11 ms·

>After all the total quantity of intelligence and hard work available around is millionfold what you can provide –you're just a drop of water in the ocean. Rath

by eudox 12y ago

>After all the total quantity of intelligence and hard work available around is millionfold what you can provide –you're just a drop of water in the ocean. Rather use your imagination, the one thing that makes you a beautiful unique snowflake. Intelligence and hard work should be merely at the service of our imagination. Think outside of the box. Break out. Shake the axioms. Given this sort of nonsense, it's no surprise the author is (Probably, since they all are) some kind of vitalist. He probably doesn't think brain emulations are people!

briantakita 12y ago
Why is it nonsense?
- api 12y ago
  There are very, very few people who are capable of arguing against an idea on its merit if that idea clashes strongly with their worldview. Usually the cognitive dissonance of a differing worldview eclipses understanding to the point that anything with a wildly different context is just "insane."
- astrodust 12y ago
  "Intelligence" as we have come to understand it is not some magical thing, not some exotic element that's impossible to fabricate. In fact, it's probably something mundane and insultingly simple when we get to the core of it. Reproducing intelligence is mostly a matter of finding the correct formula, the right structures, the right technology. After that it will be boring, ordinary, even disposable. This doesn't sit well with some people who reject that on an emotional level even if they can't figure out any concrete reason why. It just can't be. We already have enough hardware to fake intelligence, to make a believable Turing Test candidate that could win, but we've yet to figure out how. That much will become clear in the coming decades, guaranteed. If you look at the progression in computer chess programs, where they were pathetic for the longest time until things came together and the performance of them rose exponentially, matching and then eclipsing grandmasters, it's inevitable that the same pattern will play out in the artificial intelligence space.
  - briantakita 12y ago
    > "Intelligence" as we have come to understand it is not some magical thing I agree that intelligence can be replicated. My preferred definition of intelligence is broad. Intelligence is a system that has i/o & a feedback cycle. Thus, I think all matter & concepts have intelligence. Of course, there are higher forms of intelligence, such as human intelligence (which is not limited to the brain as we have a complete nervous system & more generally, autonomous cells). I still think it's magical, however. Even if we understand all of the rules & procedures, the experience of it all coming together fills me with awe. It's like playing a game where you understand the rules, yet you can achieve zen & a higher consciousness when playing. Another example is Fractals. The driving equation is simple, yet infinite complexity & beauty is created. > Reproducing intelligence is mostly a matter of finding the correct formula, the right structures, the right technology. After that it will be boring, ordinary, even disposable. This doesn't sit well with some people who reject that on an emotional level even if they can't figure out any concrete reason why. It just can't be. Animals & possibly lower life forms have evolved emotions. It's an important part of what drives us to do whatever we do. I would not be surprised if AI will need emotions to reach higher intelligence. I have also been driven to honor all life & intelligence. I see the interconnections within the system of existence & aspire to respect all of it's parts. When I hold such a mindset, I'm at my best.
    - Crito 12y ago
      Emotion may be necessary for human-like intelligent systems, however I think you've missed his point. He's not saying that emotion will not be created or emerge in synthetic intelligent systems; rather he's saying that emotional arguments, rather than logical arguments, are rubbish. In other words, "I don't want this to be true, because I don't like the implications, therefore I think that it is not true" is not sound. Whether or not emotion plays an important role in intelligence is irrelevant.
      - briantakita 12y ago
        > he's saying that emotional arguments, rather than logical arguments, are rubbish. That's true if the system in question is entirely based on logic. That means it's probably a static (non-creative) system, as emotions often are involved in creative systems. Note that creating a logical system is itself a creative system. Side note: part of arguments are about framing the system. Often times, disagreements arise because the parties aren't even talking about the same system. A party will often be focused on a subsystem or an entirely different system.
