how is that we ever accomplish anything in practice, if the search space is vast, and things that both work and look like they work are exponentially rare?
This question needs a whole essay (or several) on its own. If I don’t get around to leaving a longer answer in the next few days, ping me.
Meanwhile, if you want to think it through for yourself, the general question is: where the hell do humans get all their bits-of-search from?
How is the “the genome is small, therefore generators of human values (that can’t be learned from the environment) are no more complex than tens or hundreds of things on the order of a fuzzy face detector” argument compatible with the complexity of value thesis, or does it contradict it?
The key difference is between “human values” vs “generators of human values”. The complexity of value thesis (as articulated on that arbital page) says that human values are not algorithmically simple, and I do agree with that. But that still allows for simple generators of human values, which (conceptually) take in lots of data from the real world and spit out values. Everything except those generators is learned from the environment.
In principle, if we can figure out those relatively-simple generators, then we can feed an AI data similar to the data from which humans’ value-generators generate their values, and the AI should be able to reconstruct human values (up to within ordinary between-humans-within-similar-environments variation).
Meanwhile, if you want to think it through for yourself, the general question is: where the hell do humans get all their bits-of-search from?
Cultural accumulation and google, but that’s mimicking someone who’s already figured it out. How about the person who first figured out eg crop growth? Could be scientific method, but also just random luck which then caught on.
Additionally, sometimes it’s just applying the same hammers to different nails or finding new nails, which means that there are general patterns (hammers) that can be applied to many different situations. There’s bits of information in both the patterns themselves and when to apply them, though I feel confused trying to connect these ideas here.
People specifically have inner simulations (ie you can imagine what it’d look like to drop a bowling ball off a building even if you’ve never seen it) from things you have lots of experience with is a way of applying different patterns to new situations.
Did you get around to writing a longer answer to the question, “How do humans do anything in practice if the search space is vast?” I’d be curious to see your thoughts.
My answer to this question is that: (a) Most day-to-day problems can be solved from far away using a low-dimensional space containing natural abstractions. For example, a manager at a company can give their team verbal instructions without describing the detailed sequence of muscle movements needed. (b) For unsolved problems in science, we get many tries at the problem. So, we can use the scientific method to design many experiments which give us enough bits to locate the solution. For example, a drug discovery team can try thousands of compounds in their search for a new drug. The drug discovery team gets to test each compound on the condition they’re trying to treat—so, they can get many bits about which compounds could be effective.
This question needs a whole essay (or several) on its own. If I don’t get around to leaving a longer answer in the next few days, ping me.
Meanwhile, if you want to think it through for yourself, the general question is: where the hell do humans get all their bits-of-search from?
The key difference is between “human values” vs “generators of human values”. The complexity of value thesis (as articulated on that arbital page) says that human values are not algorithmically simple, and I do agree with that. But that still allows for simple generators of human values, which (conceptually) take in lots of data from the real world and spit out values. Everything except those generators is learned from the environment.
In principle, if we can figure out those relatively-simple generators, then we can feed an AI data similar to the data from which humans’ value-generators generate their values, and the AI should be able to reconstruct human values (up to within ordinary between-humans-within-similar-environments variation).
Cultural accumulation and google, but that’s mimicking someone who’s already figured it out. How about the person who first figured out eg crop growth? Could be scientific method, but also just random luck which then caught on.
Additionally, sometimes it’s just applying the same hammers to different nails or finding new nails, which means that there are general patterns (hammers) that can be applied to many different situations. There’s bits of information in both the patterns themselves and when to apply them, though I feel confused trying to connect these ideas here.
People specifically have inner simulations (ie you can imagine what it’d look like to drop a bowling ball off a building even if you’ve never seen it) from things you have lots of experience with is a way of applying different patterns to new situations.
Did you get around to writing a longer answer to the question, “How do humans do anything in practice if the search space is vast?” I’d be curious to see your thoughts.
My answer to this question is that:
(a) Most day-to-day problems can be solved from far away using a low-dimensional space containing natural abstractions. For example, a manager at a company can give their team verbal instructions without describing the detailed sequence of muscle movements needed.
(b) For unsolved problems in science, we get many tries at the problem. So, we can use the scientific method to design many experiments which give us enough bits to locate the solution. For example, a drug discovery team can try thousands of compounds in their search for a new drug. The drug discovery team gets to test each compound on the condition they’re trying to treat—so, they can get many bits about which compounds could be effective.