The Superlative Imagination is, in my view, premised on ignorance of or even active hostility to certain basic facts of reality. Among them:
[1] Technoscientific progress does not trump but requires political progress.
This means, real technoscientific progress is not a matter of the socially indifferent accumulation of a toypile, but must be developed and distributed in the context of a progressive social order in which there is equal recourse to the law, free and fair elections, no taxation without representation, basic income guarantees, or at any rate general welfare, universal healthcare and education, independent media, and a real respect for and protection of the scene of informed, nonduressed consent.
[2] Lives are lived in bodies that are as vulnerable as they are promising.
This means, there can be no scooping up of your brains into shiny immortal robot bodies or, more absurd yet, "selves" reduced to and then "uploaded" into digital networks without bodies at all, but there can be at best universal basic public healthcare together with proliferating projects of private self-creation through informed, nonduressed, consensual, regulated non-normalizing genetic, prosthetic, and cognitive modification medicine.
[3] Intelligence, too, is embodied, and arises in connection with and is expressed through a diversity of cultures and lifeways.
This means there are not likely to be autonomous artificially intelligent persons sharing our world with us any time soon, certainly not coming out of the communities of enthusiasm most prone to say otherwise, with their disembodied, computational, otherwise absurdly reductionist, and essentially sociopathic conceptions of intelligence.
[4] We share the world as peers with a plurality of stakeholders who exhibit an ineradicable diversity of capacities, perspectives, interests, and aspirations.
This means there will be no trumping of the impasse of stakeholder politics through the achievement of superabundance -- via ubiquitous computation, automation, nanotechnology, or whatever the techno-utopians are handwaving about at the moment -- an abundance so inherently enriching and emancipatory that it trivializes this diversity of demands and so renders democratic politics unnecessary or tyranny -- whether traditionally authoritarian or in some smugly "meritocratic" technocratic mode -- suddenly tolerable.
I have yet to see any effort to provide a comprehensive response to these critiques (especially not a response sensitive to the inter-implications of these critiques) and, frankly, I have yet to see anything close to a convincing case made even in response to any of the four critiques individually. I'd say responses to [3] and [4] have, so far, generated the most noise.
Typically, though, techno-utopian Superlatives want to get their critics to shift their attention to what the Superlatives consider "technical" questions, minutiae about which they imagine themselves to be experts (despite the inevitable disagreement on these very questions of the consensus of actually working scientists in the relevant fields under discussion) as quickly as possible. This is because one can easily forget just how batshit crazy a worldview involving Robot Gods, immortal robot bodies, and nanoscale robot genies-in-a-bottle really is if you are devoting your full attention to the futurological cottage industry in neologisms and arrows exponentially curving heavenward on charts and pages of equations carving up human experience into quarterly profit reports and so on.
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[1] Technoscientific progress does not trump but requires political progress.
Technological progress doesn't require proper use of the technology. If someone invented a mind control device tomorrow and used it on everyone, there is no technoscientific regression (as long as modern technology/tools continue to be used).
[2] Lives are lived in bodies that are as vulnerable as they are promising.
I agree with this one, but how are digital networks fundamentally different from humans? Their actions (outputs) are both completely determined by the laws of physics. (It is impossible to observe consciousness, so you have to observe actions.)
[3] Intelligence, too, is embodied, and arises in connection with and is expressed through a diversity of cultures and lifeways.
Observable intelligence is caused by physical processes.
disembodied, computational, otherwise absurdly reductionist, and essentially sociopathic conceptions of intelligence
"Disembodied"--do you need to move to think? "Computational"--if nothing possible under the laws of physics can be more powerful (computationally) than a Turing machine, then people can't be more intelligent than the best theoretically possible AI. "Otherwise absurdly reductionist"--people's actions can be replicated by a perfect physical simulation. It might not be possible to simulate consciousness, but unless you want to be an AI, it doesn't matter. "Essentially sociopathic conceptions of intelligence"--intelligence is not intrinsically social.
Also, can "artificial" be exactly defined? Humans can already create intelligence.
[4] We share the world as peers with a plurality of stakeholders who exhibit an ineradicable diversity of capacities, perspectives, interests, and aspirations.
Of course. I don't see why it is guaranteed to continue--everyone (*everyone*) could die in an asteroid collision or nuclear war. If everyone dies, democracy is obviously unnecessary.
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This only shows that it is theoretically possible for the "basic facts" not to be true or that the "fact" is irrelevant, not that they aren't probably true. (Except for the first one...) I said that democracy isn't necessary if there were no more people (human or not), but that isn't what Singulatarians want.
I'll try to actually argue against the fourth one:
First, why do non-democratic governments have to be tyrannical?
Superabundance has been achieved in some areas--smallpox vaccines, for example, or air. Some other types of superabundance are definitely arriving in the near future (polio vaccines). Superabundance can be achieved by reducing demand, not just increasing supply. If demand becomes effectively zero relative to the supply (there are very few smallpox vaccines, but there is zero demand for them), there is superabundance. Food is not superabundant, but if the population of the world drops for several hundred years to a few thousand (this doesn't involve many people getting killed, just low birth rates) and farming becomes much easier, everyone could produce their own food easily. Food doesn't become superabundant very easily, though. A better example is housing--if zero-maintenance houses could be made, and an asteroid suddenly killed all but a million people, people could move into other people's houses for a long time (water and electricity would still cost money, though).
