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
Not that I know of, unless a client like SoundCloud or Apple Podcast gives you a way to do it.
Have you been enjoying the podcast on artificial creativity? Consider making a donation to support the show: patreon.com/artificialcrea…
Thinking of setting up a Patreon page for my podcast, but hesitant because of their practices of kicking out people who disagree politically.
Has anyone found or tried decent alternatives? I found buymeacoffee.com but it doesn't come close in terms of functionality.
@bnielson01 @yudapearl @onnlucky @ks445599 @SamHarrisOrg
Right, that. Is it not meant as an answer to the question of how we know? That’s how it seemed to me in the podcast.
@bnielson01 @yudapearl @onnlucky @ks445599 @SamHarrisOrg
Is the ladder of knowledge not an answer to the question “how do we know”?
@bnielson01 @yudapearl @onnlucky @ks445599 @SamHarrisOrg
(It's really the only theory of knowledge we have.) From your article, I don't see @yudapearl adding anything of value to Popperian epistemology, nor criticizing it. Both are welcome. Again, I may change my mind if I read the book.
@bnielson01 @yudapearl @onnlucky @ks445599 @SamHarrisOrg
I skimmed it. The touch point I see between the two is the focus on causation. And the criticism of deep learning is correct. The reason Popperians tend to have an attitude of "all or nothing" is because it's the best theory of knowledge we have.
RT @nature:
The first few weeks of an embryo's development are vital. Now, new techniques are allowing scientists to learn more about this…
@yudapearl @onnlucky @ks445599 @SamHarrisOrg
Then I suggest the same thing to you that I suggested @onnlucky do. I'll be sure to read your book as well.
RT @PessimistsArc:
Sliced bread? LAZY! (1935) newspapers.com/clip/31259441/… https://t.co/EsY9rjjNGp
@onnlucky @ks445599 @SamHarrisOrg @yudapearl
At this point, I suggest you read chapter 1 of "The Beginning of Infinity". Then, read it again. And then you read it a third time. Then report back.
@onnlucky @ks445599 @SamHarrisOrg @yudapearl
Yes. We can have both. One lets us see. The other lets us understand how seeing works. Either way, no observation without theory.
@onnlucky @ks445599 @SamHarrisOrg @yudapearl
What’s “descriptive knowledge”?
@onnlucky @ks445599 @SamHarrisOrg @yudapearl
Theory of optics is supplied genetically. Many animals have it from birth.
@onnlucky @ks445599 @SamHarrisOrg @yudapearl
No. Before you can observe anything you need a theory of optics, and a theory of what to look at.
@onnlucky @SamHarrisOrg @yudapearl
The point is induction does not exist. It’s impossible.
@onnlucky @SamHarrisOrg @yudapearl
Then I suggest you read the material I reference.
Why do you keep ignoring Popper? Eg he solved the problem of induction, yet you and @yudapearl talk about it as if it’s this mysterious thing.
Episode 11 of the podcast on artificial creativity is out, on the problem of induction as it surfaces in @SamHarrisOrg’s latest episode with @yudapearl, Karl Popper’s solution to it and how it relates to AGI:
Going to be in Oxford over the weekend. Anyone I should meet?
If it's about physical reproduction without understanding, why not have sex? We want the explanation.
The whole point is that we do not need to simulate or physically copy a brain, or any part of the body; we need only simulate creativity.
I don't think we could upload or simulate AGI without understanding it first.
Still not sure what you mean by "beyond"?
I speculate that AGI is an easier problem to solve than halting the aging process, but I don't know because I can't program either one. At least we have the requisite hardware for AGI already.
I see the cure for aging in uploading our minds to computers; but I speculate that to do that, we must first crack AGI, because that is a mind running on a computer.
A German translation of amazon.de/Switch-Your-Br…
@RealtimeAI @JoeNanbu @SimonDeDeo
Sure, and they’re structurally different. But they have the same repertoire.
