[ExI] Only Behavior? (Was Re: From Friendly AI to Loving AI)

Kelly Anderson kellycoinguy at gmail.com
Tue May 17 05:46:38 UTC 2011


Sorry for the late reply...

2011/5/6 Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at canonizer.com>:
> Everyone always cracks me up, all this talk about "(behave as if he)" and so
> on.  Is there nothing beyond behavior that anyone is interested in yet?
> What about the all the effing good stuff?  Is any of that mentioned in any
> of the books about the future of sex?  Or is it all just about lying
> behavior?

Yes, the book I referred to spends some time on this sort of thing.
The key to the difference between what you're talking about here, and
the stuff I've been talking about is WHEN it happens. The sexbot will
likely be first, and the upload, reload, crossload experiences you're
talking about here will likely be later.

> I was excited to see so much talk about BDSM, this is obviously a minority
> camp, and I pity the majority that are in for a big surprise when they fully
> find out how effing great true BDSM really is.

That may well be true. I think people will be more willing to try such
"far out" stuff in virtual reality, or some other 'safer' way of doing
things. BDSM in the real world has certain hazards that most of us
want to avoid.

> But still, for me, even only
> the "pair up BM robots with SD humans" is missing what is for me the real
> good stuff.  What gets me off mostly, being a switch, is knowing what it
> will feel like for someone doing something to me.  That kind of shared
> recursive awareness is way beyond anything purely behavioral.  I am so
> looking forward to effing what that is like to others, I bet most of you
> will be completely shocked, as any behavior, talking, or anything will never
> get close to what it is really like.

Indeed, it would be hard to really understand something that you have
never gotten close to doing in real life. This goes way beyond sex, of
course. I mean, what the hell is going on in the heads of some of
those holy rollers?!? What the hell is that voodoo state? Extreme
sports of all kinds. There are going to be a number of extremely
interesting states into which we can place our minds that will just
blow us out of the water. I can hardly wait.

> Fully sharing all this is still effingly impossible, you can still only know
> half of what is going on, only guessing   from the 'behavior' - really
> wondering if they are lying, if they are experiencing more or less than you
> ever knew was possible...  Is anyone interested in knowing such or what
> their partner is really experiencing?

Being completely in the head of your partner is something that some
people would get into, but probably not everyone. I think it is
something I would like very much.

> Is their behavior all that matters to
> you?  Do you always want your partner to tell you what they need, via some
> behavior?  Or do you want to know, first hand, and not just experience half
> of it and guess the rest through behavior?

That would be very nice in the context of the right kind of relationship.

> Stefano mentioned "or perhaps better..."
>
> Might I ask what you imagine such to be?  I hope it's more than just
> behavior?
>
> I imagine taking all these phenomenal pleasures, hard wired, like puppet
> strings by my primitive creator, making me do what it wanted me to do.  I'm
> so pained that I must give up so much of what I want to do, in order to
> spend the time to get any of this, and giving up so much of the reverse, as
> I work to resist such, to be socially acceptable, and to get anything useful
> done at all.  I imagine rewiring all this great stuff to more powerfully in
> synch with everything I want to do, not all this gross waist of time, anti
> social stuff.  And not only that, I imagine getting my hands involved in
> designing and improving and hacking such phenomenal stuff, and pushing
> towards becoming omni phenomenal.  I bet there are things possible out there
> in nature trillions of times more than any human has come close to
> experiencing, even if you only stay with what some of the lessor animals
> must be experiencing when they do it.

Very well put. This is confusing stuff to think about, but well worth
the "trip".

> Who cares about mindless behavior and programming such into ever more
> sophisticated behavior playback machines that are only behaving as if they
> are in love?

This is a short term play. A stop on the way to what you're talking
about. It is important to keep the short, mid and long term in mind
when talking about the future. You have to have things like sexbots
and synchronized videos to push the envelope, or you will never get to
what you're talking about in the very long term. If you looked at the
first cell phone, you probably could never imagine using one of those,
particularly on a daily basis. Walk, then run. It takes patience to
get to the future.

> Why is everyone, especially transhumanists, so quick to miss what the expert
> consensus is telling us about what consciousness, sex, and effing really is,
> what it really means, and what sharing all that will be like in the near
> future?

Qualia are important, and there are likely many more qualia than we
currently experience. It will be exceedingly interesting to get there.
It will also be hard to convey memetically given the current limited
methodologies we have for communication. Additional senses will likely
help, but qualia being separated from senses to an extent... it's a
difficult problem to get through. It is amazing what we are able to
communicate about qualia in our current state of development.

> Is anyone else out there
> interested in more than just behavior?  It should would be nice to know,
> definitively.

Yes, I think it's interesting. But I think it is too far out in the
future to be able to think about very constructively at this point.

> P.S,  I'm watching how many of you respond with the popular completely
> clueless, primitive, and ignorant "Oh Gross, I don't want to know what my
> partner is experiencing and share what I'm experiencing..." most people
> respond to such talk with.  Seriously, I really want to know if anyone
> really gets any of this, and rigorously measure how much progress the
> experts are making at educating the rest of the world about what is about to
> be effing possible and what the world will be like 100 years from now.  That
> which you measure, improves, and if you have half a clue, please support the
> "Representational Qualia Camp" and help us educate the rest of the world.

If I had half a clue what things would be like in 100 years... well, I
would write a book or something. :-)

-Kelly




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