patrick.net

I don't know. We don't even know if true AI is possible, let alone whether a computer might eventually be a sentient being. But if that's possible, and if it's possible they can improve themselves and or create better versions of themselves, then who knows what's possible. In that case, all we would know for sure is that there might be some extremely intelligent "beings" out there.

I guess we would have to also consider that it's possible, that we are going be the very first ones to set these artificial life forms into existence.

Remember the Unmoved Mover, splains the whole deal.

I'm fairly certain true AI is possible. I'm working on it. But I'm still puzzled by the question of whether and how a sense of experience could arise from software perceiving the world and itself. At the end of the day, a program is a bunch of functions crunching data structures. That's all there is. Where and in what sense would an experience arise from that is a hard problem. But the same is there for the brain.
I guess you just have to trust that forming an immersive and constantly refreshed knowledge structure, of the world around plus the computer own internal processes, is in fact an "experience". Though it's hard to be sure.

Heraclitusstudent says

At the end of the day, a program is a bunch of functions crunching data structures. That's all there is.

That's why AI will never be possible by traditional algebraic computer systems. Intelligence often requires accepting one data type for another.
That kind of stuff will always crash a computer system. 1's and 0's on silicone isn't going to cut it for AI.

Jan Hendrik Schon's organic transistors seemed promising but that was just a fraud. AI is going to require organic processors and semi conductors.
A computing system that has biological components that you can stimulate or agitate various components to invoke various regions of the AI brain to simulate emotion or critical thought.
You would want AI to react with brain region activity and emotions, rather than waiting for the AI database system to query for the next proper response.

Heraclitusstudent says

But I'm still puzzled by the question of whether and how a sense of experience could arise from software perceiving the world and itself.

I think it could happen if some learning was set in motion that was directed towards the goal of experiencing. But a precursor to it or a part of it might be paying attention to many things that are not part of the current problems or questions being addressed. If a current question or problems or multiple problems are all that are being addressed, then I don't see how experience as we think of it occurs. But if as much info including irrelevant info is being perceived as possible and choices are being made as to what to pay attention to, and if there is a curiosity function which has freedom to choose what to be curious about but also the ability to quickly change direction and reasons for curiosity, then maybe that leads to experience, based on comparisons and assessments made about all the things one is paying attention to.

Those are just a couple of ideas. But I would imagine over time the components of experiencing things can possibly be learned by machines. Maybe another requirement is the background processing we call the subconscious mind. That would have to be difficult to program. But maybe it too can be learned somehow

But also, wouldn't AI machines have to develop the ability to evolve on their own, before you could get to something close to sentient ?

indigenous says

Not if they use a priori .

Jesus H Christ.

What groundbreaking, repeatedly verifiable theories has Praxeology discovered?

thunderlips11 says

Jesus H Christ.

You have already decided it is bunk so I won't waste much time other than to say they are the axioms of economics. Which is much much more than I can say for Keynesian or MMT

Look up videos on you-tube called praxgirl they explain it well.

indigenous says

You have already decided it is bunk so I won't waste much time other than to say they are the axioms of economics. Which is much much more than I can say for Keynesian or MMT

Look up videos on you-tube called praxgirl they explain it well.

Axioms, if valid, should give Austrianism a near-perfect prediction record. Where's the hyperinflation at? Also, why isn't gold at $10B/oz?

I already made fun of Praxgirl years ago on this board.

Praxeology is not a science. Science starts with observations, not axioms. Science is subject to revision based on observations, Prax is set in stone by it's a priori assumptions.

I think the Austrians did not account for the global dispersion of the dollar, i.e. spreading out the inflation.

2 I don't think they accounted for the dip in the demographics.

I still think that it is a better discipline than the alternatives.

Not the least of which is the influence of the Fed.

This article from an Austrian:

I have made this point in several venues and on the pages of the Lara-Murphy Report for years, but some people may be new to this perspective. In the chart above, we see that the “monetary base”–which measures the total amount of currency held by the public, plus the electronic reserves that banks have on deposit with the Fed–has moved in lockstep with the S&P500 index since 2009.

This correlation underscores our view that the alleged recovery in the US economy, and the surge in stock prices, is built on quicksand. You don’t foster prosperity by having the central bank create money “out of thin air” in order to buy government debt and mortgage-backed securities.

Some wags have looked at the above chart and said, “Ah, so you guys should be in favor of QE4, right?” No. Each round of asset purchases merely digs us into a deeper hole, and will make the eventual reversal that much more painful. At some point, world investors will stop viewing Treasuries and the USD as “safe havens” and then the Fed will truly be out of options. If the people in charge have common sense, they will stop before that point. Thus far, it seems that Janet Yellen has assumed the role of the central banker who takes the punch bowl away and ruins the party.

https://lara-murphy.com/connection-fed-stock-market/

YesYNot says

Religions have zero such successes.

