http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_ridley_when_ideas_have_sex.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2010-07-20&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email
Good lecture worth looking at about how trade - exchange of both goods and ideas - has fostered civilisation. Near the end introduces a v. important idea - "the collective brain". In other words, our apparently individual intelligence is actually a collective intelligence. Nobody he points out actually knows how to make a computer mouse, although that may seem counterintuitive - it's an immensely complex piece of equipment, simple as it may appear, that engages the collective, interdependent intelligence and productive efforts of vast numbers of people. When you start thinking like that, you realise that there is v. little we know how to do, esp of an intellectual nature, individually, without the implicit and explicit collaboration of vast numbers of people and sectors of society. The fantasy of a superAGI machine that can grow individually without a vast society supporting it, is another one of the wild fantasies of AGI-ers and Singularitarians that violate truly basic laws of nature. Individual brains cannot flourish individually in the real world, only societies of brains (and bodies) can. (And of course computers can do absolutely nothing or in any way survive without their human masters - even if it may appear that way, if you don't look properly at their whole operation) ------------------------------------------- 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=8660244-6e7fb59c Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
