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> you really think that emulating human cognition on a separate substrate is outright impossible? Absolutely not. But I think it's too far in the future, that
by sampo 12y ago
> you really think that emulating human cognition on a separate substrate is outright impossible?
Absolutely not.
But I think it's too far in the future, that it is totally pointless for us, in 2014, to worry about it.
I view the singularity crowd as a bunch of medieval alchemists, after they have seen gunpowder, worrying about mutually assured destruction of the whole world, after someone scales their firecrackers to a size capable of destroying whole countries.
Yes, coming to 1950's we did reach nuclear weapons with end-the-world capability.
But it would have been quite pointless for (al)chemist, or philosophers, in the 1400's, or even in the 1700's, to start worrying about this threat.
- eli_gottlieb 12y agoAh, so you think scientific progress proceeds not merely at a constant rate, but at a constantly slowing rate, thus causing the rate of new discoveries to be roughly constant over the centuries, despite our constantly adding more scientists, and publishing more papers, based on increasingly solid foundations.
- sampo 12y ago> so you think scientific progress proceeds not merely at a constant rate, but at a constantly slowing rate No, I don't think so. I just think the way looks very long, even given our current acceleration rate. Plus, this field has a very strong track record of blatant overestimations.