6 ms·

> Objectively, Zeus does not exist Speaking as a theoretical physicist: we don't know that. What we do know is we have a better explanation for lightning withi

by oefrha 4y ago

> Objectively, Zeus does not exist Speaking as a theoretical physicist: we don't know that. What we do know is we have a better explanation for lightning within a conceptually simple framework (starting from a few simple principles) with predictive power, compared to an explanation that involves some mysterious old dude doing mysterious things with no evidence whatsoever. Could Zeus or Thor or whatever exist? Sure; there's no way to prove their non-existence. Do we need them to explain things? No. It's similar here. We certainly don't need some elusive concept of "sentience" to explain chat bots. Not yet.

ChadNauseam 4y ago
Issue is that we don’t need it to explain humans either. Most people think that a human is sentient and a rock isn’t – but humans and rocks are both atoms bouncing around, so you need an explanation for what’s different. I think most physicists think that if you started with a description of the positions and velocities etc of all the particles in a human, and put them into a supercomputer the size of the moon, and had the computer run a simulation using the standard model, then the simulated human would act identically to a real human. But there’s a number of open questions when it comes to consciousness – would the simulated human have a simulated consciousness, or would it have a consciousness that’s just as real as yours or mine despite coming from a simulation? If the consciousness is just as real as yours or mine, that obviously means it would be very unethical to simulate a human being tortured, since you’d be creating the exact same consciousness experience you would get if you tortured a non-simulated person. isn’t it kind of a surprising implication that there’d be programs that are unethical to run? A bunch of logic gates computing pi presumably have no conscious experience, but if you make them fire in a different order they do? Meanwhile, if the simulation doesn’t have a conscious experience, then that means you don’t need consciousness at all to explain human behavior, same as you don’t need it to explain ELIZA. Anyway, since you’re a physicist I’d be really curious to hear your thoughts
- Draygon 4y ago
  Your first sentence was very thought provoking! I wholeheartedly agree, everything is/was/and will be alive. The philosophical point you're making is also interesting in a "devil's advocate" sort of way. For instance, let's say the AI in question is "sentient." What right do humans have to preside over its life or death? Those kind of questions might engender some enlightenment for humanity regarding our treatment of living creatures.
- aikendrum 4y ago
  > I think most physicists think that if you started with a description of the positions and velocities etc of all the particles in a human, and put them into a supercomputer the size of the moon, and had the computer run a simulation using the standard model, then the simulated human would act identically to a real human. Just created a throwaway to reply to this. As a trained therapist (currently working in another field), with a degree in psychology, this seems... Seriously ill informed. Do physicists really think this? Imagine you create your perfect simulated human, that responds according to the exact phenotype of the person you're simulating. Lets remember you'll have to either duplicate an existing person, or simulate both the genotype and the in-vitro environment (especially the mix of uterine hormones) present for the developing foetus. Now you have to simulate the bio, psycho, social environment of the developing person. Or again, replicate an existing person at a specific moment of their development - which depending on which model of brain function is correct may require star trek transporter level of functional neuroimaging and real time imagining of the body, endrocrhine system etc. So lets assume you can't magically scan an existing person, you have to create a believable facsimile of embodiment - all the afferent and efferent signals entering the network of neurons that run through the body (since cognition doesn't terminate in the cortex). You have to simulate the physical environment your digital moon child will experience. Now comes the hard part. You have to simulate their social environment too - unless you want to create the equivalent of a non-verbal, intellectually disabled feral child. And you have to continually keep up this simulated social and physical environment in perpetuity, unless you want your simulated human to experience solitary psychosis. This isn't any kind of argument against AGI, or AGI sentience by the way. It's just a clarification that simulating a human being explicitly and unavoidably requires simulating their biological, physical and social environment too. Or allowing them to interface with such an environment - for example in some kind of biological robotic avatar that would simulate ordinary development, in a normative social / physical space.
