Yehuda Yudkowsky, 1985-2004
yudkowsky.net
yudkowsky.net
Besides, unless the universe is infinite we're just arguing about timeframes. I prefer not to think about death as annihilation because death doesn't mean that we never existed, we each have our unique portion of space-time.
What really prevents the singularity is the limits of the physical world. The speed of light is already a problem such that PC ram is never going to drop in latency without moving it closer to the CPU. I don't care how smart you are you can't build a 101% efficient engine etc.
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/08/1243244...
http://seedmagazine.com/news/2008/03/out_of_the_blue.php?pag...
Granted the human brain has around 100 billion neurons vs 10,000 neurons, with about 30 million synaptic connections between. However 100,000,000,000 / 10,000 is only 1/10,000,000 which is around 30 years unless the software becomes more efficient.
PS: I don't think directly simulating a brain is the most efficient method of reaching human level AI but it's hard to see how it would fail.
No we haven't. Computers play chess by examining all possible outcomes, then choosing the optimal one. That seems to be how humans play chess too. But if you think about it, humans are much more spontaneous than that. We haven't succeeded in coding "spontaneity" yet.
This line of thinking leads to doom scenarios, when you think about how scarce resources would be allocated (bottom line - probably not to humans), so it does contradict singularity-as-the-promised-land scenarios.
Whether this will happen before or after transhumanism I don't know. But like any other exponential curve it won't go on forever.
(It is not at all clear that any answer exists.)
Still a pretty bad record overall, though.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=377510
Someone thought maxwell's demon and the fluctuation theorem provided a way around the 2nd
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=110074
but I'm not convinced:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=377625
"Thanks, those are interesting links. Still, nothing there that seems especially compelling.
Maxwell's demon assumes the energy cost for sorting the molecules is less than the net gain. That looks like another variant of the perpetual motion machine.
The fluctuation theorem says the 2nd law doesn't hold for very, very small entities, but its probability of being correct climbs exponentially as the system scales. So, it is fallacious to then say the 2nd law may not hold at the macro level due to it not holding at the micro level, since the theorem used to support this idea is itself an instance of the idea being false."
If you have enough heat to make it click forward, you also get random bounces on the prawl which themselves make it go in reverse as much as forward.
How does one find value in life when - in the long run - their entire existence will be forgotten and their species just a blip on the timeline of Evolution? If you think about it, on the infinite (or even extremely large) timeline of this universe, our individual value pretty much equals 0.
Sure, in the short run it is evident that one's life can have value and purpose to humanity. Many powerful leaders and wars have proven this. But so what? Our egos won't be around to reap the glory of knowing that either. Zooming out to the larger timeline - or the big picture - of this universe, I can't see how someone finds value in this present life without a convincing belief in either:
1) God/Afterlife
2) The existence of a solution to mortality
Life without one of those beliefs would be like working hard with the goal of a profitable business but knowing that in the long-run my business would never turn over a single dollar of profit. It's pretty obvious that the big picture negates the short-term goals and meaning of that work.
Life should be like running a profitable business, which you know will not last forever. The point of your business is giving a value to your customers today. Eventually a competing business will cater better to your customers' needs and put you out of business. This doesn't take away the value you've given your customers, nor the money you made.
Going one step further, the business does not even need to be profitable. You can find value in activities which are economically and socially useless most of the time, like art for example.
"On a grand scale we simply want to save the world, so obviously we're just letting ourselves in for a lot of disappointment and we're doomed to failure since we didn't pick some cheap-ass two-bit goal like collecting all the Garbage Pail Kids cards." -- http://www.subgenius.com/bigfist/answers/rants/X0044_Subject...
Georges Perec, Life: A User's Manual
Goals of Man
☑ Don't get eaten by a lion ☑ Get out of Africa ☐ Get out of Earth ☐ Get out of Solar System ☐ Get out of Galaxy ☐ Get out of Local Group ☐ Get out of Earth-Visible Universe ☐ Get out of Universe
You can also check out the Lifeboat Foundation: Lifeboat.com
Religion is a lot more than that, but this part of religion does seem a bit dumb.
Besides, unless the universe is infinite we're just arguing about distances. I prefer not to think about death as annihilation because I'm afraid of turning into worm food.
It is easy to debate for hours about the feasibility of singularity. I understand the accelerated returns and all, but I think that much of these stuff and very-near milestones stem very much from wishful thinking by proponents. "Rapture" within lifetime, immortality. I think these are still too far-fetched, and I cannot understand how proponents of singularity swear by this timeline with utmost faith.
