[FRIAM] death

[Marcus Daniels]

My actual question is more like:   Is death universal or is a finite lifetime just a sufficient solution found by evolution (and carbon-based life)?   Must memories be purged for progress, or is it just that that they _can_ be without particular harm to the species?

There was a piece on 60 minutes last night about Adolfo Kaminsky who forged thousands of official documents to protect Jews in France.   His colleagues reflected on their accomplishments and didn't reflect on danger in what they were doing at the time, perhaps because they were so young.

It could be that the high-order aspects of wisdom are cognitively too costly (operationally) at some point.   Diminishing returns on complexity.. Delays on action are as dangerous as imprudent actions.

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of g??? ?
Sent: Monday, October 30, 2017 2:18 PM
To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] death

Good question.  But I tend to think the problem is less about plasticity and more about specialization.  As we've seen, specialized (artificial) intelligence is relatively easy, compare termites to humans.  So-called general intelligence (or universal constructors) is much harder.  The distance between any old TM and a UTM seems quite large.

Whether, once specialized, an AI can generalize is an open question.  Will we *grow* general AI?  Or will we construct it from scratch to be general?

On 10/30/2017 01:12 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> But will this be true of AIs as well?   Assuming that this fossilization occurs, is that a human idiosyncrasy that plasticity reduces?   Perhaps it could be treated with drugs, electroshock therapy, stem cells, PTSD medication, etc.?

--
☣ gⅼеɳ

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