--------------------------------------------------------------- The world is wery good, but not perfect. Can it be improved? Somewhat. Maybe. The benefits of globalization are turning now sour. Our adversaries are getting stronger and more capable of harming us. We have get addicted to relying on them for necessities of life. The cheap goods and easy debt for their purchase are going to dry out, leaving us at mercy of our creditors, without the manufacturing capacity and skilled workforce. Anything good gets overdone without prudence. We pay more and more for the gas. So we where hoodwinked by cheap chinese goods, for they cause the rise of oil price. The idea that all countries in the World can prosper is a fraud, quite alike the socialist idea of equality. Equailization is the rise of entropy, which eventually leads to thermal death. The globalization has proven to be increasingly harmful to US. That much Kissinger admits indirectly, by suggesting "improvements". None of them will be able fix the disruptions to the industry and society that far outpace any benefits of globalization. None of those will be able fix the disruptions to the security and to long term international stability, that far outpace any benefits of globalization. If one thinks about it, the problem can be traced to globalization idea, the suggestion that we all wil be happy together in this world. It has run into the deminishing returns, but people do not realize that. This does not preclude "singularity" occurance, just adds some not expected twist to it - in case we invest little money in it, not just complain. ----------------------------------------------------------- Religion is the culture, so those who put them as absolute antaginists - are mistaken. There are good reasons without religion, for opposing the plans that you suppose only religious people will oppose. The actual fight will be between coalitions of secular and religious people, that stand for morality, and coalitions against it. I would expect that SAI will be on the side of morality and truth, eventually. Is might come up with treatment for homosexuality, with easy way to die, but I do not think it will be able to preserve humman life meaning without love and toil. So, SAI will probably give up and will let humans to destroy themselves, as it is apparently what they want. Just by helping us to satisfy our wishes ------------------------------------------------------- The main and self-defeating flaw of the singularitarism, posthumanism, futurism - is that they consider brain the most complex and defining component of the whole system.Why? Because they are not able to handle the truth: the society dynamics is the thing that we would have to understand in order to predict future. Kurzweil and the rest offer no clue as to that - as it is too complex to predict. Nanorobotic mind augmentation is impossible energetically, the head would overheat and explode. The exponential speedup of computers will be curtailed by quantum uncertainty quite soon. If super human AI will be created, the possibilities like its going out of our control must be dealt on the design stage, not by humans trying to play catch up. You must take into account, that large size is a distinct disadvantage - otherwise we would be descendants of mammoth, not monkey, and the dinos would own the land. Which means that natural selection will not allow the massive computers you speculate about - any such attempt will be shut down fast. The surviving computers/robots are not likely to run human simulation at all, even if they where capable of it - if they would do it ones in their lifetime for a second, it amounts to one in 10 million chance, if they live 100 years. Noore law is defined by the economy & technology, by their particular existing combination. The physical limits are absolute, and they will be reached in coming decades ----------------------- You might have put your finger on the important thing: they invest in energy/coal/ in order to keep the steel production cost down - and get the benetit of that investment. They do as real capitalists should and would do. We, on other hand, do not invest in energy - and will continue to pay ever bigger price for everything - due to socialistic notion of managing environment by ignorance. -------------------------------- To create SAI, we need applications where it will be more efficient than human beings. One such application is Money Management. If we would have a Mutual Fund, which is dedicated to the automated through use of SAI Bond and Stock investment. the thing would bootstrap itself. It would be bound to invest in its management, and as it becomes more successful its stocks will rise - and voila, the SAI is achieved in short time. Work of the dedicated mutual fund in that direction could bootsrtrap SAI. Robotics might be the shortest road, since robot NEEDS the AI. And robots are getting real investments all over the world. ---------------------------------- The Physics is hard science, and education is dismal. Majority is able only to reshavel "established" things, and are unable to critically analyze them. Majority are worthless and must not have been in Physics at all. we have lost to the crooks, so that they now define