NxGenSentience

No changes that I'd recommend, at all. SPECIAL NOTE: please don't interpret the drop in the number ofcomments, the last couple of weeks, as a drop in interest by forum participants. The issues of these weeks are the heart of the reason for existence of nearly all the rest of the Bostrom book, and many of the auxiliary papers and references we've seen, ultimately also have been context, for confronting and brainstorming about the issue now at hand. I myself just as one example, have a number of actual ideas that I've been working on for two weeks, but I've been trying to write them up in white paper form, because they... (read more)

Before we continue, one more warning. If you're not already doing most of your thinking at least half-way along the 3 to 4 transition (which I will hereon refer to as reaching 4/3), you will probably also not fully understand what I've written below because that's unfortunately also about how far along you have to be before constructive development theory makes intuitive sense to most people. I know that sounds like an excuse so I can say whatever I want, but before reaching 4/3 people tend to find constructive development theory confusing and probably not useful...

I understand this kind of bind. I am over in the AI - Bostrom forum, which I... (read 943 more words →)

I didn't exactly say that, or at least, didn't intend to exactly say that. It's correct of you to ask for that clarification.

When I say "vindicated the theory", that was, admittedly, pretty vague.

What I should have said was the recent experiments removed what has been more or less statistically the most common and continuing objection to the theory, by showing that quantum effects in microtubules, under the kind of environmental conditons that are relevant, can indeed be maintained long enough for quantum processes to "run their course" in a manner that, according to Hameroff and Penrose, makes a difference that can propogate causally to a level that is of significance to... (read 720 more words →)

Hi, Yes, for the kickstarter option, that seems to be almost a requirement. People have to see what they are asked to invest in.

The kickstarter option is somewhat my second choice plan, or I'd be furher along on that already. I have several things going on that are pulling me in different directions.

To expand just a bit on the evolution of my You Tube idea: originally – a couple months before I recognized more poignantly the value to the HLAI R & D community of doing well-designed, issue-sophisticated, genuinely useful (to other than a naïve audience) interviews with other thinkers and researchers -- I had already decided to create a... (read 1083 more words →)

Same question as Luke's. I probably have jumped at it. I have a standing offer to make hi-def (1080) video interviews, documentaries, etc and competent, penetrating Q and A sessions, with people like Bostrom, Google-ites setting up the AI laboratories, and other vibrant, creative, contempory AI-relevant players.

I have knowledge of AI, general comp sci, deep and broad neuroscience, the mind-body problem (philosophically understood in GREAT detail -- college honors thesis at UCB was on that) and deep, detailed knowledge of all the big neurophilosphy players' theories.

These players include but are not limited to Dennett, Searle, Dreyfus, Turing, as well as modern players too numerous to mention, plus some... (read 429 more words →)

Same question as Luke's. I probably would have jumped at it, if only to make seed money to sponsor other useful projects, like the following.

I have a standing offer to make hi-def (1080) video interviews, documentaries, etc and competent, penetrating Q and A sessions and documentaries with key, relevant players and theoreticians in AI and related work. This includes individual thinkers, labs, Google's AI work, the list is endless.

I have knowledge of AI, general comp sci, consideralble knowledge of neuroscience, the mind-body problem (philosophically understood in GREAT detail -- college honors thesis at UCB was on that) and deep, long-term evolutionary knowledge of all the big neurophilosphy players'... (read 772 more words →)

It's nice to hear a quote from Wittgenstein. I hope we can get around to discussing the deeper meaning of this, which applies to all kinds of things... most especially, the process by which each kind of creature (bats, fish, homo sapiens, and potential embodied artifactual (n.1) minds (and also not embodied in the contemporaneously most often used sense of the term -- Watson was not embodied in that sense) *constructs it's own ontology) (or ought to, by virtuue of being embued with the right sort of architecture.)

That latter sense, and the incommensurability of competing ontologies in competing creatures (where 'creature' is defined defined as a hybrid, and N-tuple, of... (read more)

People do not behave as if we have utilities given by a particular numerical function that collapses all of their hopes and goals into one number, and machines need not do it that way, either.

I think this point is well said, and completely correct.

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Why not also think about making other kinds of systems?

An AGI could have a vast array of hedges, controls, limitations, conflicting tendencies and tropisms which frequently cancel each other out and prevent dangerous action.

The book does scratch the surface on these issues, but it is not all about fail-safe mind design and managed roll-out. We can develop a whole literature on those topics.

I agree. I find myself continually... (read 1243 more words →)

My general problem with "utilitarianism" is that it's sort of like Douglas Adams' "42." An answer of the wrong type to a difficult question. Of course we should maximize, that is a useful ingredient of the answer, but is not the only (or the most interesting) ingredient.

Taking off from the end of that point, I might add (but I think this was probably part of your total point, here, about "the most interesting" ingredient) that people sometimes forget that utilitarianism is not a theory itself about what is normatively desirable, and least not much of one. For Bentham-style "greatest good for the greatest number" to have any meaning, it has to be... (read more)