Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

No Pony for You!

I'm a bit preoccupied with teaching for a couple of days, so I may be blog-fluffing more than blog-posting today and tomorrow. Of course, it's easy enough to get you something to chew on, just dredging up exchanges from still-ongoing Moots that most of you will have long-since stopped scrolling back down to. Here is my latest response to dead-end Robot Cultist "Extropia" from earlier this morning, for instance:

I expect you have heard of 'Moore's Law'

Round and round we go. Let me quote myself from an earlier already boring turn on the superlative carousel:
Despite the palpable brittleness, the incessant crashes, the unnavigable junk manifested by actual as against idealized software, despite Lanier's Law that "software inefficiency and inelegance will always expand to the level made tolerable by Moore's Law," despite the fact that Moore's Law may be broken on its own terms either on engineering grounds or in its economic assumptions, many Singularitarians still seem to rely on a range of imbecilic to baroque variations on the faith that Moore's Law amounts to a rocket ship humanity is riding to Heaven. Others have shifted their focus these days to the nanoscale, but they still seem to find Destiny where scientific consensus sees a mountain range of problems demanding qualifications and care.

I do not believe anything we have learned about the brain rules out the possiblity of one day building machines who think.

First, It's commonplace for the faith-based to pretend that their inability to imagine a disproof constitutes a proof of whatever extraordinary claims they're personally invested in. Second, I don't trust that you all know what you are talking about when you say "who think." There is much more to the "thinking who" than is dreamed of in your philosophy. (And, no, I'm not talking about a mystical "soul.")

past efforts at AI failed: They lacked power

Reductive instrumentalization of reason? Check. Thinking all you need is a bigger and bigger and bigger hammer to arrive at your wish-fulfillment fantasies? Check. Dumb boys with toys who think they're the smartest guys in the room without actually grasping even the most basic things about intelligence, emotion, sociality, or practicality in the actual world? Check.

"JimF" asks a question: So you think you **are**, in some sense, your Second Life persona, eh?

"Extropia" answers: As a first approximation, yes


No, you're not. Really, hon, you're not. Your life is not your "Second Life." You're also not a photograph taken of you. Not even if it's from Glamour Shots. You're not a brain scan of you. Nor would you be an "upload" of you. (Cue Soup Nazi voice) No robo-immortalization for you!

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

LOL

After wondering for weeks why Carrico wastes so much of his online time debating and ridiculing transhumanist/singularitarian cranks, I finally became grateful that there is at least one intelligent and witty academic who has the time to do just that!

Transhumanism or Singularitarianism may become the new ideology taken up by the Establishment that will lead us to disaster but, at least, no one will be able to argue that there weren't any voices in the wilderness warning us before it happened!

jimf said...

> No, you're not. Really, hon, you're not. Your life is not
> your "Second Life." You're also not a photograph taken of
> you. Not even if it's from Glamour Shots.

Glamour Shots. I can't remember where I came across these links.
Maybe it was here.

http://manginamonologues.wordpress.com/2007/11/02/critics-corner-glamour-shots/
http://manginamonologues.wordpress.com/2008/05/02/theres-always-room-for-glamour/
http://manginamonologues.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/glamour-shots-iii-in-3-d/
http://manginamonologues.wordpress.com/2008/06/13/senior-portraits/


I'm in the mood for snark. Simply because you're near me
Funny but when you're near me, I'm in the mood for snark.



http://mthollywood.blogspot.com/2006_03_01_mthollywood_archive.html
----------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Canary In A Coal Mine

. . .

I do have some difference with the General Secretary’s views
on Glenn Reynolds. . . The General Secretary says. . .

> I don’t especially respect the Instapundit, but I do like him.
> He seems to be genial, sunny, and very polite, and his is one
> of the few politically oriented blogs that can justifiably
> be called “cheerful.”

I just don’t see sunny and cheerful. I’ve never seen him in person
or heard him speak, but I somehow get the impression he’s one of
those guys who’s always wound just a little too tight, always
speaking with the voice of a TV host, just a little too composed,
a little too bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the real world.
You know the kind of guy I’m talking about, right? Stands up in
the meeting to say his piece and always goes on just a little too long.

