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Comment by BasilPH | Hacker News Reader

Back in the early 2000s when I studied computer-science, one of our professors Rolf Pfeifer[^0] was famous for being the father of embodiment. The way I understood it, the idea was that the physical shape of a human is also part of our intelligence. For example, we don't have to think about walking that much, because the arrangement of muscles, bones and tendons makes some movements easier than others. We're biased towards certain things by our physical shape.

I'm curious in what relation this paper stands to his work.

[^0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolf_Pfeifer

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I always thought about it as thinking like an oak tree.

A 100 year oak tree probably "knows" more "things" than I do, but there's almost no common language by which we could communicate.

And that's with another biological entity! The chasm would be even wider with fully synthetic life, absent an intentional recreation of our methods of perception.

I am not trying to be obtuse, I literally cannot think of any literal common sense explanation of how an oak tree could know more things than you.

It has lived longer and therefore observed (for some definition of observed) more. Its rings encode atmospheric carbon and drought metrics for centuries, for example.

But if we cut down the tree next to it then we can know just those same things, but the tree doesn't have youtube so I guess its a toss up.

How much do you know about the soil nutrient mix, pH, and microbiome under your feet?

By what measure does an oak tree "know" about any of these things?

If it does under definition X, do I also "know" about the microbiome in my own body under definition X? The nutrient mix of the food I eat, the oxygen content of the air I breathe?

It changes its own processes in response to those quantities.

And certainly, you know your own microbiome!

But I'm assuming you mass less than 9,000 kg, aren't 24 meters tall, and interact with less than 500 m^3 of soil.

I always see Dreyfus stans claim that embodiment is needed for AGI. My big mainframe based god model will refute them by existing.

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