Yea I mean a more generic version of the simulation theory is just that there is an "outside world" within which our universe exists in containment. Seems probably impossible to disprove (or prove) that for the same reason that proofs about the existence of God are hard.
But, making proofs about the capabilities of the exact types of computation we currently use can still be interesting.
My journey has been identical, and I have a suspicion that this inability to use an app with bells and whistles might have something to do with ADHD.
I actually ended up making an app as a side project which is just todo.txt with one extra feature: if you start a line with a "!", it turns that line to a push notification on your lock screen. just keeps the important things in your list just a bit closer to awareness without overwhelming
Using some italics with an edgy claim doesn't allow you to cut through centuries of philosophy. It's almost as if, when philosophers have coined this term in language "subjective experience" and thousands have used it often in coherent discussion, that it actually has semantic value. It exists in the intersubjective space between people who communicate with shared concepts.
I don't have much to say about the shrimp, but I find it deeply sad when people convince themselves that they don't really exist as a thinking, feeling thing. It's self repression to the maximum, and carries the implication that yourself and all humans have no value.
If you don't have certain measurable proof either way, why would you choose to align with the most grim possible skeptical beliefs? Listen to some music or something - don't you hear the sounds?
There is nothing edgy about it. You can't detect it, you can't measure it, and if the word had any applicability (to say, humans), then you're also misapplying it. If it is your contention that suffering is something-other-than-subjective, then you're the one trying to be edgy. Not I.
The way sane, reasonable people describe subjective phenomena that we can't detect or measure is "not real". When we're talking about decapods, it can't even be self-reported.
> but I find it deeply sad when people convince themselves that they don't really exist as a thinking, feeling thing. It's self repression to the maximum,
Says the guy agreeing with a faction that seeks to convince people shrimp are anything other than food. That if for some reason we need to euthanize them, that they must be laid down on a velvet pillow to listen to symphonic music and watch films of the beautiful Swiss mountain countryside until their last gasp.
"Sad" is letting yourself be manipulated so that some other religion can enforce its noodle-brained dietary laws on you.
> If you don't have certain measurable proof either way
> If it is your contention that suffering is something-other-than-subjective, then you're the one trying to be edgy.
You do feel pain and hunger, at least to the extent you experience touch. You can in fact be even more certain of that than anything conventionally thought to be objective, physical models of the world, for it is only through your perception that you receive those models, or evidence to build those models.
The notion of suffering used in the paper is primarily with respect to pain and pleasure.
Now, you may deny that shrimp feel pain and pleasure. It's also possible to deny that other people feel pain and pleasure. But you do feel pain and pleasure, and you always engage in behaviors in response to these sensations; your senses also inform you secondarily that many other people abide by similar rules.
Many animals like us are fundamentally sympathetic to pain and pleasure. That is, observing behavior related to pain and pleasure impels a related feeling ourselves, in certain contexts, not necessarily exact. This mechanism is quite obvious when you observe parents caring for their young, herd behavior, etc.. With this established, some people are in a context where they are sympathetic to observed pain and pleasure of nonhuman animals; in this case shrimp rather than cats and dogs, and such a study helps one figure out this relationship in more detail.
Eh, perhaps we can’t detect it perfectly reliably, but we can absolutely detect it. Go to a funeral and observe a widow in anguish. Just because we haven’t (yet) built a machine to detect or measure it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
> Eh, perhaps we can’t detect it perfectly reliably, but we can absolutely detect it. Go to a funeral and observe a widow in anguish.
If your definition of suffering describes both the widow grieving a lost husband and a shrimp slowly going whatever the equivalent is of unconscious in an icewater bath... it doesn't much seem to be a useful word.
> Just because we haven’t (yet) built a machine to
Yes, because we haven't built the machine, we can't much tell if the widow is in "anguish" or is putting on a show for the public. Some widows are living their most joyous days, but they can't always show it.
Reading is social! And having physical books and libraries allows you to share with your friends what you are reading in a concrete, physical, albeit arguably performative way. And it also allows you to share the book itself with others.
