Comment author: iDante 29 May 2013 01:06:09AM 0 points [-]

There will be AI long before there are quantum computers.

Comment author: tgb 05 May 2013 03:04:18AM *  1 point [-]

Good suggestions - I hadn't heard of World's End Girlfriend before and quite enjoy it.

For other post-rock suggestions: literally every song by the Evpatoria Report is worth listening to, IMO. The standouts being Eighteen Robins Road, Naptalan and it's immediate sequel Vokshod Project, and Taijin Kyofoshu.

In response to comment by tgb on May 2013 Media Thread
Comment author: iDante 06 May 2013 03:03:37AM 1 point [-]

You're the second person to recommend me them so I finally listened to their music and yep. It's good.

:D

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 01 May 2013 11:10:41AM *  1 point [-]

Music Thread

Comment author: iDante 01 May 2013 05:07:23PM 2 points [-]

I've been on a post-rock binge. My favorite bands along this line are Godspeed You! Black Emperor, World's End Girlfriend, and, of course, Explosions in the Sky. I don't expect this music appeals to everyone though.

Comment author: iDante 18 April 2013 05:28:10AM 2 points [-]

We must test our own ideas and arguments. Just because we don't know how to do so doesn't make our ideas any better, but it can make them seem better to the careless.

It's part of why I don't post very often on this site. Even though I know more QM than most people here, I know I don't know enough to argue the validity of the sequence.

Comment author: wedrifid 16 April 2013 11:35:18AM *  3 points [-]

We are in zero gravity of a hollow sphere

Oh, that's what the gravity from a hollow sphere all adds/multiplies out to? Uniform zero (net) gravity inside, normal outside the sphere? Neat.

Comment author: iDante 17 April 2013 12:29:39AM *  0 points [-]

An aside for those curious about the Gauss Law argument. The law in its integral form states that the flux of the gravitational field inward through any closed surface encompassing the Sun is proportional to the Sun's mass.

As long as the mass distribution is spherically symmetric the gravity outside of the sun is the same as if the mass was all located at the center. It's the same for electrostatic force since that goes like 1/r^2 too :D.

Oh, that's what the gravity from a hollow sphere all adds/multiplies out to? Uniform zero (net) gravity inside, normal outside the sphere? Neat.

adds

Comment author: IsaacLewis 14 March 2013 05:56:18PM *  0 points [-]

Thanks for the pointers - this post is still more at the "random idea" stage, not the "well-constructed argument stage", so I do appreciate feedback on where I might have gone astray.

I've read some of the Sequences, but they're quite long. What particular articles did you mean?

Comment author: iDante 15 March 2013 04:16:49AM 2 points [-]

Sorry for the terse comment, it's finals week soon so things are busy around sweet apple acres.

Essentially what you've done is take the mysterious problem of intelligence and shoved it under a new ill-defined name (living). Pretty much any programmer can write a self-replicating program, or a program that modifies its own source code, or other such things. But putting it as simply as that doesn't actually bring you any closer to actually making AI. You have to explain exactly how the program should modify itself in order to make progress.

Mysterious answers will make this clear. A Human's Guide to Words will maybe show you what's wrong with using "living" like that. EY gave a presentation in which he noted that all the intelligence in the universe that we know of has so far been formed by evolution, and it took a long time. AI will be the first designed intelligence and it'll go much quicker. You seem to base your entire argument on evolution though, which seems unnecessary.

Also, be careful with your wording in phrases like "computers don't have intrinsic goals so they aren't alive." As other peoples mentioned, this is dangerous territory. Be sure to follow a map. Cough cough.

Comment author: iDante 14 March 2013 05:35:54PM *  -2 points [-]

Try reading the sequences all the way through. You'll find that you make a lot of common assumptions and mistakes that make the argument weaker than you'd like.

Comment author: iDante 11 March 2013 04:33:45PM 16 points [-]

The lady who runs this is quite literally, nuts.

I do not think this means what you think it means, but thanks for the funny image anyway.

Comment author: iDante 10 March 2013 10:29:09PM 0 points [-]

Hey I can input! I'm also a physics undergrad. Math textbooks are always tough. Go talk to a math professor and see if they recommend one for you. This is good because they know about where your knowledge level is and can suggest an appropriate book, plus you can come to them with questions. I do the same for physics textbooks too.

Do all the exercises, it should take a long time. I've done ~3/4 of the exercises in Griffiths E&M in the last four months, and that's a reasonable pace.

Comment author: iDante 06 March 2013 12:00:38AM 2 points [-]

Let us, then, avoid the philosophical minefields of belief and truth, and pay attention to what we really need, which is predictive ability.

From a great book

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