

Scott Aaronson's Worldview Manager helps uncover inconsistencies in your beliefs - bumbledraven
http://projects.csail.mit.edu/worldview/

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jacquesm
I played around with the 'strong AI' section but found it to be internally
inconsistent, maybe it says more about the makers of the world view manager
than it says about the visitors ? Or maybe I am internally inconsistent :)

According to the test there is an inconsistency between:

A simulation is never equivalent to the real thing. (true)

and

One can know that minds exist purely through empirical observation. (true)

The explanation given why these are inconsistent is:

Empirical observation will not be able to distinguish between some being and a
simulation of that being, if the simulation is good enough. If simulations can
never be equivalent to the real thing, then empirical observation is not
enough.

The crux here is that the 'good enough' bit modifies the statement in 'B'
after the fact, no simulation is perfect, but now we have to take one that is
'good enough' to be taken for perfect.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
You're right in that your two statements appear to be consistent and their
explanation is a bit twisted. But I'd be fascinated to here of how you know,
by observation, that there are a plurality (>1) of minds.

The explanation appears consistent with a response that says "A simulation may
be observed to be equivalent to the real thing (true)".

Perhaps a simple logic slip.

~~~
jacquesm
I think you meant 'hear' :)

If you are self-aware and you are curious about self-awareness then you can
present your environment with stimuli (spoken words, gestures, and so on) to
create variations on the Turing test, if the parties appear to think like you
do then slowly the evidence over time accumulates to the point where you will
have to assume others are sentient.

Testing rocks, cats and people in this respect will give you different ideas
about the sentience of rocks, cats and people (and in the case of the cats, if
you should frighten them with your sounds or gestures will give you a healthy
respect for small creatures with claws).

I believe the people in my environment when they say they have a mind too, I
trust cats to have 'some form of mind' because they seem to be self motivated
like I am. Their motivations are clearly different than mine, but they do
_seem_ to think, at some point the evidence that points in that direction has
to be taken to be overwhelming, so therefore we lean towards taking it to be
the truth.

No simulation gets in the way of that one.

Now if someone were to slip a simulated intelligence in my environment (we are
assuming that it is a fact here for the sake of the argument) and I would not
be able to tell the simulation apart from any of the other entities then we
have achieved a situation where there would be an equivalence between that
simulated intelligence and 'the real thing'.

Maybe I'm stretching things here, but it seems to make sense to me.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
You're assuming other beings as your starting point, you need to demonstrate
first that there is an external world that sense data received from your mind
are a) trustworthy and b) externally produced. Taking the standard "brains in
vats" position there is no way to show in your system the the apparent actions
of [apparently] external beings aren't simply being fed to you.

Assuming a realist position (on the existence of the universe!) the fact that
a cat responds in a similar way that a person with a mind does proves nothing
- if I am startled (assuming I have a mind) then it is not the internally
thoughtful part of myself that causes me to jump but it is a basic response
below the action of my thought processes, I can't decide not to jump.

Consider that androids will soon appear to think - or that if you play poker
online against a bot, but think it a person, that this person [bot] appears to
you [from your position seeing their moves] as thinking. It is clear that the
bot is only apparently thinking it is simply acting according to a complex
algorithm.

Taking your point on a "slip[ping] a simulated intelligence" in front of you.
You seem to be saying that if the simulation can work then it is a real mind
(a sort of pure Turingism). What if a simpler person is convinced that the
intelligence is real, but you are not. Does that mean that the intelligence
has a mind? Does it think when interacting with that other person but not with
you. I contend that it genuinely thinks in neither situation.

[Yes I meant "hear", I have problems with homophones, usually it's their=there
and usually I catch it!]

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zasz
Here's a group of quizzes with the same idea, but a nicer interface:
<http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/>.

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gjm11
There are a bunch of (what I consider to be) bugs in the topic files at
present. (The QM one is particularly horribly broken -- actual bug rather than
mere confusion, I think; the strong-AI one is also pretty bad, but here it's
that I think the author of the topic file was confused about some things.)

This will become more interesting if it gains the ability to take uncertainty
into account more effectively. Unfortunately, I have my doubts about whether
their (firmly logic-based) resolution engine can be made to do this without
major work.

~~~
gwern
> The QM one is particularly horribly broken -- actual bug rather than mere
> confusion, I think

Broken link, right? I reported it to them a few hours ago and they/he're
apparently working on it.

~~~
gjm11
Nonono, not just a broken link. Something is confusing the inference engine
and it's claiming "tensions" and giving "explanations" for them that don't
make the slightest bit of sense. The files that define the "topics" are
actually on the web -- they expose their git repository -- and there's one
thing in the QM file that looks like a mistake, which might be responsible for
the trouble.

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mnemonicsloth
It bothers me that there's _exactly one_ political position on the list of
available topics, and that Mr. Aaronson seems to spend a fair amount of time
dissing it on his blog.

Intentional or not, this is not the kind of message you want to send if you're
serious about promoting consistent rational thinking.

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diiq
As others have pointed out, the questions are somewhat confusingly vague, but
what bothered me the most was that it's rather dull if it finds no
inconsistencies in your answers --- it's like a baldly philosophical opinion
poll.

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Dilpil
Very, very slow for me.

~~~
anigbrowl
Same here, painfully so. Also, I tried the libertarian one and the statements
were so vague as to seem useless. Ran out of patience.

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rwolf
I'd like to hide the comments on questions, at least until after I've answered
them. I found them to be a distraction.

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bumbledraven
This is from <http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=424>

