic manipulation itself. Just imagine a perfect rule book that already has a translation from one language into the other for every imaginable sentence, some native speakers just have written any possible combination down. You could 'translate' by just visually picking without having any idea of what's being said. They understand, you do not.
    - Chris2048 5y ago
      ok, so you define something that isn't understanding (symbolic manipulation, use of a magic rule book). But where do you define what it is? "grasping what a symbol refers to" is another way of saying "understand" - it doesn't define what it means to "grasp".

foobarian 5y ago

There is some gray area in between where maybe AGI is dependent on some (material) mechanism that we haven't discovered yet, and hence can't be accomplished using present computational setups.

colinmhayes 5y ago
Absolutely, the "inevitable" timeframe may be millenia for all anyone knows, it just means that we will eventually achieve it given enough time and resources.

simonh 5y ago

The Chinese room argument is a parlour trick that uses scale as a distraction. It posits a person in a room manipulating symbols to produce intelligent seeming outputs. It says, see, it’s absurd to think a person in a room with a stack of symbols could emulate intelligence. But let’s say the room contains many billions of people, it is the size of a planet, and it contains racks of many trillions of symbols, and it spends millions or billions of years to produce an output. That’s more like the scale of a sophisticated computer system, or a brain. Does that sound much like a man in a room with some symbols? No. Does it sound like that could do complex calculations and produce sophisticated and perhaps even intelligent outputs? Well, given enough time and scale, yes why not? The Chinese room is pure misdirection and it amazes me anyone falls for it. There’s really no actual argument there.

colinmhayes 5y ago
I mean I agree, but a third of philosophers subscribe to dualism, so I wouldn't be so quick to write the whole thing off.
- simonh 5y ago
  Dual meaning two, right? Material and non material. As far as I can tell not one of them can describe what the second non material thing in dualism is, or what any of its properties are. Even they seem to have no idea what they actually believe.
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    They believe it's not possible to explain human consciousness as a purely physical concept. I don't see why they need to explain what it is that isn't material to make that claim.
    - simonh 5y ago
      I just want a coherent explanation of their belief. They’re the ones positing something non material, not me. I just what you know what it is they mean by that. Absent that, I don’t see how they can claim their belief is coherent.
      - colinmhayes 5y ago
        I’m not especially well versed, but as I understand it they believe we don’t know the essence of the non material part and in fact it being unknowable is sort of the point. This sort of reminds me of the people who claim the Big Bang is incoherent because we don’t know what came before it. Why is I don’t know not good enough?
        simonh 5y ago
        I suppose that’s fair to a point. It’s just disappointing. The thing is this non material whatever can’t have properties. If it stores information, has state and has consistent behaviour then really it’s just a form of material (in the philosophical sense that it’s a part of the world), so it can’t have any of those. At which point, how does it even interact with the world at all? I mean if it influences the brain, then that mechanism of influence makes it part of the world, right? It makes it material. That’s where I find the idea incoherent. I don’t see how it can be both immaterial but also have material effects. Doing so makes it material, I think by definition. It means it must be part of material reality in that sense. Or at least I’d like to hear an argument why it doesn’t.

teraflop 5y ago

Dualism has always seemed like a complete red herring to me. Even if you assume dualism is true, and that human consciousness has some non-material basis, what reason is there to believe that an AGI couldn't also have a conscious mind with non-material aspects?

techdragon 5y ago
I see this from people who expect that quantum computing will be an essential component of building AGI… However a lot of these people are throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks when it comes to selling whatever quantum computing related tech or service they are working on. So it comes with a pile of skepticism from me. However the philosophical point of quantum computing being necessary if any of the “quantum dualist” type theories of consciousness turn out to be true.
colinmhayes 5y ago
I don’t think dualism necessarily means AGI is impossible for the reason you pointed out. But it would definitely mean it’s not inevitable, the non material part may be something that is somehow unique to people.
- eru 5y ago
  It depends a bit on what we mean by AGI. Even if dualism is true, and humans have something special, that doesn't mean that a paperclip optimizer is impossible. A paperclip optimizer would be very, very smart (in the sense of being able to solve problems and achieving its objective of turning the universe into paperclips), but would not have a consciousness.

riskneutral 5y ago

> Basically it comes down to whether we are purely material beings or whether there are non-material aspects to our mind. The current state of physics suggests that we really have no idea what the "material" universe really is, at any scale. There may well be aspects of physical reality that we have yet to even conceive of. Given that when we cannot even say what a lump of rock is truly made of, or what even the dark void of space is made of, it should be obvious that we cannot be certain at all about what consciousness is made of.

RealityVoid 5y ago

I'm sorry, maybe it's just my tiny monkey brain, but I see no rational reason why someone would even consider dualism to be a thought worth entertaining. We obviously know material changes affect mental functioning directly. So how the heck could that substrate exist if not at the physical level?

jltsiren 5y ago

Most of the confusion around the Chinese Room arises when people don't realize that "computer" and "computation" are not synonyms. Turing defined computation as I/O behavior. The Church–Turing Thesis states that as far as their I/O behavior is concerned, all sufficiently general computational mechanisms (computers) are equivalent. The Chinese Room Argument presents a stupid computational mechanism with I/O behavior equivalent to a human communicating in Chinese. Some people then conclude that because the Chinese Room is clearly not intelligent and "because all computers are equivalent", computers cannot be intelligent. But that requires leaving out the qualifications from the Church–Turing Thesis. But maybe there is more to computers than their external I/O behavior. Maybe intelligence is a property of the internal behavior of a system rather than its external behavior. Then there could be some computers that are intelligent and others that are not, even if they have the same external behavior.

Barrin92 5y ago

For the love of god can people stop abusing the Chinese room? Searle is a materialist, pretty hardcore one at that. What he wanted to show with the Chinese room is that simulation of intelligence and intelligence are not the same thing, that a machine, or even a human for that matter, can perform symbol manipulation without having any internal understanding of the thing they perform. It's an argument against functionalism (i.e. that a digital computer 'thinks' the same way as a human merely because it performs the same tasks), not an argument for dualism. (that mind and matter are ontologically dinstinct substances)

Chris2048 5y ago
But it doesn't. It totally fails to meaningfully define "understanding".
- Barrin92 5y ago
  It defines it just fine. Understanding means grasping what a symbol refers to and what it represents conceptually, rather than just engaging in symbolic manipulation itself. Just imagine a perfect rule book that already has a translation from one language into the other for every imaginable sentence, some native speakers just have written any possible combination down. You could 'translate' by just visually picking without having any idea of what's being said. They understand, you do not.
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    ok, so you define something that isn't understanding (symbolic manipulation, use of a magic rule book). But where do you define what it is? "grasping what a symbol refers to" is another way of saying "understand" - it doesn't define what it means to "grasp".