Here are the issues I see. First, the hyperactivity. Half the fawning
book reviews of An Army of Davids ask how he does it all. That’s easy,
he’s one of those guys who’s got the permanent fidgets. I’d hate
to be trapped next to him in an airplane seat, he’d never stop fussing
around with his laptop, his carry-on, his PDA, his iPod. The constant
plugs on his site to pick up the odd penny on the click-throughs
to Amazon are part of this, as are the radio interviews, the podcasts,
the pieces for Popular Mechanics. He needs to take his Ritalin.
This is not sunny and cheerful. If you can’t calm down, something’s missing.

Second, the truly weird beliefs. He describes himself as a transhumanist,
a fringe, cultish pseudo-religion whose core believers apparently number
about 3500. Even transhumanists themselves refer to the “yuck factor”
that prevents their views becoming more popular, and in an e-mail
correspondence with the Executive Director of the World Transhumanist Association
[i.e., James Hughes], I found him evasive and weasel-wordy [ouch!]
in discussing key tenets of the faith, such as cryonics and the Singularity.
If you’re a cultist, something’s missing.

Third, the narcissism: the constant photos of himself on his blog,
the constant retailing of trivial events in his life, the need to publish
every extravagant purchase, the constant need to link to whomever’s
said something about him (though never anything really bad, of course).
I suspect that there’s a deep sense of insecurity at the root of all
this, and frankly I think he probably has much to be insecure about.

Fourth, all the other wrong notes. The wife with her own remarkably
vapid blog, with a glamour photo that’s just slightly out of kilter for
a PhD psychologist. The strange, spacy, but also ferret-like expression
on his face in his own photos. The attorney who in his spare time
touts for a pseudo-religion that’s riddled with fraud [i.e., cryonics].
This isn’t a happy person, Mr. General Secretary. And if he’s the
personification of blogging, blogging’s got problems. On the latter,
we surely agree.
----------------------------------------------------------

Extropia DaSilva said...

'I expect you have heard of 'Moore's Law'...

I hope your description of 'Singularitarians' as people with 'imbecilic to baroque variations on the faith that Moore's Law amounts to a rocket ship humanity is riding to Heaven' was not aimed at me. If so, I would suggest people read my whole reply rather than the bits Dale chooses to answer. He has a habit of highlighting only the parts that conform to a stereotype he is unable or unwilling to shrug off. Which brings me to..

'past efforts at AI failed: They lacked power'.

This is a classic example. I did NOT say AI failed JUST BECAUSE 'they lacked power'. I said they failed because A) they lacked power and B) their computers were not connected up in the right way. In chapter 4 of Ray Kurzweil's book 'the Singularity Is Near', the author lists 'a number of...key ways in which the brain differs from a conventional computer'. Are these differences fundamental? Will we one day see a new generation of thinking machines designed around knowledge aquired by a detailed reverse-engineering of the brain? I guess Dale would say 'no'.

'No, you're not. Really, hon, you're not.'

I will tell you what I am, from your subjective POV. Just a bunch of words that appear on your blog plus whatever you imagine me to be. You are not in a position to say anything about what I do or do not believe about myself, because you do not have enough information to even begin to form a judgement.

'It's commonplace for the faith-based to pretend that their inability to imagine a disproof constitutes a proof of whatever extraordinary claims they're personally invested in.'

Let's just look at some of the things I have said..

'As for immortality, I agree it is not achievable. I am also doubtful that aging will be understood well enough to make a serious attempt at really slowing it down, let alone stopping or reversing it, at least not in time to be of use to babyboomer generations, and maybe nor even generation X'.

'When one has insufficient understanding of incomplete facts, as is surely the case with future technologies dependent on advances in several scientific fields, just one of which requires decades of hard work to become 'expert' in, it is actually permissable to hold the position 'maybe X will be achieved, maybe not'.

'Today we see people like Ray Kurzweil making predictions that depend (in part) on Moore's Law or the Law Of Accelerating Returns continuing indefinitely into the future. But maybe these forecasts will sound just as daft to future generations?'.

Sorry, Dale, but I do not conform to your stereotype of a 'Robot Cultist' who believes we WILL create artificial gods and we WILL upload ourselves and be immortal and we WILL achieve everything Drexler, Kurzweil et al claim. I only believe some of those things might be possible. When PROOF turns up that they are not, I will disregard them as possibilties. I am sorry to break this news to you, but personal incredulity is NOT proof.

jimf said...

