Dennis Hackethal’s Blog
My blog about philosophy, coding, and anything else that interests me.
Tweets
An archive of my tweets and retweets through . They may be formatted slightly differently than on Twitter. API access has since gotten prohibitively expensive – I don't know whether or when I'll be able to update this archive.
But in case I will, you can subscribe via RSS – without a Twitter account. Rationale
Yes, moral claims are claims about what's best for a situation.
No, they're about what to want and what to do. Very different.
You and I know all knowledge fallible.
Yes, but does Neil know this? @neiltyson
Check this thread re difference between helping people and knowing what's "best" for them:
I agree that we should use reason to counter ignorance. When did I say otherwise?
I don't fear bloodshed as the outcome of any moral stance.
We're not trying not to destroy the means of error correction for the sake of all humanity. We try not to because it would be immoral and because it would prevent progress.
Forcing help on others is what Neil's sort of reasoning leads to.
If by the virus you mean Covid 19, that's not what the quote is about. He wants less ignorance.
If you don't think good intentions are problematic, then you're ignoring what I've been writing in this thread.
However, helping people ≠ claiming to know what's best for them. The latter often leads to forcing "help" on others who didn't ask for it. Like children.
Either way, the best technology is built out of personal need.
My point was stronger than that: whenever somebody claims he knows what's best for you, RUN.
But yes, one can help people out of self interest and some do that.
Such dissenters are then dealt with accordingly.
Btw, it's quite a presumptuous thing to claim to know what's best for everyone. It's a claim of infallibility. "I know what's best for you; just listen to me and do as I say." That doesn't sound like a recipe for disaster to you?
Claiming the necessity of something for the benefit of humanity is dangerous because anyone who doesn't buy into it is seen as a dangerous dissenter who doesn't see the allegedly manifest truth and must, therefore, either be evil and hate humanity or be dumb and untrustworthy.
I don't think so. Doing almost anything with good intentions can lead to very bad results. That seems to be the case universally.
Doing things for self-generated reasons such as interest and fun usually lead to better results, and never bloodshed.
But I wasn't taking issue with that part. I was taking issue with the good intention of doing it for the sake of humanity. That intention often leads to false authorities and bloodshed.
Ah, my mistake - I thought you were asking what preceded the entire quote; but you did say part quote.
Of course bad intentions aren't great either, but at least memes of bad intentions don't spread as easily. And it's a false dichotomy: one doesn't need good or bad intentions to work on a problem. One just needs interest.
Those things above were part of one emergent experience for me earlier.
For now I'm guessing that yes, truly simultaneous conversations could appear as one experience.
The mind seems to contain one meta-algorithm, and there's no second one missing in any explanations afaik.
@n_iccolo @bnielson01 @ReachChristofer
Babies may become conscious during pregnancy, but there must be a cut-off point before which they aren't yet conscious. E.g. before the brain is sufficiently developed. It would be okay to abort before such a cut-off point imo because the baby is not a person yet. Afterward, no.
If the velocity is great enough, does an object orbit forever, or does it always come back eventually?
Don't we already split our attention often? E.g. right now I'm typing while bopping my head to Michael Jackson while checking my grammar while checking for typos etc. All this seems to happen simultaneously and requires conscious effort (admittedly less so for the head bopping).
One's self-generated reasons: fun, happiness, interest, curiosity, wealth, etc.
I don't know what preceded it.
What Tyson seems to advocate is a fairly totalitarian notion of science. Totalitarianism defeats reason. So by criticizing his statement, I'm arguing for reason.
Ignorance is not a virus; we're all infinitely ignorant. Bad ideas can be.
Be very suspicious of those who claim to do things “for the sake of all humanity.” The road to hell is paved with good intentions. twitter.com/universal_sci/…
What a strangely inconsistent quote. The notion of democracy conflicts with dictates of truth, and science isn't about dictating truth either. Sounds like scientism.
With the help of @bnielson01, I posted a transcript of my latest appearance on @ReachChristofer's podcast. Criticism welcome.
