Craig: beautiful reply, appreciate your understanding and explanation. H O W E V E R : if we "MIX" pop culture with more 'thought-of' speculation (language?) we get into trouble soon. Popular meanings are ill-defined and many times loose. I try to verify the exact meanings applies
On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 4:36 PM, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]>wrote: > > > On Wednesday, May 14, 2014 4:10:11 PM UTC-4, JohnM wrote: >> >> Craig: about your title... >> I see no 'realistic' meaning to SINGULARITY (although it may be >> calculated in many fashions by diverse experts...!) >> Taking a STRICT meaning of the term, it has NOTING. Not even borderlines, >> which would belong INTO (forbidden). So the only singularity I can fathom >> is the infinite complexity, the existential world beyond our thinking >> capabilities. >> (My agnosticism speaking). >> The 'S'-term serves usefully in many arguments. I discount those. >> > > Hi John, > > I'm using Singularity here only in the pop culture sense of a > Technological Singularity in which AI begins to use its eventual superior > intelligence to create exponentially more intelligent AI. The idea of a > Moneybot Singularity would be some kind of a program that generates > exponentially more revenue producing programs. > > >> Your other term (emphasized): >> *Free will is a feeling with teeth. It allows us to bite into the world >> that we perceive in a way that a deterministic algorithm cannot.* >> I don't know about 'free will' either. It is helpful to make the faithful >> afraid, sinful, responsible for bad deeds committed, so the eternal >> forgiveness can be denied from them. Good tool also for worldly powers to >> keep opposition at bay. >> > > I use free will in a pop culture sense also. If I were to be more precise > I might say 'the continuum of will in which degrees of experienced freedom > are inversely proportionate to distance/entropy'. > > >> Otherwise: (again my agnosticism talking) whatever occurs is >> 'pressures-related, mostly compensated from diverse ones that may be >> controversial at times. Mind you: I did not call them flatly deterministic: >> in most cases there is a 'choice' which affecting trend to give some >> preference in personal decision ways - maybe against our (self) interest. >> Yes, it is a "feeling". A human pretension of self aggrandizing. >> >> What say you? >> > > I agree that up to 99.9...9% of our experience of our own will as free is > exaggerated, but I think that part of being conscious in any way is that at > least 0.0...1% of your experience is completely unique and proprietary. > With that tiny fragment, it becomes possible, through billions of years of > evolution, to hand down ever more powerful shortcuts to amplifying that > seed. As human beings, we do indeed suffer the self-aggrandizing pretense > of feeling our own will as entirely free or entirely ours, but in another, > larger sense, the civilization which we have inherited is a product of the > collective hacking of nature by our species to yield a potential increase > in the degree of freedom (although arguably that increase is only for a > select few in select measures, at the expense of everyone else). In > physical terms though, I think that each frame of reference, each > experience has a germ of unrepeatable and proprietary novelty which is in > direct opposition to computationalist axioms. The universe invented numbers > from 100% free will, even though we might, as human beings, be nested so > deeply within the numbered and structured that we can barely recognize > their origin. > > Craig > > >> John Mikes >> >> >> On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 2:58 PM, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]>wrote: >> >>> An interesting little thought experiment to consider: Is there a way to >>> create a program or AI moneybot which can figure out how to make more money >>> on the internet than it costs? >>> >>> I see this as a sneaky way to get at the trans-computable nature of >>> consciousness as it brings up issues about the ultimate causes of financial >>> transactions. As we know, human motives and senses are required to legally >>> cause money to change hands. We spend a lot of time developing schemes for >>> security that will protect the power of humans to control how their own >>> money is spent. Also as we know, the proximate causes of financial >>> transaction over the internet are the digital incrementing and decrementing >>> of account data. >>> >>> Even given a souped-up quantum computer which could break every >>> encryption and factor, the idea that there could be an algorithm which will >>> be able to reliably and legally extract money from the internet forever >>> seems fundamentally flawed. We have primitive moneybots already, in the >>> form of malware, but releasing malware carries a risk, especially if it is >>> successful enough to catch the attention of police. Also, free protection >>> against malware tends to spread as fast as the original threat, so that the >>> long term prospects seem shaky at best. Finally, even in the case where a >>> moneybot happens to be successful, its use would inevitably destroy >>> whatever economy that it is introduced into. As the bot’s automatic success >>> eclipsed the ebbs and flows of the real life financial risk, there