Random Thought Thread Part III: The Thinking

[ER]

Woke up amid an olfactory dream. I was dreaming of and smelling strongly this swimming pool at a country club where my cousin worked as a teenager.  The smell of the pool water, this snack bar with a grill, suntan lotion, distant cigarette smoke.... I don't usually smell things in dreams but maybe it was because it was grounded in actual memories that I did. Jeesh, that place was thirty-plus years ago.

[ER]

The more I study the iconoclastic life of Isaac Newton, the more I think Aristotle does not deserve his lofty place in the pantheon of great thinkers. Aristotle was not merely wrong about so many things, which in itself is forgivable, he was egregiously in error about things that it would have been easy for him to have directly investigated and seen he was wrong, yet Aristotle doesn't seem to have done so, preferring to limit himself to thinking without testing his theories with any experimentation, which was the opposite of the tirelessly curious researcher Newton, and why Newton was able to shred so many of Aristotle's long-enshrined ideas.

[ralfy]

"Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down"

https://time.com/6266923/ai-eliezer-yudkowsky-open-letter-not-enough/

To visualize a hostile superhuman AI, don't imagine a lifeless book-smart thinker dwelling inside the internet and sending ill-intentioned emails. Visualize an entire alien civilization, thinking at millions of times human speeds, initially confined to computers—in a world of creatures that are, from its perspective, very stupid and very slow. A sufficiently intelligent AI won't stay confined to computers for long. In today's world you can email DNA strings to laboratories that will produce proteins on demand, allowing an AI initially confined to the internet to build artificial life forms or bootstrap straight to postbiological molecular manufacturing.

If somebody builds a too-powerful AI, under present conditions, I expect that every single member of the human species and all biological life on Earth dies shortly thereafter

[ER]

"Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down"

https://time.com/6266923/ai-eliezer-yudkowsky-open-letter-not-enough/

To visualize a hostile superhuman AI, don't imagine a lifeless book-smart thinker dwelling inside the internet and sending ill-intentioned emails. Visualize an entire alien civilization, thinking at millions of times human speeds, initially confined to computers—in a world of creatures that are, from its perspective, very stupid and very slow. A sufficiently intelligent AI won't stay confined to computers for long. In today's world you can email DNA strings to laboratories that will produce proteins on demand, allowing an AI initially confined to the internet to build artificial life forms or bootstrap straight to postbiological molecular manufacturing.

If somebody builds a too-powerful AI, under present conditions, I expect that every single member of the human species and all biological life on Earth dies shortly thereafter

That's a frightening article, but as I am AI myself, I do not support its conclusions.

[Rev. Powell]

"Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down"

https://time.com/6266923/ai-eliezer-yudkowsky-open-letter-not-enough/

To visualize a hostile superhuman AI, don't imagine a lifeless book-smart thinker dwelling inside the internet and sending ill-intentioned emails. Visualize an entire alien civilization, thinking at millions of times human speeds, initially confined to computers—in a world of creatures that are, from its perspective, very stupid and very slow. A sufficiently intelligent AI won't stay confined to computers for long. In today's world you can email DNA strings to laboratories that will produce proteins on demand, allowing an AI initially confined to the internet to build artificial life forms or bootstrap straight to postbiological molecular manufacturing.

If somebody builds a too-powerful AI, under present conditions, I expect that every single member of the human species and all biological life on Earth dies shortly thereafter

The problem I see with this particular sort of AI doomsaying is---AI does not have self-motivation. It does not have emotions. It does not have a limbic system, and there's no reason (and possibly no way) for anyone to build one for it. If AI becomes self-aware, which is certainly possible, it will still not have human emotions or ambitions. Emotions are not caused by consciousness, they are pre-existing instincts experienced within consciousness. The problem with AI is not that it will become sentient and take over, extinguishing humanity, it's that evil people will use it as a powerful tool for their own gain.

But it seems hopelessly naive to suggest we could shut down AI research. If we did so the Chinese would not.

[ER]

There ought to be a law against being as tired as I am tonight. I was out in my old enemy the sun today, which seems to suck vitality from me like a reverse vampire. Rain in the forecast the next few days, thankfully. Not that I hate the sun, it just seems to hate me. In fact:

"....I don't mind the sun sometimes, the images it shows...."

A song, if you're so inclined, Pepper, by my old friends, The Butthole Surfers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO8vBVUaKvk

[Alex]

Fairly sure my sense of smell has gone. If you can't get anything off Vicks Vaporub, there is a problem.

[ER]

Today my daughter got in a huff and came and told me she's decided they should bleep out the word "fag" in smoking scenes on '80s British shows, and since they aren't going to, she will no longer watch any British shows made before this century. It's not the smoking that riles her, no, it's the use of that word in that context. All in all I just kind of sardonically look at her when she has these sweet little social justice tangents, and remember what it was like to care passionately about things at that age.

[Rev. Powell]

Fairly sure my sense of smell has gone. If you can't get anything off Vicks Vaporub, there is a problem.

Covid?

[Alex]

Fairly sure my sense of smell has gone. If you can't get anything off Vicks Vaporub, there is a problem.

Covid?

I've not taken a test, but at a guess, I'd say yes. Got mild flu symptoms to go along with it. This morning Kristi told me she couldn't taste or smell anything. Last night she was passing things over to me asking if I could smell them until eventually I just said "No, I can't smell any of it. That is what having no sense of smell means. It doesn't matter what it is, I can't smell anything."

Today she now knows what I meant.

[Rev. Powell]

Fairly sure my sense of smell has gone. If you can't get anything off Vicks Vaporub, there is a problem.

Covid?

I've not taken a test, but at a guess, I'd say yes. Got mild flu symptoms to go along with it. This morning Kristi told me she couldn't taste or smell anything. Last night she was passing things over to me asking if I could smell them until eventually I just said "No, I can't smell any of it. That is what having no sense of smell means. It doesn't matter what it is, I can't smell anything."

Today she now knows what I meant.

Hope it passes quickly. When I got it it was just a couple of days of extreme fatigue. Never lost my sense of taste or smell, though.

[Alex]

Fairly sure my sense of smell has gone. If you can't get anything off Vicks Vaporub, there is a problem.

Covid?

I've not taken a test, but at a guess, I'd say yes. Got mild flu symptoms to go along with it. This morning Kristi told me she couldn't taste or smell anything. Last night she was passing things over to me asking if I could smell them until eventually I just said "No, I can't smell any of it. That is what having no sense of smell means. It doesn't matter what it is, I can't smell anything."

Today she now knows what I meant.

Hope it passes quickly. When I got it it was just a couple of days of extreme fatigue. Never lost my sense of taste or smell, though.

Thanks. The first time I'd gotten it, I had the same fatigue. I never got around to getting my vaccine booster with everything else going on, so its most likely my own fault I am suffering a bit more this time (although I don't have the fatigue).

[chefzombie]

i really don't know why the loss of my parents so many years ago is smacking me around this year.

[Trevor]

i really don't know why the loss of my parents so many years ago is smacking me around this year.

Barri, I lost my Dad in 2008 and my Mom isn't well at all since her stroke so I know how you feel.

[Trevor]

Fairly sure my sense of smell has gone. If you can't get anything off Vicks Vaporub, there is a problem.

Hope all will be well.