This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I think 'intelligence' if defined in 'practical' terms is "the efficiency with which one can absorb and process the information in an environment, then utilize (or at least theorize how) the material in the local environment to achieve particular goals."
The more complex the goals one can achieve, and the more efficiently they can achieve them, the higher the intelligence.
The Von Neumann/Manhattan Project parallel I'm drawing makes this point. Given all the materials necessary to make a nuclear weapon, how quickly can a particular group of humans go from merely theorizing about the possibility to actually getting one built.
A group of humans that includes Von Neumann and other Physics PhDs, with the backing of the U.S. military, can get it done in, say, 5 years.
A similarly sized group of humans of utterly average intelligence (as measured by IQ)... probably never. Even WITH the backing of the U.S. military.
One Von Neumann and a bunch of average IQ humans... well I don't know.
A whole bunch of Von Neumans working together...
I don't think that's a terrible definition, but it still ends up bounded by the amount of information in the environment available to feed into your intelligence. A third eye would give humans "more information", but probably wouldn't improve our intelligence substantially. I'm sure there are some perfectly capable blind physicists out there.
The other question is what a bunch of Von Neumann clones could do today. IIRC the idea of an atomic bomb was at least known before the Manhattan Project started. It's hard to know in foresight what sort of advances could be made in the next five years, and which will prove intractable. It'd be awesome to solve fusion power, but it's taken well more than five years so far. I'm not sure that the geography of "the possible future" is well enough known to make great claims about what could be there: not all advances that can be seen are inherently terrible.
I expect a LOT. Assuming they could cooperate, which I think they would. This guy literally founded Game Theory among other things.
Like, the other path to superintelligence might be to clone like 10 Von Neumanns, raise them according to best practices, and get them interested in the idea of creating Friendly AI, then give them a lab with a trillion dollars in funding.
Yes yes, lets bound it to "useful," "nonredundant" information. Still, a superintelligence should be able to make use of almost all information it receives second-to-second to make accurate predictions about its future so as to better use resources for its goals.
See, lemme zero in on this for emphasis. Yes, it is indeed hard.
But the higher 'intelligence' entities, given accurate information (ensuring the information you collect is true is another aspect of intelligence!), should ALWAYS be better at making such predictions than lower intelligence ones.
High IQ humans were at least discussing Artificial Intelligence and putting forth timelines for its appearance. And I suspect realized what was happening when AlphaGo beat Sedol. If I were maybe 10 points smarter, I would have plowed money into NVDIA then and there, or at least as soon as people realized AI could run on GPUs.
Average IQ humans might now get that AI has arrived and can figure out uses for it, but would NEVER have seen it coming 5 years out, even if you showed them a complete factual article explaining the AlphaGo Sedol situation. How do I know? I TRIED VERY HARD to explain the implications back when it happened. I also tried to explain the implications when DallE first arrived on the scene. Now these folks I tried explaining to use image generators without a thought!
Low IQ humans, presumably, STILL don't really get what AI is or what it does.
This is why making falsifiable predictions and tracking their outcomes is kind of critical for smart folks to stay calibrated.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link