<div dir="auto"><div>Didn't he know that the sum of the first n integers is n*(n+1)/2 ?</div><div><br></div><div data-smartmail="gmail_signature">---<br>Frank C. Wimberly<br>140 Calle Ojo Feliz, <br>Santa Fe, NM 87505<br><br>505 670-9918<br>Santa Fe, NM</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Jun 22, 2025, 10:36 AM Prof David West <<a href="mailto:profwest@fastmail.fm">profwest@fastmail.fm</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><u></u><div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr">So even though a robot might never replicate the
full sensory richness or biochemical subtlety of the human body,
it may not need to....Think of calculators: they’re completely
clueless about context, but they’ll beat any of us in a mental
arithmetic race, every time.</div></blockquote><div>even a well-handled abacus or slip-stick can do this of course, but
yes</div><div style="font-family:Arial"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial">Special case contra-examples. When I was consulting in India, several of the software developers were proponents of "Vedic Math" procedures derived from Vedic Scripture. Demonstrated ability to add columns of 10+digit numbers spoken to them. Correct results much faster than if you had to manually enter them into a calculator.</div><div style="font-family:Arial"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial">And Gauss "added the numbers from 1-100) in far less time than it would have required to enter them into calculator and press the + key.</div><div style="font-family:Arial"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial">davew</div><div style="font-family:Arial"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial"><br></div><div>On Sat, Jun 21, 2025, at 4:17 PM, steve smith wrote:</div><blockquote type="cite" id="m_3498890350435545996qt"><div>Pieter wrote:</div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr">Just one thought to toss into the mix: humans
didn’t evolve to do astrophysics, drive Ferraris, or detect
sarcasm on Twitter....</div></blockquote><div>The human *genome* did not evolve *specifically* to do all these
things, however at some point, our facility for symbolic language
and abstraction *did* evolve to support and enhance those more
fundamental needs. It is on top of that symbolic abstraction where
*culture* began to evolve and this is where our ability to do
astrophysics/ferraris/sarcasm emerges. And it might be apt to
notice that AI is much closer to driving ferraris, doing
astrophysics and detecting (or generating) sarcasm that it is at
being an effective hunter-gatherer on the
tundra/savanna/jungle/boreal-forest.</div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr">Now, if we set out to design a robot to function in
today’s environments — say, hospitals, homes, or corporate
boardrooms — we’re working with a very different set of goals.
...</div></blockquote><div>If our goal is to replace *one more* set of skills or abilities,
then it is correct that we don't "need all that". It does seem
that a hallmark of modern human activity (neolithic forward?) has
been to replace ourselves, one feature at a time. Lithics to
replace (enhance) our teeth/claws, cooking to replace (enhance) our
digestive abilities, animal husbandry to replace/enhance our
brute-labor and translate low-grade photosynthesis to
human-digestables (turning grass and leaves into milk, meat, eggs,
blood). Wheels and levers and sails and hulls and millstones and
kilns and forges and hammers and anvils and looms and ... and
rocket-ships and a dyson-sphere-of-computronium all represent a
scaffolding of escalating replacements for the things we did with
our own biochemistry (from hair and nails to lymphocytes and
neurons)...</div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr">So even though a robot might never replicate the
full sensory richness or biochemical subtlety of the human body,
it may not need to....Think of calculators: they’re completely
clueless about context, but they’ll beat any of us in a mental
arithmetic race, every time.</div></blockquote><div>even a well-handled abacus or slip-stick can do this of course, but
yes</div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr">I wouldn’t bet on a human-equivalent robot
appearing next year — but ten years? Maybe. Especially if we
stop trying to replicate every biological quirk and instead
design for function. And when I say “function,” I mean not just
doing what a human can do, but doing what the job needs — which
is often a very different thing.</div></blockquote><div>The point, I would claim is that we aspire (with AI, starting with
Golems and Frankenstein's monster and enlightenment age humanoid
mechanicals) to replace our "generalist" abilities. Many domestic
animals have been adopted/bred/trained to be "generalists" around a
large portion of our needs, whether it be converting simple carbs
into high grade fats/proteins for us, or hauling burdens, or even
(think elephants) delicately manipulating things way to heavy for
us. Some even have diverged from direct, immediate response to our
needs to more abstract needs we have (e.g. show animals whose
functional abilities might never be exercised outside of the
training/show-rooms).</div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr">Take Demis Hassabis’ current project: trying to
simulate a single biological cell to improve drug discovery.