BTW, does cryonics work now?? --- Since Yehuda's body was not identified for three days after he died, there was no possible way he could have been cryonically suspended. Others may be luckier. If you've been putting off that talk with your loved ones, do it. Maybe they won't understand, but at least you won't spend forever wondering why you didn't even try.
To paraphrase Samuel Clemens:
"I don't want to gain immortality through brain simulation. I want to gain immortality by not dying."
Start with one chip-neuron, finish with the whole artificial brain. In all steps of the process your "self" being preserved.
Credit goes to Stanislaw Lem "Do you exist Mr Jones?"
For instance, the scientific article may say, "The radioactive phosphorus content of the cerebrum of the rat decreases to one-half in a period of two weeks." Now what does that mean?
It means that phosphorus that is in the brain of a rat -- and also in mine, and yours -- is not the same phosphorus as it was two weeks ago. It means the atoms that are in the brain are being replaced: the ones that were there before have gone away.
So what is this mind of ours: what are these atoms with consciousness? Last week's potatoes! They now can remember what was going on in my mind a year ago -- a mind which has long ago been replaced.
To note that the thing I call my individuality is only a pattern or dance, that is what it means when one discovers how long it takes for the atoms of the brain to be replaced by other atoms. The atoms come into my brain, dance a dance, and then go out -- there are always new atoms, but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday.
I found this fascinating: what we are is patterns. We have a built-in desire to extend the patterns for as long as possible, but at the same time we don't want to preserve the patterns in a fixed state, or we would never learn or grow.
Simultaneously, we are part of larger patterns which -- like the atoms in our brains -- we enter into, subtly alter, then leave. Until we have better ways of extending life, our influence on the larger patterns is the most enduring thing we can have. It is some comfort against the prospect of annihilation, however small.
But there are so many wrong things with this article, it's difficult to know where to start.
Angry at the "way-things-are"? Does that even make sense? It feels like he's saying "everyone is dying, and what is the government doing?!"
"When Michael Wilson heard the news, he said: 'We shall have to work faster.' "
I mean, can one really say that seriously, outside of a poor SF story? So this is a rational, skeptical person, and not a cult member? Although I'm not religious, I think his religious relatives seem to have a much wiser attitude to life.
What exactly is your objection? That EY et al think death can be more or less completely abolished, and that's obviously wrong, so they're probably being irrational? (If so: why is it obviously wrong?)
Having this kind of anger is like believing in God.
"Succumbing to comforting lies" is like being a tourist: only other people do it.
On another note, the Singularity is an amazing social example of what Freud called the return of the repressed.
How can I get involved in helping with this? Where are the communities? How can I assist (other than donating money)?
Any pointers would be much appreciated.
The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence http://singinst.org is Yudkowsky's organization.
> How can I assist (other than donating money)?
Donating is good. Here is some writing on 'activism.' http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/writings.htm#techs...
There is also the OpenCog http://opencog.org open-source project sponsored by SIAI.
> Where are the communities?
See these email lists: http://www.singinst.org/discussion/
I'm all for the progress of science toward a much, much longer life but demanding immortality right now... is quite over the top.
I'm all for the progress of science toward winged machines but demanding flight right now... is quite over the top.
(Edit: I do understand how someone could be surprised by his sense of entitlement. I don't see, however, how it follows that we should not at least try just because the problems sounds really, really hard. Humans had never flown, but that doesn't mean humans will never fly. Same goes for many things, including death.)
There's a big difference. Avoiding death is not merely a hard technical problem. It's a moral and existential issue. If some people became immortal, imagine the whole lot of new ethical, existential problems we would have.
Moreover, what would we do with them? Copy their consciousness into a computer some day? Who pays for that? And does it really soften the blow of losing a loved one? I don't think having a copy of my dead mother would make me feel any better about the real one having passed on.
Would we grow them new bodies? What does that cost and who pays for that? Would they even want that? Do we have the right to make that decision for them? If we reanimate everyone who dies, how quickly can our country no longer sustain such a rapidly increasing population?
All of this just seems like an illogical reaction to the death of a loved one. I don't mean that to be rude (I've had my own illogical reactions) but it's just not feasible, especially for a technology that we're not sure will ever amount to anything.
Regarding the thing with "copies", that's a complex issue and I can only refer you to the entire sequence on personal identity on Overcoming Bias:
If you can't examine the facts, can you examine the theory?