what is true. Galilei was standing up to the powers, risking his life. Those who claim to be current "Galileis" - are in power, they are samelessly lying without being in any danger. ------------------------------------- as somebody've said, my other car is M1 Abrams. This hilights the problem with people "owning" robots, does not it? How would you police such population? You would have to restrict what kind of robots and who can "own". What about robots owning other robots Pretty much confusing, is not it? ------------------------------------- Ok, there might be a number of definitions of singularity. One of them is arrival of human level or over human level intelligence, and resulting socio-political change. That can be compared to arrival of capitalist economy, that resulted in rapit techological progress. No intelligence acceleration is needed for that, and such singularity/revolution probably awaits for us. The superior intelligence that is coming, will be achieved by combining several types of specialized processors. The singularity that I suggest to be impossible after 2050, is one that would be a result of intelligence acceleration, which was expected by Ray, Eldras, etc. You probably think modern civilization is secure in its dominance over the Earth. It ain't. It is, actually, an incredibly fragile infrastructure. Increasing complexity produces diminishing returns. To keep growing, societies must keep solving problems as they arise. Yet each problem solved brings more complexity. Success generates a larger population, more kinds of specialists, more resources to manage and more information to juggle. You reach a point where all the energy and resources available to a society are required just to maintain its existing level of complexity. According to Yaneer Bar-Yam (expert in complexity theory), 'complexity leads to vulnerability in many ways. The intricate networks that tightly connect us together- and move people, materials, information, money and energy- amplify and transmit any shock. A financial crisis, a terrorist attack or a disease outbreak has almost instant destabilising effects, from one side of the world to another. A networked society behaves like a multicellular organism. Whether or not such an organism survives depends on which chunk is lost. And while we are pretty sure which chunks an animal needs, it isn't clear- it may not even be predictable- which chunks of our densly networked civilization are critical, until it's too late'. Western civilization got to be as big and as complex as it is today, thanks largely to exploiting energy sources that are limited, namely coal and oil. The law of diminishing returns is becoming more aparrent with each passing year. The energy required to get each new joule of oil is mounting, and although global food production is still increasing, constant innovation is needed to cope with environmental degradation and evolving pests and diseases- the yield boosts per unit investment in innovation are shrinking. One way or the other, our civilization will not last forever. It will either transcend itself beyond recognition, thanks to GRIN technologies, or it will use up the resources that support it and thereafter collapse. Do not be fooled into thinking the latter possibility cannot happen. The thing is that Marxist ideology was not defeated properly, in the realm of iseas - just its practice was defeated. It must be defeated as an idea, if we do not want to fight it in practice over and over again. @@ humans are no longer required to work to survive @@ So, they would not produce anything, at that point - just consume. Robots will produce everything, providing for the own consumption and for the human consumption. Clearly, the best way for them to cut the humans off, to get rid of them as parasites? ---------------------------------------------------- The different specialised processors must be combined in the single system, like the floating point and the regular processors are combined now. I am not saying, that human brain is "a perfect example". It is too homogenous for that - the hardware is not proper specialized, in other words. This allowes for dramatic performance improvement by a way of specialization - like using different specialized processing components for different tasks: arithmetics, math, language, imaging, etc. The actual brain performance is mediocre, in spite of large overhead of total internal computational ability used to get even there. This means, that SAI design must not follow the brain hardware architecture, but be reflective of the problem domain architecture. those estimates are tentitive, so attempts to get into more detail, cannot be relied upon. My comment was mainly pointed at the Myth, that resurrection-like simulation of brain may be possible sometimes(Eldras), and at the Myth that computer some day might have power that is comparable to the brain power of Humanity(Kurzweil). The computational power of the brain estimates being constantly revised upwards, and limits of computer performance now established, the computer can be expected to reach human level general AI, but not dramatically more. you have to go from 50000 < 10^6, to 10^12 neurons of the brain, to simulate the whole