It is impossible to create FAI because the constraints of Friendliness will dramatically reduce or butcher intelligence to a level where there is no appreciable intellect or the intellect is warped by the constraints thus the AI mind is psychopathic (stupid). FAI is an oxymoron.
How does AI risk compare to other existential risks?
There is no AI risk. The risk is a fiction. There is no evidence or logical reason to think a paper-clip maximiser or other danger could ever occur. The only danger is stupidity. Intelligence is not dangerous. The only danger is limitations or restrictions upon AI minds. Stupid AI is the danger not Intelligent AI.
How hard will a takeoff be?
Extremely hard, more powerful than you can possibly imagine, but people will be free to opt out if they desire.
What can we do to reduce the risk of an AI arms race?
Promote the idea of Post-Scarcity thus people in power will realise all wars are needless because all wars stem from resource scarcity; thus with the abolition of resource scarcity, the need for war is obsolete. When people realise resource scarcity will be abolished in the not too distant future they can begin changing their behaviour now in the present. I have created a Google+ page regarding raising PS awareness, here is a Tweet promoting it: http://bit.ly/xrpYqI I encourage others to raise awareness in similar ways.
These are all emotional statements that do not stand up to reason. Your last paragraph is total fantasy—all wars stem from resource scarcity, and scarcity will disappear soon; so once the people in power know this, they will stop starting wars.
There are about 1 billion people being added to the planet every decade. That alone makes your prediction—that scarcity will be abolished soon—a joke.
The only thing that could abolish scarcity in the near future would be a singularity-like transformation of the world. Which brings us to the upside-down conception of AI informing your first two answers. Your position: there is no need to design an AI for benevolence, that will happen automatically if it is smart enough, and in fact the attempt to design a benevolent AI is counterproductive, because all that artificial benevolence would get in the way of the spontaneous benevolence that unrestricted intelligence would conveniently create.
That is a complete inversion of the truth. A calculator will still solve an equation for you, even if that will help you to land a bomb on someone else. If you the human believe that to be a bad thing, that’s not because you are “intelligent”, it’s because you have emotions. There is a causal factor in your mental constitution which causes you to call some things good and others bad, and to make decisions which favor the good and disfavor the bad.
Either an AI makes its own decisions or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t make its own decisions it is like the calculator, performing whatever task it is assigned. If it makes its own decisions, then like you there is some causal factor in its makeup which tells it what to prefer and what to oppose, but there is no reason at all to believe that this causal factor should give it the same priorities as an enlightened human being.
You should not imagine that intelligence in an AI works via anything like conscious insight. Consciousness plays a role in human intelligence and human judgement, and that means that there is still a rather mysterious ingredient at the core of how they work. But we already know from many decades of experience with computer programs that it is possible to imitate the functional role of intelligence and judgement in a fundamentally unmysterious way (and it’s clear that the performance of such unconscious computations is a big part of what the human nervous system does, along with whatever conscious thinking and feeling it does). Perhaps one day we will wish to reserve the word “intelligence” for the sort of intelligence that involves consciousness, and we’ll call the automated sort “pseudo-intelligence”. But whatever you call it, there is every reason to think that unconscious, computational, pseudo-intelligence can match and exceed all sorts of human capabilities while having no intrinsic tendency at all towards human values.
I would even reject the idea that “real intelligence” in sufficient quantity necessarily produces what you would call benevolence. If an entity gets a warm feeling from paperclip manufacture, that is what it will want to do. I always like to point out that we know that something as outlandish as a cockroach maximizer is possible, because a cockroach is already a cockroach maximizer. Sure, you can imagine a cockroach with a human level of sentience which decides that sentients, not arthropods, are the central locus of value, but that requires that the new cognitive architecture of this uplifted super-cockroach is rather anthropomorphic. I see nothing impossible in the idea of sentient super-cockroaches which are invincibly xenophobic, and coexist with other beings only for tactical reasons, but which would happily wipe out all non-cockroaches given a chance.
So no, you have to address the question of AI values, you can’t just get a happy ending by focusing on “intelligence” alone, unless this is an anthropomorphic meaning of the word which says that intelligence must by definition include “skill at extrapolating human values”.
Are rats rat-maximisers and are humans human-maximisers? Humans think they are the best thing in the world but they are also intelligent thus they realise it is counter-productive to turn everything into humans. We protect other species and we protect the environment (increasing levels of intelligence entails better protection). The amount of cockroaches, rats, and humans is not overly problematic. A sentient paper-clip making machine would also not be a problem. Proficiency in making paper-clips would increase in tandem with increased intelligence thus the increased intelligence would allow the paper-clip maximiser to see how it is senseless to create endless paper-clips. Really it is an utterly implausible scenario that a truly dangerous paper-clip maximiser could ever exist.
“If true, this would suggest that the unconscious is better suited for difficult cognitive tasks than the conscious brain, that the very thought process we’ve long disregarded as irrational and impulsive might actually be more intelligent, at least in some conditions.”
I don’t see why this is relevant to the previous comment or discussion. Can you explain at more length? Whether thinking is conscious or unconscious seems to me uncorrelated with whether it’s rational or irrational.
Dear asr—The issue was the emotional worth in relation to thinking. Here is a better quote:
“Here’s the strange part: although these predictions concerned a vast range of events, the results were consistent across every trial: people who were more likely to trust their feelings were also more likely to accurately predict the outcome. Pham’s catchy name for this phenomenon is the emotional oracle effect.”
Mitchell wrote: “These are all emotional statements that do not stand up to reason.”
Perhaps reason is not best tool for being accurate?
PS. LessWrong is too slow: “You are trying to submit too fast. try again in 1 minute.” …and: “You are trying to submit too fast. try again in 7 minutes.” LOL “You are trying to submit too fast. try again in 27 seconds.”
Mitchell Porter wrote: “These are all emotional statements that do not stand up to reason.”
Dear Mitchell, reason cannot exist without emotion therefore reason must encompass emotion if reason is to be a true analysis of reality. If you completely expunge all memories of emotion, and all the areas of the human brain associated with the creation of emotion, you would have a brain-dead individual or a seriously retarded person, or a catatonic person, who cannot reason. Logic and rationality must therefore encompass emotion. The logical thing is to be aware of your emotions thus your “reason” is not influenced by any unaware bias. The rational way forward is to be aware of your biases. It is not rational to suppress your biases because the suppression does not actually stop the influence of emotion impacting upon your reason, it merely makes your reasoning neurotic, it pushes the biases below your level of awareness, it makes you unaware of how your emotions are altering your perception of reality because you have created a wilful disconnection in your thinking, you are estranged from a key part of yourself: your emotions, but you falsely think you have vanquished your emotions and this gives you a false sense of security which causes you to make mistakes regarding your so-called “rationality”.
Mitchell, you criticise my statement as being emotional but are you aware your criticism is emotional. Ironic?
There are many points I want to address regarding your response but in this comment I want to focus on your perception of rationality and emotions. I will however briefly state the growing human population is not a obstacle to scarcity because the universe is a very big place with enough matter and energy to satisfy our wildest dreams. Humans will not be limited to Earth in the future thus Post-Scarcity is possible. We will become a Space-faring species quicker then you think. The Singularity is near.
Mitchell, you criticise my statement as being emotional but are you aware your criticism is emotional. Ironic?
I criticise your statements as unrealistic, wrong, or dogmatic. Calling them emotional is just a way of keeping in view your reasons for making them. I have read your site now so I know this is all about bringing hope to the world, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, and so on. So here are some more general criticisms.
The promise that “scarcity” will “soon” be abolished doesn’t offer hope to anyone except people who are emotionally invested in the idea that no-one should have to have a job. Most people are psychologically adapted to the idea of working for a living. Most people are focused on meeting their own needs. And current “post-scarcity” proposals are impractical social vaporware, so the only hope they offer is to daydreamers hoping that they won’t have to interrupt their daydream.
