ChatCEO about the size and intelligence of an average executive’s head. (Apologies to Ambrose Beirce). If you read anything from Gil Duran’s coverage of the nerd reich, you’ll appreciate the load of motivated reasoning and megalomania woven throughout Silicon Valley billionaires. There is a lot to be said as well about the consequence of (immense) wealth eliciting dark triad personality traits. If you know who Nate Hagens he has had two recent podcasts on these topics. If you have any reason to wander about and like listening to podcast, you could do worse.
But I think another useful bit of background on the AI craze is found in this article
Thanks Ghost. I do pay attention to the NerdReich from Gil, it's good and informative. Sometimes Nate too. Every now and then I get the urge to write about "Ai", it used to be entirely philosophical, but the LLM's have forced it into the political economy realm. It is more cringe in that social space, so it is hard to digest, and hence I appreciate anyone writing from a progressive/left, neoluddite (the non-violent form), perspective.
Reality is bigger and stranger than our brains are able to imagine.
Silicon-based tools are unlikely to reach the level of ability that a single prokaryotic cell possesses. Never mind a network of billions of eukaryotic cells inside a human head.
Add to that the ecosystem of bacteria, fungi, viruses and human cells that make up a human body, which is what creates our intelligence and consciousness, and we can see how ridiculous the notion is of a LLM ever coming close to that.
Sam Altman, Elmo, Peter Thiel and that lot of traumatized fascist insecure greedy little boys are selling AGI like conmen have always done.
Our tools, by definition, have selective superhuman abilities, but that is not general intelligence and scaling LLM is not going to reach anything close to AGI.
The money needed to build the data centres that are proposed is so huge that only currency creators can pay for it…and they won’t, so banks will create the credit and then will have to be bailed out when it doesn’t work. This “pimple “ will come to a head in the next 2-3years as private debt (mortgages, corporate loans, crypto-backed credit) becomes unserviceable and blow up worse than the GFC.
Elmo selling Mars as a saviour of (rich) humans is a laughable con job.
On "intelligence". Yes, behaviourally. Physical layers support consciousness, but cannot create consciousness. It is a category error.
Unless you define consciousness as "only physics". But then you are using a different definition, and it cannot support physicalism, since it'd be circular reasoning. I say there is a Hard Problem, and always will be for materialists, since the objective can never "emerge" the subjective. With consciousness and inner phenomenal intelligence, it is not about "we do not now how the emergence works" it is there is no way to even get any emergence. The Type-III nonreductionism (cannot be reduced even in principle). There is no physical signalling that can ever "carry" consciousness, since consciousness is not a physical field.
It's just a matter of definition. So not up for debate. However, if the subjective qualia *are* mere illusions, then I would consider maybe the cosmos is just physical with no connection to any other realm of existence. But even then, I would not say so, since how would you ever know there is nothing else to reality? If you are stuck in a physical bubble that does not interact with anything else in existence then you can never detect anything else. That's why Faith is faith. It's not the fault of people of faith they have no direct physical proof. There is none. It also means people of faith are highly susceptible to delusions. Which is why faith is decrepit unless backed by decent morals and wisdom. A lot of soi dissant "religion" you rail against is deeply anti-religious.
“Emergent”, to me, means “no one can explain how it happens”. The entire AGI (and consciousness) money dump is excruciating to watch. Traumatized little boys trying to compensate for something. Elmo’s use of the sovereign’s currency-creating power to escape to Mars is in the same sand box. Meanwhile a mad-king sells sh$t coins, closes rural hospitals and shuts down science. We are living the Chinese curse.
On the emergence — yeah, that's a good usage you have.
The trouble is in the scientific literature there are too many uses for "emergent" that it is a meaningless word. I've read some doozies. Some mean, "Can be explained if we use high level concepts, because reducing to base physics is still possible, just not practical."
But then there is a completely different notion that we cannot explain even in principle, and high level concepts are just merely helpful for communication, but are no explanation (so also partly your concept). So this is not genuine emergence, since there was no explanation, just a high level fudge (poetry in the guise of science essentially).
Then there is, "We can explain at a high level, but cannot reduce in principle to base physics, even though the phenomenon is purely physics." I'd say this is a good definition of genuine emergence. it requires quantum indeterminism I would say, it is inherently nonclassical. But that's ok, since CM is false. So I reckon there do exist such candidate phenomena.
The human mind is not that though, since there is no way to reduce subjective mental qualia to physics. Physics is objective in character, if not then one is not using a good definition o f "physics". Some dopey philosophers think they can blur the boundary between subjective and objective, but they're fools. If there were no boundary they've not understood the meaning of the words. It'd be a form of goal post shifting.
I should add, to avoid slandering Tegmark, that it is fine to DEFINE consciousness as all just biophysical or whatever. But that is not my definition, and not most people's understanding either. It is a twisted dopey definition, defining-away the Hard Problem of C. But if I give a subjective definition then the Hard Problem of C reappears and no progress has really been made except a change in how Tegmark re-writes the standard Oxford or Webster Dictionary.
If the Hard Problem is taken to be, "How can the objective become subjective?" then it is already solved. It is a no-go theorem. It's impossible, by basic definitions. Category Theoretic even (in both senses of that word.)
