7 ms·
What makes that obvious to you? What seems uncomputable about human intelligence?
by space_fountain 3y ago
What makes that obvious to you? What seems uncomputable about human intelligence?
- HKH2 3y agoDespite our best efforts, we are deeply irrational. Our thinking is based on instinct, not on core principles; it's a top-down approach driven by feelings.
- russelldjimmy 3y agoOff topic - a pet peeve of mine is seeing humans termed as “irrational”. Please forgive my rant, as it is not personally targeted at you. We only seem “irrational” when we are talking about a narrow view of “rationality”, i.e., as defined by the cold hard logic of machines. We do not question why we have this definition of rationality. Our “irrationality” simply seems so because we have not bothered to understand the larger complexity of our evolutionary programming. It’s the same as not bothering to understand how a car works, and then claiming that the car works on magic. If one understands how it works, then it is no longer magic. In the case of humans, we may never fully understand how we work, but we can work towards a compassionate understanding of the same. /rant
- FredPret 3y agoAbsolutely on point. I would argue that irrationality isn't even possible. If person A thinks or behaves "irrationally" according to person B, there is simply a difference in perception between the two. A large percentage of those perceptions are created inside one's own mind which may or may not be aligned with the rest of the universe.
- HKH2 3y agoWhat about cognitive dissonance?
- 23B1 3y agoEhh, is survivability the only metric by which you measure instinct? You can, as a human, map the 'wrong' response to external stimuli resulting in, say, your death (or the deaths of your progeny, for that matter)
- spuz 3y agoIt sounds like your main objection is with conflation of "irrational" with "wrong". It's helpful to describe an extreme fear of heights as "irrational" but from an evolutionary point of view it might in fact be correct because it keeps those genes that give the rest of the population a healthy fear of heights in the gene pool. I think these are different concepts and a person can be both irrational and correct in their behaviour.
- space_fountain 3y agoReactions to feelings seem very calculable or at least there’s nothing about them that seems impossible for a computer to simulate.
- circuit10 3y agoWhy is instinct not computable? That seems way easier to compute than rational thinking based on principles, it's just "if this, do that" and machine learning should be able to do that easily
- FredPret 3y agoEverything in the universe must by definition be rational. Chemical reactions always happen a certain way, physics always works a certain way, numbers add up the same every time. If something seems irrational, that's because there are rational things layered on top of one another in a way that creates a misapprehension in a partially-informed observer.
- goatlover 3y ago> Everything in the universe must by definition be rational. Why? You assume nature must be comprehensible to us because you define it that way? Nature's not under any obligation to us. > If something seems irrational, that's because there are rational things layered on top of one another in a way that creates a misapprehension in a partially-informed observer. Possible irrational things: Collapse of the wave function, consciousness, why anything exists. There's also non-computable functions, paradoxes like the liar paradox, and the inability to refute various skeptical possibilities like living in a simulation. Combine that with the fact that all models are wrong, some are just more useful. We can't model the entire universe with perfect accuracy without the model being the universe, which means there are always things left out. Our rational explanations are approximations.
- FredPret 3y agoRationality != comprehensible to us We can't look at quantum mechanics and call it irrational. The way the universe works is by definition the right / correct / only way. If logic points one way and reality points another, the logic isn't taking everything into account.
- IIAOPSW 3y agoInstincts are evolved and have a rational basis, just not one your consciously privy to.