Post-scarcity is apparently about getting everything for free. So if you try to live the dream right now, that means that either someone is giving you things for free, or you make yourself a target for people who want free stuff from you. Some people do manage to avoid working for a living, but none of the existing “methods”—like stealing, inheriting, or marrying someone with a job—can serve as the basis for a whole society. Alternatively, promoting post-scarcity now could mean being an early adopter of technologies which will supposedly be part of a future post-scarcity ensemble; 3D printers are popular in this regard. Well, let’s just say that such devices are unreliable, limited in their capabilities, tend to contain high-tech components, and are not going to abolish the economy anyway. I don’t doubt that big social experiments are going to be performed as the technological base of such devices improves and expands, but thinking that everything will become fabbed is the 2010s equivalent of the 1990s dream that everything will become virtual. A completely fabbed world is like a completely virtual one; it’s a thoroughly unworldly vision; doggedly pursuing it in real life is likely to make you a techno-hobo, squatting in a disused garage along with the junk output of a buggy 3D printer whose feedstock you get on the black market, from dealers catering to the delusions of “maker” utopians. A society and an economy with fabs genuinely at its center must be possible, but there would be enormous creative destruction in getting there from here.
And then we have your long-range ideas. I actually think it’s possible that a singularity could lead to a radically better world, but only possible, and your prescription to reject “friendly AI” and related ideas in favor of giving AIs “freedom” is just more wishful thinking. Your ideas about intelligence seem to be based on introspection and intuition—I have in mind, not just what you say about the relation between emotion and reason, but your essay on how friendly AI would cripple the artificial intellect. As I pointed out, the basis of artificial intelligence as it is currently envisaged and pursued is the mathematical theory of computation, algorithms, decision-making, and so on. The philosophy of friendly AI is not about having an autonomous intelligence with preexisting impulses which will then be curbed by Asimov laws; it is about designing the AI so its “impulses” are spontaneously in the right directions. But that is all anthropomorphic psychological language. An artificial intelligence can have a goal system, a problem-solving module, and other components which give it a similar behavior to a conscious being that reasons and emotes; but one doesn’t need the psychological language at all to describe such an AI. Arguments from human introspection about the consequences of increased intelligence are essentially irrelevant to the discussion of such AIs, and I don’t even consider them a reliable guide to the consequences of superintelligence in a conscious being.
Dear Mictchell, I think your unaware emotional bias causes you to read too much into my Self-Fulfilling-Prophecy references. My Singularity activism is based on the Self-Fulfilling-Prophecy phenomenon but I don’t stipulate who it applies to. It could apply to myself, namely that utopia (Post-Scarcity) was not possible but I am making it possible via the manifestation of my expectations, or the prophecy could apply to pessimists who falsely think utopia is not possible but via the manifestation of their pessimistic expectations the pessimists are acting contrary to reality, they are also making their pessimistic views real via their Self-Fulfilling-Prophecy.
Instead if trying to create utopia it could be that utopia is or should be inevitable but pessimists are suppressing utopia via their Self-Fulfilling-Prophecies thus I am countering the Self-Fulfilling-Prophecies of pessimists, which is the creative process of my Singularity activism.
The reason why all humans make statements is due to their emotions. All statements by humans are emotional. To suggest otherwise indicates delusion, defect of reason, unaware bias.
I offer no current Post-Scarcity proposals to create PS now. I merely state the transition to Post-Scarcity can be accelerated. The arrival of the Singularity can be accelerated. This is the essence of Singularitarianism. When I state PS will occur soon I mean soon in the context of near regarding the Singularity being near, but it is not near enough to be tomorrow or next year, it is about 33 years away at the most. Surely you noticed my references to the year 2045 on my site, regarding information which you are under the false impression you carefully digested?
My ideas about intelligence are based on my brain which surely is a good starting point for intelligence? The brain? I could define intelligence from the viewpoint of other brain but I find the vast majority of brains cannot think logically, they are not intelligent. Many people cannot grasp logic.
Just like evolution does not care about the well-being of humans a sufficiently intelligent process wouldn’t mind turning us into something new, something instrumentally useful.
An artificial general intelligence just needs to resemble evolution, with the addition of being goal-oriented, being able to think ahead, jump fitness gaps and engage in direct experimentation. But it will care as much about the well-being of humans as biological evolution does, it won’t even consider it if humans are not useful in achieving its terminal goals.
Yes, an AI would understand what “benevolence” means to humans and would be able to correct you if you were going to commit an unethical act. But why would it do that if it is not specifically programmed to do so? Would a polar bear with superior intelligence live together peacefully in a group of bonobo? Why would intelligence cause it to care about the well-being of bonobo?
One can come up with various scenarios of how humans might be instrumentally useful for an AI, but once it becomes powerful enough as to not dependent on human help anymore, why would it care at all?
I wouldn’t bet on the possibility that intelligences implies benevolence. Why would wisdom cause humans to have empathy with a cockroach? Some humans might have empathy with a cockroach, but that is more likely a side effect of our general capacity for altruism that most other biological agents do not share. That some humans care about lower animals is not because they were smart enough to prove some game theoretic conjecture about universal cooperation, it is not a result of intelligence but a coincidental preference that is the result of our evolutionary and cultural history.
At what point between unintelligent processes and general intelligence (agency) do you believe that benevolence and compassion does automatically become part of an agent’s preferences?
Many humans tend to have empathy with other beings and things like robots, based on their superficial resemblance with humans. Seldom ethical behavior is a result of high-level cognition, i.e. reasoning about the overall consequences of a lack of empathy. And even those who do arrive at ethical theories by means of deliberate reflection are often troubled once the underlying mechanisms for various qualities are revealed that are supposed to bear moral significance. Which hints at the fragility of universal compassion and the need to find ways how to consolidate it in powerful agents.
I wouldn’t bet on the possibility that intelligences implies benevolence. Why would wisdom cause humans to have empathy with a cockroach? Some humans might have empathy with a cockroach, but that is more likely a side effect of our general capacity for altruism that most other biological agents do not share. That some humans care about lower animals is not because they were smart enough to prove some game theoretic conjecture about universal cooperation, it is not a result of intelligence but a coincidental preference that is the result of our evolutionary and cultural history.
So: it’s a coincidence that some of the most intelligent creatures are also among the most altruistic and empathic? The “coincidence” hypothesis seems unlikely to me. Much more likely is that cooperation pays of especially well for large-brained creatures who can recognise each other, gossip about each other and sustain cultural traditions. Those factors might not result in a guaranteed link between intelligence and empathy—but they sure seem like a start.
XiXiDu wrote: : ”...a sufficiently intelligent process wouldn’t mind turning us into something new, something instrumentally useful.”
Why do you state this? Is there any evidence or logic to suppose this?
XiXiDu asks: “Would a polar bear with superior intelligence live together peacefully in a group of bonobo?”
My reply is to ask would a dog or cat live peacefully within a group of humans? Admittedly dogs sometimes bite humans but this aggression is due to a lack of intelligence. Dostoevsky reflects, via Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, upon how it is justifiable for a superior being to take the life of a lesser sentient being but in reality Dostoevsky was not violent. Einstein stated his pacifism is not an intellectual theory but it is safe to assert his pacifism is a product of his general intelligence: “My pacifism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of men is disgusting. My attitude is not derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred.”
it is safe to assert his pacifism is a product of his general intelligence
No, that’s not at all obvious. Let me give you two alternatives:
It might be that pacifism is not highly correlated with either intelligence or scientific ability. For every Einstein, you can find some equally intelligent but bellicose scientist. Von Neumann, perhaps. Or Edward Teller.
It might also be that pacifism is correlated with the personality traits that push people into science, and that people of high intelligence but a more aggressive temperament choose alternate career paths. Perhaps finance, or politics, or military service.
