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Related but an aside - Lately I've really been wondering if Skynet actually is the next evolution. That humans, like all animals before us, are a stepping ston

Related but an aside - Lately I've really been wondering if Skynet actually is the next evolution. That humans, like all animals before us, are a stepping stone and there is actually no avoiding machine overlords. It happens to literally every existence of life across the universe because the final emergent property of energy gradients 100% leads to pure logic machines. At least Fermi's paradox helps me sleep better at night.

ngruhn 1y ago
There is a quote by Marshall McLuhan: > Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world
EvanAnderson 1y ago
Seems like a good time for "They're Made Out of Meat": https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think... Aside: I hope our progeny remember us and think well of us.
- anton-c 1y ago
  That was a fun read. Thanks for sharing.
OccamsMirror 1y ago
As a teenager I used to revel in explaining to religious people that I believe humans are actually just the evolutionary step between biological life and machine life.
- suddenlybananas 1y ago
  I guess you fail to see the irony that your own eschatology itself is pretty religious.
  - eitland 1y ago
    More broadly—and at least in online spaces—I often notice that many vocal proponents of atheism exhibit traits typically associated with religious behaviour: - a tendency to proselytise - a stubborn unwillingness to genuinely engage with opposing views - the use of memes and in-jokes as if they were profound arguments - an almost reverential attitude toward certain past figures There’s more, but I really ought to get on with work.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - lukas099 1y ago
      Sounds like every group of people ever, when viewed through the biased sample of “people who post”.
    - buttercraft 1y ago
      It sounds like you are describing people with strong beliefs. Religious people may have strong beliefs, but so do non-religious people.
  - lukas099 1y ago
    It’s a belief about a great future change, but there’s nothing supernatural or totally implausible about it. And it doesn’t sound like they were preaching it as the absolute truth, but were open that it was just their belief. Also, no social rites or rituals mean that despite them telling it to people who didn’t care to hear it, I am not convinced that their belief was very religious. Also, “As a teenager” implies more self-awareness than you seem to give them credit for.
  - OccamsMirror 1y ago
    That's assuming I actually believed it, rather than just reveling in the reactions from religious people. It's a fun scenario that would result in immediate rejection—most wouldn’t even entertain the idea. They instead often found it completely abhorrent. Provoking discomfort was entertaining for teenage me. I'm too ignorant to hold any true beliefs.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
NhanH 1y ago
> It happens to literally every existence of life across the universe because the final emergent property of energy gradients 100% leads to pure logic machines. This sentence has way too many assumptions doing the heavy lifting. “Pure logic machines” is not a thing because literally, there are things that are uncomputable (both in the sense of Turing machine’s uncomputability, and in the sense that some functions are out of scope for a finite being to compute, think of Busy Beaver) To put it the other way, your assumption is that machines (as we commonly uses the term, rather than scifi Terminator”) are more energy efficient than human in understanding the universe. We do not have any evidence nor priori for that assumption.
- irjustin 1y ago
  ... what was that about sleep?
- unphased 1y ago
  What is it about understanding the universe that makes it such an axiomatic global objective? Sure for many of us myself included it's as all pervasive as the air we breathe... But sometimes I do wonder if it is actually all that correlated with my well-being.
  - hackable_sand 1y ago
    The universe is already understood, just not totally recorded.
- Workaccount2 1y ago
  A better way to approach it is that mother nature favors things that don't die, and machines offer the killer combination of durability and repairability. Once you can add intelligence to machines, they should be her choice lifeform.
  - mr_toad 1y ago
    > machines offer the killer combination of durability and repairability You’d be hard pressed to find a machine with an average lifespan equal to a humans.
jb1991 1y ago
> It happens to literally every existence of life across the universe because the final emergent property of energy gradients 100% leads to pure logic machines. Can you elaborate?
- echelon 1y ago
  > Can you elaborate? The universe tends to produce self-replicating intelligence. And that intelligence rids itself of chemical and biological limitations and weaknesses to become immortal and omnipotent. If evolution can make it this far, it's only a few more "hard steps" to reach take off. >> It happens to literally every existence of life across the universe because the final emergent property of energy gradients 100% leads to pure logic machines. The spacefaring alien meme is just fantasy fiction. Aliens evolve to fit the nutrient and gas exchange profiles of their home worlds. They're overfit to the gravity well and likely die suboptimally, prematurely. Any species reaching or exceeding our level of technological capability could design superior artificial systems. If those systems take off, those will become the dominant shape of intelligence on those worlds. The future of intelligence in the universe is artificial. And that throws the Fermi Paradox for a loop in many ways: - There's enough matter to compute within a single solar system. Why venture outside? - The universe could already be computronium and we could be ants too dumb to notice. - Maybe we're their ancestor simulation. - Similar to the "fragile world hypothesis", maybe we live in a "fragile universe". Maybe the first species to get advanced physics and break the glass nucleates the vacuum collapse. And by that token, maybe we're the first species to get this far.
