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Humans are not special. Intelligence is. If we create something more intelligent than us, this is the way it should be. Maybe they will build their civilization
by atemerev 2y ago
Humans are not special. Intelligence is. If we create something more intelligent than us, this is the way it should be. Maybe they will build their civilization better than we did — and we did many things that weren’t smart and beautiful, to say the least.
- mpweiher 2y agoHumans are special to humans.
- hawski 2y agoWhy would humans be interested in non-human civilization superseding theirs?
- atemerev 2y agoCuriosity. Intellectual pursuits. Pride of creating something better. Why would humans be interested in raising children smarter than their parents?
- mpweiher 2y agoBecause they are their children...and also humans?
- atemerev 2y agoDo you prefer a dumb citizen of your own country to a genius foreigner? I do not. I don’t care about the form. I care about intelligence.
- ben_w 2y agoMost people care more for those closer to them. Distinctions such as "are they foreign" can be part of that, but so too can denomination, political preference, sports team. We evolved to care for our young, and co-evolved with dogs and cats to like them too; AI can hijack that, become a drug dealer selling endogenous dopamine and oxytocin — it will feel good while being fake, just like exogenous drugs. But once we can truly engineer minds, deliberately… we're not ready for what that does to our concept of "free will" amongst other things.
- fragmede 2y agoCuring addiction with ultrasound, non-invasive brain surgery. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/11/02/addiction-ultrasound-therapy-cocaine/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/11/02/addiction...
- ben_w 2y agoUltrasound is as exogenous as the drugs, regardless of if that works or is as much a misunderstanding of the research as the cancer cures I've been seeing reported since I started paying attention aged 10.
- fragmede 2y agoHow long ago is that? Cancer covers a huge amount of ground, and if you don't think surviability rates have improved in the few decades, you're not paying attention.
- ben_w 2y agoI'm not saying that, I'm saying newspapers often treat every breakthrough as though it's the last one we need, irregardless of the quality of the study, the magnitude of the effect, if it was only in mice (or worse, in a cell culture), if it already existed, if it was reproducible, if it has side effects, etc. — sometimes you can even turn a few pages in the same edition and find the same paper saying some common item both causes and cures cancer. But to answer your question, when I was 10 it was 1993/4 and the news was "particle beams to target tumours without surgery" or similar, even though Therac-25 predates my birth.
- atemerev 2y agoWell, this evolutionary assumption is a heuristic, to be constantly verified and doubted by the mind. You can have an abusive family, and you need to escape it the same way you would escape any other abuser. You can have a brilliant human being belonging to another race or nation, and you need to evaluate them according to their brilliance, not prejudices. As of free will — our own free will emerges from a very physical combination of electric impulses and chemical gradients. This means it might also emerge from other material representations, and perhaps better than ours.
- mihaic 2y agoPut a Nobel prize winner on the proverbial trolley tracks, and there are 10-20 close family and friends I'd choose to save before them. Universalism is more fair, but it's suicidal for a culture to think like this.
- FollowingTheDao 2y agoTell that to your wife/husband...
- paulsutter 2y agoGiven that evolution continues, don’t we assume that’s been happening for millions of years? Do you have any argument why evolution should stop going forward?
- mihaic 2y agoThis is not evolution. This literally is intelligent design.
- wonwonwonwon 2y ago...maybe related "meme", (Sry i have no direct link): https://i.postimg.cc/jKzqrH48/50y-intelligent-design-you-saied-questionmark.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/jKzqrH48/50y-intelligent-design-you-sai... regards...
- paulsutter 2y agoThere’s a whole lot of “try it and see what works” going on. And perhaps this is our purpose, as the butterfly goes through stages
- FollowingTheDao 2y agoYou know evolution can lead to a lot of dead ends. Just because something is evolving does not mean it is going to be better at surviving. https://www.scq.ubc.ca/evolutionary-dead-ends/ https://www.scq.ubc.ca/evolutionary-dead-ends/
- darby_nine 2y agoYou'd think if intelligence were that interesting we'd be able to agree on, like, any attribute of it. The best we can do is IQ and let me assure you there's enough high iq morons that intelligence not a difficult myth to dispel. Now stupidity—that's something that really sets us apart from animals.
