From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Fri Jul 07 2000 - 22:11:08 MDT
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> Yes, psychology would have gotten a lot farther if the mind could be
> described by neat little equations like those the physicists are always
> using. Sadly, it can't be. End of story.
It cant be *now*. End of story *now*. Eliezer, remember that riff
you wrote about a year or two ago about bringing on the singularity
before our grandparents perish, etc. That was upbeat, progressive,
man it was inspiring! Nowthen, lets see some of that good old
dynamic optimism, bud! Stand tall, we can do this, we can, for
we are extropians.
In fact the first baby steps have already been taken. When one
is in the hospital one can have electrodes taped to one's head, and
the info passed into a computer where some [admittedly very limited]
insights can be obtained. CAT scans can kinda derive info about
what is going on in ones head. We have sniffer chips that can
determine, at least qualitatively, what chemicals we exude. And
this is ancient old y2k. What is coming?
Its all an instrumentation problem. Those electrodes I mentioned
can get smaller and the data can be collected continuously and
reduced in ways we cannot now do, to reveal insights we do not
now have. We will get new instruments that will ride inside the
brain, and will measure and analyze the hormones, blood chemistry,
etc. It may take a few years or decades, but we will get there.
Granted the equations will not be neat and little, like physics
equations, in fact they will not even be workable without massive
computers. We wont find anything analogous to E=mc^2.
My contention is that psychology will not move forward without
these instruments and techniques. spike
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