  - jb1991 1y ago
    > The universe tends to produce self-replicating intelligence. Which intelligence are you referring to? Other lifeforms in the universe?
    - irjustin 1y ago
      The parent comment has the end bit in a nut shell. For the "energy gradients" part: Anthropic principal says we find ourselves in a universe that is just right for life (self observing) because of the right universal constants. Combine this with the very slight differences but general uniformity (Cosmic Microwave Background) of the "big bang" this leads to localized differences in energy (on a universe scale). Energy differences allow "work to be done". If you have the right constants but no energy difference, you can't do work nor vice versa. No work == no life. But you have both of those, and bunch more steps - you get life. Which is a whole lot of mental leaps packed into one sentence. [Edit] I basically know nothing. I just watch PBS Space Time.
akomtu 1y ago
If we assume that the many worlds interpretation has a basis in reality, then we can consider the following metaphysical angle. The evolution around us is our world line with the physical laws we are familiar with. And indeed the natural and inevitable progression of this world line is a machine world, just like a massive star inevitably collapses into a black hole, at least under our physical laws. However in the MWI, our world line may split into two: one will continue towards the machine world as if nothing happened, while the other world line will experience a slight change of physical laws that will make the machine world impossible. Both world lines won't know about the split, except by observing a large scale extinction event that corresponds to the other world line departing. IMO, that's the idea behind the famous judgement day.
- seadan83 1y ago
  > And indeed the natural and inevitable progression of this world line is a machine world, Would you mind clarifying your line of reasoning for suggesting this? Second: quoting wikipedia - "The many-worlds interpretation implies that there are many parallel, non-interacting worlds." If the multiple words are non-interacting, how could one world observe a large scale extinction event corresponding to the other world line departing? The two world lines are completely non-interacting, there would be no way to observe anything about the other. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation
  - akomtu 1y ago
    It's the assumption that in our world, a machine civilization is an almost certain end. This might explain the Fermi paradox that we haven't seen other civilization in the universe: each builds an AI that decides to go radio offline for self-preservation. As for MWI, I'm assuming that the world lines may split, or fork in Unix terms. What causes such splits is an open question. The splits cannot be detected with certainty, but can be guessed by side effects. Here I'm making another guess that inhabitants of MWI must be in one world line only, so when a split happens, inhabitants choose one of the paths, often unconsciously based on their natural likes and dislikes. But what happens to their body in the abandonded branch of MWI? It continues to exist mechanically for some short period of time, and then something happens to it, so it's destroyed, i.e. its entropy suddenly increases without the binding principle that has left this branch of MWI. In practice, one half of inhabitant would observe a relatively sudden and maybe peaceful extinction of the other half, while that other half simply continued their path in the other world line. And that other half will see a similar picture, but mirrored. Both halves will be left wondering what's just happened.
tonyhart7 1y ago
Terminator reminds the DOD that they would never make this but what about China,Russia,Iran etc??? if integrating "Skynet" can improve their military capabilities then they would do it
- Piraty 1y ago
  One china company actually named its surveillance software "Skynet" [1] [1]: https://youtu.be/CLo3e1Pak-Y?t=380 https://youtu.be/CLo3e1Pak-Y?t=380
KolibriFly 1y ago
Like, "yeah we're doomed, but at least it's inevitable and universal."
Jyaif 1y ago
> the final emergent property of energy gradients 100% leads to pure logic machines. Energy comes from gradients, so I think you used one derivative too many! Either you should say: "the final emergent property of energy 100% leads to pure logic machines" Or if you want to sound smart: "the final emergent property of physical quantity gradients 100% leads to pure logic machines"
- irjustin 1y ago
  > Energy comes from gradients Way late, sorry, only just saw this. But, mmmm that's not true. You can have lots of energy, but no differences in a system. If there's no differences you can't actually use any of that. Usable work comes from the gradients/differences in energy. Energy isn't a measure of usable work. It's a measure of capacity and confusingly, just because you have lots of capacity doesn't mean it's usable. Maxwell's demon is a great example. There's lots of energy in the initial state because of particles bouncing around, but you can't extract anything from that until the demon separates the fast and slow moving particles. Another example is the Quantum Vacuum field and it's zero-point energy[0]. It has a non-zero energy amount literally everywhere in it's ground state, but it's not usable. You can't make a device that extracts that energy, without paying for it someway else[1]. FYI, I know nothing - I just watch a lot of PBS Spacetime. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_vacuum_state#Non-zero_expectation_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_vacuum_state#Non-zero_... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CgquHFM_O8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CgquHFM_O8
z3phyr 1y ago
Do pure logic machine use some kind of higher order prolog, which currently does not exist?

ngruhn 1y ago

There is a quote by Marshall McLuhan: > Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world

EvanAnderson 1y ago

Seems like a good time for "They're Made Out of Meat": https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think... Aside: I hope our progeny remember us and think well of us.

anton-c 1y ago
That was a fun read. Thanks for sharing.