Sharing a good book with a friend who I know will appreciate it, is one of the loveliest things. I love my ebook too, but my e-library does not lend itself to organically sharing books after I've finished them. In this loneliness epidemic, book sharing is perhaps one of many social activities we should strive to not leave behind. Even just seeing a stranger on the bus reading a book that you have read and loved can be a special catalyst for connection and community in the physical world.
Granted, none of that applies to showing off books on tiktok for the clout/likes. Like many things on tiktok, I also feel a little cynical about that.
As someone who's more of a social recluse in my day to day life, I'd never have considered what you've just said. Thank you for the eye-opener.
I still share what I've read with friends and coworkers and it's lovely to have that spark when you've both read the same thing... But as someone who used to read physical books at work I wasn't comfortable with broadcasting what I was reading – my e-reader feels much more discreet.
It's swings and roundabouts with what you're comfortable with socially. Maybe I'm too closed off for my own good!
I don't think it's fair for you to claim a leading AI expert has critically wrong assumptions when "musing" about possibilities that relate to one of the most epistemologically difficult topics to investigate (consciousness).
You're rejecting Ilya's humble musings as having critically wrong assumptions, and then turning around to definitively explain how consciousness arises, and illuminating the relationship between consciousness, empathy, and intelligence, on a random hacker news thread. Frankly, you're making some huge claims about philosophy of mind that don't obviously track for me, and you provide no citations or arguments to support. I hesitate to accuse you of "hallucinating facts", but when you're issuing a takedown of one of the top AI experts I'd expect to see some more supporting argument.
Your definition of AGI is also a bit strange as it requires that it be fundamentally different from existing natural intelligences, if I understand correctly. That seems unnecessarily stringent to me, since if a program had the same kind and level of intelligence as me, I'd be inclined to say it is AGI.
I'm just not sure where all these confidently stated, very specific claims are coming from.
That’s a fair critique, and I appreciate the engagement. Thanks!
My thinking is based on the Attention-Schema theory of consciousness (AST), by Michael Graziano. His book “Consciousness and the Social Brain” is, I believe, the right roadmap for AGI. AST is basically a variant of the Global Workspace theory of consciousness, distinguished by its deterministic account of the mechanics and utility of consciousness.
“The Consciousness Prior” by Bengio also informs my thinking.
I’m not certain that I can point to anyone that has been as explicit as I have that phenomenological consciousness is a prerequisite for intelligence, but all the cookie crumbs are there for anyone interested in following the trail.
One correction to what you wrote — I’m explicitly saying that AGI will be fundamentally the same as existing biological intelligence, in that intelligence resides only in consciousness, and consciousness remains consciousness regardless of being biological or artificial. My point was that no currently existing DL models are generally intelligent.
I think your point is somewhat fair, and I agree that advancing medicine is not a great sole reason to keep around our fellow organics. There are a few ways to respond to this, including such notions as having intrinsic respect for nature, and appreciation for what natural selection has wrought. But for one and most simply with regard to your anthropocentric viewpoint, the ecosystems that these species constitute are actually critical to keeping civilization going in a practical economic sense.
The theoretical human civilization that can withstand a global ecosystem collapse and exist on a paved over earth is perhaps possible with the right technology but also it is 1. very dreary and 2. much more expensive and difficult to maintain than just putting in some effort to prevent ecosystem collapse now.
Fisheries management is a good microcosm for the cost of ecosystem collapse. If we manage a fish population correctly, we can continue to harvest fish from it and get resources out of it indefinitely. If we do not manage it well and let the population go extinct, we lose that pool of resources permanently and need to replace it with another equivalent source of food which may be very expensive in comparison. Perhaps the local human civilization which relied on the fish will be unable to adjust and will also fall.
Thank you for your good faith reply. I agree with everything you wrote, but don't see how saving importantly regarded mammals such as polar bears, elephants, whales and dolphins (etc.) fits into the picture. If these animals and others no longer have vast tracts of wilderness to roam on an anthropocentric earth, what's the downside?
Extirpation of keystone species causes the rest of the food chain to become disrupted, resulting in proliferation of some species and extinction of others. The consequences for humans are zoonotic diseases and loss of natural food sources.
