tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post3615033726648547454..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: The "Imagination" of a Robot CultistDale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-87128921401336413772009-08-18T10:53:05.329-07:002009-08-18T10:53:05.329-07:00I will address your more substantive point about &...I will address your more substantive point about "disdain of the future" in a post later -- Michael Anissimov also posted something recently on his blog that speaks to this question. I want to give it some actual attention.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-10338596470687561352009-08-18T10:39:24.411-07:002009-08-18T10:39:24.411-07:00[A]ssuming [Voss's] statistics are valid, with...<i>[A]ssuming [Voss's] statistics are valid, within the AI community only a tiny minority see AGI as a nearterm possibility. So I suppose that means you are right when you say most coding is not an effort to create cyberconsciousness.</i><br /><br />Voss was tossing out a glib hunch, there is no question of determining the "validity" of his "statistics." To call his number "statistics" at all is to be wildly overgenerous. And you already knew that when you quoted him. It's not like anybody in the room where he tossed off his comment actually thought he was citing an empirical study or anything. As is usually the case with superlative futurologists, numbers are something you spew when you want to sound science-like. To make the dream feel more real-like. The numbers don't actually connect to reality in any actually useful way. <br /><br />As you say, Voss's hunch does indeed support my own statement that coders trying to make games more interesting aren't, for the most part, exhibiting the insane delusion of grandeur that what they are doing is taking part in some great enterprise that will eventuate in the creation of a superintelligent Robot God who Ends Human History either by solving all our problems for us or eating the world as computronium feedstock. But I don't don't need an Ayn Rand fanboy and new-tech entrepreneur from the irrationally exuberant dot.bomb epoch playing at being futurological "expert" saying something obvious to endorse my point. There are plenty of non-crazy people around who also agree with me to whom I turn in such matters. Not to put too fine a point on it, you are caught up in a Robot Cult cul-de-sac, you have lost your sense of the standards by means of which you grasp what an expert looks like, what a scientific problem looks like, what a research program looks like, what seriousness looks like in matters of philosophy, science, or policy.<br /><br /><i>Your ridiculing does not bother me in the slightest, just like the pioneers of aviation were not put off by the fact that many people thought airplanes were absurd flights of fancy</i><br /><br />Wow, it really is flabbergasting how predictable you Robot Cultists are. We have arrived at last at the inevitable self-comparison of a Robot Cultist to the Wright Brothers. Dude, neither you nor any of your little white sf fanboy friends are the Wright Brothers. You are not Einstein. You are far more like somebody's crazy uncle, you know the one, who stays in the shed out back, smelling of his own pee, working on his perpetual motion machine.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-43431069372919221082009-08-18T01:40:36.380-07:002009-08-18T01:40:36.380-07:00'I don't doubt that Voss imagines himself ...'I don't doubt that Voss imagines himself to constitute a member of the elite sooper troop of sooper coders'.<br /><br />I know nothing about the man and do not presume to know what he thinks. All I know is, assuming his statistics are valid, within the AI community only a tiny minority see AGI as a nearterm possibility. So I suppose that means you are right when you say most coding is not an effort to create cyberconsciousness.<br /><br />>As for sf writers Vinge and Stross (both of whose works I have read and enjoyed, especially Vinge's), they are writing about the fears and hopes of the present, not predicting or bringing about let alone "canceling" "The Future." <br /><br />Only silly futurologists who can't distinguish science fiction from science belong absurd things like that'.<br /><br />Yeah, science fiction is often a comment on the society that existed in the author's time, rather than a forecast of the future. I do not suppose H.G Wells really thought the human race would split into Morlok and Eloi races, any more than George Orwell thought pigs could manage a farm. Those are allegories about the class system and communism.<br /><br />But while the refrain ’this is just science fiction’ might be used as a means to inform people that speculations have wandered into absurdity, but what it really does is expose a flaw in Western language when it comes to thinking about the future. The Japanese language seems to lack a disparaging word for “futurelike”. Ideas for future technologies may be termed “Shorai-Teki” (an expected development), “Mirai no” (a hope, or a goal) or “Uso no” (imaginary only)’.<br /><br />So, the wearable computing and augmented reality of Vernor Vinge's 'Rainbows End' would be 'Shorai-Teki'. We are almost there with those iphone apps that use motion sensing and satnav to overlay data from the web context-sensitive to your location, intentions, etc.