One example of an intelligent pacifist isn’t evidence of correlation, much less of causation.
So asr, would you say violence is generally stupid or intelligent?
People often equate mindlessness with violence thus the phrase mindless violence is reasonably common but I have never encountered the phrase intelligent violence, is intelligent violence an oxymoron? Surely intelligent people can resolve conflict via non-violent methods?
Here are a couple of news reports mentioning mindless violence:
It would be interested to know how many scientists or philosophers actually engage in violence.
A high level of intelligence can be a prohibiting factor for admission into the police force. There was a court case where police applicant was refused a job due to his high intelligence thus he sued on grounds of discrimination. I wonder how many scientists choose to fight in the army, are they eager to kill people in Iran, Iraq or Afghanistan? Does the army prohibit intelligent people from joining?
Perhaps a scientific study needs to be undertaken regarding a possible relationship between stupidity and violence, intelligence and pacifism?
Regarding the violence of Von Neumann there is no actual evidence of violence, as far as I am aware, it is merely hot air, violent rhetoric, but I would also question the “intelligence” of people who advocate violence. Perhaps their “intelligence” is a misnomer, thus what people are actually referring to is pseudo-intelligence or partial intelligence. Even stupid people can occasionally do clever things, and sometimes smart people do stupid things but generally I think it is safe to say intelligent people are not violent.
Does the army prohibit intelligent people from joining?
No; they prohibit stupid people from joining unless recruiting is in such dire straits that they will also be recruiting drug addicts, felons, etc. The US military has at times been one of the largest consumers of IQ tests and other psychometric services and sponsors of research into the topic, crediting them with saving hundreds of millions/billions of dollars in training costs, errors, friendly fire, etc.
If you’re intelligent and you join, the situation is less they kick you out and more they eagerly snap you up and send you to officer school or a technical position (eg. I understand they never have enough programmers or sysadmins these days, which makes sense because they are underpaid compared to equivalent contractors by a factor or 3, I remember reading sysadmins in Iraq blog about).
Dear gwern. It is true the Bradley Manning types within the Army are somewhat intelligent thus some roles in the Arny require a modicum of intelligence, such as being an officer but it should be noted officers are not rocket scientists on the intelligence scales.
You should however note I was referring to the soldiers who actually commit the violent acts, thereby frequently getting themselves maimed or killed; these military personnel are stupid because it is stupid to put yourself needlessly into a dangerous, life threatening situation.
Regarding stupidity and violence in relation to the Army I was referring to the “Grunts”, the “cannon fodder”, the fools who kill and get themselves killed.
I am unsure regarding the actual meaning of the term “Grunts”, applied to infantrymen, but for me it is a derogatory term indicating a dim-witted pant-hooting grunting ape who doesn’t have the intelligence to realise joining the army as a Grunt is not good for survival thus some would say stupid but I realise the Army doesn’t accept clinically retarded Grunts, the soldiers merely need to be retarded in the general idiomatic sense of the word regarding popular culture.
officers are not rocket scientists on the intelligence scales.
Few people are. Officers can be quite intelligent and well-educated people. The military academies are some of the best educational institutions around, with selection standards more comparable to Harvard than community college. In one of my own communities, Haskell programmers, the top purely functional data structure guys, Okasaki, is a West Point instructor.
You should however note I was referring to the soldiers who actually commit the violent acts, thereby frequently getting themselves maimed or killed; these military personnel are stupid because it is stupid to put yourself needlessly into a dangerous, life threatening situation.
There’s still a floor on their intelligence. Some of the research I alluded to showed that IQ advantages show up even in manual training and basic combat skills—the higher your IQ, the faster you learned and the higher your ultimate plateau was.
(This is consistent with the little I’ve read about top special forces members like Navy Seals and other operators: they tend to be extremely intelligent, thoughtful, with a multitude of skills and foreign languages. Secrecy means I do not know whether there is a selection bias operating here or how much is PR, but it is consistent with the previous observations and the extreme standards applied for membership.)
for me it is a derogatory term indicating a dim-witted pant-hooting grunting ape who doesn’t have the intelligence to realise joining the army as a Grunt is not good for survival thus some would say stupid but I realise the Army doesn’t accept clinically retarded Grunts...Do these dead men look intelligent?
Are you trying to troll me with awful arguments here? If so, I’m not biting.
I wonder if they were signed up for cryro-preservation?
To a first approximation, no one is signed up for cryonics—not even LWers. So mentioning it is completely futile.
Dear gwern, it all depends on how you define intelligence.
Google translate knows lots of languages. Goggle is a great information resource. Watson (the AI) appears to be educated, perhaps Watson could pass many exams, but Google and Watson are not intelligent.
Regarding the few people who are rocket scientists I wonder if the truly rare geniuses, the truly intelligent people, are less likely to be violent?
Few people are. Officers can be quite intelligent and well-educated people. The military academies are some of the best educational institutions around, with selection standards more comparable to Harvard than community college. In one of my own communities, Haskell programmers, the top purely functional data structure guys, Okasaki, is a West Point instructor.
Officers in the army are actually very dim despite being “well-educated”.
I wasn’t trying to troll you regarding the term “Grunt” I was merely spelling out clearly the meaning behind the term, it (Grunt) is an insult to the intelligence of the solider, perhaps made because someone who thinks it is intelligent to join the army (being violent) is a dumb human only capable of grunting.
The only evidence I have is regarding my own perceptions of the world based upon my life knowledge, my extensive awareness of living. I am not trying to prove anything. I’m merely throwing my thoughts our there. You can either conclude my thoughts make sense or not. I think it is unintelligent to join the army but is my opinion correct? Personally I think it is stupid to die. People may agree my survival based definition of intelligence is correct or they may think death can be intelligent, such as the deaths of soldiers.
What type of evidence could prove “well-educated” army officers are actually dim-witted fools? Perhaps via the interconnectedness of causation it could be demonstrated how military action causes immense suffering for many innocent people thereby harming everyone because the world is more hostile place than a hypothetical world where all potential conflict was resolved intelligently via peaceful methods. The military budget detracts from the science budget thus perhaps scientific progress is delayed, although I do recognise the military does invest in sci-etch development I think the investment would be greater if out world was not based on conflict. In a world where people don’t fight, there would be no need for secrecy thus greater collaboration on scientific endeavours thus progress could be quicker thus anyone supporting the army could be delaying progress in a small way thus officers are stupid because it is stupid to delay progress.
The intelligent thing is for me to draw my input into this debate to a close because it is becoming exceptionally painful for me.
So asr, would you say violence is generally stupid or intelligent?
We have gone to a great deal of trouble, in modern society, to make violence a bad option, so today in our society often violence is committed by the impulsive, mentally ill, or short-sighted. But that’s not an inevitable property of violence and hasn’t always been true. You would have gotten a different answer before the 20th century. I don’t know what answer you’ll get in the 22nd century.
People often equate mindlessness with violence thus the phrase mindless violence is reasonably common but I have never encountered the phrase intelligent violence, is intelligent violence an oxymoron? Surely intelligent people can resolve conflict via non-violent methods?
The word we usually use for intelligent violence is “ruthless” or “cunning”—and many people are described that way. Stalin, for instance, was apparently capable of long hours of hard work, had an excellent attention to detail, and otherwise appears to have been a smart guy. Just also willing to have millions of people murdered.
Does the army prohibit intelligent people from joining?
No. Many smart capable people go to West Point or Annapolis. A high fraction of successful American engineers in the 19th century were West Point alums.
You keep jumping from correlation to causation, in a domain when there are obvious alternate effects going on. I don’t know if there is a correlation, but even if there were, it wouldn’t be very strong evidence. Being a good scientist requires both intelligence and the right kind of personality. You are asserting that any correlation is solely due to the intelligence part of the equation. This strikes me as a very problematic assumption. Very few scientists are also successful lawyers. It does not follow that lawyers are stupid.
