Agreed… But I think I disagree with some of the connotations.
How “natural” do you think “natural abstractions” are?
The notion of love is a pretty great abstraction (I say as a human), and every person in my culture has pretty reliably hit on it, or at least close enough that we can all talk to each other. So it’s at least somewhat natural—we can talk about the same thing because love is an abstraction that is particularly well-suited for explaining both of our environments.
But do all human cultures have the same concept of love? They probably have something similar, at least. But how different can it get? People in different cultures live in different environments, and interact with the world in different ways than I do, which means that they might find different abstractions best for thinking about their environment.
This variability is what I mean be “how natural are natural abstractions?” Everyone (human or AI) is interacting with the same universe, but we have different local environments, and different ways of interacting with those environments. A lot of the abstractions I care about are also found by nearby fellow humans, but is that because they’re so “natural” that they’re also found by humans in very different parts of the world, and in AIs that interact with the world in a very different way than me? Or are there a lot of things I care about that aren’t that “natural,” and might be learned differently be different humans/nonhumans?
Agreed… But I think I disagree with some of the connotations.
How “natural” do you think “natural abstractions” are?
The notion of love is a pretty great abstraction (I say as a human), and every person in my culture has pretty reliably hit on it, or at least close enough that we can all talk to each other. So it’s at least somewhat natural—we can talk about the same thing because love is an abstraction that is particularly well-suited for explaining both of our environments.
But do all human cultures have the same concept of love? They probably have something similar, at least. But how different can it get? People in different cultures live in different environments, and interact with the world in different ways than I do, which means that they might find different abstractions best for thinking about their environment.
This variability is what I mean be “how natural are natural abstractions?” Everyone (human or AI) is interacting with the same universe, but we have different local environments, and different ways of interacting with those environments. A lot of the abstractions I care about are also found by nearby fellow humans, but is that because they’re so “natural” that they’re also found by humans in very different parts of the world, and in AIs that interact with the world in a very different way than me? Or are there a lot of things I care about that aren’t that “natural,” and might be learned differently be different humans/nonhumans?