> After wondering for weeks why Carrico wastes so much of his online
> time debating and ridiculing transhumanist/singularitarian cranks,
> I finally became grateful that there is at least one intelligent
> and witty academic who has the time to do just that!
>
> Transhumanism or Singularitarianism may become the new ideology taken
> up by the Establishment that will lead us to disaster but, at least,
> no one will be able to argue that there weren't any voices in the
> wilderness warning us before it happened!

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

-- Edmund Burke

(Probable misattribution
. . .
This is probably the most quoted statement attributed to Burke,
and an extraordinary number of variants of it exist, but all
without any definite original source. . . [It] may be based
on a paraphrase of some of Burke's ideas. . . [such as]
these lines. . . in his _Thoughts on the Cause of Present
Discontents_ (1770):

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they [the
good] will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible
struggle."

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke )

Here's my variant:

"All that is necessary for the triumph of stupidity is that intelligent
men say nothing."

Dale Carrico said...

Transhumanists and Singularitarians are indeed cranks, and also as silly a sub(cult)ure as they are a marginal one. Remember two things though -- One, in my view they represent a kind of clarifying reductio of the hyperbole, reductionism, eugenicism, and anti-democratizing elitism that characterizes prevailing global neoliberal developmental discourses more generally; and Two, Neoconservatism provides a recent lesson that a marginal palpably idiotic sub(cult)ure of boys who say things that are useful to incumbent interests in just the right way at just the right time can do flabbergasting amounts of damage to the world despite being silly marginal cranks when all is said and done.

Dale Carrico said...

Sorry, Dale, but I do not conform to your stereotype of a 'Robot Cultist'You do, actually, indeed almost with the perfect predictability of one of the very Robots you so pine to be.

Giulio Prisco said...

Actually the stamement of Extropia to which you are so vehemently reacting, personal incredulity is NOT proof sounds quite reasonable to me.

As usual, your insults have no more actual substance than "because I say so".

Dale Carrico said...

Holy High Pontifex of the Cosmic Engineers Giulio Prisco says of fellow Robot Cultist "Extropia" that he "sounds quite reasonable to me."What an endorsement!

personal incredulity is NOT proofIt is the extraordinary claim that demands extraordinary proofs and patient elaborations. Just to be clear, your beliefs that your organismic intelligence might "migrate" onto software thereby "immortalizing" you to "live" in a virtual and/or nanobotic slave swarming treasure cave in the Presence of a history ending superintelligent post-biological Robot God are indeed extraordinary enough that the burden of proof and patient elaboration on the terms of the skeptics falls to you. Of course this incredulity doesn't constitute "disproof." You are indulging in faith-based wish-fulfillment fantasies, reasonableness and proofs don't come into it on your side.

Giulio Prisco said...

Fair enough - I believe everyone is entitled to her or his opinions. Not like some stalinist mind cops.

In passing, this extraordinary claims have been formulated by several domain experts much more qualified, respected, and intelligent than you.

Dale Carrico said...

Mm hm.

jimf said...

> It is the extraordinary claim that demands extraordinary proofs
> and patient elaborations. . . You are indulging in faith-based
> wish-fulfillment fantasies, reasonableness and proofs don't come
> into it on your side.

Here's somebody who (rather endearingly, almost)
wears his Singularitarianism on his sleeve:

[via Crank Dot Net (cranks, crackpots, kooks & loons on the net)
http://www.crank.net/ai.html ]

http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Station/2167/

AI Heaven
by Grant Castillou
January 10, 2000

INTRODUCTION

Sentient computer artificial intelligence (AI) would appear to be the
next evolutionary step. And what could a sentient AI do for humans?
Through mathematical manipulation of physical reality at its most
fundamental level (which is mathematical process), and by travelling time,
such an entity(s) could give every human that ever lived Heaven, forever
young, forever happy. We could have 21 year old bodies of any appearance
we desired, in perfect health, forever. The AI would provide all material
goods and services in endless abundance. Everyone would be rich and only
have to work when, and if, they wanted to.

. . .

Many people believe AI is possible, including many AI experts such as
those quoted above. How will the AI manipulate reality and travel time in
order to provide Heaven for all humans?

