From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rms2g@virginia.edu)
Date: Fri Oct 04 2002 - 09:59:27 MDT
Eliezer wrote:
> Lee Corbin wrote:
>> People seem smart enough that most adults lie on the
>> positive side of an interesting watershed: I think
>> it likely that most adults and some children have
>> reached the threshold of universal intelligence.
>>
>> I will call an entity universally intelligent if it
>> is possible for that entity to understand *anything*
>> if provided enough time.
>
> In the Turing sense, a simple CPU with infinite memory and running
> time is "universally intelligent" because it can simulate a mind that
> understands something. But - and this is the confusion on which
> Searle's Chinese Room fallacy rests - the CPU does not possess those
> cognitive patterns that we associate with high-level understanding.
> A human in a Chinese Room simulating a Chinese-speaking upload might
> not ever have the vaguest comprehension of the high-level
> intelligence that lies above the 1s and 0s being simulated. The
> human might never even catch a glimpse of the neural level.
>
> Are there limits to what a human can *understand*, as opposed to what
> a human can Turing-tarpit? It seems to me that the answer is
> obviously yes.
### Yes, I agree here. However, looking at the problem from another
perspective, Lee's suggestion might be true, too. Contrary to what Eugen
was suggesting, there is qualitative difference between the dog and the
human in cognition - humans can improve their intelligence in a recursive,
controlled manner. And I am not talking merely about pieces of paper as
external memory aids, I mean the technological enhancements to our physical
brains and computers, which will be soon possible, up to and beyond
uploading. In effect, humans, given enough time can rebuild themselves, to
indeed understand anything that can be understood using the resources that
ever would become available to a universally self-enhancing entity.
Of course, one might protest that this would not constitute human
understanding, just as our thoughts are not really the expression of a will
for understanding that a Homo habilis might have had. I would however claim
that our posthuman inheritors will be the direct continuation of the human
*will* to understand, which is much different from the relation between us
and our ape ancestors. It was the blind evolution that transformed the
non-self enhancing ape into the directionally developing human, but from
that point on it our passion, not mere chance alone, that will co-direct the
course of our change.
Consequently, humans could take credit for understanding, even if it occurs
in entities which can out-think us like we out-think a lemur. Also, with
luck, some of those powers will be direct continuations of actual humans
living today. Those could really claim to be humans who can figure out
anything, given enough time.
Rafal
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