In Germany (and Denmark, afaik) many parents lie to their children, claiming if they spend too much time looking at a screen their eyes will turn rectangular.
Is this a known practice in other countries, too?
@RebelScience @connectedregio1 @ks445599 @SurviveThrive2 @bnielson01 @EnricGuinovart @Built2T @Korrelan_AI
You can always raise money the Christian way: youtu.be/ayCeeGbW_og
@bnielson01 @SurviveThrive2 @connectedregio1 @RebelScience @EnricGuinovart @Built2T @ks445599 @markcannon5
I write about her. She wasn't all that :)
The video is a good example of how useless neuroscience is in this regard and how it still spreads Lamarckism even today, 160 years after it was refuted by Darwin. (She claims it was the invention of cooking that made us intelligent.)
"What is so special about the human brain?" Its software. But she doesn't talk about software once. Why not?
For creativity and consciousness, check out chapter 5. For effective psychotherapy, check out chapter 9. I recommend reading them in that order.
It's #corona quarantine time. You're at home, bored. Why not curl up with a new book?
𝘼 𝙒𝙞𝙣𝙙𝙤𝙬 𝙤𝙣 𝙄𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙡𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚 is out now. It is your field guide to the exciting world of your mind.
Order right now:
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@SurviveThrive2 @bnielson01 @RebelScience @connectedregio1 @EnricGuinovart @Built2T @ks445599
In any case, the disagreements between the various participants in this thread rest on epistemological disagreements. We'll keep budding heads if we continue discussing concrete, surface-level issues. It'd be more productive to discuss epistemology instead. Evrthng else follows
@SurviveThrive2 @bnielson01 @RebelScience @connectedregio1 @EnricGuinovart @Built2T @ks445599
That sounds like a mechanistic way to solve problems that is guaranteed (or at least likely) to succeed.
There can be no such thing; and it wouldn't be intelligence, either. Intelligence involves luck. Sometimes you find a solution to a problem; sometimes you don't.
I'd like to advertise on your podcast. How do I go about that?
Why would you have to include the physical/biochemical behavior of the brain?
@connectedregio1 @ks445599 @RebelScience @bnielson01
I want to understand how the mind works and then recreate it as a computer program.
@connectedregio1 @RebelScience @ks445599 @bnielson01
I think trying to emulate the hardware is a waste of time. We’re trying to simulate the software, and that software can run on computers that are not the brain. So what could the brain possibly tell us? It’s like studying computer hardware to understand web browsers.
@RebelScience @ks445599 @bnielson01 @connectedregio1
Intelligence is a universal ability. Therefore, AGI and "human-level" AGI are the same. Both are people.
@RebelScience @ks445599 @bnielson01 @connectedregio1
We don't need any hardware at the moment. We first need an explanation of how intelligence works. And then we can draw conclusions about its performance characteristics.
Worrying about scaling hardware is premature at this point.
@RebelScience @bnielson01 @ks445599 @connectedregio1
Are you suggesting these things are the same thing? They aren't.
Yes, it's possible to separate them. Software is substrate independent. I wouldn't really bother with the brain at all.
Excellent. I comment on "thousand brains theory" and HTM in the book, check out chapter 7, section "Neuroscience."
And some program in your brain instructed you to say "an apple fell from the tree" just then, no? On the appropriate level of emergence?
It seems to me you're still assuming the program would simulate some reductive state of that process. It doesn't need to. It can reflect the same level of emergence as "an apple fell from the tree." We know this from computational universality.
It's hard to answer this many questions on Twitter. I recommend moving this to critapp if you want to go deeper.
@RebelScience @bnielson01 @ks445599 @connectedregio1
No. Computing is about instantiating abstractions and their relationships through physical objects and their motion.
@RebelScience @ks445599 @bnielson01 @connectedregio1
It follows from computational universality that no such reinvention is needed. Our computers can already simulate intelligence.