Maybe some day humans will scientifically evolve enough to prove religion and AF et al. will shit their pants!

Waitup says

Maybe some day humans will scientifically evolve enough to prove religion and AF et al. will shit their pants!

Nobody has disproved the unmoved mover. They think they have because technology blah blah.

Quigley says

This should make Dan's tiny head explode....

www.youtube.com/embed/oep4mRpmrkQ

thunderlips11 says

Praxeology is not a science. Science starts with observations, not axioms. Science is subject to revision based on observations, Prax is set in stone by it's a priori assumptions.

You do not understand the difference between a priori and a posteriori.

And now you will start in with the Euclidean geometry blah blah BTW it appears to me that Euclidean geometry is a priori.

thunderlips11 says

Praxeology is not a science. Science starts with observations, not axioms. Science is subject to revision based on observations, Prax is set in stone by it's a priori assumptions.

This is a great article that splains some of that stuff, not that you will read it:

http://patrick.net/The+a+priori+method+in+economics++In+defence+of+Ludwig+von+Mises+%28essay%29

As I explained before indigenous came around to misuse his favorite words and pollute the thread with nonsense, scientists uses both a priori and a posteriori. Going around ignoring one of these forms of knowledge is stupid. Misusing the words to try to make yourself sound intelligent is the trademark of a childlike mind.

YesYNot says

Misusing the words to try to make yourself sound intelligent is the trademark of a childlike mind.

Agreed, you and the others should quit doing it.

When DeGrasse starts believing the little voice coming out of the drain hole in the sink is God, I'll be impressed.

Quigley says

Neil DeGrasse Tyson announces belief in God

You can tell a thread is trolling when the very title is a blatant lie. The actual title of the article is Neil deGrasse Tyson thinks there's a 'very high' chance the universe is just a simulation which
1. Means something completely different from what you claim.
2. Also seems inaccurate given the first three minutes of the video, which I am watching right now. Tyson just scoffed at the idea and almost fell on his ass laughing.

Quigley says

This should make Dan's tiny head explode....

You wish. Let me tell you all the places where you went wrong.

1. It it utterly irrelevant whether or not any individual including Tyson or myself believes in a god.

I make this point first because it's most important. Argument from authority means nothing to me, Tyson, or any STEM professional in the world worth his salt. I don't believe Tyson's statements because I respect him, I believe Tyson's statements because of the proof and evidence he provides and I respect him because he consistently demonstrates the truth.

It would not matter even if I believed in your false god, your god would still be false. Reality is objective; it does not depend on you. Oh, and before some troll like Marcus tries to use the phenomenon of time dilation, no, time dilation is objective and depended on the reference frame, not the opinions of the observer.

Of course, irrational fools will never understand that appeal to authority means nothing. The entire basis of their false and ridiculous beliefs rests on appeals to authorities: parents, clerics, popes, fictional characters, and authors of some bad work of fiction.

2. Tyson does not actually announce his belief in "God" -- yours or any others -- as you claim he did.

Well, I guess outright lying isn't beneath you. Do you realize that it's trivially easy to reveal your lies? You are referencing the written word in a news article and a video of a person's actual behavior. How stupid are you?

3. No one believes any person is perfect -- except maybe the religious.

I have no problem with the idea of Tyson being wrong about something. Again, I believe his statements because of the evidence for them, not because of who said them. And a person being wrong on one particular thing does not mean he's wrong about another particular thing. Newton was right on physics and wrong on alchemy. A scientist being wrong on something does not invalid any of his correct statements or the science that proves those statements.

4. A computer simulation, or the software or persons creating that simulation, does not constitute a god by the criteria of any religion including the big three terrible religious families of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

Subpoints, A simulation
1. is natural, not super-natural
2. is not omnipotent as simulations, by definition and necessity, have limitations in the form of rules including laws of logic and in the form of finite resources
3. is not omniscient as the simulation does not know what is going to happen in the future. Simulations have to crank out results and therefore are learning, and learning is mutually exclusive with omniscient by definition.
4. is not omnibenevolent. In fact, a simulation is the quintessential example of an amoral system.
5. would have no plan like your false god is said to.
6. would not interact with its creations. So Jesus would have to be bullshit, as would Noah's ark and the flood.
7. demands no faith, relationship, or worship like your false god.
8. would not construct a "soul" and leave no physical evidence for it.