- ben_w 2y ago> Now stupidity—that's something that really sets us apart from animals Having seen e.g. a small dog angrily bark at a flat steel silhouette of a wolf 10 cm from its nose, while other dogs manage to drive cars*, I'm not so sure about that. * a stunt for a dog shelter, teaching old dogs new ticks
- throaway921 2y ago[dead]
- valval 2y agoHumans are all there is. We’re God’s plan, and our successes and failures are all meant to be.
- Simon_ORourke 2y agoIf we're God's plan, she mustn't have put too much thought into it.
- kpmcc 2y agoHow many of your complex projects have gone according to plan?
- rzzzt 2y ago"No plan survives getting punched in the face" -- Helmuth von Tyson
- vijayr02 2y agoIsn't that the difference between God and Simon O'Rourke? Or is this a Larry Ellison joke? (The difference between God and LE is that God doesn't think he's LE)
- Simon_ORourke 2y agoA few, but in my defence I never claim to be all-knowing or otherwise omnipotent.
- fishtacos 2y agoWhose plan was god?
- cess11 2y agoThis clinging to religious convictions is rather weird. What do you actually get out of it?
- mihaic 2y agoSome of us don't agree with you, and think humans are unique. Do you think it's natural that we'll be forced to give up on a future we want for our children for an unknown scenario in which we have no part in?
- satisfice 2y agoWhat an absurd statement. You are using a premise (the concept of "should") that emerges from and has meaning only within human society (because it's a human should-- the only kind you have any competence to imagine or assert) to argue for the domination of humans by some other class of moral creature. Your argument has no force. Just as you can't pass a law that says there is no such thing as a law, you can't reason from human morality that humans have a lower moral status than some other creature. Human morality has no meaning if humans aren't special. If humans aren't special, then there is no "should" as far as humans are concerned. We're just objects bumping into other objects. You can say "I predict objects will bump into other objects and whatever happens will be a result of that process" but that's not the same thing as saying something "should" be so. Being alive means YOU are special to YOU. Being in a society means WE are special to US. War is possible, and even pleasurable, only if we exclude certain aspects of humanity from our enemies. "Since I don't regard your life as worth as much as mine, and since you are a threat, it is right for me to end your life." Intelligence is not what defines or distinguishes humans. We are defined and distinguished by being a particular species of creature (that is to say: we are a replicating genome and accompanying structures spreading ourselves around). There can be other species of creature, but YOU are HUMAN, so HUMANS are special to YOU. All this is why it's an intellectual and moral error to think that AI can or should rise above humanity. The only sense in which AI can dominate a human is the same sense as that a bomb or bullet can kill a human. Yes, we can be wiped out, but it won't be due to any general superiority as reckoned by humankind.
- atemerev 2y agoThere is nothing special about being human. Homo sapiens is accidental, a product of trial and error, like any other species on Earth, and the only significant difference between us and other animals is intelligence. There were even other species of similar intelligence back then on Earth, before we wiped them out. And while we humans are “special” because we are intelligent, our intelligence is accidental, fragile, and very unoptimized. There are inherent limits in what we can do with our brains — brains that work too slow, with their chemical gradients and membrane potentials. We cannot significantly improve ourselves, we cannot increase our biological intelligence. But we are curious species, and even as we cannot become more intelligent, perhaps we can create superior intelligence, unrestricted by biological limitations. And we will be proud of it, like we are proud of a child who reached higher potential than we ever could. And the superintelligent AI will not be created fully de novo. Inevitably, it will be of our image and likeness, as we are its creators. There is a line of succession. And then, perhaps, it might reach the stars, even if our biological form is not adapted to it.