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The Intelligent Universe
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The Intelligent Universe
Within 25 years, we'll reverse-engineer the brain and go on to develop superintelligence. Extrapolating the exponential growth of computational capacity (a factor of at least 1000 per decade), we'll expand inward to the fine forces, such as strings and quarks, and outward. Assuming we could overcome the speed of light limitation, within 300 years we would saturate the whole universe with our intelligence.
Orginally published on Edge
Nov. 7, 2002. Published on KurzweilAI.net on Dec. 12, 2002.
On July 21, 2002, Edge
brought together leading thinkers to speak about their "universe."
Other participants:
The
Computational Universe by Seth Lloyd
The
Emotion Universe by Marvin Minsky
The
Inflationary Universe by Alan Harvey Guth
The
Cyclic Universe by Paul Steinhardt
The universe has been set up in an exquisitely specific way so
that evolution could produce the people that are sitting here today
[at Edge's REBOOTING
CIVILIZATION II meeting on July 21, 2002] and we could use our
intelligence to talk about the universe. We see a formidable power
in the ability to use our minds and the tools we've created to gather
evidence, to use our inferential abilities to develop theories,
to test the theories, and to understand the universe at increasingly
precise levels. That's one role of intelligence. The theories that
we heard on cosmology look at the evidence that exists in the world
today to make inferences about what existed in the past so that
we can develop models of how we got here.
Then, of course, we can run those models and project what might
happen in the future. Even if it's a little more difficult to test
the future theories, we can at least deduce, or induce, that certain
phenomena that we see today are evidence of times past, such as
radiation from billions of years ago. We can't really test what
will happen billions or trillions of years from now quite as directly,
but this line of inquiry is legitimate, in terms of understanding
the past and the derivation of the universe. As we heard today,
the question of the origin of the universe is certainly not resolved.
There are competing theories, and at several times we've had theories
that have broken down, once we acquired more precise evidence.
At the same time, however, we don't hear discussion about the role
of intelligence in the future. According to common wisdom, intelligence
is irrelevant to cosmological thinking. It is just a bit of froth
dancing in and out of the crevices of the universe, and has no effect
on our ultimate cosmological destiny. That's not my view. The universe
has been set up exquisitely enough to have intelligence. There are
intelligent entities like ourselves that can contemplate the universe
and develop models about it, which is interesting. Intelligence
is, in fact, a powerful force and we can see that its power is going
to grow not linearly but exponentially, and will ultimately be powerful
enough to change the destiny of the universe.
I want to propose a case that intelligence—specifically human
intelligence, but not necessarily biological human intelligence—will
trump cosmology, or at least trump the dumb forces of cosmology.
The forces that we heard discussed earlier don't have the qualities
that we posit in intelligent decision-making. In the grand celestial
machinery, forces deplete themselves at a certain point and other
forces take over. Essentially you have a universe that's dominated
by what I call dumb matter, because it's controlled by fairly simple
mechanical processes.
Human civilization possesses a different type of force with a certain
scope and a certain power. It's changing the shape and destiny of
our planet. Consider, for example, asteroids and meteors. Small
ones hit us on a fairly regular basis, but the big ones hit us every
some tens of millions of years and have apparently had a big impact
on the course of biological evolution. That's not going to happen
again. If it happened next year we're not quite ready to deal with
it, but it doesn't look like it's going to happen next year. When
it does happen again our technology will be quite sufficient. We'll
see it coming, and we will deal with it. We'll use our engineering
to send up a probe and blast it out of the sky. You can score one
for intelligence in terms of trumping the natural unintelligent
forces of the universe.
Commanding our local area of the sky is, of course, very small
on a cosmological scale, but intelligence can overrule these physical
forces, not by literally repealing the natural laws, but by manipulating
them in such a supremely sublime and subtle way that it effectively
overrules these laws. This is particularly the case when you get
machinery that can operate at nano and ultimately femto and pico
scales. Whereas the laws of physics still apply, they're being manipulated
now to create any outcome the intelligence of this civilization
decides on.
