No, the collective brain is actually a somewhat distinctive idea. It's
saying a lot more than the individual brain is "embedded" in society, much
more like "interdependently functioning" with society - that you can't say
do maths or art or any subject, or produce products or perform most of our
activities except as part of a whole culture and society. Did you watch the
talk? My Googlings show that this does seem to be a distinctive formulation
by Ridley.
The evidence of the idea's newness is precisely the discussions of
superAGI's and AGI futures by the groups here - show me how much of these
discussions if anything at all raises the social dimension (i.e society of
robots dimension) - considers what I am suggesting is the truth that you
will not be able to have an independent AGI system without a society of
such systems. If the collective brain idea were established culturally,
AGI-ers would not talk as naively as they do.
Your last question is also an example of cocooned-AGI thinking? "Which
brains?" The only real AGI brains are those of living systems - animals and
humans - living in the real world. All machines to date are only extensions
of humans not living systems - though I'm not sure how many AGI-ers truly
realise this. And all those systems can and do only function in societies.
Why? Well, when you or y'all ever get around to dealing with AGI/creative
problems you will realise why. The risk of failure and injury when dealing
with the creative problems of the real world is so great that you need a
social network a) to support you and b) by virtue of a collective, to
increase the chances of at least some individuals successfully reaching
difficult goals. Also, social division of labour massively amplifies the
productive power of the individual. Plus you get sexual benefits.
--------------------------------------------------
From: "Jan Klauck" <jkla...@uni-osnabrueck.de>
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2010 8:25 PM
To: "agi" <agi@v2.listbox.com>
Subject: Re: [agi] The Collective Brain
Mike Tintner wrote
Near the end introduces a v. important
idea - "the collective brain". In other words, our apparently individual
intelligence is actually a collective intelligence.
That individuals are embedded into social networks of specialization
and exchange, care etc. is already known both in sociology and economics,
probably in philosophy and social psychology, too.
and productive efforts of vast numbers of people.
Already known to economists.
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.
AGIers and Singularitarians say so?
Individual brains cannot flourish individually in the real world, only
societies of brains (and bodies) can.
What kind of brains? What kind of societies? And why?
-------------------------------------------
agi
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