I made the case for the likelihood of the Singularity here, and one of my favorite authors, John Wright, really didn’t like what I said. My response to him is here.
I think your initial post was not the best / least-condescending way of talking about the singularity. But I think the main problem you encountered was that many of the commenters were religious and openly anti-materialist. If you think God created man in his image and that man’s consciousness and cognition are special and linked to a divine, immaterial element called a soul, it’s going to be hard to convince you of superhuman AI. Trying to start off with an argument for materialism conflated with an argument for extrapolating current scientific trends is just going to make them dig in further.
So you really were in a lose-lose situation. But your response was solid; certainly better than the original case.
A better point many of those commenters make is the distinction between extrapolation and creation; even if I disagree that singularity predictions are optimistic navel-gazing, it’s still fair to say that the path to the singularity is not laid out in a concise and reasonable way (and pointing to Kurzweil’s charts is a poor response).
So you really were in a lose-lose situation. But your response was solid; certainly better than the original case.
I thought it largely ignored the points and positions Wright made, and the counter-arguments weren’t great. (I like Bostrom, but when someone makes a laughable claim like materialism is associated with no great philosophers, that’s not a good time to bring him up; that’s a time to invoke Hume, the Atomists and Stoics, Dennett, etc.)
If one is going to respond at all (and given how intemperate his response was, I would personally feel no obligation to reply), one should try to do at least a decent job which doesn’t demonstrate one’s opponent’s claim that materialists don’t know “enough philosophy to argue with a freshman” and possibly fostering a back-fire effect. (Hopefully wittily, like quoting some of Wright’s bile and then sardonicly noting that Wright’s religious conversion after a heart attack is itself an excellent example of materialism.) Strawmen are common enough without becoming a living one.
I don’t think anyone denies that brain states have a strong influence on conscious experience, which is the only thing that Phineas Gage proved. The real question is how mechanistic matter can create subjective experience. For example, someone who was completely colorblind from birth could never understand what it felt like to see the color green, no matter how much neuroscience that person knew, i.e., you could never convey the sensation of “green” through a layout of a connectome or listing wavelengths of light.
However, this doesn’t mean that there must be some magical substance which produces experience, and it does not mean that Whole Brain Emulation and AGI is impossible, which is the hasty conclusion reached by many non-materialists. Rather, it only poses problems for those who say that brain states are the same thing as conscious experience.
For example, someone who was completely colorblind from birth could never understand what it felt like to see the color green, no matter how much neuroscience that person knew, i.e., you could never convey the sensation of “green” through a layout of a connectome or listing wavelengths of light.
Also see orthonormal’s posts here (and accompanying discussion). I remember the point being similar to “I might know all about heroin and how I’d respond to it, but taking heroin means that certain neurons release chemicals in ways that I don’t have conscious control over, and it e.g. will cause memories to be formed that I could not form normally.”
The real question is how mechanistic matter can create subjective experience.
Philosophy (which today is mostly a historical field—the study of old speculations) is not the right place to find the answer to this question. Computational neuroscience is.
Rather, it only poses problems for those who say that brain states are the same thing as conscious experience.
The ‘problem’ is overstated—the mindstate of observing green through information flowing from the retina through multiple layers of visual cortical processing is in a wholly different category than the congenital colorblind’s mindstate of thinking about green as an abstract linguistic concept.
The two mindstates are completely different and involve largely unrelated computations in functionally distinct minds.
I fail to see how Wright’s answer is even remotely relevant. Let’s say that for some mysterious reason brains have a door that connects them to some metaphysical realm that silicon-based devices could never have. Does this changes the fact that a properly programmed computer can beat any human at chess or checkers? Does this changes the fact that cars can self-drive successfully for thousands of miles? Does this changes the fact that right now a living organism is being simulated at cellular level? The only thing that distinguishes the Singualirty scenario from a simple observation of the state of the world is the assumption that there is a point after which an AI can exponentially self-improve, and that will have an exponentially large effect on our society.
The fact that Albert Einstein existed wouldn’t provide as much evidence for the future likelihood of science-doing AI if brains had such doors, although you are correct that this wouldn’t mean we sill could not develop such AIs.
My goal was to promote my book Singularity Rising. John Wright wasn’t the intended or expected audience, although I knew he worked with the author of the blog my essay appeared in.
