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Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine 5 years, 6 months ago 923 views

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AGI Significance Paradox: As progress accelerates towards AGI, the number of people who realize the significance of each new breakthrough decreases.

Why is it that you can boil a frog in water without it jumping out if you gradually increase the temperature?

The problem for the frog is that it does not have the internal models to realize that there is a change in the water temperature. A cold-blooded creature like the frog has its temperature regulated by the external environment.

To recognize change, an agent must have an internal model of reality that is able to recognize this change. Unfortunately, a majority of the population do not have good models of human general intelligence.

In fact, even the simplistic dual-process model of system 1 and system 2 is not very well known.

Recent big developments was muZero, AlphaFold2, GPT-3 and Dall-E. GPT-3 did receive a lot of attention, but the other 3 likely have not. To understand muZero and AlphaFold2 requires a high level of expertise. Dall-E is actually like GPT-3 but it's more difficult to grasp.

We are going to continue to get these incremental developments for several years. But the audience that recognizes its importance will continue to decline. Then suddenly, boom... we get to AGI and most people will be in shock. Shocked because they thought there was no progress.

The quantum leaps (punctuated) in evolution is a consequence of many incremental developments that accrue. It is only when the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle is found when the revolution is expressed.

But it takes unusual expertise to know that we are accelerating towards AGI. The problem is that it is not obvious how human intelligence actually works. We simply do not know what it means to 'understand'.

Ask most AGI researchers, philosophers or psychologists as to what it means to 'understand'. They will be stumped to give you a good answer.

So if we do not know this answer, then how can we recognize that the water's temperature is gradually increasing?

The number of people who might know continues to diminish. This implies collectively that we know less and less. When AGI happens, it will come as a shock. It is as if, nobody had anticipated it.

@threadreaderapp unroll

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Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine

I suspect that Emergentism and Enactivism have very little appeal in a world dominated by Reductionists.

To get funding one must present a reductionist idea. A perfect example of this is the European Blue Brain project.

I also suspect that pitches that show how one can get a competitive advantage over the rest of humanity has a much greater appeal than pitches that show how one can that has a unified view of humanity.

My book 'The Deep Learning Playbook' out sold my other book 'Artificial Intuition' by a metric mile. I am however more proud of the latter book.

That's because the word 'playbook' conveys a thing that once possessed gives one new power. In contrast, the word 'intuition' does not feel like a think but more of a process (a thought process). Processes don't appear like things that can be owned.

Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine

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?

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Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine

All Biological life on earth is possible because of a discrete digital mechanism of preservation and replication.

The mechanism of signaling between the superorganism we know of as bacteria and its ongoing war against viruses is through a digital mechanism.

The source of innovation in biology is in this milieu of microbiome and viromes that are ubiquitous in every complex multicellular organism on earth. Humans are walking ecologies and cannot survive stripped of these ecologies.

We can picture this as a cloud of digital interaction that surrounds all of us.

The cells of multicellular creatures however do not communicate in the same way as bacteria. The DNA of mammals are sequestered from daily activity so as to prevent wear and tear.

Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine

I woke up realizing that there is something very wrong with thinking in categories and classifications. Many people accept the idea that this kind of thinking is at the core of abstract thought.

Douglas Hofstadter argues otherwise in a very thick (not dumb in the Brit sense) book of his ('Surface and Essences') where he argues that analogy is at the core of thinking. You'll have to read his book, specifically the last chapter to understand what he means.

The problem with categories is that they create artificial boundaries that are too crisp. But we know that when we master any subject that there is a distinct fluidity between concepts. The master seems wrong from a by-the-book novice because he keeps on breaking definitions.

Analogy making employs the tacit knowledge gained through experience to adroitly navigate between similar and competing concepts. A master has an intuitive feel of the vocabulary he employs to create expressions that have previously never been heard.

Biological brains feel their way through their realities. Something feels like red because our interactions with that thing feels the same as if it was red. We do not see the color red, we feel the color red. There is no red in this picture:

Carlos E. Perez
@IntuitMachine

"Three modes of evolution have thus been brought before us: evolution by fortuitous variation, evolution by mechanical necessity, and evolution by creative love." - C.S. Peirce 1893

These words were spoken prior to the discovery of quantum mechanics and computation. What if Peirce knew of these discoveries? If so, how would he have conceptualized these evolutionary modes differently?

I believe there is an extreme benefit in revisiting the writings of great minds in the past and refining them based on scientific discoveries that occurred only in their futures.

wrote the book "A New Kind of Science" that speculated how science would be different if computers existed prior to calculus.

In the same way, let me explore C.S.Peirce ideas of evolutionary philosophy from the vantage point of knowing of the discoveries of quantum physics and universal computation.

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10-K Diver
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1/

Get a cup of coffee.

In this thread, I'll help you understand the basics of Binomial Thinking.

The future is always uncertain. There are many different ways it can unfold -- some more likely than others. Binomial thinking helps us embrace this view.