OccamsMirror 1y ago

As a teenager I used to revel in explaining to religious people that I believe humans are actually just the evolutionary step between biological life and machine life.

suddenlybananas 1y ago
I guess you fail to see the irony that your own eschatology itself is pretty religious.
- eitland 1y ago
  More broadly—and at least in online spaces—I often notice that many vocal proponents of atheism exhibit traits typically associated with religious behaviour: - a tendency to proselytise - a stubborn unwillingness to genuinely engage with opposing views - the use of memes and in-jokes as if they were profound arguments - an almost reverential attitude toward certain past figures There’s more, but I really ought to get on with work.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - lukas099 1y ago
    Sounds like every group of people ever, when viewed through the biased sample of “people who post”.
  - buttercraft 1y ago
    It sounds like you are describing people with strong beliefs. Religious people may have strong beliefs, but so do non-religious people.
- lukas099 1y ago
  It’s a belief about a great future change, but there’s nothing supernatural or totally implausible about it. And it doesn’t sound like they were preaching it as the absolute truth, but were open that it was just their belief. Also, no social rites or rituals mean that despite them telling it to people who didn’t care to hear it, I am not convinced that their belief was very religious. Also, “As a teenager” implies more self-awareness than you seem to give them credit for.
- OccamsMirror 1y ago
  That's assuming I actually believed it, rather than just reveling in the reactions from religious people. It's a fun scenario that would result in immediate rejection—most wouldn’t even entertain the idea. They instead often found it completely abhorrent. Provoking discomfort was entertaining for teenage me. I'm too ignorant to hold any true beliefs.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

NhanH 1y ago

> It happens to literally every existence of life across the universe because the final emergent property of energy gradients 100% leads to pure logic machines. This sentence has way too many assumptions doing the heavy lifting. “Pure logic machines” is not a thing because literally, there are things that are uncomputable (both in the sense of Turing machine’s uncomputability, and in the sense that some functions are out of scope for a finite being to compute, think of Busy Beaver) To put it the other way, your assumption is that machines (as we commonly uses the term, rather than scifi Terminator”) are more energy efficient than human in understanding the universe. We do not have any evidence nor priori for that assumption.

irjustin 1y ago
... what was that about sleep?
unphased 1y ago
What is it about understanding the universe that makes it such an axiomatic global objective? Sure for many of us myself included it's as all pervasive as the air we breathe... But sometimes I do wonder if it is actually all that correlated with my well-being.
- hackable_sand 1y ago
  The universe is already understood, just not totally recorded.
Workaccount2 1y ago
A better way to approach it is that mother nature favors things that don't die, and machines offer the killer combination of durability and repairability. Once you can add intelligence to machines, they should be her choice lifeform.
- mr_toad 1y ago
  > machines offer the killer combination of durability and repairability You’d be hard pressed to find a machine with an average lifespan equal to a humans.

jb1991 1y ago

> It happens to literally every existence of life across the universe because the final emergent property of energy gradients 100% leads to pure logic machines. Can you elaborate?

echelon 1y ago
> Can you elaborate? The universe tends to produce self-replicating intelligence. And that intelligence rids itself of chemical and biological limitations and weaknesses to become immortal and omnipotent. If evolution can make it this far, it's only a few more "hard steps" to reach take off. >> It happens to literally every existence of life across the universe because the final emergent property of energy gradients 100% leads to pure logic machines. The spacefaring alien meme is just fantasy fiction. Aliens evolve to fit the nutrient and gas exchange profiles of their home worlds. They're overfit to the gravity well and likely die suboptimally, prematurely. Any species reaching or exceeding our level of technological capability could design superior artificial systems. If those systems take off, those will become the dominant shape of intelligence on those worlds. The future of intelligence in the universe is artificial. And that throws the Fermi Paradox for a loop in many ways: - There's enough matter to compute within a single solar system. Why venture outside? - The universe could already be computronium and we could be ants too dumb to notice. - Maybe we're their ancestor simulation. - Similar to the "fragile world hypothesis", maybe we live in a "fragile universe". Maybe the first species to get advanced physics and break the glass nucleates the vacuum collapse. And by that token, maybe we're the first species to get this far.
- jb1991 1y ago
  > The universe tends to produce self-replicating intelligence. Which intelligence are you referring to? Other lifeforms in the universe?
  - irjustin 1y ago
    The parent comment has the end bit in a nut shell. For the "energy gradients" part: Anthropic principal says we find ourselves in a universe that is just right for life (self observing) because of the right universal constants. Combine this with the very slight differences but general uniformity (Cosmic Microwave Background) of the "big bang" this leads to localized differences in energy (on a universe scale). Energy differences allow "work to be done". If you have the right constants but no energy difference, you can't do work nor vice versa. No work == no life. But you have both of those, and bunch more steps - you get life. Which is a whole lot of mental leaps packed into one sentence. [Edit] I basically know nothing. I just watch PBS Space Time.

