No, the only really alien intelligence on this planet is natural selection, of which I have already spoken... for exactly this reason, that it gives you true experience of the Alien. Evolution knows no joy and no anger, and it has no facial expressions; yet it is nonetheless capable of creating complex machinery and complex strategies. It does not work like you do.
If you want a real alien to gawk at, look at the other Powerful Optimization Process.
I recall comments made by Kasparov after his defeat by Deep Blue. Something along the lines of having confronted another order of intelligence.
I suspect that looking at another Powerful Optimization Process is useful for getting a better sense of the distance, but is possibly going too far, somewhat like contemplating a light-year to get a sense of the distances involved in landing on Mars.
Another social intelligence is likely to have mechanisms for dealing with something like politics. (If anyone has ever lived with a dog and a parrot, one has a couple of points of comparison for a very slightly alien, and slightly more alien intelligence, though these are very close to us in comparison to evolution.)
I wonder if this implies that what Eliezer and most AI researchers are currently working with is of the order of alienness that evolution is?
Today's post, The Psychological Unity of Humankind was originally published on 24 June 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
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