May 28, 2023

/stream /reading /philosophy

Read Superintelligence: The Idea that Eats Smart People. It helped me develop my own thoughts on intelligence and sentience, and connect some of my "emergent, complex systems" model of human cognition with my gut-level distrust in the hype narratives around "AI".

Specifically, as someone who grew up in an environment where religious beliefs were facilitated, and as someone who subsequently exited that faith, it helped show me that my distrust may have been stemming from the fact that the aura around AI is rooted in many of those same faith based arguments that I've learned to escape from. This quote sums it up pretty well:

It's a clever hack, because instead of believing in God at the outset, you imagine yourself building an entity that is functionally identical with God. This way even committed atheists can rationalize their way into the comforts of faith.

The AI has all the attributes of God: it's omnipotent, omniscient, and either benevolent (if you did your array bounds-checking right), or it is the Devil and you are at its mercy.

Like in any religion, there's even a feeling of urgency. You have to act now! The fate of the world is in the balance!

May 20, 2023

/stream /philosophy /coalescence /information

Explored the ideas of "pattern, information, and concepts" through drafting an essay. After some good conversations, I feel like I've developed some really strong connections between my definition of abstract concepts and the nature of information as "embodied" concepts.

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