<br /><br />Damon Knight's story 'A For Anything' would be 'Uso no', because it is all about 'gizmos' which are devices that can duplicate anything without requiring any feedstock. Since matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed (only transformed), a device that can make something out of nothing is clearly violating the laws of physics. <br /><br />As for 'Mirai no', well that could be gradient between an expected development and something that can only ever be imaginary. I will not bore you with examples, the point is that science fiction scenarios are not necessarily absurd, nor necessarily prophetic. The genre is richer than these two assumptions presume.<br /><br />'expect to be ridiculed as the cultist you are.'<br /><br />Your ridiculing does not bother me in the slightest, just like the pioneers of aviation were not put off by the fact that many people thought airplanes were absurd flights of fancy (sorry about the pun).Extropia DaSilvahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13835594840650345569noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-56155308112311082632009-08-17T18:41:23.692-07:002009-08-17T18:41:23.692-07:00Cultish clock cleaning!Cultish clock cleaning!Michael Anissimovhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06217926458888484768noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-43590807339830507732009-08-17T16:58:09.915-07:002009-08-17T16:58:09.915-07:00AI expert Peter Voss
You mean to refer to new-tec...<i>AI expert Peter Voss</i><br /><br />You mean to refer to new-tech entrepreneur and Ayn Rand fanboy Peter Voss, I presume? Yes, one really expects serious science at the "Extro 5 conference" -- that is to say, a conference of extropian transhumanist Ayn Raelian Robot Cultists... I don't doubt that Voss imagines himself to constitute a member of the elite sooper troop of sooper coders, the 20% of the 20% of the 20% of the 20% of the 20% of the actual consensus scientists who alone are capable of welcoming the Robot God to an unworthy humanity. I for one have my doubts. <br /><br />As for sf writers Vinge and Stross (both of whose works I have read and enjoyed, especially Vinge's), they are writing about the fears and hopes of the present, not predicting or bringing about let alone "canceling" "The Future." <br /><br />Only silly futurologists who can't distinguish science fiction from science belong absurd things like that, only silly futurologists "believe in" a singular "thing" that doesn't exist called "The Future" while disdaining the present and the plurality of their peers in the present who in presents to come will continue to share that present, peer to peer, in the open futurity of freedom. Anybody who speaks of the singular scam of "The Future" is trying to sell you something. <br /><br />Wise up and move on or expect to be ridiculed as the cultist you are.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-8265650824061966012009-08-17T15:57:58.857-07:002009-08-17T15:57:58.857-07:00'While it is quite right to point out that the...'While it is quite right to point out that there are thousands of clever coders working on the improvement of gaming systems at the moment, it is quite extraordinary to say that this amounts to work to "create cyberconsciousness." <br /><br />At the EXTRO-5 conference, AI expert Peter Voss came up with the following statistics:<br /><br />""Of all the people working in the field called "AI" ...<br /><br />80% don't believe in the concept of General Intelligence (but instead, in a large collection of specific skills and knowledge); of those that do,<br /> <br />80% don't believe that (super) human-level intelligence is possible--either ever, or for a long, long time; of those that do,<br /> <br />80% work on domain-specific AI projects for commercial or academic-political reasons (results are a lot quicker); of those left, <br /><br />80% have a poor conceptual framework." <br /><br />Mind, that was years ago and maybe Goertzel or someone has changed opinions since then.<br /><br />>Stross? Wasn't he the guy that called off the future because he wanted to<br />keep his stories easy to write?'.<br /><br />No that was Vernor Vinge. In 'Marooned In Realtime' (I think) he uses a nuclear war to delay the singularity by a thousand years. But that was more for his readers' comfort than his own, I suspect.Extropia DaSilvahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13835594840650345569noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-59829057973880454262009-08-17T13:12:07.014-07:002009-08-17T13:12:07.014-07:00> Did you ever see the episode of ST:NG where J...> Did you ever see the episode of ST:NG where Jordi<br />> stalker-simulated a colleague on the Holodek and she<br />> discovered it in a later ep and he realized what<br />> an icky loser he was? Are you that guy? Creepy.<br /><br />There was another episode in which Reg Barclay, Starfleet's<br />token neurotic twitchfest loser<br />( http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Reginald_Barclay )<br />has a Holodeck addiction involving a fantasy world with<br />a whole cast of fellow crewmates, some of whom end up<br />getting a tour of his fantasy. Deanna Troi is particularly<br />funny when she tells her own simulation to "stuff a sock in it".<br /><br />> Khannea Suntzu. . .<br /><br />Oh, him. From the comment thread of<br />http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/02/the_21st_century_faq.html :<br /><br />208:<br />Wow. Michael A. really cleaned your clock. Now you are the laughing stock<br />of the teeming hordes of H+-ians. Bad move - this will reflect in your book sales.