Mitchell, you criticise my statement as being emotional but are you aware your criticism is emotional. Ironic?
I criticise your statements as unrealistic, wrong, or dogmatic. Calling them emotional is just a way of keeping in view your reasons for making them. I have read your site now so I know this is all about bringing hope to the world, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, and so on. So here are some more general criticisms.
The promise that “scarcity” will “soon” be abolished doesn’t offer hope to anyone except people who are emotionally invested in the idea that no-one should have to have a job. Most people are psychologically adapted to the idea of working for a living. Most people are focused on meeting their own needs. And current “post-scarcity” proposals are impractical social vaporware, so the only hope they offer is to daydreamers hoping that they won’t have to interrupt their daydream.
Post-scarcity is apparently about getting everything for free. So if you try to live the dream right now, that means that either someone is giving you things for free, or you make yourself a target for people who want free stuff from you. Some people do manage to avoid working for a living, but none of the existing “methods”—like stealing, inheriting, or marrying someone with a job—can serve as the basis for a whole society. Alternatively, promoting post-scarcity now could mean being an early adopter of technologies which will supposedly be part of a future post-scarcity ensemble; 3D printers are popular in this regard. Well, let’s just say that such devices are unreliable, limited in their capabilities, tend to contain high-tech components, and are not going to abolish the economy anyway. I don’t doubt that big social experiments are going to be performed as the technological base of such devices improves and expands, but thinking that everything will become fabbed is the 2010s equivalent of the 1990s dream that everything will become virtual. A completely fabbed world is like a completely virtual one; it’s a thoroughly unworldly vision; doggedly pursuing it in real life is likely to make you a techno-hobo, squatting in a disused garage along with the junk output of a buggy 3D printer whose feedstock you get on the black market, from dealers catering to the delusions of “maker” utopians. A society and an economy with fabs genuinely at its center must be possible, but there would be enormous creative destruction in getting there from here.
And then we have your long-range ideas. I actually think it’s possible that a singularity could lead to a radically better world, but only possible, and your prescription to reject “friendly AI” and related ideas in favor of giving AIs “freedom” is just more wishful thinking. Your ideas about intelligence seem to be based on introspection and intuition—I have in mind, not just what you say about the relation between emotion and reason, but your essay on how friendly AI would cripple the artificial intellect. As I pointed out, the basis of artificial intelligence as it is currently envisaged and pursued is the mathematical theory of computation, algorithms, decision-making, and so on. The philosophy of friendly AI is not about having an autonomous intelligence with preexisting impulses which will then be curbed by Asimov laws; it is about designing the AI so its “impulses” are spontaneously in the right directions. But that is all anthropomorphic psychological language. An artificial intelligence can have a goal system, a problem-solving module, and other components which give it a similar behavior to a conscious being that reasons and emotes; but one doesn’t need the psychological language at all to describe such an AI. Arguments from human introspection about the consequences of increased intelligence are essentially irrelevant to the discussion of such AIs, and I don’t even consider them a reliable guide to the consequences of superintelligence in a conscious being.
Dear Mictchell, I think your unaware emotional bias causes you to read too much into my Self-Fulfilling-Prophecy references. My Singularity activism is based on the Self-Fulfilling-Prophecy phenomenon but I don’t stipulate who it applies to. It could apply to myself, namely that utopia (Post-Scarcity) was not possible but I am making it possible via the manifestation of my expectations, or the prophecy could apply to pessimists who falsely think utopia is not possible but via the manifestation of their pessimistic expectations the pessimists are acting contrary to reality, they are also making their pessimistic views real via their Self-Fulfilling-Prophecy.
Instead if trying to create utopia it could be that utopia is or should be inevitable but pessimists are suppressing utopia via their Self-Fulfilling-Prophecies thus I am countering the Self-Fulfilling-Prophecies of pessimists, which is the creative process of my Singularity activism.
The reason why all humans make statements is due to their emotions. All statements by humans are emotional. To suggest otherwise indicates delusion, defect of reason, unaware bias.
I offer no current Post-Scarcity proposals to create PS now. I merely state the transition to Post-Scarcity can be accelerated. The arrival of the Singularity can be accelerated. This is the essence of Singularitarianism. When I state PS will occur soon I mean soon in the context of near regarding the Singularity being near, but it is not near enough to be tomorrow or next year, it is about 33 years away at the most. Surely you noticed my references to the year 2045 on my site, regarding information which you are under the false impression you carefully digested?
My ideas about intelligence are based on my brain which surely is a good starting point for intelligence? The brain? I could define intelligence from the viewpoint of other brain but I find the vast majority of brains cannot think logically, they are not intelligent. Many people cannot grasp logic.
I criticise your statements as unrealistic, wrong, or dogmatic. Calling them emotional is just a way of keeping in view your reasons for making them. I have read your site now so I know this is all about bringing hope to the world, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, and so on. So here are some more general criticisms.
The promise that “scarcity” will “soon” be abolished doesn’t offer hope to anyone except people who are emotionally invested in the idea that no-one should have to have a job. Most people are psychologically adapted to the idea of working for a living. Most people are focused on meeting their own needs. And current “post-scarcity” proposals are impractical social vaporware, so the only hope they offer is to daydreamers hoping that they won’t have to interrupt their daydream.
Post-scarcity is apparently about getting everything for free. So if you try to live the dream right now, that means that either someone is giving you things for free, or you make yourself a target for people who want free stuff from you. Some people do manage to avoid working for a living, but none of the existing “methods”—like stealing, inheriting, or marrying someone with a job—can serve as the basis for a whole society. Alternatively, promoting post-scarcity now could mean being an early adopter of technologies which will supposedly be part of a future post-scarcity ensemble; 3D printers are popular in this regard. Well, let’s just say that such devices are unreliable, limited in their capabilities, tend to contain high-tech components, and are not going to abolish the economy anyway. I don’t doubt that big social experiments are going to be performed as the technological base of such devices improves and expands, but thinking that everything will become fabbed is the 2010s equivalent of the 1990s dream that everything will become virtual. A completely fabbed world is like a completely virtual one; it’s a thoroughly unworldly vision; doggedly pursuing it in real life is likely to make you a techno-hobo, squatting in a disused garage along with the junk output of a buggy 3D printer whose feedstock you get on the black market, from dealers catering to the delusions of “maker” utopians. A society and an economy with fabs genuinely at its center must be possible, but there would be enormous creative destruction in getting there from here.
And then we have your long-range ideas. I actually think it’s possible that a singularity could lead to a radically better world, but only possible, and your prescription to reject “friendly AI” and related ideas in favor of giving AIs “freedom” is just more wishful thinking. Your ideas about intelligence seem to be based on introspection and intuition—I have in mind, not just what you say about the relation between emotion and reason, but your essay on how friendly AI would cripple the artificial intellect. As I pointed out, the basis of artificial intelligence as it is currently envisaged and pursued is the mathematical theory of computation, algorithms, decision-making, and so on. The philosophy of friendly AI is not about having an autonomous intelligence with preexisting impulses which will then be curbed by Asimov laws; it is about designing the AI so its “impulses” are spontaneously in the right directions. But that is all anthropomorphic psychological language. An artificial intelligence can have a goal system, a problem-solving module, and other components which give it a similar behavior to a conscious being that reasons and emotes; but one doesn’t need the psychological language at all to describe such an AI. Arguments from human introspection about the consequences of increased intelligence are essentially irrelevant to the discussion of such AIs, and I don’t even consider them a reliable guide to the consequences of superintelligence in a conscious being.
Dear Mictchell, I think your unaware emotional bias causes you to read too much into my Self-Fulfilling-Prophecy references. My Singularity activism is based on the Self-Fulfilling-Prophecy phenomenon but I don’t stipulate who it applies to. It could apply to myself, namely that utopia (Post-Scarcity) was not possible but I am making it possible via the manifestation of my expectations, or the prophecy could apply to pessimists who falsely think utopia is not possible but via the manifestation of their pessimistic expectations the pessimists are acting contrary to reality, they are also making their pessimistic views real via their Self-Fulfilling-Prophecy.
Instead if trying to create utopia it could be that utopia is or should be inevitable but pessimists are suppressing utopia via their Self-Fulfilling-Prophecies thus I am countering the Self-Fulfilling-Prophecies of pessimists, which is the creative process of my Singularity activism.
The reason why all humans make statements is due to their emotions. All statements by humans are emotional. To suggest otherwise indicates delusion, defect of reason, unaware bias.
I offer no current Post-Scarcity proposals to create PS now. I merely state the transition to Post-Scarcity can be accelerated. The arrival of the Singularity can be accelerated. This is the essence of Singularitarianism. When I state PS will occur soon I mean soon in the context of near regarding the Singularity being near, but it is not near enough to be tomorrow or next year, it is about 33 years away at the most. Surely you noticed my references to the year 2045 on my site, regarding information which you are under the false impression you carefully digested?
My ideas about intelligence are based on my brain which surely is a good starting point for intelligence? The brain? I could define intelligence from the viewpoint of other brain but I find the vast majority of brains cannot think logically, they are not intelligent. Many people cannot grasp logic.