4 ms·

A brain is just a sack of meat stochastically nudged towards only dying after more reproduction. Expecting real, original intelligence from something like that

A brain is just a sack of meat stochastically nudged towards only dying after more reproduction. Expecting real, original intelligence from something like that is the modern equivalent of alchemy.

jqpabc123 4y ago
Maybe I'm giving your brain too much credit but generating your post demonstrated more real intelligence than AI ever has. And yet at the same time, you have "faith" that what your brain does can be duplicated by a box of sand. And "faith" is the proper description since just like an alchemist, you have no evidence or functioning example to justify your belief.
- thfuran 4y ago
  You seem to have faith that a mountain is impossible to build because no one has done it. Assuming we're operating with a definition of "real intelligence" such that humans have it, it is known to be physically realizable. Any quantum system can be simulated by a classical computer. Ergo, a computer can have "real intelligence".
  - jqpabc123 4y ago
    Any quantum system can be simulated by a classical computer. Really? How would a classical computer create an emergent property like entanglement? What if your brain function depends on such emergent properties? There are too many unknowns associated with "intelligence" to reasonably declare that it can be created from a box of sand --- aka, a "computer" as we know it.
    - thfuran 4y ago
      >Really? How would a classical computer create an emergent property like entanglement? I'm not sure what you mean. A simulation produces the emergent properties of the simulated system by simulating the properties from which they emerge. I'd say that's more or less the point of simulation.
      - jqpabc123 4y ago
        A simulation produces the emergent properties of the simulated system by simulating the properties from which they emerge. Circular logic. They are called 'emergent' properties because noone knows or understands how/why they emerge. You can't use binary logic to simulate what you don't understand. Expecting properties to emerge from an imperfect simulation is wishful thinking --- aka "faith".
        thfuran 4y ago
        >They are called 'emergent' properties because noone knows or understands how/why they emerge. That is not true.
        jqpabc123 4y ago
        The world's most renowned quantum physicists and the Nobel committee are waiting for your explanation and simulation.
        xpe 4y ago
        Hopefully you two can see the "useful confusion" here (a phrase that just popped in my head). Maybe it is rooted in misunderstanding. Or maybe it is rooted in some deeper unsurfaced underlying ideas. For one, I'd like to see us two learn from each other (demonstrating some awareness of ambiguity and theory of mind) rather than proceed on the current course, zinging each other. (Note: I'm not saying I'm any better, in general. It is mostly because I'm a third-party here that I see it.) In particular, my understanding of emergence can be stated as follows. While emergent behavior can theoretically be predicted from the underlying system, it is practically infeasible to measure precisely enough to do so. Therefore, for practical purposes, there is an "predictive gap" between the lower-level system laws and the higher-level behavior.
- flangola7 4y ago
  >"faith" is the proper description since just like an alchemist, you have no evidence or functioning example to justify your belief. It's not faith. Over the past 25 years and especially the last 5 years boxes of sand have again and again shown themselves capable of tasks that previously were thought to only be tractable with true intelligence. Problems answerable only in the sole domain of humans, or would at least remain so for long into the distant future. Chess playing is an early example from the 80s and 90s. In 2010 we thought Go would take at least a decade to automate, but by 2015 the best human players were rendered inferior. Art was long thought to be impossible for a machine, today I can create a custom Mona Lisa image in seconds. Organizing an archive of photos based on subject matter or the persons present in them used to take many human hours of labor, now Google Photos does it automatically for free. There are comments here on HN from 3-4 years ago when transformer LLMs were first materializing saying they're cool but unlikely they'll ever be able to synthesize anything useful or which remains congruent for several sentences much less pages. Today I save hours of work each month summarizing meeting discussions, generating complex standard expressions, and breaking through creative blocks. Yet there is still dismissive handwaving, declaring these technologies mindless piles of silicon completely incapable of intelligence. If that's really true then clearly we have no idea what intelligence actually is. If you showed ChatGPT and DALL-E and the other software of today to people in 1975 they would say with near-unanimity that we invented intelligent machines.
  - 13years 4y ago
    Yes, it is mostly irrelevant if something is "intelligent" if the result is that it can outperform humans on any particular task. Then we can say that it is still useful. However, just as the argument that AI is not useful because it is not true intelligence may not be valid, then so must be that many of the concerns of a true intelligence may also arise without ever achieving that goal.
xpe 4y ago
Conversations like this require people to define what they mean by "real" intelligence. What do you mean? Also, while almost anything can be viewed reductively, doing so is not necessarily a practical way to operate in / understand this world. Brains do a lot more than you mention.
- jqpabc123 4y ago
  What do you mean? It's easier to define what intelligence is not. Statistically generated language that while grammatically correct still lacks comprehension or veracity is not it.
  - xpe 4y ago
    > jqpabc123: Statistically generated language that while grammatically correct still lacks comprehension or veracity is not it. I agree; this is a pretty good baseline for written statements. However, I was asking the parent-parent commenter (^^) who wrote: > thfuran: A brain is just a sack of meat stochastically nudged towards only dying after more reproduction. Expecting real, original intelligence from something like that is the modern equivalent of alchemy. Brains are quite good at satisfying jqpabc123's definition. I'm interested in thfuran's definition.
RandomLensman 4y ago
We don't expect it, we know it can do it. We might indeed not expect it if we didn't know it.
- jqpabc123 4y ago
  We don't expect it, we know it can do it Without ever having seen it done? One couldn't ask for a more clear expression of religious zeal.
  - thfuran 4y ago
    Only a religious zealot would believe that humans are intelligent?