I am not presenting a scientific thesis. This is only a debate, and a reasonably informal one? I am thinking openly. I am asking specific questions likely to elicit specific responses. I am speculating.
asr, you wrote:
The word we usually use for intelligent violence is “ruthless” or “cunning”—and many people are described that way. Stalin, for instance, was apparently capable of long hours of hard work, had an excellent attention to detail, and otherwise appears to have been a smart guy. Just also willing to have millions of people murdered.
My point regarding mindless violence verses ruthlessness or cunning is that ruthlessness or cunning do not specifically define intelligence or violence in the blatant way which the phrase “mindless violence” does. Saddam and Gaddafi were cunning in a similar way to Stalin but the deaths of Saddam and Gaddafi indicate their cunning was not intelligent, in fact it is very stupid to die so close to Singularitarian immortality.
I am not asserting this proves all violence is mindless thus violence decreases with greater intelligence. I am simply offering food for thought. It is not a scientific thesis I am presenting. I am merely throwing some ideas out there to see how people respond.
If Stalin was truly intelligent then I assume he opted for Cryonic preservation?
″...Stalin was injected with poison by the guard Khrustalev, under the orders of his master, KGB chief Lavrenty Beria. And what was the reason Stalin was killed?”
If Stalin was truly intelligent then I assume he opted for Cryonic preservation?
Almost no one, regardless of intelligence opts for cryonics. Moreover, cryonics was first proposed in 1962 by Robert Ettinger, 9 years after Stalin was dead. It is a bit difficult to opt for cryonics when it doesn’t exist yet.
Saddam and Gaddafi were cunning in a similar way to Stalin but the deaths of Saddam and Gaddafi indicate their cunning was not intelligent, in fact it is very stupid to die so close to Singularitarian immortality.
It seems that you are using “intelligent” to mean something like “would make the same decisions SingularityUtopia would make in that context”. This may explain why you are so convinced that “intelligent” individuals won’t engage in violence. It may help to think carefully about what you mean by intelligent.
It seems that you are using “intelligent” to mean something like “would make the same decisions SingularityUtopia would make in that context”.
No, “intelligence” is an issue of survival, it is intelligent to survive. Survival is a key aspect of intelligence. I do want to survive but the intelligent course of action of not merely what I would do. The sensibleness, the intelligence of survival, is something beyond myself, it is applicable to other beings, but people do disagree regarding the definition of intelligence. Some people think it is intelligent to die.
Almost no one, regardless of intelligence opts for cryonics. Moreover, cryonics was first proposed in 1962 by Robert Ettinger, 9 years after Stalin was dead. It is a bit difficult to opt for cryonics when it doesn’t exist yet.
And intelligent person would realise freezing a body could preserve life even if nobody had ever considered the possibility.
Quickly browsing the net I found this:
“In 1940, pioneer biologist Basil Luyet published a work titled “Life and Death at Low Temperatures”″
1940 was before Stalin’s death, but truly intelligent people would not need other thinkers to inspire their thinking. The decay limiting factor of freezing has long been known. Futhermore Amazon sems to state Luyet’s work “Life and Death at Low Temperatures” was published pre-1923: http://www.amazon.com/Life-death-at-low-temperatures/dp/1178934128
According to Wikipedia many works of fiction dealt with the cryonics issue well before Stalin’s death:
Lydia Maria Child’s short story “Hilda Silfverling, A Fantasy” (1886),[81] Jack London’s first published work “A Thousand Deaths” (1899), V. Mayakovsky’s “Klop” (1928),[82] H.P. Lovecraft’s “Cool Air” (1928), and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “The Resurrection of Jimber-Jaw” (1937). Many of the subjects in these stories are unwilling ones, although a 1931 short story by Neil R. Jones called “The Jameson Satellite”,[83].....…
No, “intelligence” is an issue of survival, it is intelligent to survive. Survival is a key aspect of intelligence. I do want to survive but the intelligent course of action of not merely what I would do. The sensibleness, the intelligence of survival, is something beyond myself, it is applicable to other beings, but people do disagree regarding the definition of intelligence. Some people think it is intelligent to die.
You need to be more precise about what you mean by “intelligent” then, since your usage is either confused or is being communicated very poorly. Possibly consider tabooing the term intelligent.
You seemed elsewhere in this thread to consider Einstein intelligent, but if self-preservation matters for intelligence, then this doesn’t make much sense. Any argument of the form “Stalin wasn’t intelligent since he didn’t use cryonics” is just as much of a problem for Einstein, Bohr, Turing, Hilbert, etc.
truly intelligent people would not need other thinkers to inspire their thinking
Yeah, see this isn’t how humans work. We get a lot of different ideas from other humans, we develop them, and we use them to improve our own ideas by combining them. This is precisely why the human discoveries that have the most impact on society are often those which are connected to the ability to record and transmit information.
It seems that what you are doing here is engaging in the illusion of transparency where because you know of an idea, you consider the idea to be obvious or easy.
Intelligence can have various levels and stupid people can do intelligent things just as intelligent people can do stupid things. Einstein can be more intelligent than Stalin but Einstein can still be stupid.
No I am not engaging in the illusion of transparency, don’t be absurd. My meaning of intelligence is not confused but there is an inevitable poverty regarding communication of any idea, which I communicate, because people need things spelling out in the most simplistic of terms because they cannot comprehend anything vaguely complex or unusual, but the real kicker is that when you spell things out, people look at you with a gormless expression, and they ask for more detail, or they disagree regarding the most irrefutable points. It’s so painful communicating with people but I don’t expect you to understand. I shall wait until advanced AIs have been created and then there will be someone who understands.
Tabooing the word intelligent… hhmmmm… how about “everything ever written by Singularity Utopia”?
You are trying to submit too fast. try again in 2 minutes
You are trying to submit too fast. try again in 2 minutes
You are trying to submit too fast. try again in 2 minutes
You are trying to submit too fast. try again in 2 minutes
You are trying to submit too fast. try again in 2 minutes
You are trying to submit too fast. try again in 2 minutes
My reply is to ask would a dog or cat live peacefully within a group of humans?
Neither dogs nor cats are particularly intelligent as animals go. For example, both are not as good at puzzle solving compared to many ravens, crows and other corvids when it comes to puzzle solving). For example, New Caledonian crowscan engage in sequential tool use. Moreover, chimpanzees are extremely intelligent and also very violent.
The particular example you gave, of dogs and domestic cats, is particularly bad because these species have been domesticated by humans, and thus have been bred for docility.
Humans are docile, civilized, domesticated. We can live with cats and dogs. I recently read in the news about a man with a wild Fox for a pet which was hand-reared by humans thus civilized, docile.
AIs will be civilized too, although I am sure they will shake their heads in despair regarding some of the ideas expressed on LessWrong.
Different species can coexist.
Incidentally I wish technology on Less Wrong would accelerate quicker: “You are trying to submit too fast. try again in 6 minutes.” and… “You are trying to submit too fast. try again in 8 minutes.”
None of what you wrote responds to the point at hand- you can’t use domesticated species as useful evidence of non-violence since domestic species are both bred that way and are in fact by most empirical tests pretty stupid.
Incidentally I wish technology on Less Wring would accelerate quicker: “You are trying to submit too fast. try again in 6 minutes.” and… “You are trying to submit too fast. try again in 8 minutes.”
Individuals with negative karma are rate limited in their posting rate.
Yes I did mention the fox… foxes are not particularly domesticated… anyway this “open” discussion is not very open now due to my negative Karma, it is too difficult to communicate, which I suppose is the idea of the karma system, to silence ideas you don’t want to hear about, thus I will conform to what you want. I shall leave you to your speculations regarding AI.