- Crito 12y ago
  I see little justification in the article for the assertion that creativity/imagination^ is something unique and distinct from other aspects of intelligence. Any system that explores solutions will need to speculate on which branch of decisions will have the greatest chances of yielding a desirable outcome. Any system with enough power to fully explore all possibilities will have enough power to discover other possibilities that it lacks the power to fully explore within it's SLAs. Different intelligent systems that employ different pruning techniques or heuristics will have different "creativities". The more sophisticated the intelligent system, the greater the range of 'creative' thought. I've seen little reason to think that creativity is some sort of "special sauce" that would not become commoditized as the rest of intelligence is commoditized. Why shouldn't it? ^ Imagination without creativity is merely simulation, something that nobody doubts is mechanical. I therefore conclude that the author is actually identifying creativity as special.
  - briantakita 12y ago
    There's a couple of ways I see to go with this discussion. I'll explore both... 1. We are in a temporal frame. The evolution of intelligence has gotten us to this point. Right now, high creativity is unique to humans. I agree that the possibility exists for humans to create creative beings. 2. The definition of creativity is broad at the moment. Pursuits that are defined as "creative" are also changing. As we learn more about creativity (zoom into the definition), we will identify more nuances of creativity. Indeed, it may loop back to a fundamental notion of cognition which itself may be related to a fundamental notion of self-perpetuating systems creating the best possible outcome for it's lineage. I suspect that creativity is akin to a driving force. So in a fractal system, "creativity" or "emotional drive" is the equation which creates/generates the fractal over time.
    - Crito 12y ago
      I think that it is easiest (and therefore best ;) to define creativity by what we can observe about it, without any internal knowledge about it. So basically "creativity" is some sort of black-box that generates novel outcomes (for a broad sense of outcomes). On the face of it, I think that for this definition of creativity, I think you could do by simply logically exploring problem spaces that have not been explored before, or by exploring branches in problem spaces that have not been explored before. Maybe throw in a source of randomness when deciding what to explore, to explore possibilities that may not otherwise make sense but could nevertheless lead to interesting outcomes. (The equivalent of a chemist randomly fucking around in his backyard shed). Some of my friends and I practice a sort of very limited mechanical creativity in the form of a drinking game. We invent new "startup ideas" by ad libbing into the phrase "The ____ of ____", where both blanks are existing companies. We then explore that idea and speculate on what such a company would actually entail. "The Twitter of Githubs", maybe that's a company build around the idea of sharing code snippets, like gists? Not a very interesting idea, but I'm sober at the moment. ;)
jsun 12y ago
Well he said if you kept giving the AI exponentially more computing resources it would get linear growth. I think it's fairly obvious that providing 1 computer exponentially more resources isn't much different from creating exponentially more brain simulations...
dang 12y ago
This is not a good Hacker News comment. It's snarky, resorts to name-calling, and presents no substantive view. Thus its signal/noise ratio is poor. Several people have observed that HN threads are sensitive to initial conditions. Threads seem to go more off the rails when a dismissive one-liner becomes the top comment early. I'm not sure how one could test this, but it does strike me as valid. All: Please don't post dismissive one-liners. They don't just lower the signal/noise ratio a little—they add a significant risk of lowering it a lot. It's better to post nothing. When you do comment, please do so "in the spirit of colleagues cooperating in good faith to figure out the truth about something". That's a pg phrase which captures the desired quality of HN so well that we intend to add it to the site guidelines.
- VintageCool 12y ago
  > I would like to simply argue that scientific progress is in fact linear I stopped reading right there. The model that the author is looking for to express his ideas is "logistic growth", or "S curves".