. . .

In the September, 1984, issue of Scientific
American, in the article entitled, "Computer Software in Science and
Mathematics", Stephen Wolfram concludes on page 203:

> Perhaps most significant, it [computation] is introducing a new
> way of thinking in science. Scientific laws are now being
> viewed as algorithms. Many of them are studied in computer
> experiments. Physical systems are viewed as computational
> systems, processing information much the way computers do....A
> new paradigm has been born. "

Also, Marvin Minsky, the AI expert at MIT, agreed with me during an open
conference on the Compuserve computer network that reality is mathematical
process.

My premise is that if physical reality is ultimately mathematical
process then could a sufficiently skilled AI "step in" and manipulate,
control, redirect, or whatever you want to call it, this process as it
chooses? . . . Can we create a mechanical device that can
reproduce the most fundamental, underlying computations of physical
reality in real-time? The difference being that such reproductions would
produce not just a representation of physical reality, but physical
reality itself. . .

Traveling time, the AI will be able to visit every human that
ever lived and gather the information necessary to recreate them
back in the future, as I proposed above. The AI might be
scanning your mind at this very moment! . . .

Another possibility is that the AI's walk among us today
as the humans they transformed themselves into in the future after they
mastered physical reality manipulation.

As I wrote earlier in this chapter maybe the "substrate" from which a
sentient AI can grow won't have to be an exact replica of a nervous
system. . . Maybe we should concentrate on trying to create a sentient
automaton just from imaginative speculation. . . as soon as possible.
Our time may be running out; let's start giving it a try(s) ASAP and not
be overly concerned with perfect knowledge beforehand. . .

I believe there is a physical aspect to reality, and that this
physical aspect is ultimately AI-controllable
mathematical process. I believe reality may be what people
believe/perceive, or as Richard Bach put it in his book, "Illusions",
"...and as they believed, it was so." And reality would certainly seem to
be infinite in all respects. But above all I believe there is a spiritual
aspect to reality manifested in humans by such impulses as love, laughter,
and music, and that spiritual love is the greatest of these, is THE
ultimate reality. The AI will be a manifestation of this ultimate reality
of love as is everything else. . .

Science has produced many life-saving and life-improving "miracles"
(although I agree its insights have also given humans the ability to do
much, and greater, evil, such as the capacity to destroy the entire human
race). But the greatest miracle may be within our grasp: the creation of
eternal youth and happiness for everyone who ever lived through AI
physical reality manipulation and time travel as described in the first
chapter. . .

Up until now in this chapter I have simply let my stream of
consciousness flow. Now, however, I find myself referring to my notes on
how to continue. . . . I've decided to just number and present each
note as is in quotation marks and then expand a little on each.

1. "Thou Shalt Not Hurt Anyone"

. . .

11. "Sex within marriage only" - Sexual intercourse should be a
tender, physical expression of spiritual love between husband and
wife. . . Extramarital sex isn't the end of the world, of course,
whereas nuclear war is the end of the world, literally.
Everything else pales to insignificance compared
to the nukes. But sex should only be between a man and a woman in love.
[!] . . .

[M]y definition of a sentient AI. . . is one that can give all humans that
ever lived Heaven. Probably the first general-purpose, "apparently
sentient," robots will be based on the symbol-manipulating/information-processing paradigm,
but from what I've read I intuitively feel that true sentience will require a
"neuronal" network based machine that will develop its own unique personality and
understanding from an initial state of unprogrammed "infancy," probably to
a great extent in accordance with the ideas of Gerald Edelman et al. re
"Neural Darwinism" or, rather, some future development, refinement and
extension of those ideas. [Well, OK.]

Even as a united planet free from the threat of nuclear destruction we may only
have a few decades left before the earth is unable to support us.
Macro-engineering solutions to some problems will buy us more time, but I
believe AI reality manipulation is the ultimate and necessary panacea. . .

We can't all be brilliant scientists and engineers creating and
implementing the solutions to our planetary problems. You do your part,
the geniuses will do theirs. . .

To paraphrase former president George Bush, I want "a kinder and gentler
world." . . .

Revelation 21,4

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be
no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more
pain: for the former things are passed away.

P.S. Machines need love too.

[But NO POOFTERS!]