<br /><br />Stross? Wasn't he the guy that called off the future because he wanted to<br />keep his stories easy to write?<br /><br />Posted by: Khannea Suntzu | March 6, 2009 12:06 PM <br /><br /><br />209:<br />Khannea Suntzu: piss off, troll. (Future postings of yours will be deleted,<br />if they're in a similar mode.)<br /><br />For the record: I think the H+ types are basically religious nutters,<br />much like the Randroids. The real world is a whole lot more complex than<br />they understand, and while there's undoubtedly going to be a lot of<br />change in the next fifty years, I doubt the emerging picture will look<br />anything like what they pray for.<br /><br />Posted by: Charlie Stross | March 6, 2009 12:46 PM<br /><br />-------------<br /><br />Speaking of Charlie Stross, I recently picked up a paperback of his:<br />_Saturn's Children_<br />( http://www.amazon.com/Saturns-Children-Charles-Stross/dp/0441015948 ).<br /><br />It's pretty good. Its "heroine" is a sex-bot<br />(sort of like a female counterpart of Gigolo Joe in the movie<br />_Artificial Intelligence_, but much smarter) who gets caught up in<br />all sorts of intrigue. The story is set a few centuries hence after<br />humanity has gone **extinct**, and the robots they left behind<br />(designed to be Friendly (TM) ) are really screwed up by their<br />built-in veneration of their defunct masters (and pretty nasty to<br />each other). It deliberately turns a number of current<br />Singularitarian obsessions on their heads. Instead of "grey goo"<br />the robots are worried about "pink goo" and "green goo"<br />(living stuff, you know); they have, instead of Gibson-esque Turing<br />Police, the Pink Police, and there's a conspiracy of robots<br />who think it would be a good idea to resurrect the biosphere<br />and ultimately a human being (while others think that would be<br />the end of robot civilization). It's a gas.jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-79942606064714608972009-08-17T10:41:31.015-07:002009-08-17T10:41:31.015-07:00Khannea Suntzu: I shall keep shamelessly speculati...Khannea Suntzu: <i>I shall keep shamelessly speculating</i><br /><br />By all means, let a bazillion flowers bloom, just don't expect me or anybody else with sense to mistake your sf fanboy wanking for actual science or actual policy making.<br /><br /><i>'simulate' a few dozen 'completely authentic' 'software versions' of Dale Carrico</i><br /><br />Uh, whatever gets you through the night, dude. Did you ever see the episode of ST:NG where Jordi stalker-simulated a colleague on the Holodek and she discovered it in a later ep and he realized what an icky loser he was? Are you that guy? Creepy.<br /><br /><i>treacherous and lying arguments</i><br /><br />"Treacher[y]," is it? What is the Robot God -- on that glorious day when at last He comes to earth on the day of the Singularity -- going to send me to Robot Hell because I didn't believe in Him like all his faithful Robot Cult fanboys do? Ooh, skeery. <br /><br />And anybody who thinks I am "lying" about the Robot Cultists need only follow the links to their texts I provide in my critiques of them. Every quote I attribute to Martine Rothblatt, for example, is palpably there in black and white for all to judge for themselves. The same is true of every text I critique.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-20492573282372112642009-08-17T05:00:08.560-07:002009-08-17T05:00:08.560-07:00Athena Andreadis wrote:
> [I]f the IEET is con...Athena Andreadis wrote:<br /><br />> [I]f the IEET is convinced these claims are even remotely<br />> valid, why not write an NSF grant based on them?<br /><br />to which Dale replied:<br /><br />> Excellent question! I suspect we both know the answer<br />> already, though.<br /><br />About three years ago, Dr. Ben Goertzel (founder of a defunct<br />"Artificial General Intelligence" startup company called<br />Novamente, currently working for the Singularity Institute for<br />Artificial Intelligence, AFAIK) wrote<br />( http://www.mail-archive.com/singularity@v2.listbox.com/msg00269.html )<br /><br />"$5M . . . is a fair estimate of what I think it would<br />take to create Singularity based on further developing<br />the current Novamente technology and design."<br /><br />Cheap at the price!<br /><br />$5M would be nothing to DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research<br />Projects Agency, formerly just ARPA -- the Internet started out<br />as the ARPAnet), which funded Marvin Minsky's AI lab at<br />MIT for years, and which provided a chunka change (along with<br />the NSF) to the New York University (Courant Institute of Mathematical<br />Sciences) Robotics Lab when I worked there 20-odd years<br />ago, if they (or the brains that consult for them, like<br />my erstwhile NYU boss the late Dr. Jack [Jacob T.] Schwartz)<br />had the slightest suspicion that "AGI" was that close<br />to happening.jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-52139033412292857172009-08-17T04:02:13.612-07:002009-08-17T04:02:13.612-07:00...and I, a fierce opponent of incumbent intersts,......and I, a fierce opponent of incumbent intersts, a radical if no revolutionary proponent of socialism, less income disparity and societal exclusion, as well as radically more democracy, as well as radical and sensible application of what is possible with technology and use it to better all people, and not just a small few ...