Marcus -
Even though I play the Luddite most of the time, I am in fact fascinated
with the possibilities of post/transhumanism, at least in the sense that
it feels "inevitable". With the implied magnitude of qualitative
change in Homo this-n-that to /Homo postHomo /or maybe /Homo Cyborgis/
or quite possibly Homo goneBabygoneNevertobeSeenAgain along with all
mammalian/warm-blooded/vertebrate life, depending on our overshoot, it
seems worth a second thought or two as to what we *might* have some
control over.
We are about to enter a chaotic maelstrom of change, and while that can
seem hopeless, I do believe that extreme sports enthusiasts are very
precise about the line they enter their maelstroms from/on. (Surfing,
skiing, Niagra-Falls-Barrel-Diving... etc)
Regarding the augmentation of LLMs... we were all born in a time of
huge augmentation in the form of libraries and books and most saliently
perhaps reference books for our language (dictionary, encyclopedia, etc)
and reference books to our myriad specialties (Technical Libraries).
*IN* my lifetime I have participated in the digitization of most if not
all of that matter as well as adapting the professional and plebian
workplaces to those changes, whilst adapting our personal lives (e.g.
handheld device connected to the "global brain" 24/7) to those
changes. We can all probably conjure a 1000 utopian/dystopian
vignettes supporting/undermining any determination of whether this is
"for the good" or not. I'm almost completely habituated to this
"modern era" but old enough to still have intellectual inertia making
paper maps, newspapers, magazines, etc. at least *quaint* items if I
almost always defer to the other. I recently gifted my 1903 Blackies
Encyclopedia set to a HS History teacher to use in his classes to give
his students a snapshot of time *in the original text and atoms* for
whatever that is worth.
I'm not likely to be an early adopter of neural interfaces (unless I
face an acute disability in that area) but I am already a fairly regular
GPT4-whisperer. I can't say it has improved any of the practical
aspects of my life (yet), but it has been an interesting correspondent
in the way I usually burden *this group* with my maundering
speculations. GPT4 is infinitely patient, broadly and deeply informed,
and only occasionally fails to provide me with some interesting feedback.
I recently funded a Kickstarter for a powered exoskeleton (Lower
extremety only) which may return to me a little more mobility than
megadosing NSAIDS and velcro-strapped stabilization belts for my
hips... I don't know that this will be anything more than a novelty or
if it will be as (relatively) good as the Oculus (I've been playing with
VR since before it was called that and was totally blown away by the
"value" Oculus represents).
<ramble off>
- Steve
I don't mean "we" as in FRIAM, I mean "we" as in nations. A benefit
of capturing knowledge with LLMs, or similar technology, is that
people wouldn't need to be educated about the same material over and
over, especially if these systems are integrated into our neural
systems. Why not have individuals inherit a common database so that
their lives can be spent on differentiated activities? There's so
little that tie together individuals besides their fears and
superstitions. When I see chatGPT emit passable conversations like
this, it seems kind of absurd to waste years of a young person's time
covering the same old ground. (Actually, it already seems that way to
me.) Countries like Israel and Greece have mandatory military service.
Some believe this instills in them values greater than themselves.
In this case of the Borg, care of the collective is care of the self
and vice versa. The common practice in the open source LLM community
of fine tuning pre-trained LLMs is so much more efficient than what
humans do to educate.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> on behalf of Jochen Fromm
<j...@cas-group.net>
*Sent:* Sunday, June 4, 2023 3:17 PM
*To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<friam@redfish.com>
*Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Radical Empiricism
Discussions with large language models are new. But you are right, we
had discussions of similar topics before. Maybe I was hoping I could
inspire Nick and/or Eric to write a summary of their ideas and what we
have discussed before ( such as the solution to the hard problem of
consciousness, the nature of subjective experience and what it has to
do with path dependence, complexity science and James' radical
empiricism ).
-J.
-------- Original message --------
From: Marcus Daniels <mar...@snoutfarm.com>
Date: 6/4/23 9:54 PM (GMT+01:00)
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<friam@redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Radical Empiricism
The conclusion I draw is that these conversations have all occurred
before. So I wonder, why have them?
*From:* Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Jochen Fromm
*Sent:* Sunday, June 4, 2023 10:44 AM
*To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<friam@redfish.com>
*Subject:* [FRIAM] Radical Empiricism
ChatGPT now allows sharing conversations. I've asked it about William
James book "Essays in Radical Empiricism"
https://chat.openai.com/share/375aef4e-a8d6-467e-8061-bd85b341c46b
-J.
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