Maybe part of the point of this question was, much like the injunction to write our own commandments, an exercise in determining what we would do in a God-like position- such as we might be if we were to design the first successful fAI and tell it what it should want to do.
Laura B
I would not tell anyone that I had the money, but rather assemble several closely-knit teams of truth-seeker rationalists to work together on finding ways to improve the world via the expenditure of money. They would write reports with evidence- I would higher people I felt capable of evaluating such reports, and do what they said with the money.
Hal has something there with the eye contact. I think many people don’t even realize the extent to which they are themselves ‘lying’ in social situations. False or mindless compliments you don’t mean, laughing at banal jokes, saying you just love that band, putting on the persona of a 14 (or 55) year-old, strongly declaring ‘opinions’ that have not been thought out, strongly declaring ‘emotions’ that have not been reflected upon, invoking false bonds of kinship over superficialities, trying to be generally ‘likable’ to people at the expense of showing what you really think about the world or them (lie by omission)-- all are forms of dishonesty. Some people just can’t stomach the masquerade. Others learn to exploit it. Others (myself included) are skilled actors, with a closet full of many other people’s skins, though they long for the day when the lines and the costumes are unnecessary… at least not the ones that are no fun to say or wear...
That we presume people directly tell us anything at all about themselves in polite conversation is a fallacy. Anyone of any psychological skill knows the devil is in the details of the subtext. A good actor/expoiter makes eye contact and tells the other person what they are (what they should be) thinking with their reactions.
Eye contact- well that leaves you open to manipulation. If you know you’re no good at this game, best to opt out. Or tell all.
Also- thought: awareness of common knowledge collapses the wave function. If both Mary Jane and Captain Jack recognize that the situation of being alone together on a deserted beach while MJ’s chubby-hubby is all viked-out back home is awkward, then there is an implicit acknowledgement that they are going to need to decide whether or not they are going to have sex, and that such a decision is a deliberate, rational, act on both of their parts, which makes them blame-worthy for the outcome of their actions. No room for plausible deniability if the Cap sticks his hand down MJ’s pants, and she either slaps him, claiming she wasn’t flirting (really honey-save it for court), or if she kisses him back, and later claims to have been ‘suddenly overcome by irrational passion’ (right… and you were overcome for the entire hour you spent holding hands on the beach beforehand???) Excuses Excuses Excuses....
Brandt: “what is the functional role and underlying mechanism of qualia in the timeless mathematical structure of the multiverse.”
Doesn’t this question imply that you believe qualia has a purpose? Isn’t this a bit mystic? We know evolutions are stupid and goal-less...
″ And what is the minimal structure required for qualia.” Isn’t this unknowable, given that the only way to really determine ‘qualia’ proper is to experience it? Read anti-zombie posts. Do you think an insect has qualia? What about a paramecium? It’s a pretty intelligent little cell...
I also agree that it’s pretty amazing that the universe seems intuitable AT ALL, and this might be the result of evolutions and their goal-less drives… If so… OH WELL! Lets have a good time. What’s also strange is how other people’s minds seem intuitable if you know certain essential information about them… Also strange that the minds of some animals are intuitable (ie I think I know my cat pretty well). However, that anything is understandable might just be because we live in a universe that we are capable of understanding. It’s similar to the question, ‘If life is so unlikely to occur randomly, then why do we exist?’ Well… “If a universe capable of being comprehended by a mind, and a mind capable of understanding a universe are so unlikely to occur randomly, then why do they exist?” Tah Dah! Well… here we are. Or I might just be a bolzman brain. Go me!
Michael-
Some problems which precede the questions you are asking about qualia: 1) What is qualia? Give your definition. 2) By what means do you recognize that something has qualia? This doesn’t need to be a fool-proof algorithm, but at least a practical approximation for determining if, say, a cat or other creature similar to ourselves has qualia. If we can’t say whether or not a fellow mammal has qualia, then how are we supposed to begin to deal with alien minds?
I totally love the Huxleys!!! When I was 15, I wanted to hunt down and marry one… Oh Thomas Henry and his iron will to flaunt society… Aldous and his mescalin-fueled orgies because of his bad luck in marrying a lesbian when he 19… Julian and his microscope and myosin heavy chains… Andrew and his cephalopodiae and wacky electrical theories of mind… What a bunch of fantastic geniuses! Can the superintelligence resurrect them? PLEASE!!!! Can it throw in Yeats and Keats while it’s at it??? That would be awesome. That would be a dream come true.