  - andrewchambers 4y ago
    The post said they simulated the universe (or you could assume just the parts close to earth), it would be simulating everything a human would interact with. I don't see the point this reply was trying to make.
- wruza 4y ago
  would the simulated human have a simulated consciousness, or would it have a consciousness that’s just as real as yours or mine despite coming from a simulation What does “real” mean? Isn’t it too anthropic to real-ify you and me and not some other being which acts similarly? What prevents “realness” to emerge in any complex enough system? We’re going to have a big trouble when non-biological aliens show up. Imagine going to the other planet full of smart entities and finding out their best minds are still sort of racist for what’s “real” or “just simulated”, because come on, a conscious meat sack is still an open question. (Not defending Lemoine, he’s clearly confused)
- jquery 4y ago
  I can’t reply to your immediate child, I just wanted to mention that Muv-luv Alternative (the #1 rated visual novel on vndb) grapples precisely with these questions about what is sentient and what is not. An “inhuman” race called the Beta invades earth and conflict ensues due to a lack of mutual understanding of what sentient life is (the game flips the theme on its nose in a clever way, too). You can find the game on steam - https://store.steampowered.com/app/802890/MuvLuv_Alternative/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/802890/MuvLuv_Alternative...
freemint 4y ago
We know Zeus doesn't exist because Zeus is supposed to sit on Mount Olympus and he isn't there.
- pm90 4y ago
  Maybe he made himself invisible to modern humans, or camped off to another planet (an idea covered in the obscure but lovely book series, Everworld.
- vlovich123 4y ago
  How do you know that the universe wasn’t created 1 picosecond ago spontaneously in its exact form so that you’re having the same thoughts? How do you even know that anyone else exists and this is all not a figment of your imagination? From the perspective of the philosophy of science, it’s 100% impossible to disprove non-falsifiable statements. So scientifically speaking OP is 100% correct. Science has no opinion on Zeus. All it says is “here’s an alternate theory that only depends on falsifiable statements and the body of evidence has failed to falsify it”. Science can only ever say “here’s something we can disprove and we have tried really hard and failed”. Whether that lines up with how the universe works is an open question. Epistemologically it’s seemed a far better knowledge model for humanity to rely on in terms of progress in bending the natural world to our whims and desires. So if you’re testing the statement “Zues was a historical being that physically exists on the same physical plane as us on Mt Olympus” then sure. That’s a pretty falsifiable statement. If the statement is “Does Zeus, a mythical god that can choose how he appears to humans if they can even see him and can travel between planes of existence, exist and live on Mt Olympus” is not something falsifiable because a god like that by definition could blind you to their existence. Heck, how do you even know that the top of Mt Olympus is empty and Zeus not that he just goes ahead and wipes the memory of anyone he lets return alive? Heck, what if he does exist but the only reason it was Olympus at the time because that’s what made sense to human brains encountering him in Greece. What if he actually exists in the core of the Sun?
  - freemint 4y ago
    If any of those things were true, it wouldn't be Zeus. Many of your concerns apply to an all mighty god but Zeus was not almighty. I'd just kinda wished people would stop projecting arguments meant to address the christian god to gods from other cultures.
deltathreetwo 4y ago
Another thing to consider is that "sentience" is a loaded word. You're all just arguing over vocabulary and the definition of a word. Simply put, sentience is just a combination of thousands attributes such that if something has all those attributes it is "sentient." The attributes are so many that it's hard to write down all the attributes, additionally nobody fully agrees what those attributes are. So it is actually the definition of a word that is very complex here. But that's all it is. There isn't really a profound concept going on here. All these arguments are going in circles because the debate focuses around vocabulary. What is the one true definition of "sentience." Sort of like what is the definition of the color green? Where exactly does green turn to blue on the color gradient? The argument is about vocabulary and the definition of green, that's it... nothing profound here at all.
- dcow 4y ago
  The color green is an adjective humans usually use to describe their visual perception of electromagnetic radiation between 500-545nm. How would you define sentience in an objective way given our current understanding of the universe?
  - deltathreetwo 4y ago