Sounds simple — it’s just one cell — but it’s turning out to be
a mammoth challenge. Meanwhile, a useful robot doesn’t need even
one biological cell. It just needs actuators, sensors, and some
reasonably clever code. This illustrates a broader point:
biological systems are complex because evolution took the long
road. Engineering can often take a shortcut.</div></blockquote><p>And while I am very much a fan of engineering, I do believe
Evolution to be more than "less efficient Engineering". AI/ML
has been an effort in *reverse-engineering* our greatest cognitive
abilities, up until the recent generations of "model-less
modeling" that in fact seems to be to try to reverse-engineer
evolution (exemplified by genetic algorithms and neural nets and
???)</p><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><div>So yes, the human body is a marvel — a product of billions of
years of trial and error. But that doesn’t mean it’s the most
efficient solution for every task. It’s just the one that
happened to work well enough to keep our ancestors from being
eaten.</div><div> <br></div><div> After all, birds fly beautifully. But when we wanted to fly, we
didn’t grow feathers. We built jets.</div></div></blockquote><p>In a certain sense yes, but not particularly in virtually every
other sense? I have had lucid dreams about flying since I was
very young, spanning many forms from sailing/soaring to flapping,
to pumping my arms as with a hydraulic jack to telekineticing,
swinging from vines or spider-man-shot webs, and more recently to
following stellar/planetary geodesics with my intention, spreading
my electromagnetic pinfeathers in the solar/wind/magnetic fields
of the sun/planets/moons/belts/rings/clouds. But no jets... or
any mechanical contrivance really... even icarus/daedelus
wings-o-wax...</p><p><aviation tangent></p><blockquote><p>While I have flown a (vintage) light plane, even through minor
aerobatics, and ridden hundreds? of thousands of miles in
commercial jets, none of it really matches the experiences I
*aspire*/*imaginate* to have in those dreams... I can't (until
DaveW or maybe Glen turns me on to the right entheogen) project
my spirit into the Ravens frolicing on the canyon edge or the
bats echolocating their way through a flux of airborne
foodstuffs.</p><p>But yes, Jets, hypersonics, space rockets, interplanetary
bussard ramjets, ultra-lights, gyrocopters, etc. They are
marvels and each in their own way more "capable" than any given
bird/species and there are probably unpiloted winged vehicles
which will rival the Wandering Albatross reputed to spend 95% of
their time in the air and expending order 2x their basal
metabolic rate. See Gossamer Condor/Albatross/Penguin and note
that Aerodynamic Engineer on the first two projects, Peter
LIssaman hung at SFx with us for a while?</p><blockquote><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human-powered_aircraft" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human-powered_aircraft</a></p></blockquote><p>How soon will we have a Lissaman/MacReady equivalent AI (throw
in pedal-pusher Bryan Allen for good measure)? Or leonardo DaV
or Archimedes, or... ? Can they exist/arise/emerge without the
larger culture that spawned them? Maybe we can identify to an
AI their achievements and reverse engineer their solutions, but
can we frame the context that lead them to pursue those
challenges.</p><p>I *suspect* that if given the opportunity/motivation that
suites of AI/ML agents might well develop minimalist
human-scaled prosthetics so that I (my grandchildren) can
literally have those experiences direct. Some
proprioception/motion-platform/haptics added to visual/auditory
synthetic sensoria and even I might be soaring virtually over
the surface of mars or through the braided rings of Saturn
as-in-my dreams?</p></blockquote><p></tangent></p><p>And in the immortal <i>Tears in Rain</i> words of Roy Batty:</p><blockquote><p><i><b>"I've seen things you people wouldn't
believe.</b><br> Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.<br> I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser
Gate.</i></p><p><i><b>All those moments will be lost in time, like
tears in rain.</b></i></p><p><i><b>Time to die."</b></i></p></blockquote><p><br></p><div>.- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-..</div><div>FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv</div><div>Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom <a href="https://bit.ly/virtualfriam" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">https://bit.ly/virtualfriam</a></div><div>to (un)subscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a></div><div>FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a></div><div>archives: 5/2017 thru present <a href="https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/</a></div><div> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 <a href="http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/</a></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><b>Attachments:</b></div><ul><li>OpenPGP_0xD5BAF94F88AFFA63.asc</li><li>OpenPGP_signature.asc</li></ul></blockquote><div style="font-family:Arial"><br></div></div>.- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-..<br>
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