This is basically bioforming, and I'm sure it's more complicated than "removing keystone species == always bad". For instance, sperm whales compete significantly with humans for tuna fish, making up about 50% of the fish eaten. As our demand for tuna grows, wouldn't exterminating sperm whales help us meet that demand?
Ad tuna ... it's worse than you think. I have to quote to a very good article:
"The Mitsubishi conglomerate controls a forty per cent share of the world market in bluefin tuna; they are freezing and hoarding huge stocks of the fish every year. While they claim this is to smooth supply on a year-to-year basis, conservationists believe they are acting in the expectation that in the event of the fish’s extinction in the wild, prices will skyrocket. Frozen in great stacks at –60oC by the same company who made my childhood cassette player, the bodies would be sold for astronomical prices.
It has a name, this uniquely vile game: it is called extinction speculation. It’s practised by those who collect Norwegian shark fin, rare bear bladders and rhino horn; men and women with hearts that sing along only to the song of money. There are collectors known to be building up huge piles of tiger pelts and vats of tiger bone wine. (The wine is made by soaking portions of a tiger’s skeleton in rice wine; it takes eight years to ferment, and can then be stored indefinitely.) If tigers go extinct in the wild, which is wholly possible by 2050, the value of these assets will soar."[0]
The tuna is not on brink of collapse because it competes with sperm whales for food. They were here together, perfectly fine, for ... i don't know ... millions of years? It's near die off because we eat them and work tirelessly towards their extinction.
Also ... if you want to know more what happens to the ecosystem when some key species die off (it collapses), I highly recommend the movie Seaspiracy [1]
Also, wouldn't extermination of primates prevent crossover of viruses? A world without other primates would have been a world without HIV. A world without other mammals would be (or would have been) a world without COVID, MERS, SARS, Ebola, Marburg, Rabies, hantavirus, bubonic plague...
Hmm. I'm taking the fanatical blue aliens' position from the second Doc Future e-book.
I think it's fair to want money/a job, and pursue getting hired for one, but then also be interested in improving the culture or working conditions of the job once you start working there.
You say they are entitled - high skill, difficult to replace workers are actually entitled to make demands of their employer which are proportional to the value they offer, in particular when they act collectively.
This is like the person who moves next to an airport, paying less than they would otherwise, and then complains incessantly and wants the airport to stop operating, it's called "coming to the nuisance". SpaceX is well known for not being "money/a job", it's extremely intense. If you join it without realizing that, despite how infamous it is for that, then that's totally on you. You kinda have to want to do really hard things that have never been done before to make it worth it.
If you just like rockets, and want some work-life balance, you can always apply for the SLS team, or Boeing Starliner.
I'm a business owner and hiring skilled employees is literally the hardest part of my job. If my employees are unhappy about something, then I am grateful that they have given me the chance to hear about it and maybe fix it rather than having them quit without warning, leaving me with customer deadlines and empty chairs.
I get what you’re saying, I have similar experience, but they’ve pretty clearly chosen iteration/execution speed over a low attrition/burnout rate. And that’s fine, different strokes for different folks. It seems to be working out fine for them so far, 20 years in. If I didn’t have kids whose childhood I wanted to be a big part of, I’d certainly consider throwing myself at trying to help make Starship work.
> Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or saying how great an article is. It's implicit in submitting something that you think it's important.
&
> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.
I could see why the OP wanted to edit it if they were following the submission guidelines. You can make a case to keep the original title as is, but you can also make the case that “WOW! Signal” in the original title sounds like linkbait. So if there’s an error here, it looks like a good faith error in an attempt to follow the guidelines. :)
If you read up on it, that's the actual name of the signal though, exclamation point and all. This isn't some intentional doctoring on OP's behalf to garner clicks.
This distinction is more common online when talking about bad speech (e.g. profanity and racism); content filters simply can't tell if you are using a bad word in anger, or just mentioning its use by others; they merely match the presence of the bad word.
IMHO, the "!" should not be removed as the submission is not "doing things" (i.e. using a "!" to pep up the title ), they are mentioning the well-known existing name of the thing.
I, for one, found the previous title super clear and interesting enough to click further without being clickbait. The new one gives zero information. So thank you for your effort, OP.
But, making proofs about the capabilities of the exact types of computation we currently use can still be interesting.