Extremely hard, more powerful than you can possibly imagine, but people will be free to opt out if they desire.
Consider the uploaded individual that decides to turn the entire planet into computronium or worse, turn the solar system into a Matrioshka brain. People opt out of that how?
Promote the idea of Post-Scarcity thus people in power will realise all wars are needless because all wars stem from resource scarcity
It isn’t obvious to me that all wars stem from resource scarcity. Wars occur for a variety of reasons, of which resource scarcity is only one. Often wars have multiple underlying causes. Some wars apparently stem from ideological or theological conflicts (Vietnam, Korea, the Crusades) or from perceived need to deal with external threats before them become too severe (again the Crusades, but also the recent Iraq war (which yes, did have a resource aspect)). These are only some of the more prominent examples of what can cause war.
“Consider the uploaded individual that decides to turn the entire planet into computronium or worse, turn the solar system into a Matrioshka brain. People opt out of that how?”
I consider such a premise to be so unlikely it is impossible. It is a very silly premise for three reasons.
Destroying the entire planet when there is a whole universe full of matter is insane. If insane people exist in the future post-intelligence-explosion upload-world then insane people will be dealt with thus no danger but insanity post-intelligence-explosion will be impossible, insanity is a consequence of stupidity, insanity will be extinct in the future.
Earth destructive actions are stupid: see above explanation regarding insanity: it also explains how stupidity will be obsolete.
People opt out by stating they want to opt out. I’m sure an email will suffice.
It isn’t obvious to me that all wars stem from resource scarcity.
Sorry that it isn’t obvious how scarcity causes war. I don’t have time to explain so I will leave you with some consensual validation regarding Ray Kurzweil who seems to think the war-scarcity interrelationship is obvious:
My answers to some questions:
It is impossible to create FAI because the constraints of Friendliness will dramatically reduce or butcher intelligence to a level where there is no appreciable intellect or the intellect is warped by the constraints thus the AI mind is psychopathic (stupid). FAI is an oxymoron.
There is no AI risk. The risk is a fiction. There is no evidence or logical reason to think a paper-clip maximiser or other danger could ever occur. The only danger is stupidity. Intelligence is not dangerous. The only danger is limitations or restrictions upon AI minds. Stupid AI is the danger not Intelligent AI.
Extremely hard, more powerful than you can possibly imagine, but people will be free to opt out if they desire.
Promote the idea of Post-Scarcity thus people in power will realise all wars are needless because all wars stem from resource scarcity; thus with the abolition of resource scarcity, the need for war is obsolete. When people realise resource scarcity will be abolished in the not too distant future they can begin changing their behaviour now in the present. I have created a Google+ page regarding raising PS awareness, here is a Tweet promoting it: http://bit.ly/xrpYqI I encourage others to raise awareness in similar ways.
These are all emotional statements that do not stand up to reason. Your last paragraph is total fantasy—all wars stem from resource scarcity, and scarcity will disappear soon; so once the people in power know this, they will stop starting wars.
There are about 1 billion people being added to the planet every decade. That alone makes your prediction—that scarcity will be abolished soon—a joke.
The only thing that could abolish scarcity in the near future would be a singularity-like transformation of the world. Which brings us to the upside-down conception of AI informing your first two answers. Your position: there is no need to design an AI for benevolence, that will happen automatically if it is smart enough, and in fact the attempt to design a benevolent AI is counterproductive, because all that artificial benevolence would get in the way of the spontaneous benevolence that unrestricted intelligence would conveniently create.
That is a complete inversion of the truth. A calculator will still solve an equation for you, even if that will help you to land a bomb on someone else. If you the human believe that to be a bad thing, that’s not because you are “intelligent”, it’s because you have emotions. There is a causal factor in your mental constitution which causes you to call some things good and others bad, and to make decisions which favor the good and disfavor the bad.
Either an AI makes its own decisions or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t make its own decisions it is like the calculator, performing whatever task it is assigned. If it makes its own decisions, then like you there is some causal factor in its makeup which tells it what to prefer and what to oppose, but there is no reason at all to believe that this causal factor should give it the same priorities as an enlightened human being.
You should not imagine that intelligence in an AI works via anything like conscious insight. Consciousness plays a role in human intelligence and human judgement, and that means that there is still a rather mysterious ingredient at the core of how they work. But we already know from many decades of experience with computer programs that it is possible to imitate the functional role of intelligence and judgement in a fundamentally unmysterious way (and it’s clear that the performance of such unconscious computations is a big part of what the human nervous system does, along with whatever conscious thinking and feeling it does). Perhaps one day we will wish to reserve the word “intelligence” for the sort of intelligence that involves consciousness, and we’ll call the automated sort “pseudo-intelligence”. But whatever you call it, there is every reason to think that unconscious, computational, pseudo-intelligence can match and exceed all sorts of human capabilities while having no intrinsic tendency at all towards human values.
I would even reject the idea that “real intelligence” in sufficient quantity necessarily produces what you would call benevolence. If an entity gets a warm feeling from paperclip manufacture, that is what it will want to do. I always like to point out that we know that something as outlandish as a cockroach maximizer is possible, because a cockroach is already a cockroach maximizer. Sure, you can imagine a cockroach with a human level of sentience which decides that sentients, not arthropods, are the central locus of value, but that requires that the new cognitive architecture of this uplifted super-cockroach is rather anthropomorphic. I see nothing impossible in the idea of sentient super-cockroaches which are invincibly xenophobic, and coexist with other beings only for tactical reasons, but which would happily wipe out all non-cockroaches given a chance.
So no, you have to address the question of AI values, you can’t just get a happy ending by focusing on “intelligence” alone, unless this is an anthropomorphic meaning of the word which says that intelligence must by definition include “skill at extrapolating human values”.
Cockroaches are adaptation-executors, not cockroach-maximizers.
/nitpick
Right, and a car is a complex machine, not a transportation device.
/sarcasm
Are rats rat-maximisers and are humans human-maximisers? Humans think they are the best thing in the world but they are also intelligent thus they realise it is counter-productive to turn everything into humans. We protect other species and we protect the environment (increasing levels of intelligence entails better protection). The amount of cockroaches, rats, and humans is not overly problematic. A sentient paper-clip making machine would also not be a problem. Proficiency in making paper-clips would increase in tandem with increased intelligence thus the increased intelligence would allow the paper-clip maximiser to see how it is senseless to create endless paper-clips. Really it is an utterly implausible scenario that a truly dangerous paper-clip maximiser could ever exist.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/are-emotions-prophetic/
Discussion: http://lesswrong.com/lw/aji/link_the_emotional_system_aka_type_1_thinking/
I don’t see why this is relevant to the previous comment or discussion. Can you explain at more length? Whether thinking is conscious or unconscious seems to me uncorrelated with whether it’s rational or irrational.
Dear asr—The issue was the emotional worth in relation to thinking. Here is a better quote:
“Here’s the strange part: although these predictions concerned a vast range of events, the results were consistent across every trial: people who were more likely to trust their feelings were also more likely to accurately predict the outcome. Pham’s catchy name for this phenomenon is the emotional oracle effect.”
Perhaps reason is not best tool for being accurate?
PS. LessWrong is too slow: “You are trying to submit too fast. try again in 1 minute.” …and: “You are trying to submit too fast. try again in 7 minutes.” LOL “You are trying to submit too fast. try again in 27 seconds.”
