Wow what hubris the “brain is inadequate spaghetti code”. Tell me have you ever actually studied neuroscience? Where do you think modern science came from? This inadequate spaghetti code has given us the computer, modern physics and plenty of other things. For being inadequate spaghetti code (this is really a misnomer because we don’t actually understand the brain well enough to make that judgement) it does pretty well.
If the brain is as bad as you make it out to be then I challenge you to make a better one. In fact I challenge you to make a computer capable of as many operations as the brain running on as little power as the brain does. If you can’t do better then you are no better then the people who go around bashing General Relativity without being able to propose something better.
I look forward to it. (though I doubt I will ever see it considering how long you’ve been saying you were going to make an FAI and how little progress you have actually made)
But maybe your pulling a Wolfram and going to work alone for 10 years and dazzle everyone with your theory.
I don’t think there’s actually any substantive disagreement here. “Good,” “bad,” “adequate,” “inadequate”—these are all just words. The empirical facts are what they are, and we can only call them good or bad relative to some specific standard. Part of Eliezer’s endearing writing style is holding things to ridiculously impossibly high standards, and so he has a tendency to mouth off about how the human brain is poorly designed, human lifespans are ridiculously short and poor, evolutions are stupid, and so forth. But it’s just a cute way of talking about things; we can easily imagine someone with the same anticipations of experience but less ambition (or less hubris, if you prefer to say that) who says, “The human brain is amazing; human lives are long and rich; evolution is a wonder!” It’s not a disagreement in the rationalist’s sense, because it’s not about the facts. It’s not about neuroscience; it’s about attitude.
The post shows the exact same lack of familiarity with neuroscience as the comment I responded to. Examine closely how a single neuron functions and the operations that it can perform. Examine closely the ability of savants (things like memory, counting in primes, calender math...) and after a few years of reading the current neuroscience research comeback and we might have something to discuss.
Wow what hubris the “brain is inadequate spaghetti code”. Tell me have you ever actually studied neuroscience? Where do you think modern science came from? This inadequate spaghetti code has given us the computer, modern physics and plenty of other things. For being inadequate spaghetti code (this is really a misnomer because we don’t actually understand the brain well enough to make that judgement) it does pretty well.
If the brain is as bad as you make it out to be then I challenge you to make a better one. In fact I challenge you to make a computer capable of as many operations as the brain running on as little power as the brain does. If you can’t do better then you are no better then the people who go around bashing General Relativity without being able to propose something better.
I accept your challenge. See you in a while.
Awesome.
I look forward to it. (though I doubt I will ever see it considering how long you’ve been saying you were going to make an FAI and how little progress you have actually made) But maybe your pulling a Wolfram and going to work alone for 10 years and dazzle everyone with your theory.
I don’t think there’s actually any substantive disagreement here. “Good,” “bad,” “adequate,” “inadequate”—these are all just words. The empirical facts are what they are, and we can only call them good or bad relative to some specific standard. Part of Eliezer’s endearing writing style is holding things to ridiculously impossibly high standards, and so he has a tendency to mouth off about how the human brain is poorly designed, human lifespans are ridiculously short and poor, evolutions are stupid, and so forth. But it’s just a cute way of talking about things; we can easily imagine someone with the same anticipations of experience but less ambition (or less hubris, if you prefer to say that) who says, “The human brain is amazing; human lives are long and rich; evolution is a wonder!” It’s not a disagreement in the rationalist’s sense, because it’s not about the facts. It’s not about neuroscience; it’s about attitude.
While my sample size is limited I have noticed a distinct correlation between engaging in hubris and levelling the charge at others. Curious.
For calibration, see The Power of Intelligence.
“The Power of Intelligence”
Derivative drivel...
The post shows the exact same lack of familiarity with neuroscience as the comment I responded to. Examine closely how a single neuron functions and the operations that it can perform. Examine closely the ability of savants (things like memory, counting in primes, calender math...) and after a few years of reading the current neuroscience research comeback and we might have something to discuss.