Peco asks:
> [W]hy do non-democratic governments have to be tyrannical?
Because we live in a fallen world?
That implies a religious ontology, but it has the ring
of truth.
Because some (most) people are always going to act like
sons o' bitches, given a chance?
Now, if you're suggesting that SIAI is going to create
an incorruptible, benevolent Robot God to make us all play
nicely together while satisfying our cravings for
Big Daddy in the Sky, well. . .
A **long** excerpt from my e-mail archive:
Subject: Nothin' would be finer than to be in Carolina. . .
Brin asks, in that Salon piece,
> Wouldn't life seem richer, finer if we still had kings?
Perhaps. C. S. Lewis, as he often does, seems to
be getting at some truth of human psychology
that mere politically-correct sneering glosses
over at its own peril:
"And that is why the imagination of
people is so easily captured by ...
films about loyal courtiers or ... Nazi
ideology. The tempter always works on
some **real** weakness in our own system
of values: offers food to some need
which we have starved. . .
We Britons should rejoice that we have
contrived to reach much legal democracy
(we still need more of the economic)
without losing our ceremonial Monarchy.
For there, right in the midst of our
lives, is that which satisfies the
craving for inequality, and acts as permanent
reminder that medicine is not
food. Hence a man's reaction to Monarchy
is a kind of test. Monarchy can
easily be "debunked"; but watch the faces,
mark well the accents, of the
debunkers. These are the men whose tap-root
in Eden has been cut: whom no
rumor of the polyphony, the dance, can reach --
men to whom pebbles laid in a row
are more beautiful than an arch. Yet even if
they desire mere equality they
cannot reach it. Where men are forbidden to
honour a king they honour
millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead:
even famous prostitutes or
gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily
nature, will be served; deny it
food and it will gobble poison.
And that is why this whole question is
of practical importance. Every intrusion
of the spirit that says "I'm as good as
you" into our personal and spiritual
life is to be resisted just as jealously
as every intrusion of bureaucracy or
privilege into our politics.
Hierarchy within can alone preserve
egalitarianism without. Romantic attacks
on democracy will come again. We shall
never be safe unless we already
understand in our hearts all that the
anti-democrats can say, and have
provided for it better than they. Human
nature will not permanently endure flat
equality if it is extended from its
proper political field into the more
real, more concrete fields within. Let
us **wear** equality; but let us undress
every night."
"Equality", from _The Spectator_,
27 August 1943
-----------------------------------------------
Another approach to hierarchy is taken in [Lewis's]
_That Hideous Strength_. The first passage is dealing with
equality and how it guards life, it doesn’t make it.
“Ah, equality!” said the Director.“We must talk of that
some other time. Yes, we must all be guarded by equal
rights from one another’s greed, because we are fallen.
Just as we must all wear clothes for the same reason.
But the naked body should be there underneath the clothes,
ripening for a day when we shall need them no longer.
Equality is not the deepest thing, you know.”
“I always thought that was just what it was. I thought
it was in their souls that people were equal.”
“You were mistaken,” said he gravely. “That is the last
place where they are equal. Equality before the law, equality
of incomes – that is very well. Equality guards life; it doesn’t
make it. It is medicine, not food.”
(Lewis, _Hideous_ 148)
The next thing the Director does is the illustration of hierarchy
and the provisions the higher ranked make for the lower.
He uses mice to do this:
"Now, Mrs. Studdock," said the Director, "you shall see a
diversion. But you must be perfectly still." With these words
he took from his pocket a little silver whistle and blew a note
on it. And Jane sat still till the room became filled with silence
like a solid thing and there was first a scratching and then a
rustling and presently she saw three plump mice working their
passage across what was to them the thick undergrowth of the
carpet, nosing this way and that so that if their course had been
drawn it would have resembled that of a winding river, until they
were so close that she could see the palpitation of their noses.
In spite of what she said she did not really care for mice in the
neighborhood of her feet and it was with an effort that she sat still.
Thanks to this effort she saw mice for the first time as a really
are - not as creeping things but as dainty quadrupeds, almost,
when they sat up, like tiny kangaroos, with sensitive kid-gloved
forepaws and transparent ears. With quick inaudible movements
they ranged to and fro till not a crumb was left on the floor.
Then the blew a second time on his whistle and with a sudden
whisk of tails all three of them were racing for home and in a few
seconds had disappeared behind the coal box. The Director
looked at her with laughter in his eyes. ...
"There," he said, "a very simple adjustment. Humans want crumbs
removed; mice are anxious to remove them. It ought never to have
been a cause of war. But you see that obedience and rule are
more like a dance than a drill – specially between man and woman
where the roles are always changing.’
-----------------------------------------------
http://campus.kcc.edu/faculty/cstarr/C.S.%20Lewis%20Course/C.S.%20Lewis's%20-%20Hierarchy%20In%20C.S.%20Lewis.htm
http://ourworld.cs.com/lkrieg45/quotes_l.htm
Lewis held that formalized
ethical rules -- the Ten Commandments, the Torah, the Talmud,
and so on, are stopgap measures for a fallen world.