2/

The S&P 500 index is at ~3768 today.

Suppose we want to predict where it will be 10 years from now.

Historically, we know that this index has returned ~10% per year.

If we simply extrapolate this, we get an estimate of ~9773 for the index 10 years from now:

3/

What we just did is called a "point estimate" -- a prediction about the future that's a single number (9773).

But of course, we know the future is uncertain. It's impossible to predict it so precisely.

So, there's a sense of *false precision* in point estimates like this.

4/

To emphasize the uncertainty inherent in such predictions, a better approach is to predict a *range* of values rather than a single number.

For example, we may say the index will return somewhere in the *range* of 8% to 12% (instead of a fixed 10%) per year.

5/

10 years from now, this implies an index value in the *range* [8135, 11703]:

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The distinction of measuring the time in a scientific manner is achieved only by Bhāratīyas. Time has been measured from the smallest dimension to infiniteness. Even Time is envisioned as God and venerated. Paramēśvara was extolled as ‘Mahākāla’, the very embodiment of Time.

Nārāyaṇa Upaniṣad envisages Nārāyaṇa as ‘Kālaśca Nārāyaṇa:’, the very embodiment of Time, ages ago. The measurement of Time by Bhāratīyas is as ancient as the very God Himself. Count of many future ages has also been done even from very ancient times.

Since these calculations aren't dependent upon the birth & death of any individual, but are done based on astronomical science, they are thoroughly scientific. Unfortunately, during the British rule, the Bhāratīya way of Time measurement was casted as an illusion...

...with an evil intention to establish their command. Though it is 70+ years since independence, blindly time is still measured as BC & AD or CE in this religion-less land without even making any attempt to comprehend the magnanimity of Bhāratīya Time measurement methods.

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$Thomas A. Fine \U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8$

Thomas A. Fine 🇺🇸...
@thomasafine

Let's talk about Avi Loeb and his theory about alien

First, I should disclose that I work at the fame research facility as Dr. Loeb, though I work in a different department and to my recollection we've never met.

He's a scientist; I'm in computer support.

With that out of the way...
The interview above is worth a read, and a lot of serious thought, because there's an idea there that's really critical to science, and it isn't whether or not aliens have visited (exactly).

It's about how fashion and culture and taboo have an unfortunately strong effect on science.

In particular he compares his theory on alien visitation with the multiverse theory.

Which of these is more deserving of ridicule?

Science is fundamentally a structure for forming hypotheses and then (critically) testing these hypotheses to see if they should be kept, rejected, or modified.

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In some cases, almost 100% of the light energy can be converted to the second harmonic frequency. These cases typically involve intense pulsed laser beams passing through large crystals, and careful alignment to obtain phase matching.

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What are the classics of the "Science of Science" or "Meta Science"? If you were teaching a class on the subject, what would go in the syllabus?

Here's a (very disorganized and incomplete) handful of suggestions, which I may add to. Suggestions welcome, especially if you've dug into relevant literatures.

1. The already classic "Estimating the reproducibility of
psychological science" from the Open Science Collaboration of @BrianNosek et al. https://t.co/yjGczLZ6Je

(Look at that abstract, wow!)

Many people had pointed out problems with standard statistical methods, going back decades (what are the best refs?). But this paper was a sledgehammer, making it impossible to ignore the question: what, if anything, were we actually learning from all those statistical studies?

2. Dean Keith Simonton's book "Creativity in Science: Chance, Logic, Genius, and Zeitgeist". If an essentially scientometric book could be described as a fun romp through science & creativity, this would be it

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1-Smile
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6-Listens & relates
7-Comfortable Touching people
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[ QUICK THREAD ]

1-Smile

How do you feel when you see someone that looks angry?

It’s a downer

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2-Good posture

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Stand up straight with your chin up & chest out like a god

Walk like you’re proud of yourself

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Strong eye contact displays confidence

4-Fluid hand gestures

Use your hands to talk & express your points

Don’t stand there like a robot

Using the hands can make what you’re talking about exciting

It can also be used to emphasize

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1/ Recently, I learned about the concept of ‘struggle porn’. This refers to the fetish of sacrificing nearly everything (health, relationships, time) for your startup. I fear that this label is creating more harm than good.

2/ @nateliason wrote a fabulous article about this topic, which first introduced me to this concept. Everyone should read it:

3/ @alexisohanian also recently spoke about struggle porn, though referring to it as ‘hustle porn.’ (as the co-founder of @hustlefundvc, obviously I take issue with this pejorative definition of ‘hustle’, but that’s another topic)

4/ Struggling in itself isn’t necessarily bad. Let’s be real here--if you’re going to start a startup, you will struggle. Founders should expect to work harder generally than employees. You will be challenged in many ways and also be super rewarded in others. This is normal.

5/ However, if you are over-indexing on hard work without clear purpose and degrading your mental health/relationships in the process--then this is very bad and we obviously should not celebrate this behavior.