Jáchym Fibír

Karma: −38

Jáchym Fibír 30 Sep 2025 13:08 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: TAG’s comment on: How one logical fallacy killed God, corrupted Science and now fuels the AI race
I THANK YOU for this comment. It’s the discussion I wanted from LW. I’m terribly sorry for replying so late as I missed it!
You start off by saying there is no life, according to physicalism, and then go on to say that there is but it is merely emergent, which isn’t good enough...because?
I’m saying physicalism posits the universe as an inherently lifeless sandbox – that by default, it is not alive, and just churns matter and energy around. Never said it’s not good enough.
Yep. And physicalism is such a framework. If you think it is the wrong framework, you need to say why, not just note that it is a framework.
But that is exactly the point!
No, physicalism doesn’t imply determinism… And determinism doesn’t imply hard determinism.
You are right! I used the wrong word, I meant to use implicates – anyway, at that point I didn’t have all the pieces about determinism/physicalism crystallized but now I have the arguments laid out in my newest article.

So the only “special place” physicalism holds among philosophical views is that it introduces the least amount of “extra assumptions.” But that says nothing about its ultimate plausibility.
Yes, it does. There is a proof in probabilistic logic that the hypotheses with the fewest assumptions are more plausible.
This I see as the crux of all of this. Yes, we can invoke probabilistic logic and say physicalism, among all other interpretations, has a higher probability of being the correct one, because it has fewest extra assumptions. But the logical fallacy that I point to, is that this does not mean we should operate as it is the most likely explanation. As you say, there are many other arguments, interpretations, etc. – so what I’m saying is let’s not get stuck within a small physicalist-like space of possibility.
The way how this translates to practice is again best put in my new post here.

Jáchym Fibír 29 Jul 2025 22:12 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Gordon Seidoh Worley’s comment on: How one logical fallacy killed God, corrupted Science and now fuels the AI race
Well I think now you’re conflating two things—pointing out someone made a mistake and telling someone they’re being foolish. I have learned from my last relationship it is crucial to separate the two. I would be extremely careful to label someone foolish as that can be taken as an attack ad hominem. Pointing out that someone had made a mistake (like turning physicalism into a scientific dogma) is admittedly a lesser misstep but I think it still strikes a note in many.
I’m just a bit disappointed that my last two posts have gotten so many downvotes but not a single person had presented arguments that my argumentation is incorrect. Fingers crossed I’m the 1% of contrarians that happens to be right? haha :D

Jáchym Fibír 29 Jul 2025 15:42 UTC
5 points
2
in reply to: Gordon Seidoh Worley’s comment on: How one logical fallacy killed God, corrupted Science and now fuels the AI race
Thank you. You made me realize that I am blaming scientists here in a way. And as my ultimate goal is to create a better reality for everyone, blaming seems like a poor way of achieving that. I will try to remind myself that dividing and polarizing is not helpful to the cause. :) 🙏

Jáchym Fibír 29 Jul 2025 14:41 UTC
−1 points
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in reply to: Garrett Baker’s comment on: How one logical fallacy killed God, corrupted Science and now fuels the AI race
There I presented three out of many reasons why science doesn’t disprove God. I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you are criticizing. Can you say what’s wrong about it?

Jáchym Fibír 29 Jul 2025 14:25 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Garrett Baker’s comment on: How one logical fallacy killed God, corrupted Science and now fuels the AI race
Hmm, I don’t understand what you mean. Can you give some specific examples of my arguments that are inadequate?

Jáchym Fibír 30 Jun 2025 15:14 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: AnthonyC’s comment on: How metaphysical beliefs shape critical aspects of AI development
2) Yes, that is true. I did leave out a sentence saying that “this assumes that there are no higher P(doom) realities in our list of plausible realities.” I left it our for readibility for the audience of the original publication (Phi/AI). I concede that for LW I should have done a more rigorous version.
But still I think the logic to lower our P(doom) holds in that specific analysis (all 3 alternatives might have some failsafes). And in my eyes it would hold also if we look at the current landscape of the top most plausible metaphysics, where there really is not much more “unsafe” than physicalism in terms of human survival.
3) I think you are not correct in your conclusions about physicalism. Physicalism is, by its proper definition, a philosophical belief: “Physicalism is the philosophical view that everything in existence is fundamentally physical, or at least ultimately depends on the physical, meaning there is “nothing over and above” the physical world.” This means that physicalism goes beyond the “simple logic” you described. The simple logic you described can only ever explain the parts of our reality that can be subjected to experimental observation—i.e. it’s limited by the descriptive scope of science. But physicalism goes beyond that by believing that there is nothing “extra” added beyond that.
For example, if our world would be a simulation with fixed rules (physical laws) run by an alien, your simple logic could not distinguish that from a scenario where our world just “popped up from nothing.” So the only “special place” physicalism holds among philosophical views is that it introduces the least amount of “extra assumptions.” But that says nothing about its ultimate plausibility.
Another way to picture this is that everytime we want to build a complete model of reality, there will be two parts: one verifiable by experiment (science) and the other inherently unverifiable (philosophy). The fact that physicalism is picking the “simplest, least complicated philosophical framework” should in no way lead us to ignore all the other, equally unverifiable, alternatives.
4) I am not the one originally making the claim that the experiments that proved non-locality of QM had profound implications on metaphysical and philosophical discourse. In the post, I link to the article “Enter experimental metaphysics” by Hans Busstra, which might help you understand the context.
5) This article is only the very introduction to my ultimate goal of exploring alternative metaphysical frameworks to find novel approaches to AI safety. I’m sure the rationale will be clearer as I release further articles and I warmly invite you to read the full series.