would be >>> no way for a market to compete with a sure thing. We’re already seeing this >>> happen in the form of automated trades in hedge funds, derivatives, etc, >>> but that’s another conversation. >>> >>> What would it take to write a moneybot that actually *earns* money >>> legally without human intervention? Answering this question, if we are >>> being honest, is probably a much higher priority for working computer >>> scientists than answering the more philosophical questions about Strong AI. >>> The question of what a bot would have to say or do on the internet to get >>> people to willingly part with their money, and to do so without complaints >>> later on, would seem to be infinitely difficult without the bot being able >>> to identify personally with human beings living human lives. Modeling only >>> the behavior of data being sent and received wouldn’t work because the data >>> has no access to the actual experience of a person receiving merchandise.To >>> the moneybot, the only difference between successfully selling something >>> and failing is that there is no complaints received, not that there was >>> nothing that actually existed to sell in the first place. >>> >>> A moneybot could find, for example, that people spend money at sites >>> like Amazon.com, and could create a website that looks and acts like a >>> retail site, but there is nothing that the bot could tell the customer to >>> assure them that its arbitrarily generated tracking number has caused the >>> delivery of the package. There is no way for the program to know whether >>> there is really something to deliver or not, and there is no way for the >>> customer to ignore the fact that there is nothing delivered. The program >>> can’t calculate that the actual Amazon site has a backend fulfillment >>> machine which is composed of real manufactured goods, packaging, delivery, >>> etc. The bot could conceivably be programmed to understand what such a >>> fulfillment enterprise entails, but it has no way to compute the difference >>> between its own in silico modeling of an enterprise and the concrete >>> reality that is required for people to get boxes on their doorstep. To the >>> bot, financial transactions begin and end in the data. All this to say, yet >>> again, that the map is not the territory. >>> >>> Taking this as a metaphor for computationalism in general, our own >>> sensory experiences are the brick and mortar presence of the brain’s >>> information processing, rather than the neurology of the brain. What is >>> literally in the brain cannot, in and of itself, represent that which is >>> not literally located in the brain. Internet marketing data can only be >>> used to infer what we do and think, it cannot process what we actually >>> experience. A computerized salesman faces the insurmountable task of having >>> no model for free will. Knowing that financial transactions take place >>> under a particular computable criteria does not explain why those >>> transactions ultimately exist and how to selectively attract them. The >>> probability of success of any given sales approach changes in response to >>> unknowable factors which might make a whole class of products or terms >>> unpopular overnight. Human agents will change their behavior to suit their >>> own preferences rather than to maintain a statistical model of their >>> behavior. >>> >>> Like a shifting antigen disease, the moneybot would have to constantly >>> update its offerings to stay ahead of audiences as they grow resistant, not >>> only to specific techniques, but to automated money making schemes in >>> general. We are seeing this happen now as spam becomes more sophisticated. >>> For a while, shotgunning keywords was a popular strategy and the sending of >>> garbage emails presumably yielded some benefit for the spammers for a >>> while, but these were very easy for end users to spot and avoid opening. As >>> end users keep catching on, and spam filters keep catching up, I would >>> guess that the spammers are always chasing slimmer and slimmer margins. >>> >>> To really make a moneybot that harvests cash from the internet legally >>> and perpetually, I think that you would have to model the entire universe, >>> especially the psychology of each individual person, and their interactions >>> with each other. You would have to model all of human history, really, to >>> find which trends might repeat at what times. It’s because of the free will >>> thing. *Free will is a feeling with teeth. It allows us to bite into >>> the world that we perceive in a way that a deterministic algorithm >>> cannot.*Free will is motivated by aesthetics, including the aesthetics of >>> function >>> and process, which makes it not just non-computational, but >>> trans-computational. Computation is a sensory experience, but it is one >>> which lowers the aesthetic amplitude in order to extend the reach across >>> subjective worlds from the outside in. >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>> Groups "Everything List" group. >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >>> an email to [email protected]. >>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >>> >>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >>> >> >> -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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