I was surprised by the magnitude of his negative reaction.
I made the case for the likelihood of the Singularity here, and one of my favorite authors, John Wright, really didn’t like what I said. My response to him is here.
I think your initial post was not the best / least-condescending way of talking about the singularity. But I think the main problem you encountered was that many of the commenters were religious and openly anti-materialist. If you think God created man in his image and that man’s consciousness and cognition are special and linked to a divine, immaterial element called a soul, it’s going to be hard to convince you of superhuman AI. Trying to start off with an argument for materialism conflated with an argument for extrapolating current scientific trends is just going to make them dig in further.
So you really were in a lose-lose situation. But your response was solid; certainly better than the original case.
A better point many of those commenters make is the distinction between extrapolation and creation; even if I disagree that singularity predictions are optimistic navel-gazing, it’s still fair to say that the path to the singularity is not laid out in a concise and reasonable way (and pointing to Kurzweil’s charts is a poor response).
I thought it largely ignored the points and positions Wright made, and the counter-arguments weren’t great. (I like Bostrom, but when someone makes a laughable claim like materialism is associated with no great philosophers, that’s not a good time to bring him up; that’s a time to invoke Hume, the Atomists and Stoics, Dennett, etc.)
If one is going to respond at all (and given how intemperate his response was, I would personally feel no obligation to reply), one should try to do at least a decent job which doesn’t demonstrate one’s opponent’s claim that materialists don’t know “enough philosophy to argue with a freshman” and possibly fostering a back-fire effect. (Hopefully wittily, like quoting some of Wright’s bile and then sardonicly noting that Wright’s religious conversion after a heart attack is itself an excellent example of materialism.) Strawmen are common enough without becoming a living one.
Chapeau!
Your case was kinda simple and condescending. On the other hand I can answer Wright by saying “Phineas Gage”
I don’t think anyone denies that brain states have a strong influence on conscious experience, which is the only thing that Phineas Gage proved. The real question is how mechanistic matter can create subjective experience. For example, someone who was completely colorblind from birth could never understand what it felt like to see the color green, no matter how much neuroscience that person knew, i.e., you could never convey the sensation of “green” through a layout of a connectome or listing wavelengths of light.
However, this doesn’t mean that there must be some magical substance which produces experience, and it does not mean that Whole Brain Emulation and AGI is impossible, which is the hasty conclusion reached by many non-materialists. Rather, it only poses problems for those who say that brain states are the same thing as conscious experience.
The ‘colorblind-synesthete’?
Also see orthonormal’s posts here (and accompanying discussion). I remember the point being similar to “I might know all about heroin and how I’d respond to it, but taking heroin means that certain neurons release chemicals in ways that I don’t have conscious control over, and it e.g. will cause memories to be formed that I could not form normally.”
Philosophy (which today is mostly a historical field—the study of old speculations) is not the right place to find the answer to this question. Computational neuroscience is.
The ‘problem’ is overstated—the mindstate of observing green through information flowing from the retina through multiple layers of visual cortical processing is in a wholly different category than the congenital colorblind’s mindstate of thinking about green as an abstract linguistic concept.
The two mindstates are completely different and involve largely unrelated computations in functionally distinct minds.
I fail to see how Wright’s answer is even remotely relevant. Let’s say that for some mysterious reason brains have a door that connects them to some metaphysical realm that silicon-based devices could never have.
Does this changes the fact that a properly programmed computer can beat any human at chess or checkers? Does this changes the fact that cars can self-drive successfully for thousands of miles? Does this changes the fact that right now a living organism is being simulated at cellular level?
The only thing that distinguishes the Singualirty scenario from a simple observation of the state of the world is the assumption that there is a point after which an AI can exponentially self-improve, and that will have an exponentially large effect on our society.
The fact that Albert Einstein existed wouldn’t provide as much evidence for the future likelihood of science-doing AI if brains had such doors, although you are correct that this wouldn’t mean we sill could not develop such AIs.
And you’re surprised? I haven’t read more than a five thousand words by or about Wright and I am not at all surprised.
What was your goal? Did you tune your pitch to this audience?
My goal was to promote my book Singularity Rising. John Wright wasn’t the intended or expected audience, although I knew he worked with the author of the blog my essay appeared in.
I was surprised by the magnitude of his negative reaction.