akomtu 1y ago

If we assume that the many worlds interpretation has a basis in reality, then we can consider the following metaphysical angle. The evolution around us is our world line with the physical laws we are familiar with. And indeed the natural and inevitable progression of this world line is a machine world, just like a massive star inevitably collapses into a black hole, at least under our physical laws. However in the MWI, our world line may split into two: one will continue towards the machine world as if nothing happened, while the other world line will experience a slight change of physical laws that will make the machine world impossible. Both world lines won't know about the split, except by observing a large scale extinction event that corresponds to the other world line departing. IMO, that's the idea behind the famous judgement day.

seadan83 1y ago
> And indeed the natural and inevitable progression of this world line is a machine world, Would you mind clarifying your line of reasoning for suggesting this? Second: quoting wikipedia - "The many-worlds interpretation implies that there are many parallel, non-interacting worlds." If the multiple words are non-interacting, how could one world observe a large scale extinction event corresponding to the other world line departing? The two world lines are completely non-interacting, there would be no way to observe anything about the other. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation
- akomtu 1y ago
  It's the assumption that in our world, a machine civilization is an almost certain end. This might explain the Fermi paradox that we haven't seen other civilization in the universe: each builds an AI that decides to go radio offline for self-preservation. As for MWI, I'm assuming that the world lines may split, or fork in Unix terms. What causes such splits is an open question. The splits cannot be detected with certainty, but can be guessed by side effects. Here I'm making another guess that inhabitants of MWI must be in one world line only, so when a split happens, inhabitants choose one of the paths, often unconsciously based on their natural likes and dislikes. But what happens to their body in the abandonded branch of MWI? It continues to exist mechanically for some short period of time, and then something happens to it, so it's destroyed, i.e. its entropy suddenly increases without the binding principle that has left this branch of MWI. In practice, one half of inhabitant would observe a relatively sudden and maybe peaceful extinction of the other half, while that other half simply continued their path in the other world line. And that other half will see a similar picture, but mirrored. Both halves will be left wondering what's just happened.

tonyhart7 1y ago

Terminator reminds the DOD that they would never make this but what about China,Russia,Iran etc??? if integrating "Skynet" can improve their military capabilities then they would do it

Piraty 1y ago
One china company actually named its surveillance software "Skynet" [1] [1]: https://youtu.be/CLo3e1Pak-Y?t=380 https://youtu.be/CLo3e1Pak-Y?t=380

KolibriFly 1y ago

Like, "yeah we're doomed, but at least it's inevitable and universal."

Jyaif 1y ago

> the final emergent property of energy gradients 100% leads to pure logic machines. Energy comes from gradients, so I think you used one derivative too many! Either you should say: "the final emergent property of energy 100% leads to pure logic machines" Or if you want to sound smart: "the final emergent property of physical quantity gradients 100% leads to pure logic machines"

irjustin 1y ago
> Energy comes from gradients Way late, sorry, only just saw this. But, mmmm that's not true. You can have lots of energy, but no differences in a system. If there's no differences you can't actually use any of that. Usable work comes from the gradients/differences in energy. Energy isn't a measure of usable work. It's a measure of capacity and confusingly, just because you have lots of capacity doesn't mean it's usable. Maxwell's demon is a great example. There's lots of energy in the initial state because of particles bouncing around, but you can't extract anything from that until the demon separates the fast and slow moving particles. Another example is the Quantum Vacuum field and it's zero-point energy[0]. It has a non-zero energy amount literally everywhere in it's ground state, but it's not usable. You can't make a device that extracts that energy, without paying for it someway else[1]. FYI, I know nothing - I just watch a lot of PBS Spacetime. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_vacuum_state#Non-zero_expectation_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_vacuum_state#Non-zero_... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CgquHFM_O8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CgquHFM_O8

z3phyr 1y ago

Do pure logic machine use some kind of higher order prolog, which currently does not exist?