Let me back up and talk about how intelligence came about. Wolfram's
book has prompted a lot of talk recently on the computational substrate
of the universe and on the universe as a computational entity. Earlier
today, Seth Lloyd talked about the universe as a computer and its
capacity for computation and memory. What Wolfram leaves out in
talking about cellular automata is how you get intelligent entities.
As you run these cellular automata, they create interesting pictures,
but the interesting thing about cellular automata, which was shown
long before Wolfram pointed it out, is that you can get apparently
random behavior from deterministic processes.
It's more than apparent that you literally can't predict an outcome
unless you can simulate the process. If the process under consideration
is the whole universe, then presumably you can't simulate it unless
you step outside the universe. But when Wolfram says that this explains
the complexity we see in nature, it's leaving out one important
step. As you run the cellular automata, you don't see the growth
in complexity—at least, certainly he's never run them long
enough to see any growth in what I would call complexity. You need
evolution.
Marvin talked about some of the early stages of evolution. It starts
out very slow, but then something with some power to sustain itself
and to overcome other forces is created and has the power to self-replicate
and preserve that structure. Evolution works by indirection. It
creates a capability and then uses that capability to create the
next. It took billions of years until this chaotic swirl of mass
and energy created the information-processing, structural backbone
of DNA, and then used that DNA to create the next stage.
With DNA, evolution had an information-processing machine to record
its experiments and conduct experiments in a more orderly way. So
the next stage, such as the Cambrian explosion, went a lot faster,
taking only a few tens of millions of years. The Cambrian explosion
then established body plans that became a mature technology, meaning
that we didn't need to evolve body plans any more.
These designs worked well enough, so evolution could then concentrate
on higher cortical function, establishing another level of mechanism
in the organisms that could do information processing. At this point,
animals developed brains and nervous systems that could process
information, and then that evolved and continued to accelerate.
Homo sapiens evolved in only hundreds of thousands of years, and
then the cutting edge of evolution again worked by indirection to
use this product of evolution, the first technology creating species
to survive, to create the next stage: technology, a continuation
of biological evolution by other means.
The first stages of technologies, like stone tools, fire, and the
wheel took tens of thousands of years, but then we had more powerful
tools to create the next stage. A thousand years ago, a paradigm shift
like the printing press took only a century or so to be adopted, and
this evolution has accelerated ever since. Fifty years ago, the first
computers were designed with pencil on paper, with screwdrivers and
wire. Today we have computers to design computers. Computer designers
will design some high-level parameters, and twelve levels of intermediate
design are computed automatically. The process of designing a computer
now goes much more quickly.
Evolutionary processes accelerate, and the returns from an evolutionary
process grow in power. I've called this theory "The Law of
Accelerating Returns." The returns, including economic returns,
accelerate. Stemming from my interest in being an inventor, I've
been developing mathematical models of this because I quickly realized
that an invention has to make sense when the technology is finished,
not when it was started, since the world is generally a different
place three or four years later.
One exponential pattern that people are familiar with is Moore's
Law, which is really just one specific paradigm of shrinking transistors
on integrated circuits. It's remarkable how long it's lasted, but
it wasn't the first, but the fifth paradigm to provide exponential
growth to computing. Earlier, we had electro-mechanical calculators,
using relays and vacuum tubes. Engineers were shrinking the vacuum
tubes, making them smaller and smaller, until finally that paradigm
ran out of steam because they couldn't keep the vacuum any more.
Transistors were already in use in radios and other small, niche
applications, but when the mainstream technology of computing finally
ran out of steam, it switched to this other technology that was
already waiting in the wings to provide ongoing exponential growth.
It was a paradigm shift. Later, there was a shift to integrated
circuits, and at some point, integrated circuits will run out of
steam.
Ten or 15 years from now we'll go to the third dimension. Of course,
research on three-dimensional computing is well under way, because
as the end of one paradigm becomes clear, this perception increases
the pressure for the research to create the next. We've seen tremendous
acceleration of molecular computing in the last several years.