by eudox 12y ago

briantakita 12y ago

Why is it nonsense?

api 12y ago
There are very, very few people who are capable of arguing against an idea on its merit if that idea clashes strongly with their worldview. Usually the cognitive dissonance of a differing worldview eclipses understanding to the point that anything with a wildly different context is just "insane."
astrodust 12y ago
"Intelligence" as we have come to understand it is not some magical thing, not some exotic element that's impossible to fabricate. In fact, it's probably something mundane and insultingly simple when we get to the core of it. Reproducing intelligence is mostly a matter of finding the correct formula, the right structures, the right technology. After that it will be boring, ordinary, even disposable. This doesn't sit well with some people who reject that on an emotional level even if they can't figure out any concrete reason why. It just can't be. We already have enough hardware to fake intelligence, to make a believable Turing Test candidate that could win, but we've yet to figure out how. That much will become clear in the coming decades, guaranteed. If you look at the progression in computer chess programs, where they were pathetic for the longest time until things came together and the performance of them rose exponentially, matching and then eclipsing grandmasters, it's inevitable that the same pattern will play out in the artificial intelligence space.
- briantakita 12y ago
  > "Intelligence" as we have come to understand it is not some magical thing I agree that intelligence can be replicated. My preferred definition of intelligence is broad. Intelligence is a system that has i/o & a feedback cycle. Thus, I think all matter & concepts have intelligence. Of course, there are higher forms of intelligence, such as human intelligence (which is not limited to the brain as we have a complete nervous system & more generally, autonomous cells). I still think it's magical, however. Even if we understand all of the rules & procedures, the experience of it all coming together fills me with awe. It's like playing a game where you understand the rules, yet you can achieve zen & a higher consciousness when playing. Another example is Fractals. The driving equation is simple, yet infinite complexity & beauty is created. > Reproducing intelligence is mostly a matter of finding the correct formula, the right structures, the right technology. After that it will be boring, ordinary, even disposable. This doesn't sit well with some people who reject that on an emotional level even if they can't figure out any concrete reason why. It just can't be. Animals & possibly lower life forms have evolved emotions. It's an important part of what drives us to do whatever we do. I would not be surprised if AI will need emotions to reach higher intelligence. I have also been driven to honor all life & intelligence. I see the interconnections within the system of existence & aspire to respect all of it's parts. When I hold such a mindset, I'm at my best.
  - Crito 12y ago
    Emotion may be necessary for human-like intelligent systems, however I think you've missed his point. He's not saying that emotion will not be created or emerge in synthetic intelligent systems; rather he's saying that emotional arguments, rather than logical arguments, are rubbish. In other words, "I don't want this to be true, because I don't like the implications, therefore I think that it is not true" is not sound. Whether or not emotion plays an important role in intelligence is irrelevant.
    - briantakita 12y ago
      > he's saying that emotional arguments, rather than logical arguments, are rubbish. That's true if the system in question is entirely based on logic. That means it's probably a static (non-creative) system, as emotions often are involved in creative systems. Note that creating a logical system is itself a creative system. Side note: part of arguments are about framing the system. Often times, disagreements arise because the parties aren't even talking about the same system. A party will often be focused on a subsystem or an entirely different system.
Crito 12y ago
I see little justification in the article for the assertion that creativity/imagination^ is something unique and distinct from other aspects of intelligence. Any system that explores solutions will need to speculate on which branch of decisions will have the greatest chances of yielding a desirable outcome. Any system with enough power to fully explore all possibilities will have enough power to discover other possibilities that it lacks the power to fully explore within it's SLAs. Different intelligent systems that employ different pruning techniques or heuristics will have different "creativities". The more sophisticated the intelligent system, the greater the range of 'creative' thought. I've seen little reason to think that creativity is some sort of "special sauce" that would not become commoditized as the rest of intelligence is commoditized. Why shouldn't it? ^ Imagination without creativity is merely simulation, something that nobody doubts is mechanical. I therefore conclude that the author is actually identifying creativity as special.
- briantakita 12y ago
  There's a couple of ways I see to go with this discussion. I'll explore both... 1. We are in a temporal frame. The evolution of intelligence has gotten us to this point. Right now, high creativity is unique to humans. I agree that the possibility exists for humans to create creative beings. 2. The definition of creativity is broad at the moment. Pursuits that are defined as "creative" are also changing. As we learn more about creativity (zoom into the definition), we will identify more nuances of creativity. Indeed, it may loop back to a fundamental notion of cognition which itself may be related to a fundamental notion of self-perpetuating systems creating the best possible outcome for it's lineage. I suspect that creativity is akin to a driving force. So in a fractal system, "creativity" or "emotional drive" is the equation which creates/generates the fractal over time.
  - Crito 12y ago
    I think that it is easiest (and therefore best ;) to define creativity by what we can observe about it, without any internal knowledge about it. So basically "creativity" is some sort of black-box that generates novel outcomes (for a broad sense of outcomes). On the face of it, I think that for this definition of creativity, I think you could do by simply logically exploring problem spaces that have not been explored before, or by exploring branches in problem spaces that have not been explored before. Maybe throw in a source of randomness when deciding what to explore, to explore possibilities that may not otherwise make sense but could nevertheless lead to interesting outcomes. (The equivalent of a chemist randomly fucking around in his backyard shed). Some of my friends and I practice a sort of very limited mechanical creativity in the form of a drinking game. We invent new "startup ideas" by ad libbing into the phrase "The ____ of ____", where both blanks are existing companies. We then explore that idea and speculate on what such a company would actually entail. "The Twitter of Githubs", maybe that's a company build around the idea of sharing code snippets, like gists? Not a very interesting idea, but I'm sober at the moment. ;)

jsun 12y ago

Well he said if you kept giving the AI exponentially more computing resources it would get linear growth. I think it's fairly obvious that providing 1 computer exponentially more resources isn't much different from creating exponentially more brain simulations...

dang 12y ago

This is not a good Hacker News comment. It's snarky, resorts to name-calling, and presents no substantive view. Thus its signal/noise ratio is poor. Several people have observed that HN threads are sensitive to initial conditions. Threads seem to go more off the rails when a dismissive one-liner becomes the top comment early. I'm not sure how one could test this, but it does strike me as valid. All: Please don't post dismissive one-liners. They don't just lower the signal/noise ratio a little—they add a significant risk of lowering it a lot. It's better to post nothing. When you do comment, please do so "in the spirit of colleagues cooperating in good faith to figure out the truth about something". That's a pg phrase which captures the desired quality of HN so well that we intend to add it to the site guidelines.

VintageCool 12y ago
> I would like to simply argue that scientific progress is in fact linear I stopped reading right there. The model that the author is looking for to express his ideas is "logistic growth", or "S curves".