On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 12:30 PM, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]
> wrote:
On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 3:33 PM, Jason Resch <[email protected]>
wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 5:03 AM, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]
>
> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> If you have some time/patience, let me know what you think of my
arguments
>> here:
>> https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.02009
>>
>
>
> Telmo,
>
> Interesting read.
Thanks for reading, and for the comments.
> In general I have a lot of sympathy for this view.
>
> I think there may be an inverse relationship between intelligence
and
> confidence in actions. That is, the more intelligence the super
> intelligence becomes, the less certain it may be about whether a
given
> course of action is correct, and this could lead to a paralysis of
sorts.
That is an interesting idea. My initial intuition is to argue that in
a purely probabilistic system, the more intelligent actors might
assume (correctly) that they are more likely to predict the future
correctly than the less intelligent ones. A bit like an expert poker
player: they know they can't win them all, but they also know that
they will win in the long term.
> I've also read a few science fiction stories where upon being
uploaded,
> people modify their brains to activate their pleasure centers and
> effectively become zombies thereafter. I wonder though, and
perhaps this
> relates to the nature of possible conscious experiences, would a
> super-intelligence prefer to exist and continually stimulate its
utility
> function, or would it be equally (or more?) happy to define its
utility
> function as being maximized by not existing and then kill itself?
E.g. with
> the choice between an eternal heroine trip/orgasm vs. suicide,
what would a
> rational agent choose?
I agree, this is a deep question. I would say that it goes into they
mystery of qualia. I would say that the arguments that I present in
the paper are valid from the third-person, but we have to take a grain
of salt because we don't understand qualia/consciousness.
> Another question, what if a super intelligence agreed with the ideas
> expressed in the one-self paper and it determined its self
interest extends
> to all conscious beings. Would it, acting under such a belief,
seek to help
> (and not modify) existing conscious life realize their utility
functions, or
> would it instead decide to modify the utility functions of those
other
> conscious life forms it has the power to change? Would it modify
their
> utility functions to seek to stop existing and then kill them? If
it does
> so instantaneously, it doesn't seem like it really ever modified
their
> utility functions in the first place and instead of assisting their
> suicides, is murdering them.
Ok, I see we have similar thoughts. I don't write about this because
these are things that I see almost as my personal faith, not as
something that I can address scientifically. Bruno might disagree, if
assuming comp.
My personal faith: we are all the same person, including animals and
who knows what else. I cannot show that this to be true, and I further
think that it is beyond the Gödelian veil. Even doing introspection
(and enhanced introspection, let's leave it at that...), I fluctuate
between "yes, we are all the same person" and "bullshit".
This puts you in good company. It is a view shared not only by many
mystics, but also by many scientists and thinkers:
Giordano Bruno:
It is manifest... that every soul and spirit hath a certain
continuity with the spirit of the universe, so that it must be
understood to exist and to be included not only there where it
liveth and feeleth, but it is also by its essence and substance
diffused throughout immensity... The power of each soul is itself
somehow present afar in the universe... Naught is mixed, yet is
there some presence.
Anything we take in the universe, because it has in itself that
which is All in All, includes in its own way the entire soul of the
world, which is entirely in any part of it
The universal Intellect is the intimate, most real, peculiar and
powerful part of the soul of the world. This is the single whole
which filleth the whole, illumineth the universe and directeth
nature to the production of natural things, as our intellect with
the congruous production of natural kinds.
We find that everything that makes up difference and number is pure
accident, pure show, pure constitution. Every production, of
whatever kind, is an alteration, but the substance remains always
the same, because it is only one, one divine immortal being.
Erwin Schrödinger:
But, of course, here we
knock against the arithmetical paradox; there appears to be a great
multitude of these conscious
egos, the world is however only one. There is obviously only one
alternative, namely the
unification of minds or consciousnesses, Their multiplicity is only
apparent, in truth there is only
one mind. This is the doctrine of the Upanishads. And not only of
the Upanishads. The
mystyically experienced union with God regularly entails this
attitude unless it is opposed by strong
existing prejudices; and this means that it is less easily accepted
in the West than in the East. Let
me quote as an example outside the Upanishads an Islamic Persian
mystic of the thirteenth century,
Aziz Nasafi. I am taking it from a paper by Fritz Meyer and
translating from his German
translation: On the death of any living creature the spirit returns
to the spiritual world, the body to
the bodily world. In this however only the bodies are subject to
change. The spiritual world is one
single spirit who stands like unto a light behind the bodily world
and who, when any single creature
comes into being, shines through it as through a window. According
to the kind and size of the
window less or more light enters the world. The light itself however
remains unchanged."
Kurt Gödel (interviewed by Rudy Rucker):
"I asked Gödel if he believed there is a single Mind behind all the
various appearances and activities of the world. He replied that,
yes, the Mind is the thing that is structured, but that the Mind
exists independently of its individual properties. I then asked if
he believed that the Mind is everywhere, as opposed to being
localized in the brains of people. Gödel replied, “Of course. This
is the basic mystic teaching.”