Jáchym Fibír 26 Jun 2025 16:29 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: AnthonyC’s comment on: How metaphysical beliefs shape critical aspects of AI development
Thank you for the feedback. I’ll try to address the key points.
1) I actually have looked into EY’s metaphysical beliefs and my conclusion is they are inconsistent and opaque at best, and have been criticized for that here. In any case, when I say someone operates from a single metaphysical viewpoint like physicalism, this is not any kind of criticism of their inability to consider something properly or whatnot. It just tries to put things into wider context by explaining that changing the metaphysical assumptions might change their conclusions or predictions.

2) The post in no way says that there is something that would “prevent” the existential risk. It clearly states such risk would not be mitigated. I could have made this more explicit. What the post says is that by introducting a “possibility,” no matter how remote, of certain higher coordination or power that would attempt to prevent X-risk because it is not in its interest, then in such a universe the expected p(doom) would be lower. Does that make sense?

3) You say that
If you want to argue against physicalism, there’s a very simple, inarguable method that would prove it. All you need to do is find one single reproducible example, anywhere, ever, of any part of the universe behaving differently than the laws of physics say they should
My reaction to that is that here your are exactly conflating physicalism with the “descriptive scope of science” which is exactly the category mistake I’m trying to point to! There will always be something unexplainable beyond the descriptive scope of science, and physicalism is filling that with “nothing but more physical-like clockwork things.” But that is a belief. It might be the “most logical believe with fewest extra assumptions.” But that should not grant it any special treatment among all other metaphysical interpretations.

4) Yes, I used the word “share/transmit information across distance” while describing non-locality. And while you cannot “use entanglement to transmit information,” I think it’s correct to say that the internal information of an entangled particle transmits information of its internal state to its entangled partner?

5) Please, don’t treat this as an “attack on AI safety”—all I’m trying is to open it to a wider metaphysical consideration.

Jáchym Fibír 26 Jun 2025 15:22 UTC
3 points
0
on: How metaphysical beliefs shape critical aspects of AI development
Hmm, interesting that this has −5 karma 5min after posting. That is not enough time to read the post. Can those downvoting explain? Thank you.

Jáchym Fibír 8 Apr 2025 11:59 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: AnthonyC’s comment on: Tetherware #1: The case for humanlike AI
Responding to your last sentence: one thing I see as a cornerstone of biomimetic AI architectures I propose is the non-fungibility of digital minds. By being hardware-bound, humans could have an array of fail-safes to actually shut such systems down (in addition to other very important benefits like reduced copy-ability and recursive self-improvement).
In one way, of course this will not prevent covert influence and power accumulation etc. but one can argue such things are already quite prevalent in human society. So if the human-AI equilibrium stabilizes in AIs being extremely influential yet “overthrowable” if they obviously overstep, then I think this could be acceptable.

Jáchym Fibír 1 Apr 2025 16:11 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: AnthonyC’s comment on: Tetherware #1: The case for humanlike AI
Hmm, so it is even more troubling, when eventually it does not end well, but initially it may seem like everything is fine.
To me that gives one more reason to why we should start experimenting with autonomous, unpredictable intelligent entities as soon as possible, and see if arrangements other than master-slave are possible.

Jáchym Fibír 12 Feb 2025 21:03 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: dr_s’s comment on: Tetherware #1: The case for humanlike AI
Thank you. What a coincidence, huh?

Jáchym Fibír 12 Feb 2025 9:12 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Dagon’s comment on: Gradual Disempowerment, Shell Games and Flinches
I think you miss the point where gradual disempowerment from AI happens as AI is more economically and otherwise performant option that systems can and will select instead of humans. Less reliance on human involvement leads to less bargaining power for humans.
But I mean we already have examples like molochian corporate structures that kind of lost the need to value individual humans as they can afford high churn rate and there are always other people to get a decently paid corporate job even if the conditions are … suboptimal.