He suggested that the essence of harmony with the Tao,
or with God, or the social fabric, or whatever, is a much more
fluid, evanescent phenomenon than could be captured in a net of words.
-----------------------------------------------
"The dance is a particularly interesting expression of important
issues in that it connotes an intensity which avoids the burdensome.
This is because dance is a form of playing not working. . . . The seriousness
of play as opposed to the seriousness of work reveals a mode of
being totally given to its raison d’etre while work is always done fo
the purpose of something else. . . . Play, then, is a highly ordered
but totally free experience which can also be said of sacred activity.
Freedom and order (the law) are perennially the watchwords in religious
thinking. Freedom in its relation to sacred order means freely willed
rather than constrained obedience to law.
Lewis summarized it well:
'For surely we must suppose the life of the blessed to be an end in
itself, indeed The End: to be utterly spontaneous; to be the complete
reconciliation of boundless freedom with order -- with the most delicately
adjusted, supple, intricate, and beautiful order?' (Letters to Malcolm, p. 94).
It is in the dance that the reconciliation of freedom and order can
perhaps be most vividly imagined.
'The pattern deep hidden n the dance, hidden so deep that
shallow spectators cannot see it, alone gives beauty to the wild,
free gestures that fill it, just as the decasyllabic norm gives
beauty to all the licences and variation of the poet’s verse,'
Lewis writes when talking about Milton’s world view.
In some sense we could say that the dance reconciles the
two poles, but at the same time freedom and order generate
the dance. A result of their fusion is a concrete and dynamic
third reality, or, more appropriately, freedom and order are a
dance. . . . The distinctions, freedom and order, generate the
dance: their reconciliation is a dance. The material not only
has religious significance in the dance, but is, along with the
spiritual, essential to the dance. And this spirituality is not
burdensome because the seriousness of dance is the
seriousness of play."
Marcia Tanner
The Image of Dance in the Works of C. S. Lewis
(quoted in http://www.lomcc.org/2003%20sermons/02-16-03.pdf )
-----------------------------------------------
Lewis used a metaphor of "The Great Dance" for
the kind of non-legalistic, seemingly effortless
cooperation that he imagined redeemed man
as capable of.
E.g. _Miracles_, Chapter 14, "The Grand Miracle"
p. 201:
"Where a God who is totally purposive and totally
foreseeing acts upon a Nature which is totally
interlocked, there can be no accidents or loose ends...
What is subservient from one point of view is the
main purpose from another. No thing or event is
first or highest in a sense which forbids it
to be also last and lowest. The partner who bows
to Man in one movement of the dance receives
Man's reverences in another. To be high or central
means to abdicate continually: to be low means
to be raised: all good masters are servants:
God washes the feet of men. The concepts we usually
bring to the consideration of such matters are
miserably political and prosaic. We think of flat
repetitive equality and arbitrary privilege as
the only two alternatives -- thus missing all the
overtones, the counterpoint, the vibrant sensitiveness,
the inter-inanimations of reality..."
There's also a relevant passage in Lewis's
middle "Deep Heaven" novel, _Perelandra_. In this
story, a (contemporary) man of Earth has travelled to the
planet Venus (Perelandra), where the first
man and the first woman of that world are still
living in their Garden of Eden. Unfortunately,
the physicist who flew the rocket there is
possessed by the Devil ( :-> ), and it is up
to the hero (Ransom) to help the new Eve from being
tempted to a second Fall (it's not an apple,
in this case, but there's a similar prohibition).
After the body of the possessed physicist has
been physically destroyed by the hero, there's
a scene in which the new Adam and Eve (Adam
has been watching offstage, contemplating
his own temptation -- whether he would follow
his Eve into Sin as the Adam of Earth did),
tell Ransom (the man from Earth) what's in
store for the new race (and for the human
race, too):
"We will fill this world with our children. . .
We will make the nobler of the beasts so wise
that they will become hnau [sentient] and speak:
their lives shall awake to a new life as we
awake in Maleldil [the Son, Christ]. When
the time is ripe for it and the ten thousand
circlings are nearly at an end, we will tear
the sky curtain and Deep Heaven shall become
familiar to the eyes of our sons as the trees
and the waves to ours. . .
Then it is Maleldil's purpose to make us free
of Deep Heaven. Our bodies will be changed,
but not all changed. We shall be as the
eldila [angels], but not all eldila. And so
will all our sons and daughters be changed
in the time of this ripeness, until the number
is made up which Maleldil read in His Father's
mind before times flowed."
"And that," said Ransom [the Earthman], "will
be the end?"
Tor the King [the Venusian Adam] stared at
him.
"The end?" he said. "Who spoke of an end?"
"The end of your world, I mean," said Ransom.
"Splendour of Heaven!" said Tor. "Your thoughts
are unlike ours. About that time we shall be
not far from the beginning of all things.
But there will be one matter to settle before
the beginning rightly begins."
"What is that?" asked Ransom.
"Your own world," said Tor, "Thulcandra [Earth,
the "Silent Planet", since it was quarantined
from Deep Heaven after Satan's fall. ;-> ].
