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<p>Responding first to Marcus point:</p>
<blockquote>
<p> "I think there will be a transition toward a more advanced
form of life, but I don’t think there will be a clear connection
between how they think and how humans think. Human culture
won’t be important to how they scale, but may be relevant to a
bootstrap."</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I believe we are "in transition" toward a more advanced form of
life, though it is hard to demarcate any particular beginning of
that transition. The post/trans-humanists among us often seem to
have a utopian/dystopian urge about all this that I am resistant
to. <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/10960.Steven_Kotler">Kotler's</a>
works (Abundance, Rise of the Superman, Tomorrowland, Art of the
impossible, etc.) are representative of this genre, but since I
know him also to be a grounded, thoughtful, compassionate person,
I try hard to listen between the lines of what normally reads to
me as egoist utopian fantasy. His works are always well
researched and he's fairly good at being clear what is speculation
and what is fact in his writing/reporting, even though his bias is
still a very techno-utopian optimism.</p>
<p>I really liked <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Her_(film)">Spike Jonze
movie "Her"</a> as a compassionate-utopian story of a fairly
abrupt AI transition/emergence ... a fantasy by any measure of
course, but an interesting twist on compassionate abandonment by
our "children".</p>
<p>With Glen's re-statements, I found specifically the following:</p>
<p>Simulation in place of Symbols - I don't know all that Marcus
intended or Glen imputes with this but I think it might be very
important in some fundamental way. I wonder at the possibility
that this fits into Glen's stuck-bit about "episodic" vs
"diachronic" identity (and experience?) modes.</p>
<p>I haven't been able to parse the following very completely and
look forward to more discussion?<br>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>- percolation from concrete, participative, perceptual
intuition and imagination (or perhaps the inverse, a wandering
from abstract/formal *toward* embodiment as we see with the rise
of GANs, zero-shot, and online learning AI) <br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>and in fact, all of these as well... good stuff.<br>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p><br>
- a more heterarchical, high-dimensional, or high-order
understanding of "fitness costs" - fitness of fitnesses
<br>
- holes or dense regions in a taxonomy of SAMs - including my
favorite: cross-species mind-reading
<br>
- game-theoretic (infinite and meta-gaming) logics of cognition
(including simulation of simulation and fitness of fitnesses) <br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I introduced "deictec error" because I think it is maybe core to
*my* struggles with this whole topic, so I'm glad Glen referenced
it, and also look forward to possibly more discussion of that in
regard to the rest.</p>
<p>- Steve<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 9/16/22 10:25 AM, glen∉ℂ wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:d7a369e9-0377-8edc-cf10-40d23b3c030e@gmail.com">I do see
us trying to identify the distinguishing markers of ... "cognition
we can't imagine". That's fantastic. I'll try to collate some of
them going backwards from Marcus':
<br>
<br>
- novelty - dissimilarity from "cognition as we know it"
<br>
- graded separation from human culture/sociality
<br>
- simulation in place of symbols (I failed to come up with a
better phrase)
<br>
- accelerated look-ahead
<br>
- percolation from concrete, participative, perceptual intuition
and imagination (or perhaps the inverse, a wandering from
abstract/formal *toward* embodiment as we see with the rise of
GANs, zero-shot, and online learning AI)
<br>
- a more heterarchical, high-dimensional, or high-order
understanding of "fitness costs" - fitness of fitnesses
<br>
- holes or dense regions in a taxonomy of SAMs - including my
favorite: cross-species mind-reading
<br>
- game-theoretic (infinite and meta-gaming) logics of cognition
(including simulation of simulation and fitness of fitnesses)
<br>
<br>
It seems like all these are attempts to at least circumscribe what
we can know about what we can imagine. And if so, it's like a
convex hull beyond which is what we can't imagine. I wanted to
place "deictic error" in there. But it seems to apply to several
of the other categories. In particular, part of Dave and SteveS'
irritation with the arrogance of abstraction is that symbols only
ever *hook* to their groundings. Logics over those symbols may or
may not preserve the grounding. Like the rather obvious idiocy of
classical logic suggesting that anything can be concluded from
inconsistent premises. When/if an entity can fully replace all
shunted/truncated symbols with (perhaps participatory)
simulations, it might reach the tight coupling with the simulated
(possible) worlds in the same way Dave implies we couple tightly
(concretely) with our (actual) world.
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 9/15/22 21:16, Marcus Daniels wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">I think there will be a transition toward
a more advanced form of life, but I don’t think there will be a
clear connection between how they think and how humans think.
Human culture won’t be important to how they scale, but may be
relevant to a bootstrap. I would be surprised if compression,
deconstruction, and reductionism went unused by this species. I
would be surprised if such a species would struggle with
quantification. I would also be surprised if they did not use
simulation in place of symbols. I think they will have dreams
of entire human lives, of the rise and fall of nations, and
regard our aspirations like I regard my dog dreaming of her
encounters at the park.
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">On Sep 15, 2022, at 4:11 PM, Prof David
West <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:profwest@fastmail.fm"><profwest@fastmail.fm></a> wrote:
<br>
<br>
<br>
Just to be clear, I have zero antipathy towards Wolpert or his
efforts at steelmanning. I think Wolpert does an excellent job
of phrasing as questions what I perceive "Scientists" and
"Computationalists" to merely assert as Truth. I have long
tilted at that particular windmill and I applaud Wolpert, and
glen for bringing him to our attention, for exposing the
assertions such that counter arguments might be made.
<br>
<br>
And when it comes to "computationalism" and AI; I know it is
not the 1970s and things have "advanced" significantly. And
although I do not comprehend the details as well as most of
you, I do understand sufficiently, I believe, to advance the
claim that they are suffering from the exact same blind spot
(with variable details) as Simon and Newell, et. al. who
championed GOFAI. Plus you all have heard of Simon and Newell
but most of you are unfamiliar with McGilchrist and similar
contemporary critics.
<br>
<br>
My antipathy toward "Scientists" and "Computationalists"
arises from what I perceive as an absolute refusal to credit
any science, math, or ways/means of acquiring/expressing
knowledge and understanding other than theirs. Dismissing
neolithic and pre-modern science is one example. Failing to
acknowledge the intelligence (and probably SAM) of other
species—especially octopi—simply because they do not build
atomic bombs or computers, is another.
<br>
<br>
A really good book that would inform a discussion of Wolpert's
questions, #4 in particular, is: /Other Minds: The Octopus,
the sea, and the deep origins of consciousness/, by Peter
Godfrey-Smith. A blurb follows.
<br>
<br>
/Although mammals and birds are widely regarded as the
smartest creatures on earth, it has lately become clear that a
very distant branch of the tree of life has also sprouted
higher intelligence: the cephalopods, consisting of the squid,
the cuttlefish, and above all the octopus. In captivity,
octopuses have been known to identify individual human
keepers, raid neighboring tanks for food, turn off light bulbs
by spouting jets of water, plug drains, and make daring
escapes. How is it that a creature with such gifts evolved
through an evolutionary lineage so radically distant from our
own? What does it mean that evolution built minds not once but
at least twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to
meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the
encounter? /
<br>
<br>
davew
<br>
<br>
<br>
On Thu, Sep 15, 2022, at 12:22 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
<br>
>>There is some kind of diectic error in our response.
<br>
>
<br>
> Korrekshun - "deictic"
<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
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