This is a cool post. I like hearing how smart people evolved. We need more such evolutions.
My first intro to ev psych was as a little girl (7?), listening to my friend’s psychiatrist father, whom I met at the Unitarian Universalist church, talk about Carl Sagan and the cosmos… Got me obsessed with the X-files too, even that young. My first revelation of where my mind came from was at age 12 when I read “Blueprints, Solving the Mystery of Evolution.” Actually… No, it was when we were discussing Greek mythology in social studies… I thought, “Gee, Man invented God. What else could he do with what he knew at the time?” Then again, I had never believed in God, I just realized why We invented Him. Incidentally, I learned what sex was at the age of 2, when my parents showed me the video ‘Where do I come from?’ Great fun. I recommend it to all.
Eliezer: “And if, in the meanwhile, it seems to you like I’ve just proved that there is no morality… well, I haven’t proved any such thing. But, meanwhile, just ask yourself if you might want to help people even if there were no morality. If you find that the answer is yes, then you will later discover that you discovered morality.”
This is beautiful. It is, more importantly, True.
I totally love the Huxleys!!! When I was 15, I wanted to hunt down and marry one… Oh Thomas Henry and his iron will to flaunt society… Aldous and his mescalin-fueled orgies because of his bad luck in marrying a lesbian when he 19… Julian and his microscope and myosin heavy chains… Andrew and his cephalopodiae and wacky electrical theories of mind… What a bunch of fantastic geniuses! Can the superintelligence resurrect them? PLEASE!!!! Can it throw in Yeats and Keats while it’s at it??? That would be awesome. That would be a dream come true.
This is a cool post. I like hearing how smart people evolved. We need more such evolutions.
My first intro to ev psych was as a little girl (7?), listening to my friend’s psychiatrist father, whom I met at the Unitarian Universalist church, talk about Carl Sagan and the cosmos… Got me obsessed with the X-files too, even that young. My first revelation of where my mind came from was at age 12 when I read “Blueprints, Solving the Mystery of Evolution.” Actually… No, it was when we were discussing Greek mythology in social studies… I thought, “Gee, Man invented God. What else could he do with what he knew at the time?” Then again, I had never believed in God, I just realized why We invented Him. Incidentally, I learned what sex was at the age of 2, when my parents showed me the video ‘Where do I come from?’ Great fun. I recommend it to all.
Eliezer: “And if, in the meanwhile, it seems to you like I’ve just proved that there is no morality… well, I haven’t proved any such thing. But, meanwhile, just ask yourself if you might want to help people even if there were no morality. If you find that the answer is yes, then you will later discover that you discovered morality.”
This is beautiful. It is, more importantly, True.
Eliezer: “Even in science fiction, the Rationalist character is rarely done right—bearing the same resemblance to a real rationalist, as the mad scientist genius inventor who designs a new nuclear reactor in a month, bears to real scientists and engineers.”
Hey! Speak for yourself as an engineer! I’m dating one of these mad scientist geniuses...
Eliezer: ”...battling monsters or falling in love or becoming a vampire, or whatever, not in being rational...”
What’s irrational about battling monsters and falling in love?!?!?! I try to do this on a regular basis!
Eliezer: “It’s this strange realism that charms me about Watt-Evans’s work. It’s not done as a schtick, but as faithfulness-to-reality. Real life doesn’t run on perfect rails of dramatic necessity; neither is it random postmodern chaos. I admire an author who can be faithful to that, and still tell a story.”
Ok- that does sound really cool. But why read fiction then? There’s much wierder stuff going on the real world right now… You should watch the Venture Brothers… similar idea.
Thanks for the recs!!!!
Well, as a women with at least 4 men after her genetic material, who is very circumspect about the wisdom of child-rearing, I find this discussion somewhat interesting… People consciously want to perpetuate themselves. It’s not just sex without contraception = babies + oxytocin + progesterone = child loving. People love children that do not yet exist. People love the written words they leave behind on the page. People love creation… their own… their immortality. With enough power, could the superintelligence reach back through the relics and memories of the past and recreate a human through his descendants? Interesting question...
Eliezer: “But you can make arguments for the importance of beauty and altruism from first principles—that our aesthetic senses lead us to create new complexity, instead of repeating the same things over and over; and that altruism is important because it takes us outside ourselves, gives our life a higher meaning than sheer brute selfishness.”
