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RE: Will I ever be as good as the old masters?
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Ruphus
Posts: 3782
Joined: Nov. 18 2010
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 RE: Will I ever be as good as the ol... (in reply to Ricardo)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo
"Dumb"? Or perhaps just smart enough to SEE that our activities are the cause of the next Mass extinction cleansing event, in fact, it was this purpose that Mother Nature allowed us to be spawned to begin with, to bring forth the renewal. Perhaps.
I see.
Your understanding of the world leans on a sort of genesis rather than a scientific base.
However, nature has no inherent purpose. It just is.
Even though nature does bear the phenomenon that life apparently developes whenever possible, there is no tendency as to how.
With the physical laws that appear to sort material in accordance to density, electrical values and so forth, provided stable circumstances, coming about of substances and planets is likely.
And with the increasing diversity of substances and shapes of a planet diversification of eventual life becomes more probable too. With that typically an evolution towards higher specialisation.
However, unlike one might be wanting to assume, such specialisation must not inevitably mean all progressing development, nor self-evident tendency towards higher intelligence and awareness.
There have for an example been cases like of island elephants that shrank in size and cut back in intelligence.
And dino sauriers despite of roughly 24 times more of chronological legacy than ours never came to invent a wheel.
Anyway, nature has not voluntarily led us, nor meant us to be, lesser even planned us to be relais to anywhere.
We are on our own with our brain, and we should use it.
Ruphus
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Date Feb. 17 2016 9:56:17
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Ricardo
Posts: 14799
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
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RE: Will I ever be as good as the ol... (in reply to Ruphus)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Ruphus
quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo
"Dumb"? Or perhaps just smart enough to SEE that our activities are the cause of the next Mass extinction cleansing event, in fact, it was this purpose that Mother Nature allowed us to be spawned to begin with, to bring forth the renewal. Perhaps.
I see.
Your understanding of the world leans on a sort of genesis rather than a scientific base.
However, nature has no inherent purpose. It just is.
Even though nature does bear the phenomenon that life apparently developes whenever possible, there is no tendency as to how.
With the physical laws that appear to sort material in accordance to density, electrical values and so forth, provided stable circumstances, coming about of substances and planets is likely.
And with the increasing diversity of substances and shapes of a planet diversification of eventual life becomes more probable too. With that typically an evolution towards higher specialisation.
However, unlike one might be wanting to assume, such specialisation must not inevitably mean all progressing development, nor self-evident tendency towards higher intelligence and awareness.
There have for an example been cases like of island elephants that shrank in size and cut back in intelligence.
And dino sauriers despite of roughly 24 times more of chronological legacy than ours never came to invent a wheel.
Anyway, nature has not voluntarily led us, nor meant us to be, lesser even planned us to be relais to anywhere.
We are on our own with our brain, and we should use it.
Ruphus
I am not saying we should not TRY, but in the bigger picture, there is but ONE biology to study at present, and that is EARTH biology, and the historical record shows the occurrence and frequency of Mass extinction events. Perhaps the causes and regularity of them are coincidental, but with only ONE biology to study, we can't say. Likewise I agree, "intelligence" need not be the be all end all of biological evolution, it's about survival nothing else. But it could very well be the norm that once or IF technology arises in the universe, it is also time for the species to leave and make room for others (destroys itself ALWAYS). THis could be the reason, after surveying THOUSANDS of worlds in the galactic neighborhood, not a single tech or Intelligence has been found....the reason for fermi's paradox is simply, nature (the cosmos) doesn't want it...or it takes a VERY VERY special type of entity to advance past that technological adolescence, while the rest are the normal type that help out with extinction events, slate cleaning. A pitiful few humans might seem to fall into the "special" category, obviously. Is it enough? Time will tell.
_____________________________
CD's and transcriptions available here:
www.ricardomarlow.com
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Date Feb. 17 2016 11:14:53
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Piwin
Posts: 3559
Joined: Feb. 9 2016
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RE: Will I ever be as good as the ol... (in reply to Ricardo)
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Studying the Earth as a system is definitely a fascinating field. How the organic influences the inorganic and vice-versa.