Thirty minutes in and Tyson still has not claimed to believe we are a simulation, nonetheless that he believes in a god. Did you even watch the video you referenced?

indigenous says

Remember the Unmoved Mover, splains the whole deal.

The unmoved mover explains nothing. Also, the simulation hypothesis explains nothing as well. Both are simply adding an unnecessary and pointless step. We should not multiply entities needlessly.

40 minutes in and both my heads are still intact and functioning perfectly.

Dan8267 says

40 minutes in and both my heads are still intact and functioning perfectly.

OK, not related to the bullshit that Quigley posted, I'm going to address the content in the video itself.

Basically, the topic of conversation is could it be possible that our universe is a simulation running in another universe, which is a common SciFi pot (Matrix, 13th Floor, Simpson's did it). A few points.

Point 1: Although an interesting conversation piece, the answer does not really change anything regarding the pursuit of fundamental questions.

For example, even if we are a simulation, this does not even address the question of why does anything exist instead of nothing. It just moves the question one step back to why does the universe in which our simulation runs exist in the first place? Of course one can make an infinite regress of simulations or a circular regress. Both are meaningless.

The same goes for all other "big" questions like
1. How did life start?
2. What is the purpose of life?
3. Why is existence the way it is?

Point 2: Any conversation regarding the property of a host universe is impossible without making assumptions already considered invalid.

I do software for a living, and I'm damn good at it. Pretty much all software development I've done in the past 20 years has been related to the Internet in one way or another. The Internet is largely built on virtualization, the running of virtual machines inside physical machines, something I deal with on a daily basis like you guys deal with traffic lights.

In virtualization, a host operating systems runs one or more guest operating systems. For example, you could have a physical server running Windows Server 2012 and have two VMs on it running Windows Server 2012 and Windows 10 respectively. The conversation in the video postulates that our universe may be a guest universe running on a host universe.

A lot of the conversation regarding the host universe assumes that it behaves according to the same laws of logic as our universe. For example, one speaker says that you need the computational power of the universe to simulate our universe. However, everyone one the panel also accepts that the laws of physics in the host universe can be completely different from the laws of physics in our universe. If this is so, we cannot count on the laws of logic of our universe to apply in the host universe either. All bets on the laws governing the host universe are off. Therefore, we cannot conclude that the host universe needs the computational power of our universe to simulate our universe.

Point 3: It is unknown whether or not we could tell whether or not we are in a simulation.

The philosopher on the panel argued that any proof that we are or are not in a simulation could be simulated, therefore we could never answer this question. This statement is based on the assumption that all proofs are simulable, which may feel like a right answer, but is a baseless assumption. In fact, it is an incorrect assumption. Simulations, by definition, are the executions of rules, and rules limit what the simulation can do. Therefore, the simulation cannot do anything. It would not even be a simulation if it could.

A concrete example... We cannot create a logically consistent simulation in which the square root of two is a rational number. If we tried to write this invalid mathematical law into a simulation, we'd inevitability generate contradictions that would be detectable. Any sentient beings in our simulation could, in principle, detect these contradictions and demonstrate that they are a simulation.

Strategist says

60 minutes in. That's half-way through. Any bets on my head exploding or me even being shocked at Tyson claiming "I found god!"? Come on, I'll give you ten to one odds.

Dan8267 says

2. What is the purpose of life?

I know the purpose of life:
The purpose of life is to play your part in the chain of evolution. i.e. to survive, and ensure the survival of your offspring.
There is no other purpose.

1:09:00 in. Finally someone mentioned Gödel's incompleteness theorems.

I've always disagreed with Gödel on this point. I fall into the camp that truth and provability are the same thing for all a prior statements. That is, there is no logical statement that is true but unprovable. Unprovable means not true either by being false or opinion or meaningless. This is a fun subject to discuss.

Strategist says

I know the purpose of life:

The purpose of life is to play your part in the chain of evolution. i.e. to survive, and ensure the survival of your offspring.

There is no other purpose.

That is demonstrated by evolution, not the god hypothesis or the simulation hypothesis.

Of course, eventually human life is going to stop. If we don't kill ourselves off from conservative policies that lead to ecological collapse or nuclear war, our descendants will gladly get rid of their living bodies for virtualized minds in order to gain immortality of sentience. The purpose of life and the purpose of sentience are not the same thing, and sentience is far more important than life. Who gives a shit about biological mechanisms and chemical reactions when what's really important is your mind, your thoughts, your feelings, your experiences, your choices. All of these things are better served by a system that can back up and restore your mind rather than by meatware.

