[FRIAM] The Three Toed Sloth meets the Shoggoth

[David Eric Smith]

I didn’t pay to read the economist, but the summary of the article given in the twitter thread is one I like.

Meaning: the framework of reasoning they use seems insightful and of the right kind to me.  We had a version of it earlier in the Ted Chiang article linked from the Cory Doctorow article that Glen sent around.  I particularly like their argument that this is the reflective system that makes a perception/control apparatus possible.  A very Shubik-like thing to emphasize.  Also gives the “niche construction” perspective, that we build these environments and then inhabit them because they confer a quite specific and describable category of functions we would not choose to live without.

I suppose this is now something like a meme, in that enough people have given takes on it that no one person gets to be the sole in-seer of it now.  All to the good.

I wonder if the next thing to be asked along this line is when does the change of timescale become a qualitatively important thing?  When is “faster different”, to paraphrase Phil Anderson?  That could be one sense in which LLMs, deep fakes, or more sophisticated linked systems of the above, could be the same in the sense of falling within the Farrell/Shalizi/Chiang framework, but also different in the sense that a flow that is laminar at one rate can become turbulent at a faster rate, because the corrections to inputs are no longer faster than the changes of the inputs.

Very valuable sources to be hooked into, though.  Thank you Roger.

Eric



> On Jun 25, 2023, at 5:55 AM, Roger Critchlow <rec at elf.org> wrote:
> 
> I was trawling through my saved bookmarks looking for insights into Prigozhin's mutiny, when I stumbled to http://bactra.org/weblog/ <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fbactra.org%2fweblog%2f&c=E,1,ZcARtoU3TE99sBTs1-sOpjxsmRUUuDObmIYEYkZDLwlEvdSg4Q-Eo266yd4HLy3--3_O3BO9tlEfIOwWnpjwahFNKsMBAU7xLIQW2ckCMg,,&typo=1> and found that Henry Farrell and Cosma Shalizi have just published an essay in The Economist, https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2023/06/21/artificial-intelligence-is-a-familiar-looking-monster-say-henry-farrell-and-cosma-shalizi, paywalled of course, but there is a twitter listicle version at https://twitter.com/henryfarrell/status/1671547591262191618
> 
> -- rec --
> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fbit.ly%2fvirtualfriam&c=E,1,bQXvqMP0ioJOk2qwgYNQYEdhSi_BjoiltDVxddb19-5RGGp2nUBuWWjeJbJmCA8J5qmvRxKUBl2_FSV-w2j-6zIwhzVRRm5-zRr7T_sbUf0qs1Zu0iuE&typo=1
> to (un)subscribe https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fmailman%2flistinfo%2ffriam_redfish.com&c=E,1,o7L830Cvho880IrH4VuP6LB6Lw_OPFpOznVFb-kYvI_x9ULsB6pOpkYCVNI5WQEzKNbuN1hCAvJMIMYmEqCa5rSBdo2Wiw-up-T8FWz_jC_xkN8,&typo=1
> FRIAM-COMIC https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2ffriam-comic.blogspot.com%2f&c=E,1,ZdYPhI27limatL4pmK3sAP5gm6EF0Qxz3Oz8FG998U4sYekbQmek5dJjq3JAodDd-zdubUzgJ6MBCdYCy3GzufNPlcMs-qte7sShIAsmNwCl7w,,&typo=1
> archives:  5/2017 thru present https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fpipermail%2ffriam_redfish.com%2f&c=E,1,6aWewzdZuxB0dzsSSt5Xua7pWRHYKjgt0siFd_5u-S-cfPMVMb7AHYE_vKnApOViQF2yBNciu-4qB0XS3LcyyxtNJifUv9uz6_xIGLbh&typo=1
>  1/2003 thru 6/2021  http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20230625/df0eb4f2/attachment.html>