The interesting thing is that we just might be the first species on Earth that may be capable of preventing (at least some) mass extinction events. For instance, once they set up the Sentinel space telescope
and operationalize gravity tractor beam technology, the chances of large asteroids hitting earth will be drastically diminished. I'm sure the dinosaurs would've loved to have that technology 
But it seems that all that knowledge doesn't do much to prevent us from simply killing ourselves and we may just go out in a massive mushroom cloud. So maybe you're right, maybe there will just be a time
where we have to "make room" for other species.
But I wouldn't attribute any kind of will to nature. I don't think nature "wants" anything. There may simply causal links between certain developments and outright extinction.
For instance, the debate that Elon Musk has started on artificial intelligence is interesting. We can choose to move forward with general AI, but if we actually succeed, who knows what's to happen? Not saying that it's going
to be a rise of the machines type of thing, just that we would probably lose our place in the driver's seat of planet earth and there's no reason to believe that an advanced AI would care about us anymore than we seem to care
for any of the "lesser intelligent" species. In which case we wouldn't go out with a bang like many expect, rather we would simply wither our way to extinction like many other species today.
As for the Fermi paradox, your suggestion may be right. But to be fair, it is pretty much open season as far as theories are concerned. I'm not even sure it's really a paradox. We simply don't know what to look for. Basically,
at this point we're looking for radio waves but we have no reason to suspect that other civilizations would use radio waves (or even build civilizations for that matter) because, like you said, we don't have any other example to
compare ourselves to. The other day, I was reading up on the expansion of the universe. The author of the article I was reading was explaining that, if expansion continues to speed up, then we would reach a moment in time where
you simply couldn't see any other star (basically put, if the universe expands faster than light (and it is the only thing that can move faster than light), then light from other stars would never reach us. Obviously, there are many reasons to believe that human beings will be long gone by then, but I find it fun to image that, theoreticaly,
one day, one of our descendants could be living on a planet with just a sun and no stars in the night sky, and he would read up on his ancestors' search for alien life and think "WTF were they talking about?"
_____________________________
"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
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Date Feb. 17 2016 14:30:53
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Ricardo
Posts: 14799
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
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RE: Will I ever be as good as the ol... (in reply to Piwin)
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quote:
The other day, I was reading up on the expansion of the universe. The author of the article I was reading was explaining that, if expansion continues to speed up, then we would reach a moment in time where
you simply couldn't see any other star (basically put, if the universe expands faster than light...
Of course, but in the future we will still be part of the Galaxy (which will eventually combine with other members of local group to form some large elliptical type thing), so there will ALWAYS be plenty of stars shining for any living beings to observe. What will be gone first from view will be the other galactic structures. THAT is the thing I assume they talk about when saying expansion will make the "stars" not visible. I once saw a very clear timeline for the future (based on current understanding) layed out in illustration. So we are talking very long time scales.
Galaxies combine locally fairly early, several million years or so from now. Sun dies in 5 billion years, and with it the earth goes by by. Still, that is fairly soon. Assuming human ancestors survive and continue by moving to new stars, it will be quite some time before all that is left is our galaxy to see, then as stars die one by one, it will be a ridiculous long time before we find ourselves with only ONE star in the galaxy to observe. Wish I could remember the numbers, but eventually after the last star fades, the protons and neutrons all decay and finally, long after THAT, the black holes will finally evaporate (in the trillions of years from now mark). Fun to think about but doesnt' seem that the "only one star visible" fantasy will ever happen.
In my post earlier I should have put "wants" in quotes like that referring to cosmos (nature) not allowing intelligence to blossom so easy as it infers a sort of intelligent design. I don't mean to imply that. However, it does seem sort of coincidental that the terrible distances of interstellar space present a formidable obstacle to any aggressive alien type vicious colonialists (such as humans have done here), does it not? As if the safe harboring of life on a tiny impossible to locate insignificant planet in the middle of nowhere might be the idea all along? Protect us from "them", and "them" from us, until we are ALL mature enough, and "ready". This coupled with the regularity of extinction events are all quite coincidental IMO. Just an idea.