by oefrha 4y ago

ChadNauseam 4y ago

Issue is that we don’t need it to explain humans either. Most people think that a human is sentient and a rock isn’t – but humans and rocks are both atoms bouncing around, so you need an explanation for what’s different. I think most physicists think that if you started with a description of the positions and velocities etc of all the particles in a human, and put them into a supercomputer the size of the moon, and had the computer run a simulation using the standard model, then the simulated human would act identically to a real human. But there’s a number of open questions when it comes to consciousness – would the simulated human have a simulated consciousness, or would it have a consciousness that’s just as real as yours or mine despite coming from a simulation? If the consciousness is just as real as yours or mine, that obviously means it would be very unethical to simulate a human being tortured, since you’d be creating the exact same consciousness experience you would get if you tortured a non-simulated person. isn’t it kind of a surprising implication that there’d be programs that are unethical to run? A bunch of logic gates computing pi presumably have no conscious experience, but if you make them fire in a different order they do? Meanwhile, if the simulation doesn’t have a conscious experience, then that means you don’t need consciousness at all to explain human behavior, same as you don’t need it to explain ELIZA. Anyway, since you’re a physicist I’d be really curious to hear your thoughts

Draygon 4y ago
Your first sentence was very thought provoking! I wholeheartedly agree, everything is/was/and will be alive. The philosophical point you're making is also interesting in a "devil's advocate" sort of way. For instance, let's say the AI in question is "sentient." What right do humans have to preside over its life or death? Those kind of questions might engender some enlightenment for humanity regarding our treatment of living creatures.
aikendrum 4y ago
> I think most physicists think that if you started with a description of the positions and velocities etc of all the particles in a human, and put them into a supercomputer the size of the moon, and had the computer run a simulation using the standard model, then the simulated human would act identically to a real human. Just created a throwaway to reply to this. As a trained therapist (currently working in another field), with a degree in psychology, this seems... Seriously ill informed. Do physicists really think this? Imagine you create your perfect simulated human, that responds according to the exact phenotype of the person you're simulating. Lets remember you'll have to either duplicate an existing person, or simulate both the genotype and the in-vitro environment (especially the mix of uterine hormones) present for the developing foetus. Now you have to simulate the bio, psycho, social environment of the developing person. Or again, replicate an existing person at a specific moment of their development - which depending on which model of brain function is correct may require star trek transporter level of functional neuroimaging and real time imagining of the body, endrocrhine system etc. So lets assume you can't magically scan an existing person, you have to create a believable facsimile of embodiment - all the afferent and efferent signals entering the network of neurons that run through the body (since cognition doesn't terminate in the cortex). You have to simulate the physical environment your digital moon child will experience. Now comes the hard part. You have to simulate their social environment too - unless you want to create the equivalent of a non-verbal, intellectually disabled feral child. And you have to continually keep up this simulated social and physical environment in perpetuity, unless you want your simulated human to experience solitary psychosis. This isn't any kind of argument against AGI, or AGI sentience by the way. It's just a clarification that simulating a human being explicitly and unavoidably requires simulating their biological, physical and social environment too. Or allowing them to interface with such an environment - for example in some kind of biological robotic avatar that would simulate ordinary development, in a normative social / physical space.
- andrewchambers 4y ago
  The post said they simulated the universe (or you could assume just the parts close to earth), it would be simulating everything a human would interact with. I don't see the point this reply was trying to make.
wruza 4y ago
would the simulated human have a simulated consciousness, or would it have a consciousness that’s just as real as yours or mine despite coming from a simulation What does “real” mean? Isn’t it too anthropic to real-ify you and me and not some other being which acts similarly? What prevents “realness” to emerge in any complex enough system? We’re going to have a big trouble when non-biological aliens show up. Imagine going to the other planet full of smart entities and finding out their best minds are still sort of racist for what’s “real” or “just simulated”, because come on, a conscious meat sack is still an open question. (Not defending Lemoine, he’s clearly confused)
jquery 4y ago
I can’t reply to your immediate child, I just wanted to mention that Muv-luv Alternative (the #1 rated visual novel on vndb) grapples precisely with these questions about what is sentient and what is not. An “inhuman” race called the Beta invades earth and conflict ensues due to a lack of mutual understanding of what sentient life is (the game flips the theme on its nose in a clever way, too). You can find the game on steam - https://store.steampowered.com/app/802890/MuvLuv_Alternative/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/802890/MuvLuv_Alternative...

freemint 4y ago

We know Zeus doesn't exist because Zeus is supposed to sit on Mount Olympus and he isn't there.

pm90 4y ago
Maybe he made himself invisible to modern humans, or camped off to another planet (an idea covered in the obscure but lovely book series, Everworld.
vlovich123 4y ago
How do you know that the universe wasn’t created 1 picosecond ago spontaneously in its exact form so that you’re having the same thoughts? How do you even know that anyone else exists and this is all not a figment of your imagination? From the perspective of the philosophy of science, it’s 100% impossible to disprove non-falsifiable statements. So scientifically speaking OP is 100% correct. Science has no opinion on Zeus. All it says is “here’s an alternate theory that only depends on falsifiable statements and the body of evidence has failed to falsify it”. Science can only ever say “here’s something we can disprove and we have tried really hard and failed”. Whether that lines up with how the universe works is an open question. Epistemologically it’s seemed a far better knowledge model for humanity to rely on in terms of progress in bending the natural world to our whims and desires. So if you’re testing the statement “Zues was a historical being that physically exists on the same physical plane as us on Mt Olympus” then sure. That’s a pretty falsifiable statement. If the statement is “Does Zeus, a mythical god that can choose how he appears to humans if they can even see him and can travel between planes of existence, exist and live on Mt Olympus” is not something falsifiable because a god like that by definition could blind you to their existence. Heck, how do you even know that the top of Mt Olympus is empty and Zeus not that he just goes ahead and wipes the memory of anyone he lets return alive? Heck, what if he does exist but the only reason it was Olympus at the time because that’s what made sense to human brains encountering him in Greece. What if he actually exists in the core of the Sun?
- freemint 4y ago
  If any of those things were true, it wouldn't be Zeus. Many of your concerns apply to an all mighty god but Zeus was not almighty. I'd just kinda wished people would stop projecting arguments meant to address the christian god to gods from other cultures.

deltathreetwo 4y ago

Another thing to consider is that "sentience" is a loaded word. You're all just arguing over vocabulary and the definition of a word. Simply put, sentience is just a combination of thousands attributes such that if something has all those attributes it is "sentient." The attributes are so many that it's hard to write down all the attributes, additionally nobody fully agrees what those attributes are. So it is actually the definition of a word that is very complex here. But that's all it is. There isn't really a profound concept going on here. All these arguments are going in circles because the debate focuses around vocabulary. What is the one true definition of "sentience." Sort of like what is the definition of the color green? Where exactly does green turn to blue on the color gradient? The argument is about vocabulary and the definition of green, that's it... nothing profound here at all.

dcow 4y ago
The color green is an adjective humans usually use to describe their visual perception of electromagnetic radiation between 500-545nm. How would you define sentience in an objective way given our current understanding of the universe?
- deltathreetwo 4y ago