Potentially The Most Important Thing Ever

Hi all, I would like to know your opinion on this matter:

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If you were to create a computer AI directly modeled after a human intelligence, so that it has the ability to learn and improve its own intelligence, then it could:

Make itself smarter, by thinking and learning;
Use this new knowledge to increase its own processing power (by rebuilding its computer system so that it is faster) and rewrite its own code (to make itself more efficient at utilizing this processing power).

Result: An exponentially intelligent intelligence, which - given enough time - could process all available data in the universe, produce every possible conclusion that can be drawn from this data, and effectively know everything there is to know.

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I stole this from Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question". But it struck me:

Humans are unique in our ability to understand (an assumption, but i think we can generally agree that humans are unique). If the infinitely complex chain of events that has led to the existence of our species has any purpose to it, is it not reasonable to assume that that purpose is to understand? (and is it not reasonable to assume that everything has some - at least relative - purpose to it?)

Under this assumption, building this intelligence would be the greatest, most important thing we could possibly do as a species. Shouldn't we be concentrating all of our efforts/resources on making the construction of such an intelligence feasible? - especially if you consider the end of the story

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There are probably a lot of stupid assumptions in this post which I've missed, and I would appreciate it if you could explain them to me.

Happy Friday everybody

It seems like whenever people try to construct intelligence "as a species," they forget to construct it as individuals and everyone ends up a stupid proponent of species-intelligence. My cynical opinion, of course.

May be true, but in the midst of such an important undertaking, does it matter?

Ethically it does. And, besides, what is the point of collective/species intelligence or any other collective achievement except the good of one or more of the individuals subsumed within the collective?

What is species-intelligence if not individual intelligence? A way to turn humans into relatively ignorant but healthy zoo-specimens?

This is exactly the point. I don't know what value any achievement has outside the good of the collective, but if an achievement can have intrinsic value independent of the collective this is it. It would be like making god. Surely that must have some value in and of itself?

My observation is that so-called collectives are nothing more than cognitive-imagery that has the function of giving meaning to directly-observed individuals and social events.

Individuals are empirically observable. Collectives are only empirically observable as representations. Any empirical observation of a collective can just as easily be described as projecting meaning onto something that is meaning-neutral from an empirical perspective.

A good analogy would be observing a constellation. You can observe stars empirically, but to observe a constellation you have to superimpose a cognitive pattern onto the stars that relates them to each other. This is projecting meaning onto empirical observations, as opposed to just observing them.

So I'll rephrase my question: what achievement of collective good exists that is not directly an achievement of good for an individual entity that is defined as being part of the collective?

Can an achievement have intrinsic value independent of the beneficiary?
I don't see how any value can be independent of a beneficiary. God has benefiaries. That seems to be the whole purpose of creating a mythology of a creator; i.e. to claim that the creation had benefited from its creation, that entities have intrinsic value as life, which is its own purpose.

Maybe this is the first one.

Ok, god was the wrong term to use. What I meant was: an omniscient being.

As to having no value independent of a beneficiary: I can't refute that.

But i have found that humans naturally believe in value independent of a beneficiary. We express this belief in, for example, making art for art's sake. Or protecting other forms of life even when they are of no value to us.

Maybe this is just silliness, but I think there may be a reason behind it; that we instinctively know, at some level, that existence has some intrinsic value to it. And if it does, then it's not that big of a stretch to say that understanding this existence also has intrinsic value to it. Another belief we express in our pursuit of understanding, even when it is of no benefit to us.

If understanding, gaining knowledge, has some intrinsic value to it, then building this intelligence would be the most valuable thing we could ever achieve, as it would be the most efficient way of gaining knowledge.

Ok, I think I see what it is you're thinking of. At the risk of starting another theism/religion battle thread, let me try to address why I think there is this idea of art for art's sake, etc.

Egoism is human selfishness. It is criticized because it involves a willingness to sacrifice others' well-being in favor of an individual ego, "me," or a collective one, "we." Altruism is the idea that humans can act "selflessly" and put the good of others ahead of their own, even when this requires self-sacrifice, which some take as the measure of altruism.

There is also a third-way, in which the good of any and all is valued, with the idea that no one should be sacrificed for anyone else's benefit. I associate this idea with the idea of "God" because if you identify with the idea of an entity that was the creator of both yourself and everyone else, then you can possibly see why He/She/It would not want any of (I'll just say "his" for convenience) his children sacrificing themselves for others, or others for themselves.

"God" is also the idea that a creator exists whose creation had the purpose of re-creating his own image of creative power and everything else about his spirit in his replicants. So, divine creation is the idea, at least, of "art for art's sake," in the sense that creation is seen as good and the purpose of it is to foster continuing creativity in others. Once again you have the helping yourself by helping others, or vice-versa, concept that eliminates the belief in self-sacrifice for others or other-sacrifice for self.

So the intrinsic value you speak of, to me, seems like the very idea of value and goodness itself, and the idea that the value of certain things go beyond being of value to one beneficiary or another. It's not that they have "collective" value; it is that they have value both as process (for the producer) and product (for the user). Good art (for art's sake) would be an example, as would any work done that is the product of love (of the work itself) and enjoyment, which is also beneficial to the recipient of the product or service produced, whether this is the worker themselves or another person.

Yes, I think you got it. Don't you think that this is something we should be working towards?

Especially considering that the technologies necessary for this project are already available, and only need to be improved upon - and, while its intrinsic value is in my opinion its greatest benefit, it would also be of great benefit to our species, as we discussed in the simulated consciousness thread.

The fastest track to all solutions lie in this direction. While most who labor to advance our technological means do not realize the inevitability of such a technological singularity, at some point in the near future that awareness will change and hopefully more will see it as a priority.

It wouldn't hurt. But I don't think it involves some kind of collective logic, i.e. a "we." Any idea of a "we" always subordinates individuals within a collective ego. This implies self-sacrifice which is not "art for art's sake," but "art for the sake of reducing individuals to subordination and submission to collectivist authority."

If you want to achieve the ideology the good of one individual need not reduce the good of another, you have to challenge the ideologies that propagate zero-sum sacrificial logics. You can criticize altruists for their self-destructive tendencies, which are actually undertaken in the hope of gaining ego recognition for their sacrifice. They want to be seen as good by others, so they sacrifice themselves for others in the hope of indebting others to their sacrifice.

You can also challenge egoists who stubbornly resist recognizing the possibility of mutually beneficial activities. They insist that the idea that something that is good for others might benefit them, or vice-versa, is just a trick to make them into slaves. They are better than the altruists, who willingly enslave themselves to others in order to dominate them, but they tend towards exploitation of others in that they see only the possibility of "dog eat dog," so they're always eating other dogs and fighting against being eaten.

Somehow I don't think you were talking about "working towards" an ideological goal. What else would you "work towards" to achieve this? It seems like a purely spiritual/philosophical issue to me.

True, it would not work using collective logic. Our current system of human exploitation is the ultimate result of collective logic.

It would require the exact opposite; a universal realization of individualism. That is the only way to subvert the current system of control, exploitation, and inequality - which would never allow such a project to reach its full potential.

Take more alkaloids. Im not joking either. The ultimate 'brain-reward' pathway. In the above scenario, it could work.

Large scale communism, with ecstatic individualist contribution

This post has been edited by Matador on Oct 27 2009, 07:43 AM

There is a lot more potential to this than communism, or any other existing political ideology. With something this capable we could have a totally new system, without politics or government of any kind. A sustainable anarchist utopia, for example.

I'm with you


Imagine what could really be accomplished under such system. Though an ideology would be needed to drive it all forward. Religion anyone? lol, just a different one.