The siege of your world shall be raised, the
black spot cleared away, before the real beginning.
In those days Maleldil will go to war -- in us,
and in many who once were hnau on your world,
and in many from far off and in many eldila,
and, last of all, in Himself unveiled. . .
But in the end, all shall be cleansed, and
even the memory of your Black Oyarsa [archangel
of a planet] shall be blotted out, and your
world shall be fair and sweet and reunited
to the Field of Arbol [the Solar System] and
its true name shall be heard again. But
can it be, Friend, that no rumor of all this is
heard in Thulcandra? Do your people think
that their Dark Lord will hold his prey forever?"
"Most of them," said Ransom, "have ceased to
think of such things at all. Some of us still
have the knowledge: but I did not at once see
what you were talking of, because what you
call the beginning we are accustomed to call
the Last Things."
"I do not call it the beginning," said Tor
the King. "It is but the wiping out of a false
start in order that the world may **then**
begin. . ."
"And is the whole story of my race no more
than this?" said Ransom.
"I see no more than beginnings in the history
of the Low Worlds [Venus, Earth, and Mars],"
said Tor the King. "And in yours a failure
to begin. You talk of evenings before the
day has dawned. I set forth even now on
ten thousand years of preparation -- I, the
first of my race, my race the first of races,
to begin. I tell you that when the last
of my children has ripened and ripeness has
spread from them to all the Low Worlds, it
willl be whispered that the morning is at
hand."
"I am full of doubts and ignorance," said
Ransom. . . "To what is all driving? What
is the morning you speak of?"
"The beginning of the Great Game, of the Great
Dance," said Tor. "I know little of it as
yet. Let the eldila [angels] speak."
The voice that spoke next seemed to be that
of Mars [i.e., the archangel of Mars], but
Ransom was not certain. . . For [in] the conversation
that followed -- if it can be called a
conversation. . . [t]he speeches followed
one another. . .like the parts of a music
into which all five of them had entered as
instruments or like a wind blowing through
five trees that stand together on a hilltop.
"We would not talk of it like that," said the
first voice. "The Great Dance does not wait
to be perfect until the peoples of the Low
Worlds are gathered into it. We speak not
of when it will begin. It has begun from
always. There was no time when we did not
rejoice before His face as now. The dance
which we dance is at the centre and for the
dance all things were made. Blessed be He!"
. . .
"In the plan of the Great Dance plans without
number interlock, and each movement becomes
in its season the breaking into flower of the
whole design to which all else had been directed.
Thus each is equally at the centre and none
are there by being equals, but some by giving
place and some by receiving it, the small
things by their smallness and the great by their
greatness, and all the patterns linked and
looped together by the unions of a kneeling
with a sceptred love. Blessed be He!"
. . .
And now, by a transition which he did not notice,
it seemed that what had begun as speech was
turned into sight, or into something that can
be remembered only as if it were seeing. He
thought he saw the Great Dance. It seemed to
be woven out of the intertwining undulation
of many cords or bands of light, leaping over
and under one another and mutually embraced
in arabesques and flower-like subtleties. Each
figure as he looked at it became the master-
figure or focus of the whole spectacle, by means
of which his eye disentangled all else and
brought it into unity -- only to be itself
entangled when he looked to what he had taken
for mere marginal decorations and found that
there also the same hegemony was claimed, and
the claim made good, yet the former pattern was
not thereby dispossessed but finding in its
new subordination a significance greater than
that which it had abdicated. He could see
also (but the word "seeing" is now plainly
inadequate) wherever the ribbons or serpents of
light intersected, minute corpuscles of
momentary brightness: and he knew somehow that
these particles were the secular generalities
of which history tells -- peoples, institutions,
climates of opinion, civilisations, arts,
sciences, and the like -- ephemeral coruscations
that piped their short song and vanished. The
ribbons or cords themselves, in which millions
of corpuscles lived and died, were things of
some different kind. At first he could not say
what. But he knew in the end that most of
them were individual entities. If so, the time
in which the Great Dance proceeds is very unlike
time as we know it. Some of the thinner and
more delicate cords were beings that we call
short-lived: flowers and insects, a fruit or
a storm of rain, and once (he thought) a wave
of the sea. Others were such things as we also
think lasting: crystals, rivers, mountains,
or even stars. Far above these in girth and
luminosity and flashing with colors from beyond
our spectrum were the lines of the personal
beings, yet as different from one another in
splendour as all of them from the previous class.
But not all the cords were individuals: some
were universal truths or universal qualities.
It did not surprise him then to find that these
and the persons were both cords and both stood
together as against the mere atoms of generality
which lived and died in the clashing of their
streams: but afterwards, when he came back
to earth, he wondered. And by now the thing must
have passed altogether out of the region of
sight as we understand it. For he says that
the whole solid figure of these enamoured and
inter-animated circlings was suddenly revealed
as the mere superfices of a far vaster pattern
in four dimensions, and that figure as the
boundary of yet others in other worlds: till
suddenly as the movement grew yet swifter,
the interweaving yet more ecstatic, the
relevance of all to all yet more intense,
as dimension was added to dimension and that
part of him which could reason and remember
was dropped farther and farther behind that
part of him which saw, even then, at the very
zenith of complexity, complexity was eaten
up and faded, as a thin white cloud fades into
the hard blue burning of the sky, and a
simplicity beyond all comprehension, ancient
as young as spring, illimitable, pellucid,
drew him with cords of infinite desire into
its own stillness. He went up into such a
quietness, a privacy, and a freshness that
at the very moment when he stood farthest from
our ordinary mode of being he had the sense
of stripping off incumbrances and waking from
trance, and coming to himself. With a gesture
of relaxation he looked about him . . ."