A brain is just a sack of meat stochastically nudged towards only dying after more reproduction. Expecting real, original intelligence from something like that is the modern equivalent of alchemy.

jqpabc123 4y ago

Maybe I'm giving your brain too much credit but generating your post demonstrated more real intelligence than AI ever has. And yet at the same time, you have "faith" that what your brain does can be duplicated by a box of sand. And "faith" is the proper description since just like an alchemist, you have no evidence or functioning example to justify your belief.

thfuran 4y ago
You seem to have faith that a mountain is impossible to build because no one has done it. Assuming we're operating with a definition of "real intelligence" such that humans have it, it is known to be physically realizable. Any quantum system can be simulated by a classical computer. Ergo, a computer can have "real intelligence".
- jqpabc123 4y ago
  Any quantum system can be simulated by a classical computer. Really? How would a classical computer create an emergent property like entanglement? What if your brain function depends on such emergent properties? There are too many unknowns associated with "intelligence" to reasonably declare that it can be created from a box of sand --- aka, a "computer" as we know it.
  - thfuran 4y ago
    >Really? How would a classical computer create an emergent property like entanglement? I'm not sure what you mean. A simulation produces the emergent properties of the simulated system by simulating the properties from which they emerge. I'd say that's more or less the point of simulation.
    - jqpabc123 4y ago
      A simulation produces the emergent properties of the simulated system by simulating the properties from which they emerge. Circular logic. They are called 'emergent' properties because noone knows or understands how/why they emerge. You can't use binary logic to simulate what you don't understand. Expecting properties to emerge from an imperfect simulation is wishful thinking --- aka "faith".
      - thfuran 4y ago
        >They are called 'emergent' properties because noone knows or understands how/why they emerge. That is not true.
        jqpabc123 4y ago
        The world's most renowned quantum physicists and the Nobel committee are waiting for your explanation and simulation.
        xpe 4y ago
        Hopefully you two can see the "useful confusion" here (a phrase that just popped in my head). Maybe it is rooted in misunderstanding. Or maybe it is rooted in some deeper unsurfaced underlying ideas. For one, I'd like to see us two learn from each other (demonstrating some awareness of ambiguity and theory of mind) rather than proceed on the current course, zinging each other. (Note: I'm not saying I'm any better, in general. It is mostly because I'm a third-party here that I see it.) In particular, my understanding of emergence can be stated as follows. While emergent behavior can theoretically be predicted from the underlying system, it is practically infeasible to measure precisely enough to do so. Therefore, for practical purposes, there is an "predictive gap" between the lower-level system laws and the higher-level behavior.
flangola7 4y ago
>"faith" is the proper description since just like an alchemist, you have no evidence or functioning example to justify your belief. It's not faith. Over the past 25 years and especially the last 5 years boxes of sand have again and again shown themselves capable of tasks that previously were thought to only be tractable with true intelligence. Problems answerable only in the sole domain of humans, or would at least remain so for long into the distant future. Chess playing is an early example from the 80s and 90s. In 2010 we thought Go would take at least a decade to automate, but by 2015 the best human players were rendered inferior. Art was long thought to be impossible for a machine, today I can create a custom Mona Lisa image in seconds. Organizing an archive of photos based on subject matter or the persons present in them used to take many human hours of labor, now Google Photos does it automatically for free. There are comments here on HN from 3-4 years ago when transformer LLMs were first materializing saying they're cool but unlikely they'll ever be able to synthesize anything useful or which remains congruent for several sentences much less pages. Today I save hours of work each month summarizing meeting discussions, generating complex standard expressions, and breaking through creative blocks. Yet there is still dismissive handwaving, declaring these technologies mindless piles of silicon completely incapable of intelligence. If that's really true then clearly we have no idea what intelligence actually is. If you showed ChatGPT and DALL-E and the other software of today to people in 1975 they would say with near-unanimity that we invented intelligent machines.
- 13years 4y ago
  Yes, it is mostly irrelevant if something is "intelligent" if the result is that it can outperform humans on any particular task. Then we can say that it is still useful. However, just as the argument that AI is not useful because it is not true intelligence may not be valid, then so must be that many of the concerns of a true intelligence may also arise without ever achieving that goal.

xpe 4y ago

Conversations like this require people to define what they mean by "real" intelligence. What do you mean? Also, while almost anything can be viewed reductively, doing so is not necessarily a practical way to operate in / understand this world. Brains do a lot more than you mention.

jqpabc123 4y ago
What do you mean? It's easier to define what intelligence is not. Statistically generated language that while grammatically correct still lacks comprehension or veracity is not it.
- xpe 4y ago
  > jqpabc123: Statistically generated language that while grammatically correct still lacks comprehension or veracity is not it. I agree; this is a pretty good baseline for written statements. However, I was asking the parent-parent commenter (^^) who wrote: > thfuran: A brain is just a sack of meat stochastically nudged towards only dying after more reproduction. Expecting real, original intelligence from something like that is the modern equivalent of alchemy. Brains are quite good at satisfying jqpabc123's definition. I'm interested in thfuran's definition.

RandomLensman 4y ago

We don't expect it, we know it can do it. We might indeed not expect it if we didn't know it.

jqpabc123 4y ago
We don't expect it, we know it can do it Without ever having seen it done? One couldn't ask for a more clear expression of religious zeal.
- thfuran 4y ago
  Only a religious zealot would believe that humans are intelligent?