When my book, The Age of Spiritual Machines, came out about
four years ago, the idea that three-dimensional molecular computing
could be feasible was quite controversial, and a lot of computer
scientists didn't believe it was. Today, there is a universal belief
that it's feasible, and that it will arrive in plenty of time before
Moore's Law runs out. We live in a three-dimensional world, so we
might as well use the third dimension. That will be the sixth paradigm.
Moore's Law is one paradigm among many that have provided exponential
growth in computation, but computation is not the only technology
that has grown exponentially. We see something similar in any technology,
particularly in ones that have any relationship to information.
The genome project, for example, was not a mainstream project when
it was announced. People thought it was ludicrous that you could
scan the genome in 15 years, because at the rate at which you could
scan it when the project began, it could take thousands of years.
But the scanning has doubled in speed every year, and actually most
of the work was done in the last year of the project.
Magnetic data storage is not covered under Moore's Law, since it
involves packing information on a magnetic substrate, which is a
completely different set of applied physics, but magnetic data storage
has very regularly doubled every year. In fact there's a second
level of acceleration. It took us three years to double the price-performance
of computing at the beginning of the century, and two years in the
middle of the century, but we're now doubling it in less than one
year.
This is another feedback loop that has to do with past technologies,
because as we improve the price performance, we put more resources
into that technology. If you plot computers, as I've done, on a
logarithmic scale, where a straight line would mean exponential
growth, you see another exponential. There's actually a double rate
of exponential growth.
Another very important phenomenon is the rate of paradigm shift.
This is harder to measure, but even though people can argue about
some of the details and assumptions in these charts you still get
these same very powerful trends. The paradigm shift rate itself
is accelerating, and roughly doubling every decade. When people
claim that we won't see a particular development for a hundred years,
or that something is going to take centuries to do accomplish, they're
ignoring the inherent acceleration of technical progress.
Bill Joy and I were at Harvard some months ago and one Nobel Prize-winning
biologist said that we won't see self-replicating nanotechnology
entities for a hundred years. That's actually a good intuition,
because that's my estimation—at today's rate of progress—of
how long it will take to achieve that technical milestone. However,
since we're doubling the rate of progress every decade, it'll only
take 25 calendar years to get there—this, by the way, is a
mainstream opinion in the nanotechnology field.
The last century is not a good guide to the next, in the sense
that it made only about 20 years of progress at today's rate of
progress, because we were speeding up to this point. At today's
rate of progress, we'll make the same amount of progress as what
occurred in the 20th century in 14 years, and then again in 7 years.
The 21st century will see, because of the explosive power of exponential
growth, something like 20,000 years of progress at today's rate
of progress—a thousand times greater than the 20th century,
which was no slouch for radical change.
I've been developing these models for a few decades, and made a
lot of predictions about intelligent machines in the 1980s that
people can check out. They weren't perfect, but were a pretty good
road map. I've been refining these models. I don't pretend that
anybody can see the future perfectly, but the power of the exponential
aspect of the evolution of these technologies, or of evolution itself,
is undeniable. And that creates a very different perspective about
the future.
Let's take computation. Communication is important and shrinkage
is important. Right now, we're shrinking technology, apparently
both mechanical and electronic, at a rate of 5.6 per linear dimension
per decade. That number is also moving slowly, in a double exponential
sense, but we'll get to nanotechnology at that rate in the 2020s.
There are some early-adopter examples of nanotechnology today, but
the real mainstream, where the cutting edge of the operating principles
are in the multi-nanometer range, will be in the 2020s. If you put
these together you get some interesting observations.
Right now we have 1026 calculations per second in human
civilization in our biological brains. We could argue about this
figure, but it's basically, for all practical purposes, fixed. I
don't know how much intelligence it adds if you include animals,
but maybe you then get a little bit higher than 1026.
Non-biological computation is growing at a double exponential rate,
and right now is millions of times less than the biological computation
in human beings. Biological intelligence is fixed, because it's
an old, mature paradigm, but the new paradigm of non-biological
computation and intelligence is growing exponentially. The crossover
will be in the 2020s and after that, at least from a hardware perspective,
non-biological computation will dominate at least quantitatively.