@RebelScience @bnielson01 @ks445599 @connectedregio1
Who cares? You won't win a factual argument by trying to establish status or credibility, or by impressing others with your achievements.
That being said, could we use Turing machines instead of Lambda Calculus? Of course, viz. universality of computation. But it wouldn't be as illustrative.
The universality of computation in itself doesn't advocate for or against any particular level of emergence. It works on any level of emergence, and we can choose the one we find informative.
Lambda calculus is not a description of the mind, and I don't use it as such.
But, as to why I like Lambda Calculus to bridge the illusory gap between philosophy and software engineering: because each part of a function maps exactly onto how explanations work.
Either would work; in the former case, you do it yourself through thought, in the latter, someone else through writing code.
@RebelScience @ks445599 @connectedregio1 @bnielson01
Once again you ignored my q :) Can you slow down pls?
Here are examples that would change my mind. A good formulation of a principle of computation showing (sensory) inputs are necessary for computation. Or, more generally, a refutation of the universality of computation.
@RebelScience @ks445599 @connectedregio1 @bnielson01
You keep saying that, despite evidence and good explanations that this isn't the case.
What could someone possibly say that would change your mind about this? In a rational discussion, one should be prepared to answer this question. (It's not a rhetorical q, I'd like to know.)
@RebelScience @connectedregio1 @bnielson01 @ks445599
So in other words, you want to keep ignoring my questions, and you want to insist that computation is impossible without inputs, even though I showed you a routine example above that performs just that?
If you want to make progress here, it's high time to change your mind.
@RebelScience @connectedregio1 @bnielson01 @ks445599
Can you answer my previous question?
And, if you are right, can you please explain how the function I posted above performs the requisite computation even though it doesn't have any inputs? Notice how the brackets behind "foo" are empty; that's where inputs would go.
Agreed. And software engineering can help improve both, including mental ailments that are the result of bugs in the "user space."
What difference does it make whether and how people discuss these things? :)
In any case, I recommend chapters 3 and 6. Especially in the latter one I address criticisms similar to the ones you propose.
@RebelScience @connectedregio1 @bnielson01 @ks445599
In other words, you're saying that nobody could possibly come up with an argument for why you should change your mind about this?
@connectedregio1 @RebelScience @bnielson01 @ks445599
(and the vast majority of our computers are; our laptops, smart phones, desktop computers, etc.)
@connectedregio1 @RebelScience @bnielson01 @ks445599
Their brains are. But yes: whatever happens in a human brain - creativity, among other things - must be replicable on a computer other than the brain, if that computer is universal.
@RebelScience @connectedregio1 @bnielson01 @ks445599
"Data" means "givens." That function I sent you does not take any inputs: it's not "given" anything, and especially not through senses. And yet it performs computation, which is something you claimed is impossible.
@RebelScience @bnielson01 @ks445599 @connectedregio1
There are whole programming languages that are built around the idea that code is data. They are called "Lisps."
What's the basic machinery of minds?
No. Software engineering is not an appeal to reductionism. It happens on the same level of emergence on which ideas live.
@RebelScience @connectedregio1 @bnielson01 @ks445599
As to your point "there can be no computation without data." Here's a simple program that takes no data:
(defn foo [] (* 2 2))
It returns 4. Are you saying this isn't computation?
@RebelScience @connectedregio1 @bnielson01 @ks445599
Organisms are born with data that's genetically given. And an organism would retain all of that genetic data even if born with a malfunction that cut off its brain from all sense data.
@connectedregio1 @RebelScience @bnielson01 @ks445599
A computer is universal when it can compute anything any other compute can compute. A universal computer can compute any computable function.
@RebelScience @bnielson01 @ks445599 @connectedregio1
No. Code is data and remains data even if cut off completely from the outside world, with not ability to ingest additional data.
I'm guessing this mistake rests on a misunderstanding of computational universality.
By the same logic, someone who is, say, schizophrenic, just needs to be talked out of it?
The comparison doesn't hold because neurosurgery and software engineering happen on different levels of emergence.