Jáchym Fibír 12 Feb 2025 9:00 UTC
1 point
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on: Gradual Disempowerment, Shell Games and Flinches
If the current trajectory continues, it’s not the case that the AI you have is a faithful representative of you, personally, run in your garage. Rather it seems there is a complex socio-economic process leading to the creation of the AIs, and the smarter they are, the more likely it is they were created by a powerful company or a government.
This process itself shapes what the AIs are “aligned” to. Even if we solve some parts of the technical alignment problem we still face the question of what is the sociotechnical process acting as “principal”.
This touches an idea I’d really like to get more attention. The idea that we should build AI fundamentally tethered to human nature so that this drift toward arbitrary form that e.g. “just so happens to sell best” doesn’t happen. I call it tetherware—more about in my post here.

Jáchym Fibír 12 Feb 2025 8:38 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: dr_s’s comment on: Tetherware #1: The case for humanlike AI
Hmm, seems like someone beat me to it. Federico Faggin describes the idea I had in mind with his Quantum Information Panpsychism theory. Check it out here if interested—and I’ll appreciate your opinion on plausiblity of the theory.
https://www.essentiafoundation.org/quantum-fields-are-conscious-says-the-inventor-of-the-microprocessor/seeing/

Jáchym Fibír 4 Feb 2025 12:09 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: dr_s’s comment on: Tetherware #1: The case for humanlike AI
I know this might not be a very satisfying response, but as extraordinary claims require extraordinary arguments, I’m going to need a series of posts to explain—hence the Substack.

Jáchym Fibír 1 Feb 2025 10:24 UTC
3 points
−2
in reply to: Nathan Helm-Burger’s comment on: Tetherware #1: The case for humanlike AI
Haha, I’ve noticed you reacted with “I’d bet this is false”—I would be quite willing to present my arguments and contrast them with yours, but ultimately this is philosophical belief and no conclusive evidence can be produced for either side (that we know of). Sorry if my comment was misleading.

Jáchym Fibír 31 Jan 2025 1:39 UTC
3 points
−10
in reply to: Nathan Helm-Burger’s comment on: Tetherware #1: The case for humanlike AI
Yes, I see connection with your section about digital people, and it is true that what I propose would make AI more compatible for merging with humans. But from my understanding I don’t think “digital” people or consciousness can exist. I strongly disbelieve computational functionalism, and believe that consciousness is inherently linked to quantum particle wavefunction collapse. Therefore, I think that if we can recreate consciousness in machines it will always be bound to specialized non-deterministic hardware. I will be explaining my positions in more detail in my Substack.

Jáchym Fibír 26 Dec 2023 19:56 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Richard_Kennaway’s comment on: “Inftoxicity” and other new words to describe malicious information and communication thereof
Hmm… I see the connection to 1984. But isn’t it useful having the words to spot something that is obviously already happening? (like drug clinical trial data being demonstrably presented or even altered with a certain malicious/monetary intent in mind)

Jáchym Fibír 26 Dec 2023 19:53 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Jiro’s comment on: “Inftoxicity” and other new words to describe malicious information and communication thereof
Thank you for starting a discussion about this. I have two things to say:

1) In the post above, the “inftoxic” adjective means very much false, incorrect information. Additionally, it also means the falseness was intentionally “put in” the data or story with an intent to mislead, cause harm, etc. So, in fact, the term is different (and to me personally more useful) than the term “malinformation” (which I likewise find quite unhelpful).

2) Regardless of the usefulness of the terminology I used as an example, do you think that we could use new words in and around information, that could improve the way how we lead the debate in an attempt to be less wrong?

Jáchym Fibír 11 Nov 2023 11:14 UTC
4 points
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on: Propaganda or Science: A Look at Open Source AI and Bioterrorism Risk
Thank you for such a detailed write-up! I have to admit that I am teetering on the issue whether to ban or not to ban open-source LLMs and as I a co-founder of an AI-for-drug-design startup I had taken the increased biosecurity risk as probably the single most important consideration. So I think the conversation sparked up by your post is quite valuable.

That said, even if I consider all that you presented, I am still leaning towards banning powerful open-source LLMs, at least until we get much more information and most importantly before we establish other safeguards against global pandemics (like “airplane lavatory detectors” etc.).
First, I think there is definitely a big difference between having online information about actually making lethal pathogens, having the full assistance of an LLM makes a quite significant difference, especially for people starting from near zero.

Then, if I consider all of my ideas for what kind of damage could be done with all the new capabilities, especially combining LLMs with generative bioinformatic AIs… I think a lot of caution is surely warranted.
Ultimately, If you take the potential benefits of open-source LLMs over fine-tuned LLMs (not crazy significant in my opinion but of course we don’t have that data either), and compare to the risks posed by essentially removing all of the guardrails and safety measures everyone is working on in AI labs… I think at least waiting some time with open-sourcing is the right call now.