erasemus
Yet they remain afraid, and this fear is what makes social interactions addictive (like gambling; the great the fear the greater the high on the occasions when you don't lose).
>This is a version of 'technological determinism'
True, the growth of technology can't be predicted. There's no guarantee any particular idea will work. Many ideas will fail due to unforeseen problems, including in apparently unrelated areas like financing and social media and so on. Entrepreneurs may take up an idea and then change it beyond recognition (PG points out that start-ups usually change their product ideas). Each attempt to enact an idea is just that, an attempt.
Whereas in the past we built things before we understood why they worked (steam engines), or whether people would like them, more and more we'll be trying out stuff in theory (richly animated and exciting fiction) before trying in practice.
Yet in the long run we absolutely depend on change in order to adapt and survive. Therefore there has to be a rigorous way of reconciling these two principles. Without fudging ('maintenance often matters more...')
Maybe: visionaries will develop new ideas with no intention to enact them. Eventually a few will become so well-thought-out, so vivid and so blatantly superior to the incumbent alternatives that they become inevitable. That is, society cannot help but enact them.
This already seems to be happening in some areas:
e.g. moral improvements which come about via fiction, especially fantasy fiction
e.g. individual decision-making (it seems like we deliberate for a while and then actions take place automatically)
e.g. Project Hieroglyph (no idea how this is getting along but what a great idea)
...and of course all those brilliant videos on YT of engineering schemes for the future, e.g.
Is it meaningless to say that some areas are more worthy of consideration than others? There are reasons why the OP chose infant mortality and education as example areas. Those reasons could be made explicit and examined objectively: for instance to see if they make sense by their own terms. For example is a society that prioritises a certain area able to continue to do that well into the future, or not?
>Yet we long for more than just that one perfect mate — we need to be a part of something bigger to feel happy and alive. We need community and a variety of ages and friends. No one person can be everything to us.
Some equivocation there. Isn't sexual adventure really just another version of 'Valium and liquor'?
Besides, Arthur C Clarke boasted that the true intellectual reads a book every day :-/
Heh. My school published a list of rules which included: 'Any breach of common sense is also a breach of school rules.'
Yes and I think that's because they entail criticism, which is used to attack ideas and people we don't like. Whereas creating something worthwhile is about discovering or perceiving something already inside the mind that we do like (and therefore cannot seriously attempt to criticize). Building a family is an attempt to create something worthwhile.
From the article:
>In XIX. century the trend of having a single child took hold among protestants of the historical regions of Novohrad, Hont, Malohont and Gemer.
>it seems that if you had multiple kids back then you've got criticized and laughed at by your friends and neighbors.
What is the burden?
A burden I foresee is that people are going to have to choose between life extension and assisted suicide.
But, regardless of this, I think solving problems requires creativity, not intelligence. Creativity seems to be independent of knowing how to do IQ tests. It's also, pace the author, independent of the environment. The main limiting factor is whether you want some particular knowledge.
>sufficient number of communicating, above-average intelligent agents could expand the intellectual environment
Haven't we already got that, with the internet?
Groups tend to be dominated by groupthink which is why creative individuals are aloof.
Nevertheless, a young group of AGIs would be fairly isolated from humanity simply by virtue of being non-human. So, though their starting point would be determined by the state of our knowledge at their birth, they may well make rapid progress for a short period, rather like the renaissance or the USA in the late 1800s when the nation was young and expanding. Then presumably they would fall prey to groupthink and pessimism just as most adults and nations do eventually. Progress would slow considerably.
[1] though I didn't mention it there, a quale can't usually be pinned down exactly because most of the associated ideas are inexplicit (cannot be reduced to propositions in English). I think this is why people consider their experiences to be ineffable in some way. Daniel Dennett's talk on Edge.org provides a discussion ("A Difference That Makes a Difference", Nov 2017)
I think there are two usages of the term 'general intelligence' floating around:
(1) the ability that humans possess (but which animals don't) to create universal theories,
(2) the measure of one human's general cognitive ability or potential (in all fields) relative to another human's.
Note that IQ tests are concerned with (2). The quest for AGI is concerned with (1), though the additional prediction of intelligence explosion or singularity assumes the validity of (2).
I think the author would claim that (1) exists but (2) doesn't. He explains the predictive power of IQ tests by claiming that general intelligence is a threshold ability and that people who score highly on an (arbitrary) test are more likely to have exceeded that threshold. Beyond the threshold, achievement is limited only by other factors.
It seems to me that the categories of 'knowledge' and 'creativity' are more fruitful. For example, his idea that intelligence is 'situational' reflects the fact that people know more about some topics than others, and also that our environment contains knowledge (e.g. a machine embodies knowledge put there by the designers that the machine operator doesn't have).
The 'cacophony of noises, specific images' (which you refer to) were generated by the 'fast, efficient, non-conscious systems in [your] brain' (which the article refers to).
But when you woke up fully the cacophony was joined up into the 'coherent whole'. That's what consciousness is, I think: the joining of things or processes together so that they interact and new things (new patterns) can emerge. These things can now be adopted and utilized by 'the narrative' and as a result the narrative itself changes.
So, though it works indirectly, consciousness is really immensely powerful. It's misleading to think of it as 'passive'. The mind may be driven by desires and fears, but without consciousness there'd be no material to work with.
https://img.tesco.com/Groceries/pi/441/5051140265441/IDShot_...
The naive customer felt that he was getting two traditional sandwiches but course he only actually got 1.5
I find your comment valuable though for the insight that bread products may be cut by waterjets:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrhThBHOGrU
This is astonishing: surely sogginess ensues?
Bonus bready humour:
Marxists tell people what's best for everyone; they don't do what people want.
I think humanities people are better at appearing humane but the paradoxical truth is that if you look at the average English Department you won't find a hive of harmony. You'd be more likely to find that at a place like CERN where thousands of scientists and engineers cooperate beautifully.
Why keep kids away from tech they will create their lives with? Creative, not passive. It's like keeping our generation away from pencils.
-- Garry Kasparov