From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Dec 14 1998 - 20:25:51 MST
Robin Hanson wrote:
>
> To me these are theories of a "magic something else." Sure, you admit,
> IQ has increased, knowledge has grown, communication has improved, and
> we have better decision & design aids. But to you none of this counts
> as "feedback" because "intelligence" is "something else," something not
> captured in all the usual concepts of and measures of intelligence, and
> something which has not improved in eons. But when we learn to improve
> that something else, you say, watch out! Maybe, I say, but maybe there
> is no magic frozen now but oh so powerful something else.
Ah, the Neanderthals say, you admit that skull capacity has increased, the
lore of our witch doctors waxes, our language has a few new words, we have
sharp stones and pointed sticks. And yet none of this counts as "sentience"
because "intelligence" is "something else".
Still the Cro-Magnons came.
There was never a brain that could see beyond itself, never an age that
predicted the next; and if you'd bring all my speculations as proof that this
time we have seen farther, then perhaps we are both wrong. Always the jump is
more extreme then we expect, to a higher level, to complexities beyond our
ability to imagine. The Cro-Magnon is not the last word in intelligence. No
fish could predict ape, or ape could imagine homo habilis, nor homo habilis
the Neanderthal, nor Neanderthal the Cro-Magnon. And yet you think that our
jump is the last one there will ever be? We cannot imagine the next jump, but
the Principle of Mediocrity tells us it is there.
Look upon economies and draw lessons if you wish, Robin Hanson. But I learn
my lessons from evolutionary ages, and this current period of intelligence has
lasted, by my reckoning, these past fifty thousand years, and will end within
fifty. I cannot know what even the next step is, but I can see that it
exists, and moreover that there likely lie other steps beyond it. The period
before this lasted three million years, and this period lasted fifty thousand;
what comes after will last a few weeks at the most.
We would not expect a thinker of a century past to understand the Singularity.
Nor the first Cro-Magnons. Nor a Neanderthal. Nor a homo habilis. Nor an
ape. Nor a fish. Nor a bacteria. What separates us from the Singularity is
not one of these gaps, but several of them, perhaps even thousands. The sad
truth, in the end, is that I do not think I truly have any more predictive
ability than a Neanderthal. The Principle of Mediocrity does not allow it.
We have not yet reached the point where sentient thought begins.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/AI_design.temp.html
http://pobox.com/~sentience/sing_analysis.html
Disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.
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