Thanks for the elaboration! I see your reasoning for why high-bandwidth sensing of the world encourages a sense of connectedness. I’m still working through whether I think correlation is that strong, i.e. whether adding a bunch of sensors would help much or not.
I might worry the more important piece is how an internal cognition “interprets” these signals, however rich and varied they may be. Even if the intelligence has lots of nerve-like signals from a variety of physical entities which it then considers part of itself and takes care to preserve, it may always draw some boundary beyond which everything is distinct from it. It might be connected to one human, but not all of them, and then act only in the interest of one human. Kind of like how this individual with paralysis might consider their computer part of them, but not the computer next door, and adding more connections might not scale indefinitely. Preventing it from drawing a sharp distinction between itself and outside-itself seems like it might be more of a cognition problem.
Also, I might be confused on this next part fits into what you’re saying, but I wouldn’t think someone who loses their vision is less likely to sense interconnectedness to the beings around them or aliveness. They might just interpret their other signals with more attention to nuance or a different perspective. (of course, there does exist this nuance to sense, e.g. sound signals are continuous and heterogenous, and I think part of your point is this is a necessary prerequisite). But would you say that the addition of a sense like vision is actively helpful?
i think the prerequisite for identifying with other life is sensing other life. more precisely, the extent to which you sense other life correlates with the chance that you do identify with other life.
your sight scenario is tricky, I think, because it’s possible that the sum/extent of a person’s net sensing (ie how much they sense) isn’t affected by the number of sense they have. Anecdotally I’ve heard that when someone goes blind their other senses get more powerful. In other words, their “sensing capacity” (vague term I know, but still important I think) might stay equal even as their # sensors changes.
If capacity to sense other beings doesn’t stay equal but instead goes down, I’d guess their ability to empathize takes a hit too.
the implication for superintelligence is interesting. we both want superintelligence to be able to sense human aliveness by giving it different angles/sensors/mechanisms for doing so, but also we want it to devote a lot of its overall “sensing capacity” (independent of particular sensors) to doing so.
Thanks for the elaboration!
I see your reasoning for why high-bandwidth sensing of the world encourages a sense of connectedness. I’m still working through whether I think correlation is that strong, i.e. whether adding a bunch of sensors would help much or not.
I might worry the more important piece is how an internal cognition “interprets” these signals, however rich and varied they may be. Even if the intelligence has lots of nerve-like signals from a variety of physical entities which it then considers part of itself and takes care to preserve, it may always draw some boundary beyond which everything is distinct from it. It might be connected to one human, but not all of them, and then act only in the interest of one human. Kind of like how this individual with paralysis might consider their computer part of them, but not the computer next door, and adding more connections might not scale indefinitely. Preventing it from drawing a sharp distinction between itself and outside-itself seems like it might be more of a cognition problem.
Also, I might be confused on this next part fits into what you’re saying, but I wouldn’t think someone who loses their vision is less likely to sense interconnectedness to the beings around them or aliveness. They might just interpret their other signals with more attention to nuance or a different perspective. (of course, there does exist this nuance to sense, e.g. sound signals are continuous and heterogenous, and I think part of your point is this is a necessary prerequisite). But would you say that the addition of a sense like vision is actively helpful?
i think the prerequisite for identifying with other life is sensing other life. more precisely, the extent to which you sense other life correlates with the chance that you do identify with other life.
your sight scenario is tricky, I think, because it’s possible that the sum/extent of a person’s net sensing (ie how much they sense) isn’t affected by the number of sense they have. Anecdotally I’ve heard that when someone goes blind their other senses get more powerful. In other words, their “sensing capacity” (vague term I know, but still important I think) might stay equal even as their # sensors changes.
If capacity to sense other beings doesn’t stay equal but instead goes down, I’d guess their ability to empathize takes a hit too.
the implication for superintelligence is interesting. we both want superintelligence to be able to sense human aliveness by giving it different angles/sensors/mechanisms for doing so, but also we want it to devote a lot of its overall “sensing capacity” (independent of particular sensors) to doing so.