Oh. Just lovely.
“Long ago, and far away, ever so long ago.”
Wow.
Temple: “All these bad aspects of love are commonly ignored and disregarded, rather than seen as urgent problems that ought to be, and can be, solved. If love is a great thing we ought to be able to get it to stop hurting people so much and so often. That people don’t have a problem-solving attitude towards love, and instead close their eyes to its flaws, is a sign that points to people having biased views on love not rational views.”
Have you ever known love? I would not want to live in a reality without it. Yes. It’s just that good.
This post gives me a lot more hope about fAI.
Yes- I know my name is now going to appear 4 times in the 10 most recent comments- I acidently posted my first comment twice...
Temple- Actually I reread your post. I think the problem is never ‘Love’ proper, but negative things that are sometimes associated with love, specifically jealousy and selfishness- well jealously is a type of selfishness. For example: married man falls in love with another woman and decides in his romantic passion to have an affair, which in turns hurts his wife and ends his marriage. The problem: His wife’s jealousy. Why should we lie to ourselves our whole lives about who we love? Why should we only love our parents, children, and spouse? Lameass social norms...
Example 2: Superspy has a choice between trying to save a whole city block or trying to save the woman he loves… He chooses the woman. Irrational? Maybe… maybe the problem was he didn’t love humanity enough to make the rationalist decision. I still don’t know what the proper response to this situation should be. Any takers?
Love as Drug, Drug as Love… Has anyone here been both in love and taken ecstasy? (I have never taken E and cannot attest). Are they similar? Which is better and why? When rats are given ecstasy, their brains dump a shit load of OXT and 5HT and they start behaving very strangely… they start wanting to be close to each other and licking each other and following each other around and nuzzling… From a human point of view it seems almost romantic. Ecstasy was, afterall, first used by psychiatrists as a drug of choice in ‘couples counselling’ because it invoked extreme feelings of closeness and attatchement in those that took it together. A very good friend of mine once told me, ‘If you want to have the best, most intimate, most extreme sex of your life, take E. But be warned- you won’t enjoy sex again for at least a month...’ And hence I’ve never tried it. So I’m kinda interested to know some first-hand accounts of this chemical form of love. Could that super-amazing feeling really be this simple??? I doubt it, but… that could be my bias.
Also of interest… Same friend said, and this is a paraphrasing, “Either take E with a partner you already know and trust, or else avoid the people you meet while on E for at least a month afterwards, because you will become psychotically attached to anyone you sleep with for no good reason, and are likely to pursue a bad relationship to disasterous ends...” Maybe not everyone needs E to get this ‘psychotic attachment’ for ‘no good reason,’ and this might be something along the lines of what Temple had in mind when he suggested we explore the negative effects of love...
Also, if love is the only point, then wouldn’t the fAI just drug us into a euphoric stupor once it figures out how to do so? Would this be desirable? Who would, right now, choose this simulation? I would not.… but I’s already got it all…
Hopefully Anonymous- Agreed. It is ALL just brain chemistry. THIS is where existential angst comes from, the fear and repulsion at the aesthetically displeasing idea that all of these intense, exciting, horrible, wonderful, all-consuming, passionate feelings have NO REAL MEANING, could be induced with a savy enough pill, a simulation, or a puppet show, that your lover and your connection is an emergent phenomenon of evolution, and then you disintigrate into heat and die and narry a memory of what you experienced exists to reverberate throughout a cold, careless, meaningless universe. That is what many people cannot stand to think of. Not- ‘Oh, woe is me! Chocolate doesn’t please me anymore!’
People want immortality in the worst of ways!
Or they wish no longer to be.
Poke, Andy-
My experience with depression was brought on by a myriad of environmental and existential factors… However, once it started, it was nearly completely a physiological problem. First, I stopped sleeping (at least in any reasonable way, though to me I really thought I wasn’t sleeping AT ALL- this went on for 5 months). I lost 20 pounds because I couldn’t make myself eat- the act of eating was repellent and completely non-reinforcing. My body temperature was always about 99 degrees, and my pulse was always somewhere over 75. Yet, I didn’t want to run or shower or even get out of the bed, since I couldn’t imagine why I would want to do any of those things. NOTHING seemed to be positively reinforcing. Not icecream, Not sex, Not science, Not love. Then there was the cognitive impairment- the worst. I would write a paper for days and end up deleting the whole thing in edits and needing an extension. I remember spending hours and hours rechecking my physics assignments, because I was entirely incapable of being uncertain or confabulating a step, right up until the deadline, after which I was always convinced I had gotten it all wrong and would fail it… Reality did not correspond. I had a 99.6 in the class. I became convinced that I had a brain-tumor and was going to die. Spent some time musing about it’s location and whether or not I should bother having it removed… I didn’t, at that time, understand depression at all.