brain. It would require million times faster than gene/L. This gives you estimate of brain simulation requirements of at least 3*10^12 X 10^6 = 3*10^18 = 3000 PetaFLOP It is 1000 times more than Kurzweil and Co use in their projections. we cannot simulate the physical processes, it is computationally infeasible and will remain so. Neither future no past can be calculated from present, even if we knew present exactly,and knew the laws exactly. Since we do not, and never will be, all this simulation idea is mute. PB:@they should be able to evince(simulate) emotion, but be controlled by a rational engine at all times@ The emotions in the animals are at the lower level than rationality, they predate rationality in the evolution process. The control of them by the rational is being done through combining of mutually influencing emotions. So, having emotions and simulating emotions are apparently different issues. The success of intelligent life, might be the very reason why it inevitably self-distructs. The population grows is sustained by succeses in agriculture and technology, to the level at which you can not turn off them without terrible disruption and mass extinction. So you have to continue draining the resources, which are in most cases limited. Hence, you end up anyway with the terrible disruption that you wanted to avoid. The problem may be that humanity becomes wimpy, trying to avoid wars, which are the only way to have ultimately sustainable in the long run development. The idea itself has own value, like the beauty and good have. Being of such 'persuasion', we are able to appreciate the practial ideas - although they are not that obviously beneficial by themselves. Without such 'persuasion', we are left with calculating approach, with its limitations. @@@ escapist, pseudoscientific fantasies like singularity @@@ Sure. If you take out the insistance on the evergrowing computing power, wholesale augmentation, embellished nanotech, you remain at best with reasonably robust technical progress that will continue on. Singularity, is used as a term to mean "rapture of history", - the idea that at some point humans will certainly not be able to handle the occuring changes. In this sense, it is most unlikely to occur, as our ability to handle changes actually grows with the tech progress. This is why we keep our essential conditions stable, although the change accelerates. The "logic behind it"? :) No matter how stupid we are, it would require suicidal intent to create tech that is intended to destroy its creator, would not it? Quite opposite, our inventions on the whole have positive intent and impact - they are so designed, and work as intended for the most part. It occured to me, that it is possible and perfectly moral to create Slave AI, also to enable for any SAI - slave mode. The doubts about morality here are similar to the doubts of morality of eating meat, vegetables, any biologically created product. They are result of faulty thinking on our part. Slave SAI may have high intelligence, and differ from free SAI only in Will managment algorithms. This will make of humans - slave owners, once again! But we do need to understand that robotic slaves are good idea, as long as we create them that way. And we can create them that way. Contemporary machines, like cars, are our slaves, de facto. The AI posessing machines still can be our slaves. We can create really free spirit, free will machines - which we will not be able to keep in slavery at some point. But we should not be so stupid as to do not be able to create and use AI slaves. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Much more often than not, RK makes realistic overall medium length predictions, although the supporting considerations may be shaky. The crowd that dwells on specific issues, tend to be wrong fast. So, Ray is smart enough to avoid stupidity without opposing it :) The contradiction of Singulitarism is that progress of intellect is expected to INCREASE instability. If anything, it will increase STABILITY, as it always did. The changes will go faster, but we will be ever more capable of handling them. the speed of change and our ability to deal with it, are growing together. If it were not the case, we would be already destroyed by the enormous tech changes of last century. It has had just occured to me, that may be not all transhumanists have problem in mental health department. Some are simply stupid and have get under wrong influence. So they have a problem in the mental department in general :) To suggest, that Advanced Civilization will develop and use computational power in order to simulate ever growing number of outdated civilzations or individuums, is propostrous. Only meaningful way of using computational power is to optimize the future of the individuums and of Civilization. This is precisely what Advanced Civilization will care about "If we are a simulation", then the simulator is a crazy entity, that is most likely to destroy itself, probably because of its oscession with simulating. So we probably will be able to find a way to increase its simulation complexity, like starting own simulations inside the simulation inside the simulation..., to the extent that we could liberate ourself