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"Since there is no objective definition of AGI or test for it, there’s no basis for any meaningful speculation on what can or cannot achieve it; discussions abo
by nathan_compton 3y ago
"Since there is no objective definition of AGI or test for it, there’s no basis for any meaningful speculation on what can or cannot achieve it; discussions about it are quasi-religious, not scientific."
This is such a weird thing to say. Essentially _all_ scientific ideas are, at least to begin with, poorly defined. In fact, I'd argue that almost all scientific ideas remain poorly defined with the possible exception of _some_ of the basic concepts in physics. Scientific progress cannot be and is not predicated upon perfect definitions. For some reason when the topic of consciousness or AGI comes up around here, everyone commits a sort of "all or nothing" logical fallacy: absence of perfect knowledge is cast as total ignorance.
- eru 3y agoYes. That absence of perfect definition was part of why Turing came with his famous test so long ago. His original paper is a great read!
- Etherlord87 3y agoSam Harris argues similarly in The Moral Landscape. There's this conception objective morality cannot exist outside of religion, because as soon as you're trying to prove one, philosophers rush with pedantic criticism that would render any domain of science invalid.
- nathan_compton 3y agoI kinda get where Sam Harris is coming from, but its kind of silly to call what he is talking about morality. As far as I can tell, Harris is just a moral skeptic who believes something like "we should get a bunch of people together to decide kind of what we want in the world and then rationally pursue those ends." But that is very different from morality as it was traditionally understood (eg, facts about behaviors which are objective in their assignment of good and bad).
- Eisenstein 3y agoWhat is the rough definition, then?