Fred Hoyle:
'There's certainly a lot of things I don't understand. This light of
yours, or whatever you like to call it, how does it decide that you
are you and I am me?'
'That could be another illusion. Look, along one wall of our office
we have one complete set of pigeon holes, all in their nice tidy
sequence. Along another wall we have another set of pigeon holes.
Two completely different sets. But there is only one light. It
dances about in both sets of pigeon holes. Wherever it happens to
be, there is the phenomenon of consciousness. One set of pigeon
holes is what you call you, the other is what I call me. It would be
possible to experience both and never know it. It would be possible
to follow the little patch of light wherever it went. There could be
only one consciousness, although there must certainly be more than
one set of pigeon holes.'
I found this a staggering idea. 'If you're right it would be
possible to be a million people and never know it.'
Freeman Dyson:
"Enlightenment came to me suddenly and unexpectedly one afternoon in
March when I was walking up to the school notice board to see
whether my name was on the list for tomorrow's football game. I was
not on the list. And in a blinding flash of inner light I saw the
answer to both my problems, the problem of war and the problem of
injustice. The answer was amazingly simple. I called it Cosmic
Unity. Cosmic Unity said: There is only one of us. We are all the
same person. I am you and I am Winston Churchill and Hitler and
Gandhi and everybody. There is no problem of injustice because your
sufferings are also mine. There will be no problem of war as soon
as you understand that in killing me you are only killing
yourself." [Dyson 1979, p.17]
"For some days I quietly worked out in my own mind the metaphysics
of Cosmic Unity. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I
becaume that it was the living truth. It was logically
incontrovertible. It provided for the first time a firm foundation
for ethics. It offered mankind the radical change of heart and mind
that was out only hope of peace at a time of desperate danger. Only
one small problem remained. I must find a way to convert the world
to my way of thinking. The work of conversion began slowly. I am
not a good preacher. After I had expounded the new faith two or
three times to my friends at school, I found it difficult to hold
their attention. They were not anxious to hear more about it. They
had the tenancy to run away when they saw me coming. They were good-
natured boys, and generally tolerant of eccentricity, but they were
repelled by my tone of moral earnestness. When I preached at them I
sounded too much like the headmaster. So in the end I made only two
converts, one wholehearted and one half-hearted. Even the whole-
hearted convert did not share in the work of preaching. He liked to
keep his beliefs to himself. I, too, began to suspect that I lacked
some of the essential qualities of a religious leader. Relativity
was more in my line. After a few months I gave up trying to make
converts. When some friend would come up to me and say cheerfully,
"How's cosmajoonity doing today?" I would just answer, "Fine, thank
you," and let it go at that. [Dyson 1979, pp. 17-18]
" The universe as a whole is also weird, with laws of nature that
make it hospitable to the growth of mind. I do not make any clear
distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it
has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension. God may be either
a world-soul or a collection of world-souls. So I am thinking that
atoms and humans and God may have minds that differ in degree but
not in kind. We stand, in a manner of speaking, midway between the
unpredictability of atoms and the unpredictability of God. Atoms are
small pieces of our mental apparatus, and we are small pieces of
God's mental apparatus. Our minds may receive inputs equally from
atoms and from God. This view of our place in the cosmos may not be
true, but it is compatible with the active nature of atoms as
revealed in the experiments of modern physics. I don't say that this
personal theology is supported or proved by scientific evidence. I
only say that it is consistent with scientific evidence."
Arnold Zuboff:
"This is also the resolution of the tension between the rival
criteria for personal identity,
psychological and bodily continuity. As with brain bisection, there
is here an embarrassment of
riches. Either side of the classic debate has the upper hand when it
argues positively that the person
could remain the same if its own pet criterion was maintained even
if the other was wholly absent.
And, indeed, one could easily imagine a person going along into
another body with a transfer to that
body’s brain of his pattern of memories. And yet one can also
easily imagine the person’s
continuing in the same body with an experience of amnesia or false
memories. It seems that all
such content of experience, in different bodies or with differing
mental states, could be mine. In
fact, all the mental content in different bodies and differing
mental states actually is mine. For all of
it has everything that it takes to be mine–the first person
character that is common to all
experience."
"You possess all conscious life. Whenever in all time
and wherever in all the universe (or beyond) any conscious being
stands, sits, crawls, jumps, lies,
rolls, flies or swims, its experience of doing so is yours and is
yours now. You are that being. You
are fish and fowl. Deer and hunter. You are saints and sinners. You
are Germans, Jews and
Palestinians. This is an important result. What else can come close
to it in importance? And
perhaps the spread of this knowledge among the intelligent beings
that are you can help you to stop
yourself from hurting yourself because you mistake yourself for
another."
This idea seems to be one of the foundational beliefs behind most
religions (and in answer to Bruno looking for more of a basis for
the silver rule):
The ancient Chinese author Laozi, who wrote Tao Te Ching, a
fundamental text of Daoism:
"Regard your neighbor's gain as your own gain, and your neighbor's
loss as your own loss."