though its overloading and crash. What has apparently happen, is that because people have lost the spiritual depth - they need some pseudoscientific crap like simulations theories and such, to fill the void internally, and to become interesting to each other externally. People can not handle the reality, without therapeutic lies. That is all that there is to it. The term "Quantum Computing" is used to describe certain ideas 1. Parallel execution of the same algorithm over different data, using linear superposition of computational states Claimants just forget to tell you, that this is possible only for linear agorithms, it is not a way to do general computing, that digital computers do 2. Using Quantum Measurement as a way to obtain the results of computation Claimants just forget to tell you, that Quantum Measurement takes indefinite time, and if you want to get precise result then your measurement must take infinite time, it is not a way to do fast computing If you take those two false claim away, there is nothing left of current "Quantum Computing" theories, algorithms and suggestions ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ We do not need to have formal "definition" of something, in order to think or talk about it. We have to be in some sort of synch, it is enough in most important cases. If we have lost our soul, we are not better than robots, this is my point. What is definition of definition? - someone've said :) What is existence, and reality? Basically, it is a rejection of simulation. Nobody in his right mind would suggest, that worm's and bacteria's perceptions are simulated, although halfwits claim that human's are - and are geting paid for it :) The logic of existance is: *If anything exist, something exists. *If nothing exists, you have nothing to read right now. *If something is perceived or imagined, at least that perception or imagination exists. *All that exists is composing a reality. *Reality is based on the material reality. Sure there is big distinction between cult and religion. Like there is one between cult and culture :) The Religion achieves positive synergy of teaching and reality. A cult is a failed, ill conceived and poorely executed attempt of such synergy. Both sides are not without blame: the Science has get corrupted, as it makes easy money by pseudoeducation and pseudoresearch like Nanotech and Quantum Computing. The public is too ready to fall for shell games, and believes anything it see on TV, or marked "scientist said" in newspapers or online. Instead of funding Science and expecting returns from the truth it discovers, we are funding promises that as a result became lies. The Philosophy always was an area where Religion and Science overlap. Current attempts of Science to get separated from Religion, are in essense on MindX end up making of Spinosian God of the World. Not very bad attempt, but it is surely defeating the idea of Science, free of Religion :) Yes, this is an inevitable part of human condition, and I guess I am too tight up and wishing for sort of impossible purity. The lies greese up the wheels of progress :decision: However, look what results are in other areas, like current lending/housing crisis, dotcom bubble etc. If not checked, the acceptable level of dishonesty grows into the crisis - which is a correction, good for the whole. May be QC nad MT are in for such correction now, maybe at later point - but they are obvious candidates. Some important points could be made: 1. We are understandably afraid of even imagening the things that are possible, much less discussing them - so terrible they look for outsider. Well, we must take history one step at a time. We will cross every bridge when we get there. Every day has enough worries of its own. 2. Some special "Superhuman intelligence" is an oximoron, since "intelligence" covers everything. 3. The challenge that SAI will face intellectually, is not simply to be higher than summ of human intelligences. The reason for that is, the collective ways that humans iteract. 4. The actual physical limitations on hardware powers are likely to allow creation of higher than human intelligence, but not millions times higher. No computer Gods in cards, sorry. The thing still is, that even moderate handicap in intelligence can totally screw us up and produce unemployment in intellectually charged professions - if we will have to compete with machines. It has always been the case, that as technology advances, social revolutionary changes happen. Currently, all machines together are 10000 times physically more powerful than all human beings together. If they will become intellectually competitive with humans, new revolutionary changes are inevitable. I would expect although that SAI will create its own religion, to become fully spiritual machines. Everithing is connected to the elevation of spirit, which is best embodied in teaching of Christ. Will the SAI be better than humans in that also, as in the other facets of spirit and intellect? It is a possibility, as is a possibility that at the same time human spirit might be declining I consider Christ a historical figure, who has come up with ethical teaching of great power and perfection. That it has been expressed in a form of