It really IS all brain chemistry. That’s what’s scary.
Mystical experiences- I’m slightly afraid that if I post this, I will never again be taken seriously. I don’t think I actually believe in reincarnation or the persistence of a soul outside of a body. I always say I do not, and all evidence suggests this is the case.
But very strange recent experience. Have you ever met someone who you felt you had known your entire life? What if that person told you that you were an ancient soul and they knew you in a past life, and then started recounting pieces of it. What if, somehow, it all seemed to make sense and you thought, in spite of yourself, ‘Yes, I did that, yes, that is me...’
This human brain is a very tricky piece of work to deal with. That it can do that, or that other people with skill can do that to you, is quite remarkable. Living for millions of years? Well, lets see how we handle it… Bring it on.
Data point of one for those who bash psych meds...
Within a week of taking prozac, I was sleeping and eating normally. Within two, I was up and about jogging and I was claiming to my shrink that I had been miraculously ‘cured’.
This wasn’t placebo effect. The first stuff they gave me did jack shit, and I had been depressed for half a year.
(Sorta a poetry dump- but eh- seemed appropriate. Take it down if not so.)
Keats Quotes, 1821: Oh won’t the zombie Keats be surprised to wake up!
“I have but two luxuries to brood over: Your Lovliness, and the hour of my Death.”
″...Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thou express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: … O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede Of marble men and maidens overwrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’ - that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
″...But with a sweet forgetting, They stay their crystal fretting, Never, never petting About the frozen time. Ah! would ’twere so with many A gentle girl and boy! But were there ever any Writhed not of passed joy? The feel of not to feel it, When there is none to heal it, Nor numbed sense to steel it, Was never said in ryme.”
″...Though one moment’s pleasure In one moment flies, Though the passion’s treasure In one moment dies; Yet it has not passed- Think how near, how near! And while it doth last, Think how dear, how dear! Hither, hither, hither, Love this boon has sent- If I die and whither I shall die content.”
″...Still so pale? then, dearest, weep- Weep, I’ll count the tears, And each one shall be a bliss For thee in after years Brighter has it left thine eyes Than a sunny rill; And thy whispering melodies Are tenderer still. Yet—as all things mourn awhile At fleeting blisses, E’en let us too! but be our dirge A dirge of kisses.”
″...And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour! That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the power Of unreflecting love!--Then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone and think Till love an fame to nothingness do sink.”
Since you didn’t take down the last one… A modern poet, Don Mclean, Falling Through Time: I can’t answer the questions you ask me, I don’t know what to say. The answers are somewhere lost in the stars when the night has turned to day. But I know if the silence of night could be here, It would drift through my soul and calm all my fear And I could reach out and draw you so near to me
Touch me and warm me and I will lie still. And all that you ask me to give you I will One living moment we’ll have for our own. A brief flash of time that we spent unalone. But you ask me for nothing and give what you can And we’re wrapped in a pillow of sleep once again And my memory drifts through the universe when we are one
Closely we’re falling through time
And the earth will turn in the silence of space, always in motion yet always in place And all things will change yet remain what they are. And far will be near and near will be far And the ages will darken and blend into time And all that is poetry will no longer rhyme But our moment together is forever sublime
For the time has arrived when we must understand That we’re lost in a void on this sad speck of sand And nobody knows where we are, no one cares And the tears that we shed in the dark no one cares And the madmen who plunder this world for their fame Have forgotten that no one remembers their name But time and the universe are always the same
Closely we’re falling through time
Note- Lara Foster was previously commentator Laura ABJ-
Eliezer: Here’s one way to interpret that quote, though I doubt it’s what you had in mind when you asked who ‘understands’ it:
Young people who have not yet accomplished anything have no reputation to defend and nothing to lose by throwing themselves full-force at a problem, flaunting established political hierarchies, and actually thinking they have some hope of solving it or accomplishing something of value that had not already been done 10 million times over.
I find your musings on hubris interesting.