@RealtimeAI @JoeNanbu @SimonDeDeo
No, that would violate computational universality.
Ok fuck this. Now she’s quoting Moses as evidence for her brain research findings. LOL. I’m done with this.
Let’s be real: there are no good explanations of consciousness at the moment.
We then came up with tests for each of them by selectively turning off WiFi, cellular, and bluetooth on both phones. Bluetooth survived the selection process as the best guess.
If you understand each step in this process down to the last detail, you can build AGI.
The devices had identified each other
1) through a sort of WiFi handshake (despite not being connected to WiFi yet)
2) over bluetooth
3) over a combination of iCloud and location services over cellular
... conveniently offered to share the password with me.
We were dumbstruck: how did our phones do this? We came up with the following conflicting ideas:
An example of AGI functionality:
Today, a friend and I tried to figure out how an particular Apple feature works. I was visiting his apartment for the first time and tried to log in to his WiFi on my phone. He was about to read the password to me, when his phone...
"Creating new explanations and ideas is exactly the same process as learning them." ❤️
Thinking that knowledge comes from “data”, or through the senses. It’s nonsense. It doesn’t work. Do yourself a favor and read chapter 1 of “The Beginning of Infinity” if you want to build AGI. And then, if you really want to build it, read the entire book. And then again.
RT @brainpicker:
“Knowledge consists in the search for truth… It is not the search for certainty.”
Popper, born on this day in 1902, on tr…
That reminded me of this scene of Family Guy: youtu.be/NCBvQX1TafY
I think barre is going help you get that physique also.
It could. It’s not guaranteed to succeed, but it’s a soluble problem.
AGI would be fully operational without any IO whatsoever, btw.
An unbounded general purpose problem solver would be an AGI. I guess that error correction is a requirement for being unbounded. So “no” to the second part of your question: that would violate AGI’s universality.
Present day computer programs are pessimistic: they are written to perform a specific purpose, and then terminate. They cannot keep going in an unbounded fashion or correct errors the programmer made. They are designed to oppose unbounded progress.
Error correction on a software level, yes. The brain's architecture doesn't matter though, see episode 03. For it to matter, it would need to violate computational universality. soundcloud.com/dchacke/artifi…
You open a book by a scientist and on the first page they profess a belief in god.
Do you a) put the book down immediately because a scientist who believes in god doesn’t get what science is about (good explanations) or b) keep reading because that’s ad hominem?
Yes. It’s a good example of both reductionism and ignorance of computational universality.
Episode 10, “Of Books and Code”, on the similarities between non-universal printing and present day software engineering, is out. Heavily inspired by @DavidDeutschOxf. soundcloud.com/dchacke/artifi…
In addition to hardware speed, I think it depends on the thought’s performance characteristics as well. Sometimes improving that is better than increasing hardware speed.
I read joanna-bryson.blogspot.com/2014/09/artifi… I think we can use the term AGI without discounting successes in AI research. However, successes toward AGI have been nearly nil, because AI and AGI are basically opposite technologies. See: soundcloud.com/dchacke/artifi…
@ks445599 @noa_lange @DavidDeutschOxf
Could it be both? Or are they mutually exclusive?
AI research has been progressing swiftly. Progress in AGI research is comparably low, with the only contributions coming out of philosophy so far.
That was also my first thought.
@RealtimeAI @atShruti
I’d use my smooth talking - uh, talk - talking... uhm. Words. I’d use words.
(Stolen from Family Guy, and it’s more fun when read with Peter’s voice.)
RT @Madisonkanna:
Love this article and especially this last part of it by @rivatez
medium.com/@rivamelissate… https://t.co/htttkIw5uh
@sfiscience @seanmcarroll @KateAdamala
What about life is problem solving?
Any books from the field you’d recommend?
@HermesofReason @SamHarrisOrg @wakingup
Sometimes Sam is surprisingly optimistic.
