All of mjankovic's Comments + Replies

The ideas about singularity and AI come from Vinge, but I have a hard time coming up with other writers before 2000 that take the same unflinching materialistic stance to human cognition that Egan does, and aren't saddled by blatantly obvious breaks from reality.

Egan's stance is not materialistic in the least. It can be best described as a "what if" of extreme idealism. It has computers without any substrate, as well as universes operating on pure mathematics. You can hardly find a way of being less materialistic than that.

The idea of singular... (read more)

0Risto_Saarelma
Yeah, 'materialism' isn't perhaps the best word since the being made of atoms part is often irrelevant in Egan's work. The connotation of materialism is being made of the math that the atoms obey, without any rule-excepting magic, and Egan has that in spades when cogsci is otherwise usually the part in even otherwise hard SF where whatever magical asspull the author needs to move the plot happens. I guess you're talking about Golem XIV? I was talking about what early MIRI was inspired by, and they talked a bunch about Vinge and pretty much nothing about Lem. And I. J. Good's 1965 Ultraintelligent Machine paper predates Golem.

Speaking as someone who's been trough that, I don't think that the article gives a complete picture. Part of the problem appears to be (particularly by reports from newer generations) in such instaces is the feeling of unreality, as the only times when we tend to see such situations is when we're sitting comfortably, so a lot of us are essentially conditioned to sit comfortably during such events.

However, this does tend to get better with some experience of such situations.

I've had a nagging sense of wrongness about #1, not so much about #5, which were the two that I knew the truth about.

While it might be true that intelectuals have trouble adapting to military lifestyle, actual combat is a whole different animal in that respect. It is also different from the type of fighting that goes on in typical civilian life.

Other than that, why would you assume that intelectuals wouldn't be better predisposed to figguring out what they're supposed to do to stay alive and accomplish the mission? Particularly as they're more used to thinking than the average guy.

Hello, I'm a physics student from Croatia, though I've attended a combined physics and computer science program (study programs here are very specific) for couple of years at a previous university that I left, though my high school specialization is in economy. I am currently working towards my bachelor's degree in physics.

I have no idea how I learned of this site, though it was probably trough some transhumanist channels (there's a lot of half-forgotten bits and pieces of information floating in my mind, so I can't be sure). Lately I've started reading th... (read more)