It's still possible it would need to update some parameters at first, which may take some time, and so it might initially stumble about a bit. Progress might look like "learning" - in which case, such a result may not tell us much.
2/2
Off-the-cuff guess: it would do better than a human initially, because presumably its knowledge of what to do with visual impressions is given genetically and remains present even when blind. Once the "veil is lifted," it just needs to invoke the knowledge.
1/
I found the video of the dog playing Jenga, if anyone wants to see it:
It was fun being on Christofer's show again. twitter.com/ReachChristofe…
@bnielson01 @ks445599 @connectedregio1
I call them "functions," but all replicators (including memes and genes) are functions, so I have been looking for a new term as well! If you think of one, let me know...
@RebelScience @bnielson01 @ks445599 @connectedregio1
Well, we also know from the universality of computation that we could build general intelligence on computers that don’t have any sensory inputs.
Either refute the universality of computation or stop invoking special-purpose brain regions and sensory inputs.
@RebelScience @bnielson01 @ks445599 @connectedregio1
No because we know from the universality of computation that we could build general intelligence on computers that don’t have visual cortices.
@RebelScience @ks445599 @connectedregio1 @bnielson01
Someone should write about why thinking about brain regions is pointless in this regard... Oh wait, I already did: amazon.com/dp/1734696109/…
@bnielson01 @connectedregio1 @ks445599
I suggest you move this to critapp if you want to have a more detailed discussion. It's near impossible to have long-form discussions on Twitter.
@bnielson01 @connectedregio1 @ks445599
We should take a step back. The underlying issue here is that you ignore my questions and that you are still an inductivist without realizing it. After ignoring a question you usually follow up with long, somewhat unrelated arguments.
@bnielson01 @connectedregio1 @ks445599
Again, why would there be nothing to learn?
@bnielson01 @connectedregio1 @ks445599
People don’t learn from their environment.
@bnielson01 @connectedregio1 @ks445599
In fact, one doesn't need access to any environment for learning to happen, let alone a random one. A brain in a vat can still create explanations.
Thinking that some environment is needed, or that it need contain regularities (non-randomness), is just a cousin of inductivism.
@bnielson01 @connectedregio1 @ks445599
Why would there be nothing to learn?
People may well guess the explanation "things happen randomly," and they'd be correct. By creating this explanation, they would have learned something.
And by creating mistaken explanations and then improving upon them, they'd also learn.
@bnielson01 @connectedregio1 @ks445599
Yeah, which makes me think the brain must be the one non-random thing in this scenario.
But no, I don’t think it would make every explanation coincidence. That’d be judging explanation by likelihood, no?
Not all animals, but many conceivably have both. It’s harder not to evolve it. And our ancestors, which were animals themselves, must have had both for us to evolve intelligence.
Though I agree with the conclusion, many animals’ brains may be universal computers.
Universal computation is a necessary condition for intelligence, but not sufficient. What’s needed in addition is explanatory universality.
Why wouldn’t people be able to develop explanations in such an environment?
They would wonder about their environment, and try to explain it, no? And maybe they would conjecture that it’s random.
Assuming 4 through 7 are true, aren’t they part of 3?
And isn’t taking vitamin D better than direct sun exposure?
I agree.
Effective psychotherapy is a branch of software engineering. Present-day approaches happen on the level of the brain, not the mind, and, therefore, are ungainly at best, counterproductive at worst.
Developing effective psychotherapy is a big part of AGI studies.
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Since evolution is a gradual process, I guess there was never a single genetically unique organism that wasn't the last of its species (that even includes humans).
Entire species can be ~unique if their last common ancestor is sufficiently far back up the phylogenetic tree.
@dela3499 @KittJohnson_
Indeed. Likewise, the gaps in human thought are filled with viable ideas. Not necessarily viable vis-a-vis a problem, but vis-a-vis spreading through the population of a mind's ideas.
Otherwise, we need to explain evolution as anything other than gradual.