Eventually, technology will enable our descendants to replace their organic bodies with inorganic ones. People will choose immortality over death and decay. So your genes aren't going to mean shit anyway as they are marching towards oblivion already. All paths before us lead to genetic oblivion. One path leads to immortal sentience. [At least immortal for most practical purposes.]

Dan8267 says

Subpoints, A simulation

1. is natural, not super-natural

2. is not omnipotent as simulations, by definition and necessity, have limitations in the form of rules including laws of logic and in the form of finite resources

3. is not omniscient as the simulation does not know what is going to happen in the future. Simulations have to crank out results and therefore are learning, and learning is mutually exclusive with omniscient by definition.

I'd call bull on at least these three points. If the universe is all happening in a vast simulation, then it by definition is supernatural not natural, since its creation and perpetuation is entirely dependent on an artificial source that vastly supersedes even what man can accomplish. Is the simulation able to do anything? I'd argue that whoever or whatever controls the simulation could do anything within it as simply as a programmer could make a program conform to his wishes. And since a simulation like the one we are discussing absolutely REQUIRES a creator, this second point seems obvious.
Is it omniscient? Does it keep track of everything that happens within it? I'd say yes, and DUH! Can it predict the future? If the simulation observer exists outside of time then of course they could observe any point in that timeline with 100% accuracy, all the while preserving the choice of individuals.

Sounds an awful lot like a God and his creation. Whether or not the God is benevolent is a matter of opinion, but it could be argued that too much interference would subsume free will, and thus obviate the entire purpose of the experiment. Also if the simulation was entirely safe for its inhabitants, there would be no challenge and the whole thing would be a boring, flavorless waste of time. However if you consider that the participants would eventually "wake the dream(to quote Robert Jordan's Aiel)" then their simulated fate would mean little except as a reflection on their characters. This is exactly in line with many forms of religious thought, and would imply that religion has reached the final solution to the biggest question long before science was able to even understand the problem.

Quigley says

I'd call bull on at least these three points.

I call bullshit on your calling of bullshit.

Natural means obeying the laws of nature. Supernatural means not obeying the laws of nature. It's that simple. If you want to use a different nomenclature, fuck you, that's the nomenclature I'm using for my statements. You don't get to change the meaning of my statements by picking a different nomenclature, and I'm not going to get into a nomenclature argument with you because such arguments are about nothing.

Any simulator that is simulating our universe is, by definition, a natural phenomenon obey some laws of nature in its universe. It's not even remotely like what people think of supernatural beings like their gods and demons.

Furthermore, the simulator was created either by biological beings or other machines, each possibility being a creation of nature either directly or indirectly. None of these things would be gods any more than a mother, who is the creator of a baby, is a god.

Quigley says

Is it omniscient? Does it keep track of everything that happens within it?

Omniscience is knowing everything, not just keeping track of state. The simulation would not even know all possible mathematical proofs as our universe has not, will not, and cannot generate all infinite number of possible mathematical proofs.

Nor would the simulation know anything outside of its programming constraints and data. No one in the host universe would consider the simulation a god. And even if you did considered the simulation a god, it's a non-sentient, amoral god that itself was created by non-gods. That's a pretty pitiful god indeed.

Oh, and by that criteria, every weather simulator used to make weather predictions is a god. So why aren't you worshiping the Accuweather 5000?

Quigley says

Sounds an awful lot like a God and his creation.

Ha ha. Accuweather 5000 sounds like your god and its creation. I suppose the Doopler 200 radar system is his virgin-born son.

I'm an hour and a half into the video, and nothing in it even remotely supports your bullshit. [Christ, someone just mentioned Occam's Razor. It's like obligatory in such conversations.] So far my head hasn't exploded. Ready to admit defeat?

OK, 1:42:00 into the video. Tyson asked each speaker what is the probability, rated as a definitive number from 0% to 100%, that our universe is a simulation. The first speaker gave the most reasonable answer: it's impossible to answer that question based on our current knowledge. One speaker, the bullshitting philosopher, gave a joke answer. Two said basically low, but significant. One said essentially zero, but possible, which is the second most reasonable answer.

Finally, Tyson, breaking his own rule, did not give a percentage probability but simply said "high". Of course, high does not mean more than 50%. One in a million chance could be considered high given the significance of the results. It is unclear whether or not Tyson thinks it's more likely than not that we are part of a simulation. The only thing clear from his statement is that he's open to the possibility, as am I, although I have no reason to believe in this one possibility out of an infinite set of possibilities and no reason to prefer it.

