[ExI] Kelly's future

Stefano Vaj stefano.vaj at gmail.com
Mon May 23 19:26:56 UTC 2011


On 23 May 2011 09:15, Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 6:20 AM, Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> *Or* you can simply emulate the effects. No big deal.
>
> I believe that it is a very big deal indeed.


What I mean is that by definition any "training" or "evolutionary" process
can be replaced by an explicit programming of its final outcome. I am not
implying that this be always easy or practical. And, according to Wolfram,
sometimes to know the final state of a system you must run through all its
steps. OTOH, when you know it, you can replicate any number of times you
like.

Moreover, what may be difficult to program by hand, may be much easier to
program, well, automatically. :-)


> This may merit it's own thread... but I suspect that some day an AGI
> will begin to exhibit a kind of super consciousness.
>

I suspect "consciousness" to be just an evolutionary artifact that albeit
being fully emulatable like anything else has little to do with
intelligence. As for qualia, they are a dubious linguistic and philosophical
artifact of little use at all..


> I think we know more than that about other human beings.
>

Sure, as far as signalling is concerned. For the rest, the truth is simply
that we are hallucinating (in a PNL sense) much more.

 Since there are people who have a fetish where they want their limbs
> to be removed (which is fully, completely crazy in my book), there are
> in all likelihood women who really truly enjoy rape, even the danger
> and pain of it.


There is nothing necessarily unconsensual in the removal of limbs, while
"rape" is defined by the lack of consent by the victim. So, welcome sudden
and violent sex by a stranger is by no means a rape either legally or
linguistically, even though the victim may fake resistance or fear bodily
damage from the process...


> True enough. With humans, there are some things that appear to be
> cross cultural. Smiling, for example, as well as most of the other
> facial expressions seem to be mostly independent of culture.


Mmhhh. Of course, there are species-related (as there are genos-related,
family-related, order-related) ethological traits, but I am not sure smiling
is one of them. There are cultures where showing teeth is insignificant (as
in Thailand) or unbecoming (Japan in the classical age) or denoting mostly
embarassment (Japan today).


-- 
Stefano Vaj
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