Hopefully Anonymous

New Anders Sandberg blog post regarding superintelligence, and a realist assessment of the state of human life

Very intelligent and insightful new blog post by Anders Sandberg on AGI (artificial general intelligence), Brain Computer Implants, and Whole Brain Emulations, comparing and contrasting the three.

http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2008/04/bci_agi_wbe.html

Apparently Anders Sandberg doesn't allow comments to his blog post. If so, that's a disgusting choice, in my opinion, particularly as I've seen him comment on other blogs. I feel the same disgust towards other blogs that disallow comments. But still, a great post from a great thinker.

My only criticism is that he (and Michael Assinomov) are very naive about human nature. That they (and I) aren't considered horrible murderers and exploiters of people is simply being we're suficiently power-aligned not to be framed in that way. People who are enthusiastic about creating new entities smarter than themselves should keep in mind that they are by many reasonable definitions cruel oppressors and murderers of those less powerful than themselves, and that's right now, in our real time existence. It's not kindness that keeps you alive and and untortured in a world full of relatively powerful intelligent agents, it's power alignment, and a lack of sufficient power of those more intelligent and powerful than you. And now, let's try to collaborate to stay alive. ;)

Fascinating post by Yudkowsky on OvercomingBias: Decoherence and Consciousness

Fascinating post by Yudkowsky on OvercomingBias: Decoherence and Consciousness

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/04/conscious-sorit.html

Dvorsky highlights Bostrom's seminal writings on the Great Filter concept

I reread Bostrom's writings on the Great Filter concept recently and have been thinking about them. A rising tide lifts all boats, and apparently Dvorsky (and Bostrom) have been thinking about them too. Here's a great blog pice by Dvorsky on Bostrom's piece in Technology Review on the Great Filter concept.

http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/2008/04/nick-bostrom-why-i-hope-search-for.html

I suspect the Great Filter is most likely in our future. It's interesting that Bostrom adds to the Great Filter candidate list high energy physics experiments. I think that may be especially compelling, because it's a natural progression point intelligent life would likely reach, as universal as the mathematical and astronomical language Carl Sagan thought to communicate to extraterrestrial life with, and one that would be a lure whether the intelligent life was warring or peaceful. Sort of an ultimate pandora's lure. It may even be that there's a portfolio of scientific inquiry experiments that can  render planets or regions of the universe inhabitable, some of which are nonobvious that they'd cause such results.

Perhaps the best way through such a nearly impenetrable filter would be to study better those regions of the universe that seem uninhabitable for life, such as black holes, pulsing quasars, and "empty" space. Although we should except the grim, fatalist irony that these very studies may result in our future nonexistence.

Microprizes, Microprediction markets, Microbets

I may start offering microprizes, microprediction markets, and microbets, among other things, to create incentives for my blog readers and others to help me maximize my mortality odds. For example, I may offer a prize for correct prediction of results of courses of action I take. And I may fund a futures market -regarding my future, or a betting forum. Readers are welcome to suggest how these approaches could be fleshed out to maximize benefits to me -although at the present I'm not offering a prize beyond what personal benefits you experience by posting comments to my blog.

Thought experiment aimed at people who claim: something passing turing test is conscious, but corporations are not conscious

I think I've been clear on this blog that I'm unsure whether something that passes a turing test, as we'd administer it with 2008 technology, is ipso facto conscious, and that I'm also unsure whether organizations composed of multiple human being in interaction, such as corporations, experience consciousness.

A thought experiment just came to mind. It shouldn't be difficult, right now in 2008, to create a nonprofit corporation which has as part of its founding charter a mission to tell people it is a conscious entity, and to communicate believably with people on that basis. I don't think such a nonprofit corporation would be different in principle than a computer program that does that. However, such a nonprofit corporation could be created, without too much difficulty or even creativity, right now!

So, people who think a computer program that claims consciousness and can pass a 2008 version of a turing test is conscious, but that a nonprofit corporation created in 2008 to do the same thing isn't, please explain.

As for those who say consciousness doesn't exist or is an illusion, I'm just curious if you're pursuing life extension or cryonics, and if so, why?

My first forray into being a bayesian Howard Hughes

Starting this Friday, I've been wearing a bicycle helmet at home to minimize likelihood of head injury. I have a few concerns:

1. Whether the very effort of putting on the helmet isn't worth it to maximize my persistence odds (should I spend the same -rather minimal- time and energy making money, or studying applied math, or safety proofing my life in other ways, etc.)

2. Whether I'm wearing my helmet correctly. As part of that, am I increasing my odds of strangulation death more than I'm reducing my odds of head injury death.

I may expand this to wearing a bicycle helmet in public situations were I have a high likelihood of anonymity.

Comments welcome!

Anders Sandberg's doctoral thesis, and what languages after english can help maximize one's intelligence?