On a papryrus scroll from the late period in ancient Egypt, it was
written:
"That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another."
From the Hadith in Islam, Mohammad is quoted as saying:
"The most righteous person is the one who consents for other people
what he consents for himself, and who dislikes for them what he
dislikes for himself."
The Suman Suttam of Jainism preaches:
"Killing a living being is killing one's own self; showing
compassion to a living being is showing compassion to oneself. He
who desires his own good, should avoid causing any harm to a living
being."
In the talmud, of Judaism masechet Shabbat, 31, A, Hillel said:
"What is hateful to you, do not do (to others)"
In the Christian new testament John, chapter 17 verses 20-23 Jesus
says:
"I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,
that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am
in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that
you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that
they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that
they may be brought to complete unity. "
Fritjof Capra, author of the Tao of Physics, writes of Hindusim:
"The basic recurring theme in Hindu mythology is the creation of the
world by the self-sacrifice of God
—'sacrifice' in the original sense of 'making sacred'—whereby God
becomes the world which, in
the end, becomes again God. This creative activity of the Divine is
called lila, the play of God, and
the world is seen as the stage of the divine play. Like most of
Hindu mythology, the myth of lila
has a strong magical flavour. Brahman is the great magician who
transforms himself into the world
and then performs this feat with his 'magic creative power', which
is the original meaning of maya
in the Rig Veda. The word maya—one of the most important terms in
Indian philosophy—has
changed its meaning over the centuries. From the might, or power, of
the divine actor and
magician, it came to signify the psychological state of anybody
under the spell of the magic play.
As long as we confuse the myriad forms of the divine lila with
reality, without perceiving the unity
of Brahman underlying all these forms, we are under the spell of
maya."
In Sikhism, the soul (atma) is considered to be part of the
Universal Soul, which is God
(Parmatma).In the Sikh holy book, the Sri Guru Granth Sahib, it is
written:
"God is in the Soul and the Soul is in the God." and "The soul is
divine; divine is the soul."
in Buddhism there is the concept of anattā which refers to the
illusion of the self. According to the doctrine of anattā there is
no such thing as a self
independent from the rest of the universe. Rather than attaching
ourselves to some independent entity, Gautama Buddha tells us:
"All that we are is the result of what we have thought."
To defend my faith: independently of the truth, if everyone operates
on this belief we are all better off. Of course I am not claiming to
be a saint or even close, I am just saying that this seems like an
overall benevolent belief system. So, as you say, the AI might reach
this same conclusion: it's better to bet that the well-being of all is
equivalent to my well-being.
I agree. I think this viewpoint is sorely needed. I believe our
brains evolved this sense of an ego for its own selfish purposes. I
think some chemicals or meditation (and in some cases stroke) can
disrupt the operation of this ego illusion, and allow us to see more
clearly the truth of the matter.
I think our morality is constrained by evolution -- in the same way
that some people suspect that even our perception of reality is
constrained, a sort of Darwinian-Plato-Cave. Most people naturally
feel that a human life is more valuable than the life of other
sentient beings. I feel that myself, but is this fundamentally
justifiable or is it just the outcome of kinship selection? What would
the AI think about this?
I think some ancestor may have understood this. But that belief
interfered with its survival, and so it lost out to those that had a
mutation that concealed the truth that we are all one.
To go further: not so long ago, most people would freely defend that
the lives of people from their ethnicity are more valuable than those
of other ethnicities. It seems to me that only recently did the
civilization process start to oppose this way of thinking, and it
seems clear that there is still a long way to go.
> It seem to me, that under computationalism, realizing conscious
states
> requires computation, and in our universe computation requires time.
> Therefore maximizing the types and kinds of conscious states one
wants to
> exist requires persistence over time. I think for a conscious super
> intelligence, utility functions must somehow be based of the
perceived
> utility of various conscious experiences. Ceasing to exist (or
ceasing to
> realize new conscious states) serves only to eliminate your own
contribution
> of experiences to the total set of experiences that exist.
Therefore the
> super intelligence that kills itself, is in effect, deciding a
preference
> for the other already extant conscious life forms and their
experiences over
> its own.
Well put, I agree.
Even without AI, bit assuming comp: would it make sense to kill
yourself if you figure that you are significantly less happy than most
other conscious beings?
Interesting question. I don't have an answer on this question.
One consideration is that if everyone followed this strategy
(assuming they could know where they stood in the spectrum of
beings), is that it would lead to all but the happiest observer
killing themselves.
> If you look at everything that motivates all human endeavors, it is
> ultimately, all about realizing and maximizing good experiences
while
> avoiding and minimizing bad experiences.
I read replies to this, but I agree with you. People sacrifice for
their kids because ultimately they bet that this makes them more happy
than any short-term pleasure. It might seem cold to discuss such
calculations, but within the "we are all the same person" faith it is
perfectly benevolent.
That is what I find so powerful about the idea. It abolishes
selfishness. If it is understood and adopted as a philosophy it
would change the world (and I think greatly for the better).