Reads a bit like Olaf Stapledon! ;->
Wouldn't it be nice.
Technological progress doesn't require proper use of the technology.
As I have defined it and discussed it at length here and elsewhere, yes, it does. At any rate, insofar as "proper" means democratic and fair.
how are digital networks fundamentally different from humans? Their actions (outputs)
I disapprove of the glib identification of outputs and people, and I have gone on at length about the fundamental differences between information and peers who matter. Comb the archives if you would know.
intelligence is caused by physical processes.
It is easily possible to repudiate facile reductionism (belief in which usually says more about it adherents than in the complex facts it would describe) without embracing thereby a supernaturalist attitude toward consciousness. Again, search the archives, I've written about this countless times.
"Disembodied"--do you need to move to think? "Computational"--if nothing possible under the laws of physics can be more powerful (computationally) than a Turing machine, then people can't be more intelligent than the best theoretically possible AI.
You are completely out of your depth peco. Study computer science and linguistics more deeply and get back to me.
people's actions can be replicated by a perfect physical simulation.
Pure religious bullshit.
intelligence is not intrinsically social
Says who, you? I'm not going to just trade bald unsubstantiated assertions with you on my own blog, peco. I thoroughly disapprove of your reductionism, anybody who reads this blog would see that in an instant. Why come here, just to say nuh-uh! nanny-nanny boo boo! after each post? Do you aspire to be a troll? Why not start your own blog where you flog whatever faith you prefer on your own terms? The demands of reacting to you respectfully and giving you the benefit of the doubt are exhausting me and boring everybody else.
Humans can already create intelligence.
If only.
If everyone dies, democracy is obviously unnecessary.
Whatever you say, Dr. Strangelove.
I said that democracy isn't necessary if there were no more people (human or not), but that isn't what Singulatarians want.
Pause, dear readers, and contemplate that one for a moment.
why do non-democratic governments have to be tyrannical?
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Superabundance has been achieved in some areas--smallpox vaccines, for example
Stuff exists, duh! Superabundance is another matter altogether. I have defined and discussed this idea many times. Search the archives and get up to speed if you would debate my views in an informed way. If you just want to make your own points, start a blog.
Some other types of superabundance are definitely arriving in the near future
So they keep telling us.
Superabundance can be achieved by reducing demand, not just increasing supply. If demand becomes effectively zero relative to the supply
Hey, kids, genocidal speculation can be fun when you're an ethical utilitarian!
A better example is housing--if zero-maintenance houses could be made, and an asteroid suddenly killed all but a million people, people could move into other people's houses for a long time (water and electricity would still cost money, though).
And if Roger Huerta was my willing sex-slave and all the Singularitarians became deaf-mmutes because an asteroid released silencing nano-mites into the atmosphere, I would probably be even more cheerful than I am today. What's your point?
Look, let's stop this. Let's set some ground rules, you're scaring away some of my regular and welcome conversational contributors here.
Please post a little less often and take the time to think a little more deeply before you do. No offense, buddy, but to disagree on so many basic terms is worse than making conversation difficult: it can yield an occasional and superficial appearance of conversation that confuses everyone to no good purpose.
Read more of my stuff from the archive if you would understand and so critique and engage with my actual assumptions on their own terms here. I don't have the time to educate you for free and it is far from clear to me that you would want me to do so anyway.
I'll explain everything I say exactly, so it won't be misunderstood.
Hey, kids, genocidal speculation can be fun when you're an ethical utilitarian!
A decreasing population doesn't have to be caused by murder/killing/genocide!!! I explained that in my post so you wouldn't say this...
"Disembodied"--do you need to move to think? "Computational"--if nothing possible under the laws of physics can be more powerful (computationally) than a Turing machine, then people can't be more intelligent than the best theoretically possible AI.
You are completely out of your depth peco. Study computer science and linguistics more deeply and get back to me.
I'll drop this.
people's actions can be replicated by a perfect physical simulation.
If a perfect physical simulation doesn't get similar actions, the *actual* (not the ones currently known) laws of physics have to be false (the actual laws of physics produce intelligent actions, so a simulation of them must also produce intelligent actions, unless the actual laws of physics are completely random and all observed intelligence is random). The actual laws of physics are true by definition, so anything that shows that they are false is impossible.
Pure religious bullshit.
The only assumption I'm making here is that the laws of physics are true.
why do non-democratic governments have to be tyrannical?
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Power corrupts people, not governments. Individual people in non-democratic governments don't have to have a lot of power (voting is restricted to a moderate-sized group of people, maybe).
I'm not responding to anything else so that I can get a longer response and also annoy you less.
I won't comment on anything to do with ethics, since I have to make some kind of unsubstantiated statement. That wouldn't be a problem if I completely agreed with you, but I don't.
