On Sun, Aug 10, 2008 at 9:02 AM, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:
> Ben:but, from a practical perspective, it seems more useful to think > about minds that are rougly similar to human minds, yet better adapted to > existing computer hardware, and lacking humans' most severe ethical and > motivational flaws > > Well a) I think that we now agree that you are engaged in a basically, > however loosely, humanoid endeavour (and thanks for setting out your > thinking). But b) I disagree about those "flaws". My general philosophy > which I keep stressing (& is perhaps v. v. loosely in parts in line with > Richard's) is: yes, everywhere you look at the human system, you see what > look like flaws. But, as a general principle, those "flaws" are actually > great design when you understand the problems they are meant to deal with. > This is one of those misleading half-truths... Evolution sometimes winds up solving optimization problems effectively, but it solves each one given constraints that are posed by its prior solutions to other problems ... For instance, it seems one of the reasons we're not smarter than we are is that evolution couldn't figure out how to make our heads bigger without having too many of us get stuck coming out the vaginal canal during birth. Heads got bigger, hips got wider ... up to a point ... but then the process stopped so we're the dipshits that we are. Evolution was solving an optimization problem (balancing maximization of intelligence and minimization of infant and mother mortality during birth) but within a context set up by its previous choices ... it's not as though it achieved the maximum possible intelligence for any humanoid, let alone for any being. Similarly, it's hard for me to believe that human teeth are optimal in any strong sense. No, no, no. They may have resulted as the solution to some optimization problem based on the materials and energy supply and food supply at hand at some period of evolutionary history ... but I refused to believe that in any useful sense they are an ideal chewing implement, or that they embody some amazingly wise evolutionary insight into the nature of chewing. Is the clitoris optimal? There is a huge and silly literature on this, but (as much of the literature agrees) it seems obvious that it's not. The human immune system is an intelligent pattern recognition system, but if it were a little cleverer, we wouldn't need vaccines and we wouldn't have AIDS... We don't understand every part of the human brain/body, but those parts we do understand do NOT convey the message that you suggest. They reflect a reality that the human brain/body is a mess combining loads of elegant solutions with loads of semi-random hacks. Not surprisingly, this is also what we see in the problem-solutions produced by evolutionary algorithms in computer science simulations. -- Ben G ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
