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AKA parasitic manipulation so normalized it invades every medium and pollutes our minds by hogging our attention, numbing our moral sense of honesty, and preventing a factual information system from forming.
Advertisement.
AKA parasitic manipulation so normalized it invades every medium and pollutes our minds by hogging our attention, numbing our moral sense of honesty, and preventing a factual information system from forming.
EY uses Bayes to frame reality ever closer, not just to answer abstract homework on paper and call it a day.
If you solve a given problem without spotting it is ill-formed, your answer is correct but not practical.
From the inside we can’t judge the relative speed or power, but we can judge the efficiency.
And it’s abysmal : the jumps from quarks to particles to atoms to molecules to cells to animals to stars to galaxies each throw orders of magnitude around like it’s nothing.
What could this possibly tell us ?
Reality just has that much resource.
The result of our reality was not designed.
The lords of the matrix are not very bright.
If people updated their belief towards those around them, then people with agendas would hammer loudly their forged belief at any opportunit… wait, isn’t this EXACTLY what they are doing ?
Others :
Almost no tracking of mistakes, failures, or even negative results for that matter.
We know it’s bad, yet we keep sweeping valuable knowledge under the rug just because it’s embarrassing. Confirmation bias anyone ?
No clear valuation of the work’s utility.
One consequence is that researchers are kind of expected to know what they will find before they even begin, a form of weak insurance on productivity. This discourages to venture in the unknown.
Okay. Q: Why do I think I am conscious ?
A: Because I feel conscious.
Q: Why ?
A: Like all feelings, it was selected by evolution to signal an important situation and trigger appropriate behavior.
Q: What situation ? What behavior ?
A: Modeling oneself. Paying extra attention.
Q: And how ?
A: I expect a kluge fitting of the blind idiot god, like detecting when proprioception matches and/or drives agent modeling, probably with feedback loops. This would lower environment perception, inhibit attention zapping etc., leading to how consciousness feels.
It’s a far cry from a proper explanation, yet it already makes so much sense.
Asking the right questions did dispel much of the mystery.
When I wrote “language”, I meant
When I use a word… it means just what I choose it to mean
(Alice in Wonderland)
Yup, every culture has it own education numbering system (that makes no sense) and seems blind to it not being universal. Just like language, numbering, date/hour format etc. except it seems particularly worse for reasons unclear.
I expected better from this author...
Realistically, we often don’t have the means to check the theory ourselves.
And in a modern world where any and everything is marketed to death, we distrust the pro-speech.
But pragmatically, I find that quickly checking the con-speech is very effective.
If it has a point, it will make it clear.
If it is flaky, that was probably the best it could do.
(this does require resistance to fallacies and bullshit)
More generally, it seems we should be avoiding anything while distracted.
It makes sense that it would mess our learning, as it makes attributing cause & consequence confusing.
But it may also mess replaying our learned skills, as it is a big cause of accidents.
Trivial inconveniences are alive and kicking in digital piracy, where one always has to jump through hoops such as using obscure services, softwares, settings or procedures.
I suspect it is to fend off the least motivated users: numerous enough to bring attention, and most likely to expose the den in the wrong place.
I suspect it is a form of subtle “ancestral tribe police”.
Throwing trivial inconveniences at offenders is a good way to hint they are out of line, avoiding:
Direct confrontation, with risk of fuss and escalation.
Posing as authority, with risk of dedication or consequences.
Goofing on the tribe policy, as such enforcing requires repeating and consensus.
Misunderstandings, as a dim offender will eventually just give up with no need to understand.
Anyways, if the 1st goal of an AI is to improve, why would it not happily give away it’s hardware to implement a new, better AI ?
Even if there are competing AIs, if they are good enough they probably would agree on what is worth trying next, so there would be no or minimal conflict.
They would focus on transmitting what they want to be, not what they currently are.
...come to think of it, once genetic engineering has advanced enough, why would humans not do the same ?
N Rays deserve an honorable mention.
Blondlot was very scientific (in appearance), and followed by some scientists (of the same nationality).
Other good candidates today would be : Nanotech, space elevator, anything too much futurist-sounding.
Yes it’s going to happen some day, no it won’t be like we imagine.
It can do what the mind it is made from can. No more, no less.
abortion should be mandatory if the baby is the product of rape.
The more humane version : The rapist should be forced to pay for the child’s upbringing, while deprived of usual father rights.
Extremely hard to argue against, and puts a limit on the bad action.
Still, it might not be enough...
Basically : In the ancestral environment, future gains were THAT unsure.
BTW, I would not be surprised if evolution led to populations enduring bad seasons to become better at planning, especially long-term, and if this played a role in the enlightenment and industrial revolution.
Edit : Cold climates demand more intertemporal self-control than warm climates
Slavery has not been abolished, just sub-contracted to cheap labor countries.
Many people are unfit to handle freedom, and would be better off constrained.
Technological progress calls for authoritarianism.
As it gives ever easier access to more power, it raises the risk of misuse and worsens the consequences, so government has to step in and regulate not matter how strongly, else disaster happens.
(already mentioned in this comment)
It is already done for nuclear, explosives, “big” weapons and some chemicals.
Next on the line is driving.
Then it will be genetic engineering.
This will eventually lead to a universal unremovable totalitarian government, this being the GOOD outcome.
And lets hope we never stumble on some discovery that turns out fatally dangerous before we realize it.
Hey, I notice almost no “unthinkable” is explained.
As if the audience here already know what we are talking about...
Being in water can get one dead really fast. Especially cold one, especially if immersed up to the head. So it makes sense that in that case evolution would select for turning off optimism and on realism, and add a jolt on top.
The question is more “why do we have excessive optimism ?” I think it paid off to make one grab opportunities before one dies anyway of bad luck in a world where so many thing can kill.
Anyways, all mammals have the Diving reflex, that alters respiration (as a whole). Evidence that evolution can and did lead to detect immersion and have strong responses to it.
Reminiscent of [CODING HORROR] Separating Programming Sheep from Non-Programming Goats
Ask programming students what a trivial code snippet of an unknown language does.
Some form a consistent model.
Right or wrong, these can learn programming.
Others imagine a different working every time they encounter the same instruction.
These will fail no matter what.
I suspect they treat it as a discussion, where repeating a question means a new answer is wanted.