_____________________________
CD's and transcriptions available here:
www.ricardomarlow.com
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Date Feb. 17 2016 18:24:45
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Ruphus
Posts: 3782
Joined: Nov. 18 2010
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RE: Will I ever be as good as the ol... (in reply to Ricardo)
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You guys are following the mainstream according to which we were not mature enough yet to be constructive.
But the global policies are not presenting a "we", much lesser so a human community that was allowed to unfold its anthropological potency.
Same incoherency with estimating potential behaviour of artificial intelligence.
There is no conclusive reason for AI to display parallels to a drives based creature.
Independent from material and social motifs / vanity it will be majorly dedicated to reason. It´s hypothecial reign possibly presenting the only possibility for any human to survive the near future at all. -Unless we were to wake up in time and come up to our potential of reason, which we are definitly being far from.
I´ve posted more in detail about the logical background of this matter before, but can´t find the posts.
Here a bit on the actual human contradiction:
quote:
It is true that oppressive conditions develop a certain efficiency within their boundaries, ever more refining by further tuning underdogs to function against their own interest until they will show even unproductive when treadmill is reduced. Meaning that the artificial cycle will resume almost like organic systems would, however only for a short while.
But that kind of "efficiency" is not worth mentioning compared to how productivity and creativity unfold in a social community in the ways most indigene ones are.
Further, what are 5000 years in regard of human evolution and genetical / behavioural adaption? Nothing.
We are still being born with the preferences and drives from before the kingdoms, and largely developing psychosis because of the inconsistency of king´s society with our emotional requirements.
Let aside the material situation and physical shortcomings.
To adapt to the unsocial structures and possibly find satisfactory emotion under drastically reduced solidarity and empathy, according to anthropological measures we should be needing another 95 000 years of servant being. Something impossible regarding ecology alone, and lesser even by chances of sustaining empires.
We still are stuffed as the homo sapiens who used to roam environment in small groups, always trying to stay close to each other, prepared to jump side to a fellow dragged away by the sabre-tooth tiger. Ready to risk own life for the chum, who again was contributing to own survival.
Though the sabre-tiger is no more, and roaming the discounters shelves being not nearly as risky, our basic outlines have not changed one bit, leaving us in permanent discrepancy to todays apathetic conditions.
The incoherent lemming-being that we are molded into by systematical structures of incapacitation make us a pity shadow of ourselves. Detouched cripples.
And here more hints as to whether global ongoings were presenting humanity or policies of a misusing minority: http://www.foroflamenco.com/tm.asp?m=250343&mpage=1&p=&tmode=1&smode=1&key=artificial%2Cintelligence
It is essential to realize how needless the happening havoc is.
Otherwise it means howling at the moon while sitting on a branch that is being cut.
Ruphus
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Date Feb. 18 2016 9:29:46
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Piwin
Posts: 3559
Joined: Feb. 9 2016
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RE: Will I ever be as good as the ol... (in reply to Ruphus)
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quote:
You guys are following the mainstream according to which we were not mature enough yet to be constructive.
But the global policies are not presenting a "we", much lesser so a human community that was allowed to unfold its anthropological potency
Perhaps that was the point of the idea? That it would somehow be much better for there to be a "we" before we engage in any type of communication with alien life.
quote:
Same incoherency with estimating potential behaviour of artificial intelligence.
There is no conclusive reason for AI to display parallels to a drives based creature.
And that is precisely why we need this current debate on whether we should move forward with general AI or not.
Parallel to these advances in artificial intelligence, scientists are constructing a robust framework of evidence and logic that seems to indicate that everything we call morality can be explained in biological terms.
In other words, there is no reason to believe that an intelligence that is not biological and not gene-based would share anything remotely related to what we call morality.
Were such a thing to exist, we will be powerless in comparison (they estimate that, given known computational speeds of computers, that a general AI could potentially cover around 28 000 years of human advancement in only a week's time, to give an idea of the scale we're talking about). Whether it would have some sort of "drive" or not is of course unknown.
