My phrasing below is more blunt and rude than I endorse, sorry. I’m writing quickly on my phone. I strong downvoted this post after reading the first 25% of it. Here are some reasons:
“Bayesianism purports that if we find enough confirming evidence we can at some point believe to have found “truth”.” Seems like a mischaracterization, given that sufficient new evidence should be able to change a Bayesian’s mind (tho I don’t know much about the topic).
Yes, that is how Baysianism works. A Bayesian will change their mind based on either the confirming or disconfirming evidence.
“We cannot guess what knowledge people will create into the future” This is literally false, we can guess at this and we can have a significant degree of accuracy. E.g. I predict that there will be a winner in the 2020 US presidential election, even though I don’t know who it will be.
I agree with you, but you can’t predict this for things that will happen 100 years from now. We may find better ways to govern by then.
I can guess that there will be computer chips which utilize energy more efficiently than the current state of the art, even though I do not know what such chips will look like (heck I don’t understand current chips).
Yes, this is the case if progress continues. But it isn’t inevitable. There are groups attempting to create a society that inhibit progress. If our growth culture changes, our “chip” producing progress could stop. Then any prediction about more efficient chips would be an error.
“We can’t predict the knowledge we will have in the future. If we could, we would implement that knowledge today” Still obviously false. Engineers often know approximately what the final product will look like without figuring out all the details along the way.
Yes, that works incrementally. But what the engineers can’t predict is what their next, next renditions of their product will be. And those subsequent steps is what I’m referring to in my essay.
“To achieve AGI we will need to program the following:
knowledge creating processes emotions creativity free will consciousness” This is a strong claim which is not obviously true and which you do not defend. I think it is false, as do many readers. I don’t know how to define free will, but it doesn’t seem necessary as you can get the important behavior from just following complex decision processes. Consciousness, likewise, seems hard to define but not necessary for any particular behavior (besides maybe complex introspection which you could define as part of consciousness).
This is a large topic and requires much explanation. But in short, what makes a person are those things listed. And AGI will by definitions will be a person.
“Reality has no boundary, it is infinite. Remembering this, people and AGI have the potential to solve an infinite number of problems” This doesn’t make much sense to me. There is no rule that says people can solve an infinite number of problems. Again, the claim is not obviously true but is undefended.
I agree, the claims in my essay depend on progress and the universe being infinite.
If you are truly interested in going deep on infinity, have a look at the book “The Beginning of Infinity”.
Maybe you won’t care about my disagreements given that I didn’t finish reading. I had a hard time parsing the arguments (I’m confused about the distinction between Bayesian reasoning and fallibilism, and it doesn’t line up with my prior understanding of Bayesianism), and many of the claims I could understand seem false or at least debatable and you assume their true.
Yes, each of my claims are debatable and contain errors. They are fallible as are all our ideas. And I appreciate you stress testing them, you brought up many important points.
This post is quite long and doesn’t feature a summary, making it difficult to critique without significant time investment.
This is a challenge, most of these theories need much more detailed explanation, Not less. I wish I could find a way to summarize and keep the knowledge intact.
Thank you for taking the time to make your comments.
Please see my reply’s in Bold
My phrasing below is more blunt and rude than I endorse, sorry. I’m writing quickly on my phone. I strong downvoted this post after reading the first 25% of it. Here are some reasons:
“Bayesianism purports that if we find enough confirming evidence we can at some point believe to have found “truth”.” Seems like a mischaracterization, given that sufficient new evidence should be able to change a Bayesian’s mind (tho I don’t know much about the topic).
Yes, that is how Baysianism works. A Bayesian will change their mind based on either the confirming or disconfirming evidence.
“We cannot guess what knowledge people will create into the future” This is literally false, we can guess at this and we can have a significant degree of accuracy. E.g. I predict that there will be a winner in the 2020 US presidential election, even though I don’t know who it will be.
I agree with you, but you can’t predict this for things that will happen 100 years from now. We may find better ways to govern by then.
I can guess that there will be computer chips which utilize energy more efficiently than the current state of the art, even though I do not know what such chips will look like (heck I don’t understand current chips).
Yes, this is the case if progress continues. But it isn’t inevitable. There are groups attempting to create a society that inhibit progress. If our growth culture changes, our “chip” producing progress could stop. Then any prediction about more efficient chips would be an error.
“We can’t predict the knowledge we will have in the future. If we could, we would implement that knowledge today” Still obviously false. Engineers often know approximately what the final product will look like without figuring out all the details along the way.
Yes, that works incrementally. But what the engineers can’t predict is what their next, next renditions of their product will be. And those subsequent steps is what I’m referring to in my essay.
“To achieve AGI we will need to program the following:
knowledge creating processes emotions creativity free will consciousness” This is a strong claim which is not obviously true and which you do not defend. I think it is false, as do many readers. I don’t know how to define free will, but it doesn’t seem necessary as you can get the important behavior from just following complex decision processes. Consciousness, likewise, seems hard to define but not necessary for any particular behavior (besides maybe complex introspection which you could define as part of consciousness).
This is a large topic and requires much explanation. But in short, what makes a person are those things listed. And AGI will by definitions will be a person.
“Reality has no boundary, it is infinite. Remembering this, people and AGI have the potential to solve an infinite number of problems” This doesn’t make much sense to me. There is no rule that says people can solve an infinite number of problems. Again, the claim is not obviously true but is undefended.
I agree, the claims in my essay depend on progress and the universe being infinite.
If you are truly interested in going deep on infinity, have a look at the book “The Beginning of Infinity”.
Maybe you won’t care about my disagreements given that I didn’t finish reading. I had a hard time parsing the arguments (I’m confused about the distinction between Bayesian reasoning and fallibilism, and it doesn’t line up with my prior understanding of Bayesianism), and many of the claims I could understand seem false or at least debatable and you assume their true.
Yes, each of my claims are debatable and contain errors. They are fallible as are all our ideas. And I appreciate you stress testing them, you brought up many important points.
This post is quite long and doesn’t feature a summary, making it difficult to critique without significant time investment.
This is a challenge, most of these theories need much more detailed explanation, Not less. I wish I could find a way to summarize and keep the knowledge intact.
Thank you for taking the time to make your comments.