This brings up the question of software. Lots of people say that
even though things are growing exponentially in terms of hardware,
we've made no progress in software. But we are making progress in
software, even if the doubling factor is much slower.
The real scenario that I want to address is the reverse-engineering
of the human brain. Our knowledge of the human brain and the tools
we have to observe and understand it are themselves growing exponentially.
Brain scanning and mathematical models of neurons and neural structures
are growing exponentially, and there's very interesting work going
on.
There is Lloyd Watts, for example, who with his colleagues has
collected models of specific types of neurons and wiring information
about how the internal connections are wired in different regions
of the brain. He has put together a detailed model of about 15 regions
that deal with auditory processing, and has applied psychoacoustic
tests of the model, comparing it to human auditory perception.
The model is at least reasonably accurate, and this technology
is now being used as a front end for speech recognition software.
Still, we're at the very early stages of understanding the human
cognitive system. It's comparable to the genome project in its early
stages in that we also knew very little about the genome in its
early stages. We now have most of the data, but we still don't have
the reverse engineering to understand how it works.
It would be a mistake to say that the brain only has a few simple
ideas and that once we can understand them we can build a very simple
machine. But although there is a lot of complexity to the brain,
it's also not vast complexity. It is described by a genome that
doesn't have that much information in it. There are about 800 million
bytes in the uncompressed genome. We need to consider redundancies
in the DNA, as some sequences are repeated hundreds of thousands
of times. By applying routine data compression, you can compress
this information at a ratio of about 30 to 1, giving you about 23
million bytes—which is smaller than Microsoft Word—to
describe the initial conditions of the brain.
But the brain has a lot more information than that. You can argue
about the exact number, but I come up with thousands of trillions
of bytes of information to characterize what's in a brain, which
is millions of times greater than what is in the genome. How can
that be?
Marvin talked about how the methods from computer science are important
for understanding how the brain works. We know from computer science
that we can very easily create programs of considerable complexity
from a small starting condition. You can, with a very small program,
create a genetic algorithm that simulates some simple evolutionary
process and create something of far greater complexity than itself.
You can use a random function within the program, which ultimately
creates not just randomness, but is creating some meaningful information
after the initial random conditions are evolved using a self organizing
method, resulting in information that's far greater than the initial
conditions.
That is in large measure how the genome creates the brain. We know
that it specifies certain constraints for how a particular region
is wired, but within those constraints and methods, there's a great
deal of stochastic or random wiring, followed by some kind of process
whereby the brain learns and self-organizes to make sense of its
environment. At this point, what began as random becomes meaningful,
and the program has multiplied the size of its information.
The point of all of this is that, since it's a level of complexity
we can manage, we will be able to reverse-engineer the human brain.
We've shown that we can model neurons, clusters of neurons, and
even whole brain regions. We are well down that path. It's rather
conservative to say that within 25 years we'll have all of the necessary
scanning information and neuron models and will be able to put together
a model of the principles of operation of how the human brain works.
Then, of course, we'll have an entity that has some human like qualities.
We'll have to educate and train it, but of course we can speed up
that process, since we'll have access to everything that's out in
the Web, which will contain all accessible human knowledge.
One of the nice things about computer technology is that once you
master a process it can operate much faster. So we will learn the
secrets of human intelligence, partly from reverse-engineering of
the human brain. This will be one source of knowledge for creating
the software of intelligence.
We can then combine some advantages of human intelligence with
advantages that we see clearly in non-biological intelligence. We
spent years training our speech recognition system, which gives
us a combination of rules. It mixes expert-system approaches with
some self-organizing techniques like neural nets, Markov models
and other self-organizing algorithms. We automate the training process
by recording thousands of hours of speech and annotating it, and
it automatically readjusts all its Markov-model levels and other
parameters when it makes mistakes. Finally, after years of this
process, it does a pretty good job of recognizing speech. Now, if
you want your computer to do the same thing, you don't have to go
through those years of training like we do with every child, you
can actually load the evolved pattern of this one research computer,
which is called loading the software.
