The author brings up the idea of things we may genuinely simply not be able to understand and just dismisses it with literally nothing except the objection that it’s claiming things could be inexplicable and hence should be dismissed. (on a related note the president of the tautology club is the president of the tautology club)
Deutsch gives arguments that people are universal explainers/constructors (this requires that they be computationally universal as well). What is your argument that there are some things that a universal explainer could never be able to understand? Alternatively, what is your argument that people are not universal explainers? Deutsch talks about the “reach” of knowledge. Knowledge created to solve a problem in one domain can solve problems in other domains too. What is your argument that the knowledge we create could never reach into this inexplicable realm you posit?
First: If I propose that humans can sing any possible song or that humans are universal jumpers and can jump any height the weight is not upon everyone else to prove that humans cannot because I’m the one making the absurd proposition.
he proposes that humans are universal constructors, able to build anything. Observation: there are some things humans as they currently are cannot construct, as we currently are we cannot actually arbitrarily order atoms any way we like to perform any task we like. The worlds smartest human can no more build a von neuman probe right now than the worlds smartest border collie.
he merely makes the guess that we’ll be able to do so in future or that we’ll be able to build something that will be able to build something in future that will be able to but that border collies never will. (that is based on little more than faith.)
From this he concludes we’re “universal constructors” despite us quite trivially falling short of the definition of ‘universal constructor’ he proposes.
When you start talking about “reach” you utterly utterly cancel out all the claims made about AI in the OP. If a superhuman AI with a brain the size of a planet made of pure computation can just barely manage to comprehend some horribly complex problem and there’s a slim chance that humans might one day be able to build AI’s which might be able to build AI’s which might be able to build AI’s that might be able to build that AI that doesn’t mean that humans have fully comprehended that thing or could fully comprehend that thing any more than slime mould could be said to comprehend the building of a nuclear power station because they could potentially produce offspring which produce offspring which produce offspring.....[repeat many times] who could potentially design and build a nuclear power station.
His arguments are full of gaping holes. How does this not jump out at other readers?
he proposes that humans are universal constructors, able to build anything. Observation: there are some things humans as they currently are cannot construct, as we currently are we cannot actually arbitrarily order atoms any way we like to perform any task we like. The worlds smartest human can no more build a von neuman probe right now than the worlds smartest border collie.
Our human ancestors on the African savannah could not construct a nuclear reactor, nor the skyline of Manhattan, nor an 18 core microprocessor. They had no idea how. But they had in them the potential and that potential has been realized today. To do that, we created deep knowledge about how our universe works. Why you think that is not going to continue? Why should we not be able to construct a von Neumann probe at some point in the future? Note that most of the advances I am talking about occurred in the last few hundred years. Humans had a big problem with static memes preventing progress for millennia (see BoI). If not for those memes, we may well be at the stars by now. While humans made all this progress, dolphins and border collies did what?
Yes, our ancestors could not build a nuclear reactor, the australian natives spent 40 thousand years without constructing a bow and arrow. Neither the Australian natives nor anyone else has built a cold fusion reactor. Running half way doesn’t mean you’ve won the race.
Putting ourselves in the category of “entities who can build anything” is like putting yourself in the category “people who’ve been on the moon” when you’ve never actually been to the moon but really really want to be an astronaut one day. You might even one day become an astronaut but aspirations don’t put you in the category with Armstrong until you actually do the thing.
Your pet collie might dream vaguely of building cars, perhaps in 5,000,000 years it’s descendants might have self selected for intelligence and we’ll have collie engineers, that doesn’t make it an engineer today.
Currently by the definition in that book humans are not universal constructors, at best we might one day be universal constructors if we don’t all get wiped out by something first. It would be nice if we became such one day. But right now we’re merely closer to being universal constructors than unusually bright ravens and collies.
Feelings are not fact. Hopes are not reality.
Assuming that nothing will stop us based on a thin sliver of history is shaky extrapolation:
Deutsch gives arguments that people are universal explainers/constructors (this requires that they be computationally universal as well). What is your argument that there are some things that a universal explainer could never be able to understand? Alternatively, what is your argument that people are not universal explainers? Deutsch talks about the “reach” of knowledge. Knowledge created to solve a problem in one domain can solve problems in other domains too. What is your argument that the knowledge we create could never reach into this inexplicable realm you posit?
First: If I propose that humans can sing any possible song or that humans are universal jumpers and can jump any height the weight is not upon everyone else to prove that humans cannot because I’m the one making the absurd proposition.
he proposes that humans are universal constructors, able to build anything. Observation: there are some things humans as they currently are cannot construct, as we currently are we cannot actually arbitrarily order atoms any way we like to perform any task we like. The worlds smartest human can no more build a von neuman probe right now than the worlds smartest border collie.
he merely makes the guess that we’ll be able to do so in future or that we’ll be able to build something that will be able to build something in future that will be able to but that border collies never will. (that is based on little more than faith.)
From this he concludes we’re “universal constructors” despite us quite trivially falling short of the definition of ‘universal constructor’ he proposes.
When you start talking about “reach” you utterly utterly cancel out all the claims made about AI in the OP. If a superhuman AI with a brain the size of a planet made of pure computation can just barely manage to comprehend some horribly complex problem and there’s a slim chance that humans might one day be able to build AI’s which might be able to build AI’s which might be able to build AI’s that might be able to build that AI that doesn’t mean that humans have fully comprehended that thing or could fully comprehend that thing any more than slime mould could be said to comprehend the building of a nuclear power station because they could potentially produce offspring which produce offspring which produce offspring.....[repeat many times] who could potentially design and build a nuclear power station.
His arguments are full of gaping holes. How does this not jump out at other readers?
Our human ancestors on the African savannah could not construct a nuclear reactor, nor the skyline of Manhattan, nor an 18 core microprocessor. They had no idea how. But they had in them the potential and that potential has been realized today. To do that, we created deep knowledge about how our universe works. Why you think that is not going to continue? Why should we not be able to construct a von Neumann probe at some point in the future? Note that most of the advances I am talking about occurred in the last few hundred years. Humans had a big problem with static memes preventing progress for millennia (see BoI). If not for those memes, we may well be at the stars by now. While humans made all this progress, dolphins and border collies did what?
Yes, our ancestors could not build a nuclear reactor, the australian natives spent 40 thousand years without constructing a bow and arrow. Neither the Australian natives nor anyone else has built a cold fusion reactor. Running half way doesn’t mean you’ve won the race.
Putting ourselves in the category of “entities who can build anything” is like putting yourself in the category “people who’ve been on the moon” when you’ve never actually been to the moon but really really want to be an astronaut one day. You might even one day become an astronaut but aspirations don’t put you in the category with Armstrong until you actually do the thing.
Your pet collie might dream vaguely of building cars, perhaps in 5,000,000 years it’s descendants might have self selected for intelligence and we’ll have collie engineers, that doesn’t make it an engineer today.
Currently by the definition in that book humans are not universal constructors, at best we might one day be universal constructors if we don’t all get wiped out by something first. It would be nice if we became such one day. But right now we’re merely closer to being universal constructors than unusually bright ravens and collies.
Feelings are not fact. Hopes are not reality.
Assuming that nothing will stop us based on a thin sliver of history is shaky extrapolation:
https://xkcd.com/605/