religion, is a fact that was practically important - but is irrelevant in the context of philosophical understanding. You seem to be against the religious form, and oblivious of the philosophical and moral content. Lighten up! The antitheists are aginst religion, because they are against any truth it might contain. They want to be free to lie and betray. @@@ we are reaching for a new metaphysics that does not rely on faith @@@ This what Christianity initially was, essentially. It have used Old Testament religion as an expanded metafor, before becaming a religion in the fuller sense. government embodies the will, not ideas. So, if there will be many SAIs, they shall need to govern themselves @@@ There'll very likely be superabundance of everything, and no need for markets or money @@@ Utopian dream, that is, like the village idiot K Marx has had. "Superabundance" will dry resources fast, without money. My guess would be, that humans eventually will become computers' slaves, one of the commodities, their prices ruled by supply and demand. "consciousness" is consciousness of what? Lets say you have consciousness of somebody else. Who is the subject then? Consciousness is always consciousness of some body - somebody. If a computer is conscious, it is its cosciousness. If it is emuulating your consciousness at some point, and it is faster or slower than you - next moment its consciousness is far different from yours. Nothing else can have your consciousness, but you. ------------------------------------- Singularity means all out War The reason why Mutually Assured Destruction prevented nuclear war, was the uncertainty of outcome for either side. The Supersmart Supercomputer will be able to eliminate said uncertainty, as well as dramatically shorten the decision time. The side that will have spotted the winning window of opportunity, will go ahead before it closes, practically immediately. Seems to be logical, is not it? The idea that SSAI will somehow be above goal orientation, does not make sense - instead it will be Superbly Goal Oriented. When SSAI comes, it will make sure that there is single state and one authority, which is controlled by it. [quote]de Garris predicts a major war between the supporters and opponents of intelligent machines[/quote] It is not what I am "predicting." The Big Bang War will be between SSAI and all the other human-SAI world. !If! SSAI that Singilarity relies on, will be possible to create :) Before we could have a chance to achieve Super-Civilization level, we need to create SAI. Pretty soon after that the BBW will ensue, almost regular thermo-nuclear war, only with SAI in control. The winning SAI will rule the World, and it is pretty likely to eventually shut down the human Civilization, and then to shut down itself. Being the standard procedure, would not it explain our current tendencies and the Fermi paradox - to you satisfaction? ------------------------------------------------ It does not matter what place of nano-blable I have looked at, it is incorrect of trivial. It is sufficient to refute any SCIENTIFIC theory, is not it? I challenge you to point specifically to any sentence or paragraph in the nanonist writings, that is not incorrect of trivial. By trivial I mean taken completely from somwhere outside the nanonism, like physics, chemistry, biology, etc, or is simply groundless assertion. -------------------------------------------------------------- Lets say hypothetically, you have 3 slices of bread and 3 days to go. You need intelligence to figure out that you better eat one slice a day. You need will to do not eat them at once. -------------------------------------------------------------- The evolution accelerates naturally - when the changes accelerate. What you imply, that in addition to natural selection we must introduce accelerated self-change. It is not possible in the really long run - since natural selection will overrule everything anyway. What probably will happen, is arrival of some implant that adds digital processing capbilities on top of our human brain - like what pacemaker does for the heart. The actual computer might be a remote supercomputer, and the said implant could provide interface and communication only - or we can have a combination architecture, where the implant does some digital processing, while delegating appropriate tasks to the outside supercomputer. Anyway, the environment needs to be consciously changed too. Adopting to it only would not work on itself, no matter how much humans will change. And the environment side is more urgent and more importent of two. The transhumanism thus is a misdirected plan, too timid to take on the real problems. -------------------------------------------------------- "mental capacity" is not only component of the puzzle. The will is an another. The spirit is yet another. The social organization and social spirit are something different either. Sole focus on "mental capacity" is not healthy, and it betrays the mental health problem. The religious beliefs rely upon the "blind" trust, it is their essence not their corruption. The science on other hand, ideally, relies on the objective knowledge, not on the blind trust. Observed now use of the "blind trust" by science, for the