What is the theory? There's two I know of: biological revival, and informational "upload". The first sounds dubious to me - there's an awful lot of damage to repair, and the nanotech to do it is not even on the drawing board, let alone the knowledge to guide repair. The second sounds much more achievable based on some sort of slice, dice, scan and digitize process, followed by computer emulation. (See recent work by Anders Sandberg.)
What would be required for upload? Continuity of information. (Continuity of the potential for biological life is NOT required.) Do we have evidence for continuity of information? We know that vitrification tech has gotten pretty good recently. (Wikipedia: a rabbit kidney was vitrified, thawed, and worked.) That suggests enough information could be preserved for upload.
Conclusion: there is convincing reason to believe cryonics should work.
I'm just reading something by Schopenhauer on death, and he thinks it doesn't make sense to fear it. Here is a better summary than I could write: http://darwiniana.com/2006/04/23/schopenhauer-on-death/
Schopenhauer's main point is that death doesn't exist because time is not real. This is not very comforting unless you can imagine what it means that time is not real. I can't.
He does point out that there is no rational reason to fear death. The fear of death is an instinct, like aggressivity for example, which you can repress and even overcome. It's useful in some situations, when it makes you go to the doctor because you're sick, and it's useless in other situations, like when you're terminally ill. People who know they will die can overcome the fear of death and learn to accept it. ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model )
So fear of death is not a reason for avoiding death. Is there a rational reason to consider death as something to avoid? Death is as natural as birth. The process of evolution even requires the cycle of birth and death.
What bothers Eliezer Yudkovski is not death, it's the suffering caused by the loss of someone dear. Making people immortal however will never rid life of suffering.
But, actually, I think you'd have reason even then to avoid death, if like most people you instinctively hate or fear it. It's rational to pursue things you like and avoid things you dislike, if anything's rational at all.
Let's leave at that: there are good arguments in Schopenhauer for not considering death as undesirable, and many of them are not necessarily dependent on his idea that time is whatever he says it is. I haven't read them carefully enough to convince anyone, let alone summarize them in a few paragraphs, but I do think it's worth pointing out this source.
The things I want to do, like reading a specific book, only make sense if I am alive. If I die, my desire to read the book disappears. I would not say I want to live in order to read this book. I would say I want to read this book if I am alive.
But I agree with you that people can sometimes have a sense of purpose, of things that should be accomplished in their life. I remember I had this a long time ago. I'm still working on what I then thought I should do. In the meantime I have lost the feeling I must absolutely live so that my work can be accomplished. But the fact this feeling exists does make me think there is something wrong with my argument.
You are right it is rational to pursue things you like or avoid things you dislike and following your instincts. At the same time your different instincts are often in contradiction, and you rationally chose which one to repress. So the fact you have an instinct doesn't mean you should never repress it, and having an instinct of survival doesn't necessarily mean it would be good to live forever.
I'd like to live for a time, sure, but even five hundred years might be too long. I'd either get driven insane by the constant bow-shocks of ever advancing culture, or I'd lapse into some kind of boredom-induced stupor.
I have my little slice of spacetime, to do with as I wish. I could live a great and noble life, or a horrific and cruel one. I could live another five decades, or if I wanted to, end it all tomorrow.
No matter what I may do, or not do, in the end.. there are no regrets, no looking back. Just.. the steady decay of my body, the essential atoms of my makeup being reused by other organisms, processes, chemical reactions.
And I like it that way.
It's not wrong either for the rest of us to be curious.
Although a "healthy fear" is certainly in order, I don't understand the reflexive hatred of death. I think it's more likely that consciousness is nonphysical and that there is some form of spiritual survival. Ian Stevenson's reincarnation research is pretty solid. (If I'm wrong, I'll never know.)
I wake up every morning an evolved version of myself - how could I ever become bored as a result of becoming ancient and wiser?
I want a bigger slice of spacetime. If you were awarded 3 wishes, sure, you could wish for something nice, you could wish to have your wishes vanish.. and that is control. But the ultimate answer to the game is to wish for more wishes - it is the only rational answer that gives you any real control over this wonder.
'The steady decay...' is a disease. If you had a curable disease would you so effortlessly arrive at the same conclusion? Is this characteristic of being human stricken with, say, cholera, that we would lay in bed, slowly dying in pain, with 'no regrets'? No!! we are creatures of survival, of sustainability, of life. We will rise to our feet, or pick up the phone, and find the treatment, and live another day of beautiful human experience.
I would like to think that I, as an atheist, don't have to rationalize the unknown and accept that we just don't have the answers to the "why" of death. I realize he is in pain, but I don't think I'm lying to myself about death just because I don't have some over-arching dogma to believe in.