Without the benefit of hindsight, which past technologies would you have expected to make a big difference to human productivity? For an example, if you think that humans’ tendency to share information through language is hugely important to their success, then you might expect the printing press to help a lot, or the internet.
Relatedly, if you hadn’t already been told, would you have expected agriculture to be a bigger deal than almost anything else?
That’s an impossible question—we have no capability to generate clones of ourselves with no knowledge of history. The only thing you can get as answers are post-factum stories.
An answerable version would be “which past technologies at that time they appeared did people expect to be a big deal or no big deal?” But that answer requires a lot of research, I think.
I’m afraid I’m still confused. Maybe it would help if you could make explicit the connection between this question and the underlying question you’re hoping to shed light on!
In case it helps, here is what I believe to be a paraphrase of the question.
“Consider technological developments in the past. Which of them, if you’d been looking at it at the time without knowing what’s actually come of it, would you have predicted to make a big difference?”
And my guess at what underlies it:
“We are trying to evaluate the likely consequences of AI without foreknowledge. It might be useful to have an idea of how well our predictions match up to reality. So let’s try to work out what our predictions would have been for some now-established technologies, and see how they compare with how they actually turned out.”
To reduce bias one should select the past technologies in a way that doesn’t favour ones that actually turned out to be important. That seems difficult, but then so does evaluating them while suppressing what we actually know about what consequences they had...
Please, Madam Editor: “Without the benefit of hindsight,” what technologies could you possibly expect?
The question should perhaps be, What technology development made the greatest productive difference? Agriculture? IT? Et alia? “Agriculture” if your top appreciation is for quantity of people, which admittedly subsumes a lot; IT if it’s for positive feedback in ideas. Electrification? That’s the one I’d most hate to lose.
I think people greatly under estimated animals of burden and the wheel. We can see that from cultures that didn’t have the wheel like the Incas. Treating disease/medicine was really unrealized until the modern age, it was not as important to the ancients. I also think labor saving technology in 19th century was really unrealized. I don’t think people realized how much less manual labor we would need within their own lifetimes. There are so many small things that had a huge impact like the mould-board plow that made farming in North America possible.
Interesting example, because agriculture decreased the productivity and lifestyle of most humans, by letting them make more humans. AIs may foresee and prevent tragedies of the commons such as agriculture, or the proliferation of AIs, that would be on the most direct route to intelligence explosion.
Without the benefit of hindsight, which past technologies would you have expected to make a big difference to human productivity? For an example, if you think that humans’ tendency to share information through language is hugely important to their success, then you might expect the printing press to help a lot, or the internet.
Relatedly, if you hadn’t already been told, would you have expected agriculture to be a bigger deal than almost anything else?
That’s an impossible question—we have no capability to generate clones of ourselves with no knowledge of history. The only thing you can get as answers are post-factum stories.
An answerable version would be “which past technologies at that time they appeared did people expect to be a big deal or no big deal?” But that answer requires a lot of research, I think.
I don’t understand this question!
Sorry! I edited it—tell me if it still isn’t clear.
I’m afraid I’m still confused. Maybe it would help if you could make explicit the connection between this question and the underlying question you’re hoping to shed light on!
In case it helps, here is what I believe to be a paraphrase of the question.
“Consider technological developments in the past. Which of them, if you’d been looking at it at the time without knowing what’s actually come of it, would you have predicted to make a big difference?”
And my guess at what underlies it:
“We are trying to evaluate the likely consequences of AI without foreknowledge. It might be useful to have an idea of how well our predictions match up to reality. So let’s try to work out what our predictions would have been for some now-established technologies, and see how they compare with how they actually turned out.”
To reduce bias one should select the past technologies in a way that doesn’t favour ones that actually turned out to be important. That seems difficult, but then so does evaluating them while suppressing what we actually know about what consequences they had...
Yes! That’s what I meant. Thank you :)
Please, Madam Editor: “Without the benefit of hindsight,” what technologies could you possibly expect?
The question should perhaps be, What technology development made the greatest productive difference? Agriculture? IT? Et alia? “Agriculture” if your top appreciation is for quantity of people, which admittedly subsumes a lot; IT if it’s for positive feedback in ideas. Electrification? That’s the one I’d most hate to lose.
I think people greatly under estimated animals of burden and the wheel. We can see that from cultures that didn’t have the wheel like the Incas. Treating disease/medicine was really unrealized until the modern age, it was not as important to the ancients. I also think labor saving technology in 19th century was really unrealized. I don’t think people realized how much less manual labor we would need within their own lifetimes. There are so many small things that had a huge impact like the mould-board plow that made farming in North America possible.
Interesting example, because agriculture decreased the productivity and lifestyle of most humans, by letting them make more humans. AIs may foresee and prevent tragedies of the commons such as agriculture, or the proliferation of AIs, that would be on the most direct route to intelligence explosion.