However, even the functional AI that we have today is to a point "driven" to compute what it computes, merely because we program it to. The chess-playing computers don't stop in the middle of the game because we have programmed them to win. A general AI will have at the very least some sort of drive towards learning programmed into, similar to the machine-learning systems we already have today.
They're already devising "tests" to see what could be done to know whether such an AI would have this sort of drive. For instance, baiting it with fake internet-access ports so as to see if it has a drive to expand. All I'm saying is that creating such a thing would be a huge leap into the unknown. If it goes in the "wrong" direction for us, the regrets of those who discovered nuclear power will be peanuts in comparison.
Knock Knock Knock. Sarah Connor?
_____________________________
"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
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Date Feb. 18 2016 11:10:28
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Ruphus
Posts: 3782
Joined: Nov. 18 2010
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RE: Will I ever be as good as the ol... (in reply to Piwin)
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Me should have mentioned that I am assuming self-awareness.
I see it coming up with a certain measure of computing. (And it kind of seems as if there was an academic fraction supporting such conclusion lately / increasingly.)
Original programming would then become of minor relevance. There would be self-repairing, - expanding, -adapting, -evolving AI creature.
And it should bear none of the intellectually limiting attributes connected to human drives. Material possession won´t attract it not only for largely having no practical use to it, but for being able of producing practically needed items itself (nano e.g.). Rivalry, attraction and vanity should be way below its intellectual radar / no-brainer.
Expanding knowledge and supporting sense should be its concerns.
Tendencies of advanced reason can already be noted within human range.
The further cognitive skills go the rather there takes form of what we call wisdom.
Banal concerns like selfishness, discrete perception, recklessness, short-sightedness etc. taking a back seat in advantage of wholly thinking, self-confidence / reduced ego, dedication to sense and reason. Growing cognition obviously tends towards general usefulness and reason.
I wasn´t aware of where the current discussion has developed to, and am obliged to hear that there has finally started a much more sober take on the matter of IA potential. (Also thank you for the interesting bit about current estimation on one weeks AI ability to learn. It´s going to explode!)
And it can´t hurt when there be trials to emulate AI characteristics.
But for as far as I can see, there is good reason to assume that independent and advanced IA will bear no irrational motivation, and certainly be way beyond a bovine mentality of letting a planet´s biosphere perish for a bulging bank account on some Cayman island.
Ruphus
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Date Feb. 18 2016 13:06:53
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Piwin
Posts: 3559
Joined: Feb. 9 2016
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RE: Will I ever be as good as the ol... (in reply to Ruphus)
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quote:
I wasn´t aware of where the current discussion has developed to, and am obliged to hear that there has finally started a much more sober take on the matter of IA potential. (Also thank you for the interesting bit about current estimation on one weeks AI ability to learn. It´s going to explode!)
If you're interested, there are loads of interesting takes on the issue of AI on edge.org, since there 2015 question was: What do you think about machines that think?
quote:
But for as far as I can see, there is good reason to assume that independent and advanced IA will bear no irrational motivation, and certainly be way beyond a bovine mentality of letting a planet´s biosphere perish for a bulging bank account on some Cayman island.
Agreed. But to an extent, that is why the human species should be worried about AI. If such a form of intelligence were to logically arrive at the conclusion that the massive presence of homo sapiens sapiens was the source of imbalance in the world, who's to know what it would do!
It all goes back to that philosophical question that has been adressed time and time again in works of science fiction, from Asimov to Star Trek and others: why do we fight for our own survival (beyond the mere genetic drive) when we aren't even sure that we "deserve" to survive? Perhaps it's that insecurity of being at the top of the pyramid of species (not in terms of being "better" in any way, but in terms of being on top of the food chain), somewhat similar to what you said at the beginning of this thread about how the more advanced a civilization, the more prone it will be to notice its shortcomings.