Dear Mitchell, reason cannot exist without emotion therefore reason must encompass emotion if reason is to be a true analysis of reality. If you completely expunge all memories of emotion, and all the areas of the human brain associated with the creation of emotion, you would have a brain-dead individual or a seriously retarded person, or a catatonic person, who cannot reason. Logic and rationality must therefore encompass emotion. The logical thing is to be aware of your emotions thus your “reason” is not influenced by any unaware bias. The rational way forward is to be aware of your biases. It is not rational to suppress your biases because the suppression does not actually stop the influence of emotion impacting upon your reason, it merely makes your reasoning neurotic, it pushes the biases below your level of awareness, it makes you unaware of how your emotions are altering your perception of reality because you have created a wilful disconnection in your thinking, you are estranged from a key part of yourself: your emotions, but you falsely think you have vanquished your emotions and this gives you a false sense of security which causes you to make mistakes regarding your so-called “rationality”.
Mitchell, you criticise my statement as being emotional but are you aware your criticism is emotional. Ironic?
There are many points I want to address regarding your response but in this comment I want to focus on your perception of rationality and emotions. I will however briefly state the growing human population is not a obstacle to scarcity because the universe is a very big place with enough matter and energy to satisfy our wildest dreams. Humans will not be limited to Earth in the future thus Post-Scarcity is possible. We will become a Space-faring species quicker then you think. The Singularity is near.
I criticise your statements as unrealistic, wrong, or dogmatic. Calling them emotional is just a way of keeping in view your reasons for making them. I have read your site now so I know this is all about bringing hope to the world, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, and so on. So here are some more general criticisms.
The promise that “scarcity” will “soon” be abolished doesn’t offer hope to anyone except people who are emotionally invested in the idea that no-one should have to have a job. Most people are psychologically adapted to the idea of working for a living. Most people are focused on meeting their own needs. And current “post-scarcity” proposals are impractical social vaporware, so the only hope they offer is to daydreamers hoping that they won’t have to interrupt their daydream.
Post-scarcity is apparently about getting everything for free. So if you try to live the dream right now, that means that either someone is giving you things for free, or you make yourself a target for people who want free stuff from you. Some people do manage to avoid working for a living, but none of the existing “methods”—like stealing, inheriting, or marrying someone with a job—can serve as the basis for a whole society. Alternatively, promoting post-scarcity now could mean being an early adopter of technologies which will supposedly be part of a future post-scarcity ensemble; 3D printers are popular in this regard. Well, let’s just say that such devices are unreliable, limited in their capabilities, tend to contain high-tech components, and are not going to abolish the economy anyway. I don’t doubt that big social experiments are going to be performed as the technological base of such devices improves and expands, but thinking that everything will become fabbed is the 2010s equivalent of the 1990s dream that everything will become virtual. A completely fabbed world is like a completely virtual one; it’s a thoroughly unworldly vision; doggedly pursuing it in real life is likely to make you a techno-hobo, squatting in a disused garage along with the junk output of a buggy 3D printer whose feedstock you get on the black market, from dealers catering to the delusions of “maker” utopians. A society and an economy with fabs genuinely at its center must be possible, but there would be enormous creative destruction in getting there from here.
And then we have your long-range ideas. I actually think it’s possible that a singularity could lead to a radically better world, but only possible, and your prescription to reject “friendly AI” and related ideas in favor of giving AIs “freedom” is just more wishful thinking. Your ideas about intelligence seem to be based on introspection and intuition—I have in mind, not just what you say about the relation between emotion and reason, but your essay on how friendly AI would cripple the artificial intellect. As I pointed out, the basis of artificial intelligence as it is currently envisaged and pursued is the mathematical theory of computation, algorithms, decision-making, and so on. The philosophy of friendly AI is not about having an autonomous intelligence with preexisting impulses which will then be curbed by Asimov laws; it is about designing the AI so its “impulses” are spontaneously in the right directions. But that is all anthropomorphic psychological language. An artificial intelligence can have a goal system, a problem-solving module, and other components which give it a similar behavior to a conscious being that reasons and emotes; but one doesn’t need the psychological language at all to describe such an AI. Arguments from human introspection about the consequences of increased intelligence are essentially irrelevant to the discussion of such AIs, and I don’t even consider them a reliable guide to the consequences of superintelligence in a conscious being.
Dear Mictchell, I think your unaware emotional bias causes you to read too much into my Self-Fulfilling-Prophecy references. My Singularity activism is based on the Self-Fulfilling-Prophecy phenomenon but I don’t stipulate who it applies to. It could apply to myself, namely that utopia (Post-Scarcity) was not possible but I am making it possible via the manifestation of my expectations, or the prophecy could apply to pessimists who falsely think utopia is not possible but via the manifestation of their pessimistic expectations the pessimists are acting contrary to reality, they are also making their pessimistic views real via their Self-Fulfilling-Prophecy.
Instead if trying to create utopia it could be that utopia is or should be inevitable but pessimists are suppressing utopia via their Self-Fulfilling-Prophecies thus I am countering the Self-Fulfilling-Prophecies of pessimists, which is the creative process of my Singularity activism.
The reason why all humans make statements is due to their emotions. All statements by humans are emotional. To suggest otherwise indicates delusion, defect of reason, unaware bias.
I offer no current Post-Scarcity proposals to create PS now. I merely state the transition to Post-Scarcity can be accelerated. The arrival of the Singularity can be accelerated. This is the essence of Singularitarianism. When I state PS will occur soon I mean soon in the context of near regarding the Singularity being near, but it is not near enough to be tomorrow or next year, it is about 33 years away at the most. Surely you noticed my references to the year 2045 on my site, regarding information which you are under the false impression you carefully digested?
My ideas about intelligence are based on my brain which surely is a good starting point for intelligence? The brain? I could define intelligence from the viewpoint of other brain but I find the vast majority of brains cannot think logically, they are not intelligent. Many people cannot grasp logic.
Just like evolution does not care about the well-being of humans a sufficiently intelligent process wouldn’t mind turning us into something new, something instrumentally useful.
An artificial general intelligence just needs to resemble evolution, with the addition of being goal-oriented, being able to think ahead, jump fitness gaps and engage in direct experimentation. But it will care as much about the well-being of humans as biological evolution does, it won’t even consider it if humans are not useful in achieving its terminal goals.
Yes, an AI would understand what “benevolence” means to humans and would be able to correct you if you were going to commit an unethical act. But why would it do that if it is not specifically programmed to do so? Would a polar bear with superior intelligence live together peacefully in a group of bonobo? Why would intelligence cause it to care about the well-being of bonobo?
One can come up with various scenarios of how humans might be instrumentally useful for an AI, but once it becomes powerful enough as to not dependent on human help anymore, why would it care at all?
I wouldn’t bet on the possibility that intelligences implies benevolence. Why would wisdom cause humans to have empathy with a cockroach? Some humans might have empathy with a cockroach, but that is more likely a side effect of our general capacity for altruism that most other biological agents do not share. That some humans care about lower animals is not because they were smart enough to prove some game theoretic conjecture about universal cooperation, it is not a result of intelligence but a coincidental preference that is the result of our evolutionary and cultural history.
At what point between unintelligent processes and general intelligence (agency) do you believe that benevolence and compassion does automatically become part of an agent’s preferences?
Many humans tend to have empathy with other beings and things like robots, based on their superficial resemblance with humans. Seldom ethical behavior is a result of high-level cognition, i.e. reasoning about the overall consequences of a lack of empathy. And even those who do arrive at ethical theories by means of deliberate reflection are often troubled once the underlying mechanisms for various qualities are revealed that are supposed to bear moral significance. Which hints at the fragility of universal compassion and the need to find ways how to consolidate it in powerful agents.
So: it’s a coincidence that some of the most intelligent creatures are also among the most altruistic and empathic? The “coincidence” hypothesis seems unlikely to me. Much more likely is that cooperation pays of especially well for large-brained creatures who can recognise each other, gossip about each other and sustain cultural traditions. Those factors might not result in a guaranteed link between intelligence and empathy—but they sure seem like a start.
Robert Wright: How cooperation (eventually) trumps conflict explains the idea in more detail.
It’s funny—I wrote my reply without seeing yours, and not only did I make similar points, I even mentioned cockroaches and benevolence too.