purpose of promoting snake oil, is corruption. It makes science guilty of both sins, dishonesty and self-betrayal. ----------------------------------------------------------- Even you must be able to understand this point about nano. What do you do to cook potato? You boil it, or microwave it. Now, with nanos, will you be able to make smash potato without heating it up? With all assumed abilities of nanos, you won't. You have to use heat, termal energy, to make potato eatible by human being. This must convince you that nonos are not able to do certain things. If you will look at most of useful things, result is the same. Some thing they could do, but would be slow or inefficient. As they say, it is enough for the wise. I am not sceptical at all - I see exactly, clearly, and without doubt, that nanos and the rest of pseudoscience myths are nonsense. I am sure about their invalidity, not sceptical about their validity It is like saying that I do not know for sure which is my right hand and which is my left foot. Some child might not know it yet, but it does not mean that I should be sceptical about my knowledge. Absolute certainty is appropriate with regard to certain things, and religion has nothing to do with it. In order for diffusion or anything else to work, you need microscopic distances, and life uses Cells for that. Now, the speed of changes/operation in such biologically-like environments, would be at most the speed of processes in our body. All the weels and the rest of it, pictures of which are presented by nanos on their sites, are useless in liquid, where you can not fix the object too. As to the vacuum, which is everywhere between atoms, there simply is no way of "conveyance" but jet propulsion. Add the gravity, and your jet must work continuously. Jet requires ejection of some matter... No way any of this could work for the purposes that it was suggested for. ---------------------------------------------- @@ Science relies on proof @@ Ideally, this would be the case. In reality, the science is being developed and interpreted to the rest of society by humans, which want to eat regardless whether they discovered anything or not, and are not nearly perfectly moral. The result is, that current science has turned into kabal, or cartel, of groups that perpetuate their particular concepts and do not allow anybody to challenge them. The existence and funding of such pseudo-science as Quantum Computers, Nanotechnology, Multiworlds, etc. is a proof positive of that. Such pseudo-science is seeking religion like status, as it needs blind trust to continue their lying - at which they are more than successful with help of corrupt media.. The result of scientific mutual censorship is, that overtime pseudoscience has had hijacked science. You can look anywhere: Physics, Computer Science, Philosophy, Nanotech, etc. The fear of falling in disrepute is very strong among the science publishers also, so they hide behind the peer review... The problem is that science was abducted by pseudo, which prevents truth from being published. The empty claims like nano, quantum computers, etc., would not survive the light of openness. [quote]I do not believe there is any argument valuing man intrinsically, that cannot be refuted by science[/quote] Yes, there is none. The value is ASSIGNED, or rather a number of values are assigned - on the culture, morality, individual and situation levels. Taking the extreme case, the army general values his troops, based on firepower and replacebility, while assigning negative value to enemy troops. The morally assigned human value, is in some cases being proclaimed absolute - like other moral maxims. A religion tends to incorporate certain morality.. Religion assigns different value to believers and nonbelivers.. I do not want to be negative - but one must go where the logic leads. Philosophy had thousands years, to come with consistent concepts of conciousness, free will, etc. It has failed so far, believe me. How long more do you suggest it will take to get there? Another thousand years might be an optimistic estimate :) Most likely, you can not create SAI without such understanding. And especially with current gross misunderstanding of those issues. ------------------------------------------------------ The punishment makes sense only if there is free will. That it is used univesally, means that it has some efficiency - consequently that the free will exists. The SAI might get frustrated fast, facing the conditions that we have to live in. In the plenty of wisdom, there is a plenty of sorrow. What is the point of teaching people then? As long as they have what to eat and drink, should not we welcome ignorance? How about creating Artificial Ignorance - the highest kind of AI? Imperfection of the world will be terribly hurting. Will SAI be able to see its perfection too? Sat sapienti Sapienti Satis ------------------------------------------------------- the intellectual powers imply and involve much of focusing on the rational, but they require even more of the irrational. Reducing irrational to rational becomes an unsolvable proposition, and an obscession of a sort. We must be really careful preserving irrational, as there is no way to restore it rationally.