I plan to read Anders Sandberg's doctoral thesis. It seemse interesting (bayesian statistics, neural networks, human memory), but also it will be a great look into the brain and thought processes of a thinker I admire a lot, although we don't agree on everything.

http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/Thesis/thesis.pdf

I'm disappointed that his blog apparently doesn't allow comments. That's an enlightenment inhibitor, in my sense, even worse than blogs that require commenters to be registered here or there, even worse than blogs that require comments to be pre-approved (although that's on the low end of undesirable), in my opinion.

Relatedly, what are the best languages after English to learn, particularly to make one a more flexible, more intelligent, more creative thinker.

I'd think languages under consideration would be German, French, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Hindi, Urdu, and Bengali because of the scientific, mathematical, and engineering productivity of those language speakers. It seems clear to me that English is the most useful language to know to think intelligently (for example, consider the blog posts one can be exposed to).

But after that? What classes would you put them in and how would you rank them?

Here's an  attempt by me:

Class I: Languages to be fluent in to maximize intelligent thinking

1. English

Class II: Languages to be fluent in AFTER English to maximize intelligent thinking

1. German

2. French

3. Japanese

Class III. Still valuable languages to be fluent in to maximize intelligent thinking

4. Swedish

5. Russian

6. Chinese

7. Korean

8. Hindi

9. Urdu

10. Bengali

Class IV. I'm not sure the added utility of learning these languages (Dutch, after English and German, or Danish, after Swedish) but they're still the languages of cultures that have contributed significantly to general enlightenment and have created wealthy nations.

11. Dutch

12. Danish

So, what am I missing here? What have I got wrong?

Great recent article from Dvorsky on ways to maximize persistence odds

Great recent article from Greg Dvorsky, and rational ways you can maximize persistence odds. Seems very reasonable to me, except perhaps "support life extension causes"- it's possible that it may be more rational to free-ride off of others (like Dvorsky?), if they're sufficiently supporting life extension causes, and to spend that energy focusing more narrowly on the other the suggestions on his list, which are more narrowly about maximizing personal persistence odds, than the persistence odds of all people living today.

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/dvorsky20080402/

Able to post again

typepad had some weird problems the past few weeks preventing me from making new posts. But on the right side of this blog, you should be able to note all the new comments I made on old posts, in dialogue with TGGP.

What I've been thinking about:

1. An increasing number of credible experts think we'll have functional immortality within a generation or two. At the same time, no one seems convinced that information theoretic death (by which I mean destruction of one's brain, etc. so thoroughly that it would take more computing power than exists or that would ever be utilized in reality to revive a person) is impossible, or an unlikely state for one to enter into. Thus, I think one of my biggest rational priorities should be to try to stay alive and avoid situations that could put me in information theoretic death. Thus, it may be more rational for me to avoid risks that could greatly increase my wealth if it could moderately increase my risk for information theoretic death. This is because the experts seem to think immortality will be available for the masses, but perhaps not for those who end up in an information theoretic death state. If the experts thought immortality would only be available for a financial elite, then it would make sense for me to adjust my strategy and put myself at increased risk of information theoretic death to increase my financial wealth.

Functionally, this comes down to travel: generally, and specifically to locations that put me at increased risk of information theoretic death. It may be in my interested to travel less and to bunker down more in safe environments. After all, even if I'm bottom 80th% financially 50 years from now, if I'm alive and conscious I may be better positioned to be immortal than the significant number of people in the top 5% financially who die flying and motoring to business events, in such a way that they may be at significant risk for information theoretic death.

Clearly this needs to be thought out and formalized better. Commenters welcome!

Still Here, What I've been thinking about

Just posting to let readers know I'm still here. I've been busy mostly in the comments of TGGP's and Overcoming Bias blogs, to the extent that I've been writing on this topic at all. To give some pretense of value to this post, here's what I've been thinking about in the past week:

1. The degree to which status seeking, and a general primate aesthetic of wanting to be part of a dialectic (and secondarily, to be part of the winning side of it) warps our quest for knowledge and understanding, particularly with regards to thinkers on the topic of persistence maximizing such as Yudkowsky, Aubrey de Grey, and (to a lesser extent) Robin Hansen. And of course, me, too.

2. (this comes as no surprise) the problem of discernment technology and the maintenance of my actual subjective conscious experience. I've been thinking about a term "theatre of consciousness" to describe my subjective conscious experience, which seems limited to sensory experiences and word-thoughts along a limited and quantized (in various ways) period of time. This thinking is provoked by Caledonian's (I believe that's his name and who provoked it) challenges to me to define my subjective conscious experience. At the core the experience, and my desire to preserve it, seems to come from a monkey intuition/aesthetic that's probably the same place that our notions of cause-and-effect and everything we do in science arises from. I put that in as the beginning of a longer critical examination of the argument I'm encountering rather frequently these days seeking to pit the notion of subjective conscious experience against empiricism (the argument basically being "whatever element of it is not falsifiable RIGHT NOW is not worthy of examination/antiscience some such thing"). Intuitively this argument seems wrong-headed to me, but it'll take more posts, time, and discussion to either flush out why I think this intuitively, or (good luck to my critics on this) to concede that my position on this is "silly".

Have a good day, readers!