Will_Newsome comments on Journal of Consciousness Studies issue on the Singularity - Less Wrong
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Comments (85)
The AIXI proofs seem pretty adequate to me. They may not be useful, but that's different from not working.
More to the point, nothing in Tipler's paper gave me the impression he had so much as heard of AIXI, and it's not clear to me that he does accept Searlian reasons - what is that, by the way? It can't be Chinese room stuff since Tipler has been gung ho on uploading for decades now.
It's really not obvious that if you run an AIXI-like AI it will actually do anything other than self-destruct, no matter how much juice you give it. There have been various papers on this theme recently and it's a common LW meme ("AIXI drops an anvil on its head").
By "Searlian reasons" I mean something like emphasizing the difference between syntax and semantics and the difficulty of the grounding problem as representative of this important dichotomy between narrow and general intelligence that philosophers of mind get angry with non-philosophers of mind for ignoring.
I don't think Tipler's not having heard of AIXI is particularly damning, even if true.
I don't think it's obvious it would self-destruct - any more than it's obvious humans will not self-destruct. (And that anvil phrase is common to Eliezer.) The papers you allude to apply just as well to humans.
I believe you are the one who is claiming AIXI will never work, and suggesting Tipler might think like you.