ChatCEO about the size and intelligence of an average executive’s head. (Apologies to Ambrose Beirce). If you read anything from Gil Duran’s coverage of the nerd reich, you’ll appreciate the load of motivated reasoning and megalomania woven throughout Silicon Valley billionaires. There is a lot to be said as well about the consequence of (immense) wealth eliciting dark triad personality traits. If you know who Nate Hagens he has had two recent podcasts on these topics. If you have any reason to wander about and like listening to podcast, you could do worse.
But I think another useful bit of background on the AI craze is found in this article
https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/
Thanks Ghost. I do pay attention to the NerdReich from Gil, it's good and informative. Sometimes Nate too. Every now and then I get the urge to write about "Ai", it used to be entirely philosophical, but the LLM's have forced it into the political economy realm. It is more cringe in that social space, so it is hard to digest, and hence I appreciate anyone writing from a progressive/left, neoluddite (the non-violent form), perspective.
“Elmo” = Elon Musk.
I enjoy reading your stream.
Reality is bigger and stranger than our brains are able to imagine.
Silicon-based tools are unlikely to reach the level of ability that a single prokaryotic cell possesses. Never mind a network of billions of eukaryotic cells inside a human head.
Add to that the ecosystem of bacteria, fungi, viruses and human cells that make up a human body, which is what creates our intelligence and consciousness, and we can see how ridiculous the notion is of a LLM ever coming close to that.
Sam Altman, Elmo, Peter Thiel and that lot of traumatized fascist insecure greedy little boys are selling AGI like conmen have always done.
Our tools, by definition, have selective superhuman abilities, but that is not general intelligence and scaling LLM is not going to reach anything close to AGI.
The money needed to build the data centres that are proposed is so huge that only currency creators can pay for it…and they won’t, so banks will create the credit and then will have to be bailed out when it doesn’t work. This “pimple “ will come to a head in the next 2-3years as private debt (mortgages, corporate loans, crypto-backed credit) becomes unserviceable and blow up worse than the GFC.
Elmo selling Mars as a saviour of (rich) humans is a laughable con job.
Interesting times, my friend.
Good thoughts.
On "intelligence". Yes, behaviourally. Physical layers support consciousness, but cannot create consciousness. It is a category error.
Unless you define consciousness as "only physics". But then you are using a different definition, and it cannot support physicalism, since it'd be circular reasoning. I say there is a Hard Problem, and always will be for materialists, since the objective can never "emerge" the subjective. With consciousness and inner phenomenal intelligence, it is not about "we do not now how the emergence works" it is there is no way to even get any emergence. The Type-III nonreductionism (cannot be reduced even in principle). There is no physical signalling that can ever "carry" consciousness, since consciousness is not a physical field.
It's just a matter of definition. So not up for debate. However, if the subjective qualia *are* mere illusions, then I would consider maybe the cosmos is just physical with no connection to any other realm of existence. But even then, I would not say so, since how would you ever know there is nothing else to reality? If you are stuck in a physical bubble that does not interact with anything else in existence then you can never detect anything else. That's why Faith is faith. It's not the fault of people of faith they have no direct physical proof. There is none. It also means people of faith are highly susceptible to delusions. Which is why faith is decrepit unless backed by decent morals and wisdom. A lot of soi dissant "religion" you rail against is deeply anti-religious.
I like the phrase "I feel I am swimming against a normie tsunami of nonsense".
BTW that is a good cartoon (also cost-efficient :).
“Emergent”, to me, means “no one can explain how it happens”. The entire AGI (and consciousness) money dump is excruciating to watch. Traumatized little boys trying to compensate for something. Elmo’s use of the sovereign’s currency-creating power to escape to Mars is in the same sand box. Meanwhile a mad-king sells sh$t coins, closes rural hospitals and shuts down science. We are living the Chinese curse.
Je suis d'accord. 我同意.
"Elmo's"? 🤣🤣 sounds funny, but I am not sure why.
---
On the emergence — yeah, that's a good usage you have.
The trouble is in the scientific literature there are too many uses for "emergent" that it is a meaningless word. I've read some doozies. Some mean, "Can be explained if we use high level concepts, because reducing to base physics is still possible, just not practical."
But then there is a completely different notion that we cannot explain even in principle, and high level concepts are just merely helpful for communication, but are no explanation (so also partly your concept). So this is not genuine emergence, since there was no explanation, just a high level fudge (poetry in the guise of science essentially).
Then there is, "We can explain at a high level, but cannot reduce in principle to base physics, even though the phenomenon is purely physics." I'd say this is a good definition of genuine emergence. it requires quantum indeterminism I would say, it is inherently nonclassical. But that's ok, since CM is false. So I reckon there do exist such candidate phenomena.
The human mind is not that though, since there is no way to reduce subjective mental qualia to physics. Physics is objective in character, if not then one is not using a good definition o f "physics". Some dopey philosophers think they can blur the boundary between subjective and objective, but they're fools. If there were no boundary they've not understood the meaning of the words. It'd be a form of goal post shifting.
I should add, to avoid slandering Tegmark, that it is fine to DEFINE consciousness as all just biophysical or whatever. But that is not my definition, and not most people's understanding either. It is a twisted dopey definition, defining-away the Hard Problem of C. But if I give a subjective definition then the Hard Problem of C reappears and no progress has really been made except a change in how Tegmark re-writes the standard Oxford or Webster Dictionary.
If the Hard Problem is taken to be, "How can the objective become subjective?" then it is already solved. It is a no-go theorem. It's impossible, by basic definitions. Category Theoretic even (in both senses of that word.)