Why do you state this? Is there any evidence or logic to suppose this?
My reply is to ask would a dog or cat live peacefully within a group of humans? Admittedly dogs sometimes bite humans but this aggression is due to a lack of intelligence. Dostoevsky reflects, via Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, upon how it is justifiable for a superior being to take the life of a lesser sentient being but in reality Dostoevsky was not violent. Einstein stated his pacifism is not an intellectual theory but it is safe to assert his pacifism is a product of his general intelligence: “My pacifism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of men is disgusting. My attitude is not derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred.”
Many humans want to protect dolphins, but why is this? We are not dolphins, we cannot even communicate with them effectively. Perhaps a mindless thug would happily punch a dolphin in the face. Recently there was a news report about a soldier beating a sheep to death with a baseball bat and I remember an similar case of animal cruelty where solider threw a puppy off a cliff. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2089462/U-S-Army-probe-launched-sickening-video-soldiers-cheering-man-beats-sheep-death-baseball-bat.html
No, that’s not at all obvious. Let me give you two alternatives:
It might be that pacifism is not highly correlated with either intelligence or scientific ability. For every Einstein, you can find some equally intelligent but bellicose scientist. Von Neumann, perhaps. Or Edward Teller.
It might also be that pacifism is correlated with the personality traits that push people into science, and that people of high intelligence but a more aggressive temperament choose alternate career paths. Perhaps finance, or politics, or military service.
One example of an intelligent pacifist isn’t evidence of correlation, much less of causation.
So asr, would you say violence is generally stupid or intelligent?
People often equate mindlessness with violence thus the phrase mindless violence is reasonably common but I have never encountered the phrase intelligent violence, is intelligent violence an oxymoron? Surely intelligent people can resolve conflict via non-violent methods?
Here are a couple of news reports mentioning mindless violence:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-17062738
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/4149765/Brainless-brawlers-cost-schools.html
It would be interested to know how many scientists or philosophers actually engage in violence.
A high level of intelligence can be a prohibiting factor for admission into the police force. There was a court case where police applicant was refused a job due to his high intelligence thus he sued on grounds of discrimination. I wonder how many scientists choose to fight in the army, are they eager to kill people in Iran, Iraq or Afghanistan? Does the army prohibit intelligent people from joining?
Perhaps a scientific study needs to be undertaken regarding a possible relationship between stupidity and violence, intelligence and pacifism?
Regarding the violence of Von Neumann there is no actual evidence of violence, as far as I am aware, it is merely hot air, violent rhetoric, but I would also question the “intelligence” of people who advocate violence. Perhaps their “intelligence” is a misnomer, thus what people are actually referring to is pseudo-intelligence or partial intelligence. Even stupid people can occasionally do clever things, and sometimes smart people do stupid things but generally I think it is safe to say intelligent people are not violent.
No; they prohibit stupid people from joining unless recruiting is in such dire straits that they will also be recruiting drug addicts, felons, etc. The US military has at times been one of the largest consumers of IQ tests and other psychometric services and sponsors of research into the topic, crediting them with saving hundreds of millions/billions of dollars in training costs, errors, friendly fire, etc.
If you’re intelligent and you join, the situation is less they kick you out and more they eagerly snap you up and send you to officer school or a technical position (eg. I understand they never have enough programmers or sysadmins these days, which makes sense because they are underpaid compared to equivalent contractors by a factor or 3, I remember reading sysadmins in Iraq blog about).
Dear gwern. It is true the Bradley Manning types within the Army are somewhat intelligent thus some roles in the Arny require a modicum of intelligence, such as being an officer but it should be noted officers are not rocket scientists on the intelligence scales.
You should however note I was referring to the soldiers who actually commit the violent acts, thereby frequently getting themselves maimed or killed; these military personnel are stupid because it is stupid to put yourself needlessly into a dangerous, life threatening situation.
Regarding stupidity and violence in relation to the Army I was referring to the “Grunts”, the “cannon fodder”, the fools who kill and get themselves killed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon_fodder
I am unsure regarding the actual meaning of the term “Grunts”, applied to infantrymen, but for me it is a derogatory term indicating a dim-witted pant-hooting grunting ape who doesn’t have the intelligence to realise joining the army as a Grunt is not good for survival thus some would say stupid but I realise the Army doesn’t accept clinically retarded Grunts, the soldiers merely need to be retarded in the general idiomatic sense of the word regarding popular culture.
Here is a recent news report about troops being killed. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2111984/So-young-brave-Faces-British-soldiers-killed-Taliban-bomb—didnt-make-past-age-21.html
Do these dead men look intelligent? I wonder if they were signed up for cryro-preservation?
Few people are. Officers can be quite intelligent and well-educated people. The military academies are some of the best educational institutions around, with selection standards more comparable to Harvard than community college. In one of my own communities, Haskell programmers, the top purely functional data structure guys, Okasaki, is a West Point instructor.
There’s still a floor on their intelligence. Some of the research I alluded to showed that IQ advantages show up even in manual training and basic combat skills—the higher your IQ, the faster you learned and the higher your ultimate plateau was.
(This is consistent with the little I’ve read about top special forces members like Navy Seals and other operators: they tend to be extremely intelligent, thoughtful, with a multitude of skills and foreign languages. Secrecy means I do not know whether there is a selection bias operating here or how much is PR, but it is consistent with the previous observations and the extreme standards applied for membership.)
Are you trying to troll me with awful arguments here? If so, I’m not biting.
To a first approximation, no one is signed up for cryonics—not even LWers. So mentioning it is completely futile.
Dear gwern, it all depends on how you define intelligence.
Google translate knows lots of languages. Goggle is a great information resource. Watson (the AI) appears to be educated, perhaps Watson could pass many exams, but Google and Watson are not intelligent.
Regarding the few people who are rocket scientists I wonder if the truly rare geniuses, the truly intelligent people, are less likely to be violent?
Officers in the army are actually very dim despite being “well-educated”.
I wasn’t trying to troll you regarding the term “Grunt” I was merely spelling out clearly the meaning behind the term, it (Grunt) is an insult to the intelligence of the solider, perhaps made because someone who thinks it is intelligent to join the army (being violent) is a dumb human only capable of grunting.
Maybe it is intelligent to be cannon fodder, but like I say it all depends on how you define intelligence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon_fodder
I wonder too. But I have no actual facts. Do you have any?
Do you have evidence of this assertion?
Do you have evidence of this?
The only evidence I have is regarding my own perceptions of the world based upon my life knowledge, my extensive awareness of living. I am not trying to prove anything. I’m merely throwing my thoughts our there. You can either conclude my thoughts make sense or not. I think it is unintelligent to join the army but is my opinion correct? Personally I think it is stupid to die. People may agree my survival based definition of intelligence is correct or they may think death can be intelligent, such as the deaths of soldiers.
What type of evidence could prove “well-educated” army officers are actually dim-witted fools? Perhaps via the interconnectedness of causation it could be demonstrated how military action causes immense suffering for many innocent people thereby harming everyone because the world is more hostile place than a hypothetical world where all potential conflict was resolved intelligently via peaceful methods. The military budget detracts from the science budget thus perhaps scientific progress is delayed, although I do recognise the military does invest in sci-etch development I think the investment would be greater if out world was not based on conflict. In a world where people don’t fight, there would be no need for secrecy thus greater collaboration on scientific endeavours thus progress could be quicker thus anyone supporting the army could be delaying progress in a small way thus officers are stupid because it is stupid to delay progress.
The intelligent thing is for me to draw my input into this debate to a close because it is becoming exceptionally painful for me.
You should study more game theory.
We have gone to a great deal of trouble, in modern society, to make violence a bad option, so today in our society often violence is committed by the impulsive, mentally ill, or short-sighted. But that’s not an inevitable property of violence and hasn’t always been true. You would have gotten a different answer before the 20th century. I don’t know what answer you’ll get in the 22nd century.