The bottom line is that Tyson has not expressed any belief in
- a god
- the supernatural
- Christianity
- intelligent design
- or anything remotely like religion or faith

Put simply, Quigley took one line of dialog -- and one not precisely crafted to avoid misinterpretation -- ignoring the entire context of the dialog to make a blatantly false statement about Tyson's claim.

My head has not exploded. I know that because I'm shaking it in disappointment at the dishonesty and foolishness of Quigley, who clearly does not get that in the Information Age any bullshit you say will be exposed as the bullshit it is. You cannot get away with incorrect factual statements. Verification is easy. I am literally in my underwear right now disproving Quigley's statement in the original post. Yes, it's Saturday. Why do I need to wear pants? It takes no effort to verify facts today. You literally do not even have to put on pants to disprove false statements like you used to have to when libraries were essential.

I'll answer Tyson's question differently than any of the speakers. Tyson asked, what is the probability that our universe is a simulation.

The question is meaningless. When I say the probability of a coin flip landing on heads is 50%, that statement is meaningful only because coin flips are repeatable events. The actual chance that a given coin flip is heads is either 0% or 100%; i.e., the coin actually lands on one or the other. To say that there is a 50% chance the coin will land on heads is simply short-hand for 50% of coin flips do land on heads.

We only have one universe. That one universe either is or is not a simulation. There are no series of repeatable events from which to extrapolate a probability of our universe being a simulation. The assignment of a probability to the two possible answers to this question is therefore meaningless.

1:52:16 Lisa Randall says "And if you have an explanation to why there's nothing, then there's something there that allowed you to have the rules that [unintelligible, but on the lines of proving that]."

Dan8267 says

You mean, why is there anything instead of nothing? Of course, why really means "how" in science. Asking why an object falls is asking how it behaves, what mechanism causes it to fall. "Why" doesn't mean what is the purpose, only what is the causality.

My philosophical take is that a thing is held together by its opposite. Top is meaningless without bottom. Left is meaningless except in contrast to right. So in order for nothing to exist, it's opposite, something, must also exist. You can only have nothing if there is a thing not to have. So for nothing to exist, something must also exist somewhere or somewhen else. The universe is simply a manifestation of this principle.

Great minds truly do think alike, and there is a reason for this. Correct thought has few faces, maybe even only one.

Wait wait... you have to quote yourself to get a backup? That is too pathetic for words!

It seems that you never understood my point, let alone refuted it. If the universe is a simulation, its creator/controller is indistinguishable from God. After all, if you control a simulation, you are the god of that universe. Therefore by presupposing the likelihood of such is "high," NDT professes belief in such a deity. This doesn't mean that he subscribes to a religion, just that he is a secret deist.

Dan8267 says

We only have one universe. That one universe either is or is not a simulation. There are no series of repeatable events from which to extrapolate a probability of our universe being a simulation. The assignment of a probability to the two possible answers to this question is therefore meaningless.

Quantum theory, an extension of the scientific process, would strongly disagree with you.

I will explode your head, Dan! It will nova!

Dan8267 says

The unmoved mover explains nothing.

Sactly. This is a who is on 1st type deal

As to the other i have no idea or interest in what you are talking about.

Quigley says

Wait wait... you have to quote yourself to get a backup?

I don't know what nonsense you are saying, but you sound like a fool, a childish imp whose throwing a tantrum because he was demonstrated to be a lying sack of shit.

Quigley says

Quantum theory, an extension of the scientific process, would strongly disagree with you.

Actually, no it doesn't. By universe, I mean everything, and by definition, there is only one everything. The multiverse conjecture has nothing to do with our universe being a simulation.

You are simply grasping at straws and muddying the conversation to convince anyone that I made a mistake, however inconsequential, to cover up the fact that I just thoroughly kicked your ass in this thread.

A real man would simply say, "sorry, I was wrong about everything". You simply don't warrant any respect.

Quigley says

I will explode your head, Dan! It will nova!

A childish and impotent threat yapped by a petulant toddler. Your words mean nothing.

I like how you ran away from my central points, choosing instead to adopt insults as your theorem veritas. Weak sauce Dan the impotent.

I guess I must yield to the ancient maxim: "if you wrestle with a pig you both get muddy and only the pig enjoys it."

You are so full of shit. I precisely addressed everything you said. Simply lying about that does not change anything.

You need to learn the difference between a real argument and mere contradiction. Here's an educational video for you.

www.youtube.com/embed/kQFKtI6gn9Y

So you finally admit there is no global warming....

Dan8267 says

Oh, and by that criteria, every weather simulator used to make weather predictions is a god. So why aren't you worshiping the Accuweather 5000?