Ask HN: Why aren't we investigating other methods of superintelligence? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why aren't we investigating other methods of superintelligence?

7 pointskeepamovin6 comments

I'm talking about humanity. We are going the 'machine' route, currently. Trying to twist machines, in their infinite scalabiltiy, to become more like us.

But why aren't we coming at it, also, from the other direction?

But why not twist ourselves (or enhance ourselves), to become more like those machine qualities we admire?

Savants arguably display superintelligence in a specialized niche. Why aren't we investigating how to add that module to regular cognition? Super-recognisers, and super-memorizers are often far more "neurotypical" than savants (in the sense they may be broadly 'high functioning' which seems less common among savants), why aren't we figuring out how to augment our cognition with those abilities?

Similarly, but requiring more broad-mindedness to consider, sages through the ages have acquired supernormal abilities (facts which are as accepted in some cultures as they are ridiculed in others), why are we not investigating how to augment our societies with these qualities?

More prosaic, but perhaps no less startling examples include chess prodigies, music prodigies, bodily kinesthetic prodigies, puzzle solving prodigies, and so on. It seems that a rigorous unified program of study devoted to all these types of skills may yield ways to augment ourselves with those types of abilities?

Anyway, just a thought throwing out there into the ether wondering why we aren't as focused on developing innate human superintelligence given we are so focused on creating machine AGI superintelligence. Oh well... :)

A super intelligence that is human based, and possibly distributed among all of us, could be far more manageable and less catastrophic than a machine innate superintelligence.

I think that generally people are interested in being as intelligent as possible. The institutes of school and university, the study of pedagogy and science in general are all dedicated to this.

The reason why people generally don’t strive to have supernormal abilities such as super memory is because these are not strictly needed. Instead of memorizing everything we can write it all down.

Some abilities are much more useful, but we don’t know what makes them appear. Neuroscience and psychology are studying the underlying mechanisms for those. These topics are just very hard to understand, and would be much harder to reliably implement in practice. For example, we understand a lot more about how muscles work than how brains work, yet most we can do to affect our strength reliably is better nutrition and exercise programs. And until we find a way to make everyone run ultra-fast without impeding other positive qualities, a bicycle would be preferred to running very fast.

If the improvement in human intelligence could only be done mechanically (i.e. by making the brain work faster or store more stuff more precisely), the sciences about human mind would be the only sciences that improve human intelligence. However, all sciences work on this. A person who studied Newtonian mechanics would be "superintelligent" in reasoning about motion of rigid bodies compared to people who don’t know about it. Being able to masterfully solve hard equations is not be as useful to humanity as a whole as devising formulas to make solving these equations easier for everyone, and computing machines to let them be solved automatically.

Most people don't prioritize self-augmentation; their aspirations lean towards contentment, stability, and the quintessential 'normal life'. The pursuit of self-enhancement often isn't intrinsically rewarding unless one has a predisposition towards it, and even with the impetus, the outcome might not provide the satisfaction one anticipated, or worse.

As for the so-called 'elite' demographic, I will simply say : "Not for lack of trying". (there is this book : "Stealing Fire" [1]). On ancient methods of improvement, it's crucial to note the difference between (super)wisdom and (super)intelligence. But that's a conversation for another time.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Stealing-Fire-Maverick-Scientists-Rev...

Interesting perspective thank you.

We aren't really focused on creating any sort of intelligence with AI research, most of AI research is basically around information compression, which is what really what most people want, because that enhances our collective intelligence.

People who don't have ADHD are taking ADHD medicines in an attempt to obtain some level of superintelligence.

Given how people strive to learn their own things to their personal maximum, the fact that so few become elites suggests that it would not be possible to successfully attempt to gain super skills in areas outside what you're already struggling with.

Unless you are suggesting that everyone "pick one" and fully master that one skill that becomes them. But corporations already try to accomplish this. It works to some degree, but I can't imagine anyone welcoming the luxury of being pigeon holed even more than they already are.

There are countries that do this, beginning in childhood, and there is no evidence that this actually produces a more advanced nation. You end up with people who are amazingly good at, but literally hate the skill they were forced to focus on constantly, at the cost of other areas where personal growth could have been enjoyed.

Utopia is out there. We'll always be trying to reach for it.

> Given how people strive to learn their own things to their personal maximum, the fact that so few become elites suggests that it would not be possible to successfully attempt to gain super skills in areas outside what you're already struggling with.

But that’s the thing. What if the way that we can learn could be radically improved? Seems we haven’t investigated it enough

Maybe I’m just rehashing the kind of loathsome hot housing mistakes of helicopter tiger moms of the 1980s but I don’t think so. I think the new effort is to tiger mama sweatshops, as modern post graduate tuition is to phrenology

I appreciate your perspective too; I find it quite realistic. However, I’m not suggesting that everyone should undertake a rigid, utilitarian socialist work regimen, akin to a dystopian ‘assignment camp’ for divergent personalities. Rather, what if we explored the diversity of specialized skills and how people excel in them? We could identify common factors and use that knowledge to boost overall competence in a broad range of skills. It’s unknown whether there are common elements—‘hacks,’ so to speak—in our underlying biology that could activate certain genes, unlocking new potentials through training methods or different mechanisms. But I believe they might exist.

Through rigorous study of these aspects, we could make significant progress. Implementing what we learn in training could potentially revolutionize education, raising everyone’s skill level. Imagine integrating this into our education system and enhancing people’s innate, generalized competence across various skill sets—even by just 5%. Applied to tens of millions, this improvement could be transformative. Therefore, it seems worthwhile to pursue this endeavor.

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