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"Base rate" is statistics jargon. I would ask something like "which disease is more common?" And then if they still don't understand, you can explain that its probably the disease that is most common, without explaining Bayes rule.
Mightn't the vet have already factored the base rate in? Suppose x is the more common disease, but y is more strongly indicated by the diagnostics. In such a case it seems like the vet could be justified in saying that she cannot tell which diagnosis is accurate. For you to then infer that the dog most likely has x just because x is the more common disease would be putting undue weight on the Bayesian priors.
My statement mostly repeat the claim which I read somewhere that computational power of QC of several thousand qubits will be stronger then computational power of classical computer in the size of all Universe.
I can't find the link now, but maybe will find it later.
I read somewhere that computational power of QC of several thousand qubits will be stronger then computational power of classical computer in the size of all Universe.
I have read this sort of claim as well. However, I recommend skepticism; there has been a lot of hyperbole in the popular press regarding the potential power of quantum computing. A good source of objective information about the potential and limitations of quantum computing is Scott Aaronson's blog, Shtetl-Optimized. Scott was a professor at MIT and is now at the University of Texas at Austin - he is very knowledgeable about QC and, equally important, he is an engaging writer that can make complex topics (reasonably) clear to non-specialists. He has spent a bit of time on his blog debunking some of the wilder claims regarding the power of QC.
Self-aware is about agent which has its own model and able to construct it. Wiki said: "Self-awareness is the capacity for introspection and the ability to recognize oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-awareness
Britannica's printed edition is not agent, but its authors were agents and they knew that they were writing an encyclopaedia and that they are its authors.
Internet include agents which thinks about internet and plan its development.
But evolution (until human appeared) didn't include or needed any idea about evolution and nicely worked without it.
What is your understanding of the idea of "self-awareness"?
What is your understanding of the idea of "self-awareness"?
The definition that you supplied: "Self-awareness is the capacity for introspection and the ability to recognize oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals" sounds about right to me. By that definition, the internet would only be self-aware if you include the internet's architects and users as part of the internet (as you did above). It is not surprising that a system that contains rational agents as a part of itself is self-aware; many an inanimate object could be considered self-aware if we consider its builders and users as a part of it - for example the three examples I listed previously would be self-aware given that consideration. But, in the case of the internet and in the cases of my examples, it is the intelligent agents that provide the self-awareness; so self awareness is an attribute of the intelligent agents rather than of the internet per se (or the encyclopaedia per se, etc.).
I meant that Internet knows about its own existence in form of scientific research which studies Internet and is published in the Internet. It is also self-aware by the mind of people who use it, nothing mystical here.
I think that idea of "consciousness" should be broken in several separate ideas:
Self-aware - something simply including model of itself.
Have qualia - ability to have own qualitative subjective experiences
Field of consciousness - united perception field which integrate different modalities in one group of things actual now. (For example mainstream mass media play such role for civilization, but they don't have their own qualia).
I meant that Internet knows about its own existence in form of scientific research which studies Internet and is published in the Internet. It is also self-aware by the mind of people who use it, nothing mystical here.
I suspect that this idea of self awareness differs considerably from what most people think of by self awareness. For example, your criteria would seem to classify the following things as self-aware:
- A printed edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, if that edition contains an article about the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
- A corporate IT department's Asset Management System (which is a computer-based repository of information about applications that the department manages), if it contains information about the Asset Management System.
- Any literary work which refers to itself (e.g. John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, in which two of the characters discuss the opera itself at various points in the opera, or Denis Diderot's novel Jacques The Fatalist and His Master, which contains numerous asides in which the narrator discusses Diderot's novel).
Do you consider those things to be self aware?
You say of the Internet (search engines, database engines, exchange media, distributed calculations) that it is "self-aware". That seems like a strong claim to make with no further explanation. How did you arrive at that conclusion?
Interesting list, thanks for posting it.
One question: You describe a quantum computer as "hypothetically more powerful than total calculation power of the universe". What does that mean?
On the one hand, even a deterministic Turing machine is hypothetically more powerful than the total calculation power of the universe, since a hypothetical Turing machine has an infinite tape. So your statement would appear to be trivially true (because you said "hypothetical").
On the other hand, it seems that no actual quantum computer can be more powerful than the total calculation power of the universe, since any actual quantum computer that we were to build would be part of the universe.
So, what does this statement really say regarding the power of a quantum computer?
In response to
Open thread, Sep. 12 - Sep. 18, 2016
So, I was trying to figure out exactly what Socrates was doing, and think I figured it out. But it made me realize I don't know how induction (deriving from inductive reasoning) works.
Socratic questioning:
You take someone's claim, induce(derive by inductive reasoning) a general principle, deduct a different claim from the same principle, disprove the new example, this disproves the general principle, which leaves the original claim unsupported. Repeat until they run out of principles, which leaves their claim ultimately unsupported.
But if someone says we shouldn't paint someone's house purple without their permission, how do we know which abstract principle to induce?
My mind goes immediately to "don't do things to people's stuff without their permission." But how? Why didn't I think the rule was "don't paint things purple," or "don't paint houses?" Obviously in this case, my familiarity is influencing me, but what about in unfamiliar situations?
Does anyone know how to reduce inductive reasoning? What algorithm are we using? What's going on in a mind which outputs an inductive inference?
But if someone says we shouldn't paint someone's house purple without their permission, how do we know which abstract principle to induce?
Here's a humorous illustration of the difficulty of selecting the correct abstract principle.
In this case, we should really define "coercion". Could you please elaborate what you meant through that word?
One could argue, that if someone holds a gun to your head and demands your money, it's not coercion, just a game, where the expected payoff of not giving the money is smaller than the expected payoff of handing it over.
(Of course, I completely agree with your explanation about taxes. It's just the usage of "coercion" in the rest of your comment which seems a little odd)
I do not think that Gram_Stone is making the claim that fining or jailing those who do not pay their taxes is not coercion. Instead, I think that he is arguing that it is not the coercion per se that results in most people paying their taxes, but rather that (due to the coercion) failing to pay taxes does not have a favorable payoff, and that it is the unfavorable payoff that causes most people to pay their taxes. So, if there were some way to create favorable payoffs for desirable behavior without coercion, then this would work just as well as does using coercion.
Gram_Stone, please correct me if that is not accurate. Also, do you have any ideas as to how to make voluntary payment of taxes have a favorable payoff without using coercion?
In fact, first two propositions in Bostrom's article are very improbable, especially if we include in the consideration all other civilizations.
1) "All possible civilizations will never create simulations" - seems to be very implausible, we are already good in creating movies, dreams and games.
2) "All possible civilizations will go extinct before they create simulations - it also seems implausible.
"All possible civilizations will never create simulations" - seems to be very implausible... "All possible civilizations will go extinct before they create simulations" - it also seems implausible
We only need to be concerned about actual civilizations, not all possible civilizations. We don't know how many actual civilizations there are, so there could be very few (we know of only one). We also don't know how difficult creating a sufficiently realistic simulation will be - obviously the more difficult it is to achieve such a simulation the more likely it is that civilizations will tend to go extinct before they create simulations. Finally, Bostrom's propositions use "almost all" rather than "all", e.g. "almost all civilizations at our current level of development go extinct before reaching technological maturity".
In light of these considerations, Bostrom's first two propositions do not seem implausible to me.
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Advice solicited. Topics of interest I have lined up for upcoming posts include:
Any thoughts on which of these are of particular interest, or other ideas to delve into?
All of these look very interesting. I am particularly interested in the 2nd and 3rd topics.