Pacificmaelstrom

Karma: −29

Pacificmaelstrom 8 Sep 2023 18:28 UTC
−26 points
−27
on: Debate series: should we push for a pause on the development of AI?
I see the petition as a stunt or a mania depending on the participant. Because the danger of AI remains low to non-existent.

But as a way to get people excited about AI and more likely to overestimate the capabilities of the current AI it is very effective.

But the hurdles that remain remain as insurmountable as ever, such as, I don’t know… An AI that can actually understand anything.

Garbage in garbage out, a singularity will not make.

Pacificmaelstrom 8 Sep 2023 18:04 UTC
−1 points
on: The Fallacy of Gray
Necro but maybe I can add something to the debate....

A problem I see is there are common cases where it is rational to be irrational, for example if being rational causes you emotional distress due to circumstances beyond your control.

And this is a big problem if one’s will to be “rational” is at root based on an emotional will to be “less wrong” for the purpose of improving internal feelings of one’s own value.

Because if that is the naked honest goal, then that rationalism is Hedonism by yet another name.

But realizing that might be destabilizing to the rationalist since, rationally, pure maximization of a social utilitarian value function is not a rational way to maximize a personal hedonistic value function no matter how hard one may try to contrive it....

So armed with intrepid rationality they may come to see the shades of grey rhetoric where Stalin is darker than Ghandi based on supposed utilitarian morality as a bad joke… and holding to utilitarian morality an irrational way to cope with the fact that power is everything and they have little of it.

To avoid this one would need to find a reason to be a rationalist other than their hedonistic value function. But the hedonistic value function is biological and innate, so the task is as impossible as winning the lottery.

But people do still win the lottery.

Would that suggest the difference between Stalin and Ghandi was little more than Ghandi’s bad luck? Because who really wouldn’t rather be in Stalin’s circumstances? (while of course believing they would avoid his evils and do good instead).

An uncomfortable thought… but then we’re always free to be irrational and just ignore what makes us uncomfortable...

Pacificmaelstrom 14 Sep 2018 21:36 UTC
1 point
on: Consciousness and Sleep
You are fully sentient (having experiences) during all phases of sleep. It is the brain processes related to MEMORY that shut down causing you not to remember it.

How do we know this? Myself and many people I’ve talked to have had the experience of almost falling asleep and then waking back up and realizing we were just thinking about a bunch on nonsense thoughts strung together in a stream of consciousness manner. For example:

“I am thinking about to go to the dog is up there is a good view of my office manager isnt really such a big potato chips are the lights on....”

It is clear that this kind of thought pattern reflects a lack of memory engagement. In the deepest sleep (or coma) this lack likely becomes so pronounced that not even single words or images are possible, but the sentient experience remains.

For another example, during dreams (REM) the memory processes turn partially back on, but not all the way, which is why dreams seem so illogical when you wake up and remember everything you couldn’t in the dream.

Our sentience always experiences only the present moment, but the complex memory hardware of our advanced brains allows our sentience to re-experience the past as well, making coherent thinking possible. Without memory there is only pure experience of the now. This is the most elementary state of mind and the definition of sentience.

From the time your neurons first start firing in the womb until they stop at death, they propagate your sentience continuously like a wave moving over the ocean. Through waking, sleeping, and even the deepest of comas this wave continues unbroken.

But when a wave crashes on the beach it is gone and nothing can bring it back. You can create a new wave of course, but you cannot get the original back. Like waves, the IDENTITY of a particular instance of sentience (“you” or “me” for example) arises from continuity and nothing else. And yes, it certianly does not arise from memory.

Silly ideas about teleported copies and clones being “you” come from basing identity on memories not continuity. Thats why it is important to understand that when you sleep it isnt your sentient awareness that shuts down… just your memory of it!