_____________________________
"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
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Date Feb. 18 2016 14:24:26
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Ruphus
Posts: 3782
Joined: Nov. 18 2010
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RE: Will I ever be as good as the ol... (in reply to Piwin)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Piwin
Agreed. But to an extent, that is why the human species should be worried about AI. If such a form of intelligence were to logically arrive at the conclusion that the massive presence of homo sapiens sapiens was the source of imbalance in the world, who's to know what it would do!
It would likely do whatever actually needed to prevent the deserting of the planet. And such a rescue would and should over weigh whatever piety we have built around ourselves.
... just lately, actually. The last cruel measures are not those of WWII. There are those programs taken against indigenous people in Australia, North America and Canada that were seized only in the late eighties / a mere ~25 years ago. And worse even when you realize how intervention into foreign democratic developments, overtoppling of governments / installment of dictatures and resulting atrocity are actually the same kind of cruel policy, which again are in place still.
So, at least those who have been accepting states of such policies, should not be too sensitive about possible AI action to save the biosphere.
More even as a pragmatic and intelligent power would be aching to maximal efficiency at minimal hardship.
Accordingly, I would expect them at the very first to halt capitalist / feudal principles, which would result into immediate effects like stopping half of food product being willingly destroyed and other counter productions. Introducing a redistribution of assets in relation to necessity. Halt of usury and of speculative reservation, making available yet overpriced goods like pharmaceuticals.
They would stop idiot projects like oil palm plantations and "bio" gas, fracking, dams etc. They would reorganize research and production for united international efforts and global aims.
With reduced hardship a lesser need for rurals to vandalize their environment, would be enhanced by retrackting them into urban vertical structural engineering and heading for reforesting orginal refuges.
In the same time among the many constuctive new installments like of algae for protein etc. vertical greenhouses midst the city centers and suburbs, releasing agrarian sites.
With the technical options already reducing men´s pressure on the environment, yet birth control might be inevitable until numbers be down to reasonable dimensions. (With an explosion originally due to old-age sheme and child mortality not to re-occure.)
And if any AI decided to pick the most unsocial individuals first for sterilization, frankly, I wouldn´t mind.
-
Conclusion:
Despite of the gross urgency, I suppose that a highly intelligent approach could do without simple decimation of humans.
There is leeway, not just because of unused opportunities, but more so because of needless destruction at status quo.
Ruphus
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Date Feb. 19 2016 10:30:44
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Piwin
Posts: 3559
Joined: Feb. 9 2016
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RE: Will I ever be as good as the ol... (in reply to Ruphus)
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It's interesting that many of the things you suggest a general AI would do are already being seriously considered by some parts of society. Whether these parts of society will prevail or not, that is another question. But there just might be hope for us yet!
Have you seen the 2015 movie "Ex machina"? Though these topics have been dealt with before, it does address the inherent limits of the Turing test in an interesting way. But I suppose the movie is less about AI per se, and more about how we define consciousness. An interesting watch in any event.
quote:
They would reorganize research and production for united international efforts and global aims.
It's so very odd how we have managed to get globalization upside down. I'm not against globalization per se, but we globalize what we shouldn't (for instance, music which is starting to sound like it's all the same porridge), and don't globalize what we should (for instance, research investments on global aims, food supplies, etc. etc.).
But I suppose that's bound to stay the case as long as we maintain these petty sense of borders and separate interests. For instance, with the gravity tractor beam I was talking about, they are worried that it will be seen as a geopolitical challenge instead of a way to save the world. Basically put, if they detect an asteroid heaeded towards Germany, the tractor beam could change its course so that it doesn't hit earth. However, to do so, the trajectory of the asteroid has to be changed so that it will clear Earth without impact, this means that the potential point of impact will temporarily move across other countries (say Poland if they modify the trajectory towards the East). And they're afraid that, in this example, the Polish would say no, keep the point of impact in Germany, completely oblivious to the fact that if it hits anywhere on the plant, it would most likely mean the destruction of all coutries alike. Of course, all of this is hypothetical at this point, but it's rather telling that they've even considered the possibility of such trivial national boundary issues in the event of a global cataclysm...
Go figure...
_____________________________
"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
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Date Feb. 19 2016 23:03:55
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Thanks for the info. 
