I’ve watched Stuart Russel’s TED talk on AI risk, and my gut reaction to it was “do you want to be paperclips? this is how you become paperclips!”. It goes completely against the grain of the view that has been expressed on this blog as of few years ago. But, then again, AI is hard, and there might be some recent developments that I have missed. What is the current state of the research? What does EY and his camarilla think about the state of the problem as of now?
timujin
Karma: 488
Confirm.
It’s not about qualia. It’s about any arbitrary property.
Imagine a cookie like Oreo to the last atom, except that it’s deadly poisonous, weighs 100 tons and runs away when scared.
Chalmers does not claim that p-zombies are logically possible, he claims that they are metaphysically possible. Chalmers already believes that certain atomic configurations necessarily imply consciousness, by dint of psychophysical laws.
Okay. In that case, I peg his argument as proving too much. Imagine a cookie that is exactly like an Oreo, down to the last atom, except it’s raspberry flavored. This situation is semantically the same as a p-Zombie, so it’s exactly as metaphysically possible, whatever that means. Does it prove that raspberry flavor is an extra, nonphysical fact about cookies?
This argument is not going to win over their heads and hearts. It’s clearly written for a reductionist reader, who accepts concepts such as Occam’s Razor and knowing-what-a-correct-theory-looks-like. But such a person would not have any problems with p-Zombies to begin with.
If you want to persuade someone who’s been persuaded by Chalmers, you should debunk the argument itself, not bring it to your own epistemological ground where the argument is obviously absurd. Because you, and the Chalmers-supporter are not on the same epistemological ground, and will probably never be.
Here’s how you would do that.
---- START ARGUMENT ----
Is it conceivable that the 5789312365453423234th digit of Pi is 7?
No, don’t look it up just yet. Is it conceivable to you, right now, that it’s 7?
For me, yes, it is. If I look it up, and it turns out to be 7, I would not be surprised at all. It’s a perfectly reasonable outcome, with predictable consequences. It’s not that hard for me to imagine me running a program that calculates and prints the number, and it printing out 7.
Yet, until you look it up, you don’t really know if it’s 7 or not. It could be 5. It would also be a reasonable, non-surprising and conceivable outcome.
Yet at least one of those outcomes is logically impossible. The exact value of Pi is logically determined, and, if you believe that purely logical conclusions apply universally, then one of those values of 5789312365453423234th digit of Pi is universally impossible.
And yet both are conceivable.
So logical impossibility does not imply inconceivability. This is logically equivalent to saying “conceivability does not imply logical possibility” (A->B ⇒ ~B->~A).
If conceivability does not imply logical possibility, then even if you can imagine a Zombie world, it does not mean that the Zombie world is logically possible. It may be the case that the Zombie world is logically impossible. Chalmer’s argument does not rule that out. For example, it may be the case that certain atomic configurations necessarily imply consciousness. Or it may be any other case of logical impossibility. What matters is that consciousness as an additional nonphysical entity is not implied by its conceivability.
---- END ARGUMENT ----
I have taken the survey.
Sort of yes. Maybe not sufficiently new. I shall look into it.
I am definitely not better off without what I lost. Genuine curiosity had tremendously powerful effect on my learning.
The source of my wanting is conscience rather than passion, though. It’s a completely different thing, and learning is a tiring activity which importance I realize, rather than something that empowers me or something I look forward to. That’s the problem.
Maybe some part of you has decided that it’s time to stop exploring education and its time to exploit the knowledge you already have? Do you feel like you have a lot of knowledge now? Or that you know enough
No, I definitely didn’t learn everything I think I need. I am very much in need to learn a lot of things, desperately, in fact.
Is your relationship to knowledge seeking now in the form of “disinterest”, “too busy for it”, “sick of it” or some other sentiment...
I still pursue knowledge from pragmatic standpoint. “This is useful, this is not, therefore I need to learn this and can completely disregard that”. There is just no “drive” in it, no genuine force of curiosity that used to be so motivating. From pragmatic standpoint, my ability to learn suffered a great hit.
I don’t feel depressed at all. In the contrary, I am quite motivated, agitated and sort of happy.
I’ve lost my curiosity. I have noticed that over the course of the last year, I have become significantly less curious. I no longer feel the need to know anything unless I need it, I don’t understand how it is possible to desire knowledge for the sake of knowledge (even though the past me definitely did), I generally find myself unable to empathize with knowledge-seekers and the virtue of curiosity. That worries me a lot, because if you asked me two years earlier, I would have named curiosity as my main characteristic and the desire for knowledge my main driving force. Thinking over the last year, I can’t remember any life-changing experiences that would have warranted the change. May it have been the foods I ate, or some neurological damage? I would have attributed it to brain aging, if I weren’t twenty. What happened? How to reverse it? I find it crippling.
“What’s up, Sarge? Do you want to live for ever?”
“Dunno. Ask me again in five hundred years.”
“Guards! Guards!”, Terry Pratchett
I’ll look into this. Thank you.
What is the best way to relatively quickly gain some elementary proficiency in world history? I notice that I have little to no awareness as to how the world came to be as it is (there were cavemen… they discovered fire… thus the technological progress started… gets us to steam engines, then elecricity, and computers...). Is there a good textbook that outlines the issue?
It is a good quote in general, but not quite a rationality quote.
By entering some important situation where my and his comparative advantage in some sort of competence comes into play, and losing.
But English language’s “Jesus” is still far off.
The claim that people can’t pronounce Jesus’ name might apply to former Soviet Union countries, but I doubt it applies anywhere else in Europe.
Do you know that Jesus’s actual name is Yeshua?
What’s wrong with ethanol made from corn, anyway?