I will restrict my comments even more. I will only comment when:
(1) I agree with you
(2) I think you have made a trivial mistake, like typing Osama instead of Obama
(3) I disagree with you (only one point per post)
Peco wrote:
> The actual laws of physics are true by definition,
> so anything that shows that they are false is impossible.
What is this, Ayn Rand on the philosophy of science?
All right, more calmly: this is not a very sophisticated
characterization of the practice, or the grounds for
belief, of physics or anything else that passes for
mainstream science.
You really do seem a bit out of your depth here, certainly
too much so to be adopting the tone of arrogant certainty
that you've borrowed from your gurus, the Singularitarians.
I wasn't talking about science. How are the actual laws of physics not true? This is like saying that something is true if and only if it is true. (Are there absolute laws of physics, in theory? Again, I'm not talking about science.)
> I wasn't talking about science. How are the actual laws
> of physics not true?
What "actual" laws of physics? You mean the ones that were
inscribed by a finger of fire by L. Ron Hubbard's Thetan
on a platinum record that was presented to Madonna when
she had lunch at the top of the Capitol Records building
in LA?
The laws of physics that prevent you from suddenly appearing on Mars, traveling faster than light and building perpetual motion machines?
If you strike your keyboard, the characters appear on your screen because of the laws of physics. If you and your keyboard were perfectly simulated, wouldn't characters also "appear" on the "screen?"
I don't think it is possible to perfectly simulate large systems, but I was trying to say that it is theoretically possible for computers to act intelligent. I really don't know whether it is practical.
Claiming that the actual laws of physics are the actual laws of physics (a tautology if I ever saw one) doesn't imply that you know, or anyone knows, what those laws are. (More generally: a correspondence theory of truth is compatible with fallibilism.)
However, peco, you can never know a simulation is perfect, so in reality the failure of such a simulation would just mean the relevant laws are not what you thought they were. (That's a minor quibble - I largely agree with you, at least on the simulation/AI front.)
Dale: do you disagree that a physical simulation of an object, in sufficient detail, will allow you to predict the behavior of that object? AFAIK, everything is reducible to raw physics in at least this very limited sense, although other forms of reductionism may be inappropriate when talking about people (and I agree that many are).
(For clarification: the first line of the above post was in response to James @ 6:02.)
On point #3, AI (which I think is much more important than simulation/uploading, so I'll try to avoid talking about the latter from here on, as tempting as it is): The fact that human intelligence is embodied and social doesn't mean that all intelligent entities need to share these properties, unless you take an overly narrow definition of "intelligence". (Yes I know you can make a word mean anything if you define it too broadly, but my point is that the definition of intelligence can perfectly well include non-embodied, non-social, generally non-humanoid entities without becoming uselessly broad.) (Yes I know all information is physically instantiated - by "non-embodied" I mean instantiated on a server rack or something similar, as opposed to an actual body continually physically interacting with the world. I'm not aware of any "Robot Cultist" who believes a literally non-physical intelligence is possible.)
However, I think Singularitarians' use of the words "artificial intelligence" is kind of a mistake, implying as it does something recognizably humanoid. A more unique term might be better, like "optimization process"; this doesn't carry any of the anthropomorphism or philosophical baggage of "intelligence". Eliezer Yudkowsky explains this in Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk, section 4.1 "Optimization processes": "an optimization process steers the future into particular regions of the possible." (Humans are one example.) Even if you define "intelligence" in a way (social, embodied, whatever) that excludes artificial optimization processes, an A.O.P. still is possible and potentially very useful or very dangerous. (No, discussion of networked malware is not a substitute for discussion of AI/AOPs. Existing malware is not intelligent in any reasonable sense of the term, can't perform goal-directed action or otherwise behave like an optimization process, can't modify itself in any nontrivial way [self-modification being what makes AI/AOP so powerful], and generally is as different from an AI/AOP as Asimo is from a human.)
(P.S. Dale, if you don't mind, what do you find libertarian or otherwise objectionable about consequentialist/utilitarian ethics? I know you've alluded to this in several posts, but I've never seen an explanation of the connection, and yes I have searched the archives. I understand if you don't want to clutter up this thread further.)
Nick Tarleton wrote:
> [D]o you disagree that a physical simulation of an object. . .
You mean a simulation program running on a computer, presumably.
> . . .in sufficient detail, will allow you to predict the behavior
> of that object? AFAIK, everything is reducible to raw physics in
> at least this very limited sense
I dunno. When should we expect the physicists to be able
to use computers exclusively and stop asking for money for
particle colliders? Ditto for the astronomers and their
telescopes? Or the chemists and their test tubes?
Come on, people. I enjoyed _The Matrix_ too (and Daniel F. Galouye's
_Simulacron-3_ when I read it in the 60s, and Egan's _Permutation
City_ in the 90s), but I'm not expecting to see a supercomputer running
a simulated universe any time soon. I don't think Second Life counts.
I just don't get the endless rounds of the "are we living in
a simulation?" discussions that seem to pop up periodically on
the Extropians'. Yeah, it's a cute SF maguffin, a real gee-whiz
of an idea the first time you encounter it. But doesn't the
thrill wear off?