<br /><br />I shall keep shamelessly speculating about the practical idea and application of devices that will be perfectly able to 'simulate' a few dozen 'completely authentic' 'software versions' of Dale Carrico, with the highly entertaining prospect of having them argue for aeons, mouths foaming, with treacherous and lying arguments over the color of the sky. <br /><br />THAT's how we robot bleep bleep orgasmatron cultists punish heretics dale, we treat them like johnny depp YARRR. <br /><br />Here's a peanut. Now do your dance.Khanihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14191101857598532784noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-77948719946087380272009-08-16T17:12:04.595-07:002009-08-16T17:12:04.595-07:00> Robot Cultists exhibit extreme confidence in ...> Robot Cultists exhibit extreme confidence in views that veer from<br />> scientific consensus in field after field after field -- in formulations<br />> suffused with familiar religious hopes for transcendence from human<br />> mortality, misery, finitude, uncertainty (rather than worldly work<br />> to solve problems in concert with the diversity of our peers) -- and<br />> all as evidence of their superior scientificity of all things. There<br />> are good reasons to be doubtful of some of their conclusions on this score. <br /><br />From a talk given by Australian SF author (and habitue of the Extropians'<br />mailing list) Damien Broderick in September, 1997 -- the keynote address to STAVCON ’97,<br />the annual conference of the Science Teachers’ Association of Victoria.<br /><br />( http://web.archive.org/web/20050909183349/http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozlit/edit9737.html )<br /><br />"The distinction between human and AI will blur and<br />vanish – or rather, double and re-double in some chaotic<br />cascade of novelty – because we’ll see a fusion of the<br />two great orders of mind. "<br /><br />Say what? What "two great orders of mind?" Poetic license<br />of the SF author. Fine for an SF novel, but -- the Science<br />Teachers' Association of Victoria?jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-50959660841675013132009-08-16T17:07:36.875-07:002009-08-16T17:07:36.875-07:00Athena: Excellent question! I suspect we both kno...Athena: Excellent question! I suspect we both know the answer already, though.<br /><br />Jim: You managed to yoke together two enormously different figures -- Kathy Griffin and Gerald Edelman -- both of whose work I'm a big fan of. Kudos!Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-81547949314908274042009-08-16T16:52:13.924-07:002009-08-16T16:52:13.924-07:00> Rothblatt evokes John Lennon's "Imag...> Rothblatt evokes John Lennon's "Imagine" to similar effect. <br /><br />Rosie O'Donnell, to Kathy Griffin, on the occasion of Sharon Stone's<br />tearfully reciting the lyrics of John Lennon's "Imagine" at her AMFAR<br />(American Federation for AIDS Research) "Seasons of Hope"<br />fund-raiser speech in New York:<br /><br />"Is she outta her fuckin' mind?"<br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXhmKtIHyeM<br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYNwsfq9HrA<br /><br />> Rothblatt hasn't only announced one faith in her opening sentences<br />> but two, and both are enormously familiar from generations of<br />> technophiliacs who seem to have only a few songs to sing when<br />> all is said and done. Not only does she declare the faith that<br />> biologically incarnated consciousness can be coded (all empirical<br />> appearances to the contrary notwithstanding) but she declares<br />> this outcome a fatality, because there is so much money to be made<br />> in it. . .<br /><br />Yes, well, somebody who oughta know said this about that<br />(about 20 years ago):<br /><br />"[Are] artifacts designed to have primary consciousness...<br />**necessarily** confined to carbon chemistry and, more specifically,<br />to biochemistry (the organic chemical or chauvinist position)[?]<br />The provisional answer is that, while we cannot completely<br />dismiss a particular material basis for consciousness in the<br />liberal fashion of functionalism, it is probable that there will<br />be severe (but not unique) constraints on the design of any<br />artifact that is supposed to acquire conscious behavior. Such<br />constraints are likely to exist because there is every indication<br />that an intricate, stochastically variant anatomy and synaptic<br />chemistry underlie brain function and because consciousness is<br />definitely a process based on an immensely intricate and unusual<br />morphology"<br /><br />-- Gerald M. Edelman, _The Remembered Present_, pp. 32-33jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-64740487953081321782009-08-16T15:02:29.075-07:002009-08-16T15:02:29.075-07:00Speaking from the other side, the claims of Rothbl...Speaking from the other side, the claims of Rothblatt et al. are so patently silly as "science" that I've decided not to waste time "rebutting" them (unless someone pays me a hefty sum and promises to publish such essays unedited). It's the equivalent of discussing theories of gravity with Uri Geller.<br /><br />But I will say this much: if the IEET is convinced these claims are even remotely valid, why not write an NSF grant based on them?Athena Andreadishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07650180659001228746noreply@blogger.com