Ben,
Obviously an argument too massive to be worth pursuing in detail. But just one
point - your arguments are essentially specialist focussing on isolated
anatomical rather than cognitive features, (and presumably we (science) don't
yet have the general, systemic overview necessary to appreciate what would be
the practical consequences to the rest of the body of, say, altering those
isolated features like the clitoris - which, ahem, can, like everything else,
no doubt, ideally, be improved). I am asserting a general, systemic philosophy
that I applied to the whole of the human mind - and you have to stand back
and look at its apparently crazy contradictions as a whole.
Just as you are in a rational, specialist way picking off isolated features,
so, similarly, rational, totalitarian thinkers used to object to the crazy,
contradictory complications of the democratic, "conflict" system of
decisionmaking by contrast with their pure ideals. And hey, there *are* crazy
and inefficient features - it's a real, messy system. But, as a whole, it works
better than any rational, totalitarian, non-conflict system. Cog sci can't yet
explain why, though, can it? (You guys, without realising it, are all rational,
totalitarian systembuilders).
Ben/MT:
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
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