Yeah, maybe it's worth tying up an IBM Blue Gene for the
Blue Brain simulation project -- it's an empirical question
whether that's going to reveal anything useful about biological
brains (or artificial ones, for that matter).
Yeah, it's fun to see old machines simulated on a PC --
SimH and Hercules and MESS and Mini vMac and the rest.
I think universe-simulating computers are about as useful in
the real world as Star Trek transporter technology --
spice for sci-fi, that's about it.
And I don't see how they settle any epistemological debates,
either.
This wasn't directed at me, but I'll answer it
anyway.
Nick Tarleton wrote:
> Dale, if you don't mind, what do you find libertarian or otherwise
> objectionable about consequentialist/utilitarian ethics?
To the extent that the people who spin utilitarian ethical systems
become, like economists, fascinated by their simplified models
to the exclusion of messy reality, they can become somewhat --
beside the point.
And if they start to think that their modelling can provide a
more "rational" **subsitute** for stakeholder politics, or if
they start tweaking their models to provide a justification for
the status quo, then they can become an outright nuisance.
Other than that, I suppose, they're no more objectionable than
entomologists, or Egyptologists. As long as they don't succumb
to the temptation to think they're spinning a "privileged"
discourse, like God handing out the Ten Commandments.
Jim F. said: To the extent that the people who spin utilitarian ethical systems
become, like economists, fascinated by their simplified models
to the exclusion of messy reality, they can become somewhat --
beside the point.
Yes. And while not everyone who engages in this kind of system-spinning ends up so enamored with the plug-and-play approach to decision analysis that they effectively forget how to think, there are some folks who seem to have that tendency (or who at least come across as if they do).
This tendency is by no means confined to folks whose primary interests lie in the realms of science, technology, and economics, either. Getting obsessed with a "model" seems to be a cross-disciplinary human trait, with some humans expressing it to greater degrees than others. I had an English teacher in college who was very Freudian in his textual interpretations -- at one point he told the class point-blank: "Everything convex is male. Everything concave is female."
And while I have no doubt that many writers do employ sexual imagery, if one assumes the level of oversimplification my professor put forth, one ends up missing out on huge chunks of the narrative and its various meanings.
Thanks to Jim and Anne for saying things more gracefully than I would have done.
"Computational"--if nothing possible under the laws of physics can be more powerful (computationally) than a Turing machine
Peco, you might want to look into Penrose's attempts to prove (using Godel's incompleteness theorem) that human minds are not (in totality at least) explainable as Turing machines. At the very least it would show you that these assumed premises of yours are actually far from settled matters among those who give them the most thought. Note that Penrose does not imply that there is anything mystical going on, just that human minds are some kind of physical process that is not reducible to a computation. So if you really want an AI it (may) be necessary to figure out first what class of things we really are and only then can we proceed to the question of how to build one on an artificial substrate.
Greg in Portland wrote:
> Peco, you might want to look into Penrose's attempts
> to prove (using Godel's incompleteness theorem) that
> human minds are not (in totality at least) explainable
> as Turing machines.
Yes, I don't think you have engage the services of physicists
and mathematicians to convince neuroscientists these days
that the analogy between brains and digital computers
is a bit strained. E.g.:
"The facile analogy [between the brain and] digital computers
breaks down for several reasons. The tape read by a Turing machine
is marked unambiguously with symbols chosen from a finite set;
in contrast, the sensory signals available to nervous systems
are truly analogue in nature and therefore are neither unambiguous
nor finite in number. Turing machines have by definition a
finite number of internal states, while there are no apparent
limits on the number of states a human nervous system can assume
(for example, by analog modulation of large numbers of synaptic
strengths in neuronal connections). The transitions of Turing
machines between states are entirely deterministic, while those
of humans give ample appearance of indeterminacy. Human experience
is not based on so simple an abstraction as a Turing machine;
to get our "meanings" we have to grow and communicate in a
society. . .
In contrast to computers, the patterns of nervous system
response depend on the individual history of each system,
because it is only **through interactions with the world**
that appropriate response pattersn are selected. This
variation because of differences in experience occurs between
different nervous systems and within a single system across
time. The existence of extensive individual variation
in cognitive systems negates the fundamental postulate of
functionalism that representations have meaning independent
of their physical instantiation. Thus, it would appear
that the independence of physical instantiation that is
such a prized feature of functionalist systems must be
abandoned if a nontrivial level of cognitive performance
is to be achieved. (This does not mean that in abandoning
the liberal position of functionalism, we must adopt
the extreme chauvinist position: that carbon chemistry,
wet tissues, and so on, are **absolutely** necessary for
cognition to occur. . .)
Whatever type of internal representations a functionalist
system may employ, a procedure is needed for establishing
the meanings of the individual units (symbols or their
generalizations) and of combinations of units in those
representations. It is not easy to see how, in the absence
of a programmer, a mechanism could be constructed
that would assign meaning to syntactic representations
and still preserve the arbitrary quality of those
representations, a quality that is an essential part of
the functionalist position. But that is our poignant
position: we have no programmer, no homunculus in
the head. . .
Whether digital computers or connectionist models are
used as a base, we are left with the same embarrassment.
