That's an interesting thought. At least since the time of Plato, Western philosophy has been based around the idea that some things never change. Plato called them "forms" or "ideals". Why would anyone think such a thing, though? How would we even come up with the idea that anything is truly immutable when everything that we see around us is always changing? It most likely originated from us observing the unfailing regularity in the position and motion of the sun and the moon and the stars. That was, I suspect, the source of the notion of (universal) objective truth.
I think I might now have the market cornered on the combination of information security, the philosophy of language, and the I Ching. 😄 (I'm not making an attempt to speak accurately.)
An interesting issue that parallels this one is the question of the domains in which we want to encourage people to compete. For instance, the biathlon in the winter Olympic games combines cross-country skiing 🎿 with rifle shooting 🎯. If we can imagine combining those into a single sport, why can't we imagine awards for explaining concepts from physics in the most verbally and/or visually poetic way that has genuine explanatory power? People are attempting to do such things but might... (read more)
We've all heard of racism. We've all heard of sexism. Many of us have heard of speciesism. Other than "speciesism", is there a word for discrimination against the intelligence in systems running on computing machinery? Do you think that we're going to need one? Or do you think that we can get by without one?
If we're talking about highly unexpected phenomena, then I think that this analysis is putting the cart before the horse. Look at it this way: The theory of materialism (in all of its forms) pushes us toward the idea that there is a sharp distinction between the mental and the physical. That is to say, it pushes us toward thinking that what exists objectively exists in space and time from the point of view of all observers and that what doesn't meet those criteria is a hallucination. However, we are already familiar with phenomena that fall in between the cracks of those distinctions. The best example is a rainbow. 🌈 We speak... (read more)
So, are you saying that want A.I. to be aligned with the values that motivated this post? Or no?
That is a fascinating observation that I never considered. I never took a course in astronomy. My interests are more aligned with with the philosophy of language. And I had a thought that some people might appreciate — one that is probably well-understood by most astronomers. I grew up around many people asking a seemingly sensible question: "What were those ancient humans smoking when they named these constellations? Ursa Major doesn't look like a bear. Draco doesn't look like a dragon. Scorpio doesn't look like a scorpion. And don't even get me started on Capricorn!"
Finally, a couple of months ago, I had a realization that has probably been long understood by many... (read more)