The word we usually use for intelligent violence is “ruthless” or “cunning”—and many people are described that way. Stalin, for instance, was apparently capable of long hours of hard work, had an excellent attention to detail, and otherwise appears to have been a smart guy. Just also willing to have millions of people murdered.
No. Many smart capable people go to West Point or Annapolis. A high fraction of successful American engineers in the 19th century were West Point alums.
You keep jumping from correlation to causation, in a domain when there are obvious alternate effects going on. I don’t know if there is a correlation, but even if there were, it wouldn’t be very strong evidence. Being a good scientist requires both intelligence and the right kind of personality. You are asserting that any correlation is solely due to the intelligence part of the equation. This strikes me as a very problematic assumption. Very few scientists are also successful lawyers. It does not follow that lawyers are stupid.
I am not presenting a scientific thesis. This is only a debate, and a reasonably informal one? I am thinking openly. I am asking specific questions likely to elicit specific responses. I am speculating.
asr, you wrote:
My point regarding mindless violence verses ruthlessness or cunning is that ruthlessness or cunning do not specifically define intelligence or violence in the blatant way which the phrase “mindless violence” does. Saddam and Gaddafi were cunning in a similar way to Stalin but the deaths of Saddam and Gaddafi indicate their cunning was not intelligent, in fact it is very stupid to die so close to Singularitarian immortality.
I am not asserting this proves all violence is mindless thus violence decreases with greater intelligence. I am simply offering food for thought. It is not a scientific thesis I am presenting. I am merely throwing some ideas out there to see how people respond.
If Stalin was truly intelligent then I assume he opted for Cryonic preservation?
″...Stalin was injected with poison by the guard Khrustalev, under the orders of his master, KGB chief Lavrenty Beria. And what was the reason Stalin was killed?”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2793501.stm
Regarding stupidity and the armed forces I have addressed this elsewhere: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ajm/ai_risk_and_opportunity_a_strategic_analysis/5zgl
Almost no one, regardless of intelligence opts for cryonics. Moreover, cryonics was first proposed in 1962 by Robert Ettinger, 9 years after Stalin was dead. It is a bit difficult to opt for cryonics when it doesn’t exist yet.
It seems that you are using “intelligent” to mean something like “would make the same decisions SingularityUtopia would make in that context”. This may explain why you are so convinced that “intelligent” individuals won’t engage in violence. It may help to think carefully about what you mean by intelligent.
No, “intelligence” is an issue of survival, it is intelligent to survive. Survival is a key aspect of intelligence. I do want to survive but the intelligent course of action of not merely what I would do. The sensibleness, the intelligence of survival, is something beyond myself, it is applicable to other beings, but people do disagree regarding the definition of intelligence. Some people think it is intelligent to die.
And intelligent person would realise freezing a body could preserve life even if nobody had ever considered the possibility.
Quickly browsing the net I found this:
http://www.cryocare.org/index.cgi?subdir=&url=history.txt
1940 was before Stalin’s death, but truly intelligent people would not need other thinkers to inspire their thinking. The decay limiting factor of freezing has long been known. Futhermore Amazon sems to state Luyet’s work “Life and Death at Low Temperatures” was published pre-1923: http://www.amazon.com/Life-death-at-low-temperatures/dp/1178934128
According to Wikipedia many works of fiction dealt with the cryonics issue well before Stalin’s death:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryonics#Cryonics_in_popular_culture
You need to be more precise about what you mean by “intelligent” then, since your usage is either confused or is being communicated very poorly. Possibly consider tabooing the term intelligent.
You seemed elsewhere in this thread to consider Einstein intelligent, but if self-preservation matters for intelligence, then this doesn’t make much sense. Any argument of the form “Stalin wasn’t intelligent since he didn’t use cryonics” is just as much of a problem for Einstein, Bohr, Turing, Hilbert, etc.
Yeah, see this isn’t how humans work. We get a lot of different ideas from other humans, we develop them, and we use them to improve our own ideas by combining them. This is precisely why the human discoveries that have the most impact on society are often those which are connected to the ability to record and transmit information.
It seems that what you are doing here is engaging in the illusion of transparency where because you know of an idea, you consider the idea to be obvious or easy.
Intelligence can have various levels and stupid people can do intelligent things just as intelligent people can do stupid things. Einstein can be more intelligent than Stalin but Einstein can still be stupid.
No I am not engaging in the illusion of transparency, don’t be absurd. My meaning of intelligence is not confused but there is an inevitable poverty regarding communication of any idea, which I communicate, because people need things spelling out in the most simplistic of terms because they cannot comprehend anything vaguely complex or unusual, but the real kicker is that when you spell things out, people look at you with a gormless expression, and they ask for more detail, or they disagree regarding the most irrefutable points. It’s so painful communicating with people but I don’t expect you to understand. I shall wait until advanced AIs have been created and then there will be someone who understands.
Tabooing the word intelligent… hhmmmm… how about “everything ever written by Singularity Utopia”?
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Neither dogs nor cats are particularly intelligent as animals go. For example, both are not as good at puzzle solving compared to many ravens, crows and other corvids when it comes to puzzle solving). For example, New Caledonian crowscan engage in sequential tool use. Moreover, chimpanzees are extremely intelligent and also very violent.
The particular example you gave, of dogs and domestic cats, is particularly bad because these species have been domesticated by humans, and thus have been bred for docility.
Humans are docile, civilized, domesticated. We can live with cats and dogs. I recently read in the news about a man with a wild Fox for a pet which was hand-reared by humans thus civilized, docile.
AIs will be civilized too, although I am sure they will shake their heads in despair regarding some of the ideas expressed on LessWrong.
Different species can coexist.
Incidentally I wish technology on Less Wrong would accelerate quicker: “You are trying to submit too fast. try again in 6 minutes.” and… “You are trying to submit too fast. try again in 8 minutes.”
None of what you wrote responds to the point at hand- you can’t use domesticated species as useful evidence of non-violence since domestic species are both bred that way and are in fact by most empirical tests pretty stupid.
Individuals with negative karma are rate limited in their posting rate.
Yes I did mention the fox… foxes are not particularly domesticated… anyway this “open” discussion is not very open now due to my negative Karma, it is too difficult to communicate, which I suppose is the idea of the karma system, to silence ideas you don’t want to hear about, thus I will conform to what you want. I shall leave you to your speculations regarding AI.
Consider the uploaded individual that decides to turn the entire planet into computronium or worse, turn the solar system into a Matrioshka brain. People opt out of that how?
It isn’t obvious to me that all wars stem from resource scarcity. Wars occur for a variety of reasons, of which resource scarcity is only one. Often wars have multiple underlying causes. Some wars apparently stem from ideological or theological conflicts (Vietnam, Korea, the Crusades) or from perceived need to deal with external threats before them become too severe (again the Crusades, but also the recent Iraq war (which yes, did have a resource aspect)). These are only some of the more prominent examples of what can cause war.
Dear JoshuaZ, regarding this:
I consider such a premise to be so unlikely it is impossible. It is a very silly premise for three reasons.
Destroying the entire planet when there is a whole universe full of matter is insane. If insane people exist in the future post-intelligence-explosion upload-world then insane people will be dealt with thus no danger but insanity post-intelligence-explosion will be impossible, insanity is a consequence of stupidity, insanity will be extinct in the future.
Earth destructive actions are stupid: see above explanation regarding insanity: it also explains how stupidity will be obsolete.
People opt out by stating they want to opt out. I’m sure an email will suffice.
Sorry that it isn’t obvious how scarcity causes war. I don’t have time to explain so I will leave you with some consensual validation regarding Ray Kurzweil who seems to think the war-scarcity interrelationship is obvious: