Learning things can itself help improve your ability to learn new things. The classic example of this is language—but much the same applies to musical skills.
What do “orders of magnitude” have to do with the issue? Surely that’s the concept of “self-improvement by orders of magnitude” instead.
Also, on what scale are you measuring? Adult master pianists can probably learn pieces in days which a 12-year old would literally take years to master the skills to be able to perform—so I am sceptical about the “orders of magnitude” claim.
The measure I had in mind was how long it takes to learn a new piece from scratch so that you can perform it to the absolute best of your current abilities. It’s true that the abilities themselves continue to increase past age 12, which for the moment may preclude certain things that are beyond the current ability level, but the point is that the rate of learning of everything the 12-year old has the technique for is not radically different than that of the adult. There are no quantum leaps in rate of learning, as would be expected if we were dealing with recursive self-improvement that iterated many times.
Humans certainly have their limits. However, computers can learn music in microseconds—and their abilities to learn rapidly are growing ever faster.
I think to argue that there is not yet recursive self-improvement going on, then at the very least, you have to stick to those things that the “machine” part of the man-machine symbiosis can’t yet contribute towards.
Of course, that does NOT include important things like designing computers, making CPUs, or computer programming.
Learning things can itself help improve your ability to learn new things. The classic example of this is language—but much the same applies to musical skills.
What do “orders of magnitude” have to do with the issue? Surely that’s the concept of “self-improvement by orders of magnitude” instead.
Also, on what scale are you measuring? Adult master pianists can probably learn pieces in days which a 12-year old would literally take years to master the skills to be able to perform—so I am sceptical about the “orders of magnitude” claim.
The measure I had in mind was how long it takes to learn a new piece from scratch so that you can perform it to the absolute best of your current abilities. It’s true that the abilities themselves continue to increase past age 12, which for the moment may preclude certain things that are beyond the current ability level, but the point is that the rate of learning of everything the 12-year old has the technique for is not radically different than that of the adult. There are no quantum leaps in rate of learning, as would be expected if we were dealing with recursive self-improvement that iterated many times.
Humans certainly have their limits. However, computers can learn music in microseconds—and their abilities to learn rapidly are growing ever faster.
I think to argue that there is not yet recursive self-improvement going on, then at the very least, you have to stick to those things that the “machine” part of the man-machine symbiosis can’t yet contribute towards.
Of course, that does NOT include important things like designing computers, making CPUs, or computer programming.