In considering the brain as a Turing machine, we must
confront the unsettling observations that, for a brain,
the proposed table of states and state transitions is
unknown, the symbols on the input tape are ambiguous
and have no preassigned meanings, and the transition
rules, whatever they may be, are not consistently
applied. Moreover, inputs and outputs are not specified
by a teacher or a programmer in real-world animals.
It would appear that little or nothing of value can be
gained from the application of this failed analogy
between the computer and the brain.
But the field is not abandoned so easily. There remains
a large body of work in cognitive psychology based on
similar confusions concerning what can be assumed about
how the brain works without bothering to study
how it is physically put together. . ."
-- Gerald M. Edelman, _Bright Air, Brilliant Fire:
On the Matter of the Mind_,
"Mind Without Biology: A Critical Postscript"
pp. 224-226
Note that this conclusion does not mean that there's
anything supernatural about how brains work, it just
means that the short-cut to cognition that seemed
to be on the horizon when digital computers were new
(spurred on by the toy-appeal of the expensive
new machines, by math-snobbery, and by the
phenomenon that Joseph Weizenbaum identified as the
"Eliza effect") is beginning to look as naive as the
efforts of clockwork automaton designers of the 18th
century.
Amor Mundi is the chronicle of one man's struggle to keep his ideas internally consistent. You see, when, like Dale, you have very strong opinions on matters in many different subject areas, but you are an expert in only a few, you run the risk of eventually contradicting yourself.
Dale is much better than most at avoiding this, and I'm about to show you why, and, I might add, it should anger you.
There are two ways to resolve apparent contradictions in one's beliefs. The first is to delete all beliefs that don't logically follow from facts. The second is to simply re-define or invent words until the contradictions are no longer apparent.
Though he may have tried, Dale can't change the basics of logic and of course deleting beliefs is out of the question. So instead, Dale exercises his rhetorical prerogatives: he re-defines words.
And in point #1 we have a nice example in the phrase 'technoscientific progress'.
Now, let's forget for a moment that the portmanteau 'technoscientific' creates a specious equivalence between two distinct activities. Instead, let's focus on meaning.
Most of us proles* would see the phrase 'technoscientific progress' and understand it to mean development or advancement in scientific or technological capability. We proles can grasp this, and since we basically agree on what the words mean, we are able to communicate with each other about these concepts.
However this is a mere kindergartner's understanding of what progress is. Dale explains, "...real technoscientific progress is not a matter of the socially indifferent accumulation of a toypile, but must be developed and distributed in the context of a progressive social order..."
Based on this insight, I now understand there must be two kinds of technoscientific progress. One is the 'real' kind as delineated clearly by Dale above. The other, if Dale's choice of the word 'real' is any indication, must be something akin to 'imaginary' technoscientific progress. This latter concept would no doubt include the standard prole understanding of progress, little more than development or advancement in scientific or technological capability.
We proles have always had overactive imaginations.
The reasons for Dale's re-definition of progress extend far deeper than rhetoric. Without loading the term 'progress' with social and political implications, his use of the term progress and progressive in other instances is contradictory.
To avoid psychosis, Dale accepts neurosis. For a shining example of the origins of his neurosis, Dale wrote on this blog in 2005 "Lately, some of my friends and political allies have taken me to task for what seems to be my eager acceptance of the designation, 'progressive,' and wonder if I can really be so oblivious to the damage that has often been done in the name of progress historically."
It is difficult to have strong opinions in areas where one is not an expert without eventually coming into contradiction with yourself. We see in Dale's writing a sample of the rhetorical yoga required to bend language so as to maintain an aura of apparent consistency. Expedient? Yes. Cunning? Yes.
But not becoming of Dale.
Let me emphasize what I mean. Is it at all acceptable for a professor of *rhetoric* in the *English* department of an elite university to re-define a commonly-used and understood word to support his own arguments, to maintain an aura of consistency, and to get along better with his friends? What an elitist, anti-democratic, indeed *fascist* activity. Us proles like our understanding of progress just fine without some bigshot English professor telling us what we 'really' mean when we talk with each other. What an egregious abuse of station.
Dale won't stop, though. His ideological apparatus has too much momentum. And he surely won't stop because I tell him to. And again we find ourselves in the contradictory world of a man with his fingers in too many pies. That is, Dale believes that science and technology should be democratized in the interest of a progressive social order. However the common meanings of words and phrases are there to manipulate any way he chooses without consulting the rest of us. Why a progressive would want to de-democratize language, the most democratic force in the world is a mystery that can only be resolved by Dale. And, if this blog is any indication, resolving the contradiction will quite likely involve a new definition of 'democracy'.
Rome never looks where she treads.
________
*Not being a professor of rhetoric, nor degreed in any of the humanities, I believe I qualify as a prole in this instance, and can adequately represent them.
Keith Elis wrote:
> [a rant accusing Dale of being "fascist" in his
> warping of English usage]
Who is Keith Elis?
Oh, I see:
> The above isn’t a threat at all, it’s a post written by
> Keith Elis about why Friendly AI is the only AI we’d ever want,
> besides being a wise marketing position for attracting funds.
http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/?p=176
One of the True Believers, IOW.
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