My attempt to map the research *doctrines* of various groups working on Artificial General Intelligence.

Those trained as physicists strive to see the world in terms of symmetries and processes that break symmetries. It's a meta-principle that guides their questioning.

This is very different from how many are taught physics (I guess in high school). We come to know of physics as consisting of laws that describe the behavior of inanimate (or is it indifferent) objects? These laws are described as expressions of equalities (i.e. equations).

But laws like Newton's f=ma or Einstein's e=mc^2 are derived from a higher meta principal. These principles are known as conservation laws. Energy, momentum, angular momentum are all conserved.

Conservation laws however are also derived from a higher principle. A conservation law implies that something remains the same as the situation of study change. Energy conservation implies that it is that something that does not change in time. In short, a symmetry.

This idea that laws are derived from conservation principles that is derived from symmetries is at the core of the study of physics. The laws of physics are only authoritative as long as they don't violate a higher principle. Ultimately, that principle is all about symmetry.

In physics, energy is that which is causally invariant or symmetric with respect to time. Said differently, energy is never created or destroyed, it is conserved in the universe.

Now there is a question about information. Is information causally invariant? Does information remain the same with respect to time? To understand this, let's first understand what energy is, then attempt to understand what information is.

The strange thing about energy is that it is this universal currency that seems to be interchangeable between the different forces in nature (i.e. electromagnetic, strong, weak and gravity). It is that thing that makes change possible.

Now let's assume that the universe is computational in nature. That is, anything we see in nature is a consequence of computation. That is, there is computation underneath the physics that is driving the universe to change.

What does it mean then that information is conserved in this computational universe? Also, how is energy conservation related to information conservation?

Interesting to realize that the living things that lay the foundation of the biosphere are extremely robust as compared to the humans that are destroying the biosphere.

Seed can remain dry and dormant for ages only to reborn when provided the proper nutrients. In contrast, most animals require a continual living vessel to reconstruct itself from its DNA.

Evolution appears to constantly perform tradeoffs between robust organisms and organisms that are adaptable. Co-evolution makes possible the development of complex species as a consequence of robust organisms.

We exist as a consequence of the multitude of less complex individuals that make up our biosphere. We are in fact symbionts that are in constant cooperation with our microbiome. Absent our individual ecologies leads to death.

We are inseparable from our microbiome, we are inseparable from our societies, and we are inseparable from our biosphere. The biggest lie we are told is that as individuals, we are independent of our world.

Star Wars has a simple dichotomy between good and evil. But as the stories have evolved, the nuances between these distinct poles also has acquired a richness that is hard to dismiss.

In the latest trilogy, we discover a dysfunctional civilization even after the defeat of the empire. The argument that the remnants of the empire make is that the galaxy stills seeks a need for order. Order and chaos are at seperate poles where evil is aligned with order.

We know however from D&D alignment charts that good and evil, order and chaos can exist in many combinations:

It is also interesting that the Sith (the Evil sorcerers) only come in pairs as opposed to the Jedi that can be entire communities. Apparently, to sustain evil one has to restrict agency and individuality to just a few. A community of evil-doers very quickly turns on itself.

So at one extreme we have evil, order, individuality and at the other we have good, chaos, collective. Which brings up the question, what is the definition of evil and good? Something that we took for granted ever since the first Star Wars movie.

This is an insightful article about what's wrong with Google as compared to Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook.

Which actually reminds me of the difference between organic and engineered designs:

Organic or biological designs are reusable designs from the ground up. They accommodate the needs of the environment because of the generality of the architecture. They don't pretend to solve just a narrow problem.

Architectures like biology that lead to general intelligence (i.e. like you) are from the ground up built from reusable components that encourage combinatorial mixing opportunities. One can never correctly guess the needs of the environment (i.e. market).

The opposite of generalization is pre-mature optimization. A company that has is genesis as a one-product company has a bias toward optimizing the entire stack. As a consequence, it compromises reusability and thus shuts of future opportunities of evolution.