RT @naval:
“the destruction of optimism, whether in a civilization or an individual, have been unspeakable catastrophes...we should take it…
Considering reading Dawkins to learn more about memes. Does he cover mostly transmission of ideas between people, or does he also go into what happens to ideas in a single mind (origin, competition, etc)?
@noa_lange @ks445599 @DavidDeutschOxf
Agreed that we should always assume to find conflict between any two ideas.
For some this is hard to imagine: how could knowledge of multiplication conflict with knowledge of how to hold a spoon?
Not sure I understand - can you elaborate?
That’s what I mean. You’re an empiricist. Empiricism is false. You won’t get around epistemology. Building an AGI is nothing but epistemology.
My worry about pseudo-randomness is that it’s reproducible and loops; I think it would “guide” evolution somehow, make it not blind.
Agreed. I wonder if any two conflicting inborn expectations will do and it will grow from there? Or does it have to be specific ones?
I’ll still entertain an explanation of how your AGI works but at this point I doubt you have one.
You need to study epistemology if you want to contribute to AGI research in any serious way. “The Beginning of Infinity” by David Deutsch is great. If you don’t read it you’ll waste your time. Alternatively (but worse) you can listen to my podcast: soundcloud.com/dchacke
Our knowledge of the world. Explanations of how the world works.
How do we think?
It's not clear to me what you mean by "symbolic schemas", but we do not create knowledge as a result of observation. That's an empiricist mistake.
Sounds like you're already working on implementing it, which means you have an explanation of how it works?
If your research is not contributing to Popperian epistemology, your efforts are futile. Unless you have something better, hence my question about how it works.
Episode 9 of the podcast on artificial creativity is out, about the problem of specification, and other problems with present day evolutionary algorithms. As always, greatly inspired by @DavidDeutschOxf.
Are you studying epistemology in general and Popperian epistemology in particular at all?
This has nothing to do with AGI. OpenAI is not working on it, despite appearances. Listen to this episode from my podcast to find out what they’re doing wrong: soundcloud.com/dchacke/artifi…
If you’ve been listenging to my podcast, you’ll find errors in virtually every paragraph of this announcement. twitter.com/OpenAI/status/…
@markcannon5 @jasonio_ @bnielson01
What is a network of neurons as opposed to a neural network?
I’m in Vienna right now and thought I’d go to Popper’s old address and I was so determined to take a selfie in front of it BUT it turns out there’s scaffolding all around it and you can’t see the building at all! So the best I got is this photo of the address sign on the building https://t.co/880n9PjCvJ
Yeah that’s what the “G” is for. Moral knowledge is also knowledge and an AGI is a universal knowledge creator. If it can’t create moral knowledge, or all other kinds of knowledge, it’s not an AGI.
RT @CodeWisdom:
“Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.” - Martin…
I’m going to go on the record as saying 1) they won’t mention Popper or reference/use his work anywhere (mistake) 2) therefore their work will be at first over hyped and then disappointing.
But I really want to be wrong on either or both of those.
RT @DavidDeutschOxf:
AI is the opposite of AGI.
Trying to shackle an AGI's thinking is slavery.
Explained in my essay "Beyond Reward and…
One beautiful ramification of this (I think) is that an AGI would work just fine without any input or output channels. Those aren’t part of the required hardware.
@lynz_h55 @davidarredondo @ashik_shanks
If you’re getting at the problem of sources, those don’t matter. Only content matters. If you have a great insight in a dream, it doesn’t make sense to discount that insight. The real source is always the same anyway: your mind.
@lynz_h55 @davidarredondo @ashik_shanks
You’re saying you had the dream so yes, the dream is real no matter its contents. I guess you’re really asking whether the contents are real. They’re not real as in “out there in the physical world”. But they’re real as in “abstractions in your mind”.
Also remember that if you enter California you’re entering everyone California has ever been with and that’s a LOT of people.
@lynz_h55 @davidarredondo @ashik_shanks
Whatever doesn’t figure in our best explanations. Eg god, magic, etc.