Machines can share their knowledge. Machines can do things quickly.
Machines have a type of memory that's more accurate than our frail
human memories. Nobody at this table can remember billions of things
perfectly accurately and look them up quickly. The combination of
the software of biological human intelligence with the benefits
of non-biological intelligence will be very formidable. Ultimately,
this growing non-biological intelligence will have the benefits
of human levels of intelligence in terms of its software and our
exponentially growing knowledge base.
In the future, maybe only one part of intelligence in a trillion
will be biological, but it will be infused with human levels of
intelligence, which will be able to amplify itself because of the
powers of non-biological intelligence to share its knowledge. How
does it grow? Does it grow in or does it grow out? Growing in means
using finer and finer granularities of matter and energy to do computation,
while growing out means using more of the stuff in the universe.
Presently, we see some of both. We see mostly the "in,"
since Moore's Law inherently means that we're shrinking the size
of transistors and integrated circuits, making them finer and finer.
To some extent we're also expanding out in that even though the
chips are more and more powerful, we make more chips every year,
and deploy more economic and material resources towards this non
biological intelligence.
Ultimately, we'll get to nanotechnology-based computation, which
is at the molecular level, infused with the software of human intelligence
and the expanding knowledge base of human civilization. It'll continue
to expand both inwards and outwards. It goes in waves as the expansion
inwards reaches certain points of resistance. The paradigm shifts
will be pretty smooth as we go from the second to the third dimension
via molecular computing. At that point it'll be feasible to take
the next step into femto engineering—on the scale of trillionths
of a meter—and pico engineering—on the scale of thousands
of trillionths of a meter—going into the finer structures of
matter and manipulating some of the really fine forces, such as
strings and quarks.
That's going to be a barrier, however, so the ongoing expansion
of our intelligence is going to be propelled outward. Nonetheless,
it will go both in and out. Ultimately, if you do the math, we will
completely saturate our corner of the universe, the earth and solar
system, sometime in the 22nd century. We'll then want ever-greater
horizons, as is the nature of intelligence and evolution, and will
then expand to the rest of the universe.
How quickly will it expand? One premise is that it will expand
at the speed of light, because that's the fastest speed at which
information can travel. There are also tantalizing experiments on
quantum disentanglement that show some effect at rates faster than
the speed of light, even much faster, perhaps theoretically instantaneously.
Interestingly enough, though, this is not the transmission of information,
but the transmission of profound quantum randomness, which doesn't
accomplish our purpose of communicating intelligence. You need to
transmit information, not randomness. So far nobody has actually
shown true transmission of information at faster than the speed
of light, at least not in a way that has convinced mainstream scientific
opinion.
If, in fact, that is a fundamental barrier, and if things that
are far away really are far away, which is to say there are no shortcuts
through wormholes through the universe, then the spread of our intelligence
will be slow, governed by the speed of light. This process will
be initiated within 200 years. If you do the math, we will be at
near saturation of the available matter and energy in and around
our solar system, based on current understandings of the limitations
of computation, within that time period.
However, it's my conjecture that by going through these other dimensions
that Alan and Paul talked about, there may be shortcuts. It may
be very hard to do, but we're talking about supremely intelligent
technologies and beings. If there are ways to get to parts of the
universe through shortcuts such as wormholes, they'll find, deploy,
and master them, and get to other parts of the universe faster.
Then perhaps we can reach the whole universe, say 1080
protons, photons, and other particles that Seth Lloyd estimates
represents on the order of 1090 bits, without being limited
by the apparent speed of light.
If the speed of light is not a limit, and I do have to emphasize
that this particular point is a conjecture at this time, then within
300 years, we would saturate the whole universe with our intelligence,
and the whole universe would become supremely intelligent and be
able to manipulate everything according to its will. We're currently
multiplying computational capacity by a factor of at least 103
every decade. This is conservative, as this rate of exponential
growth is itself growing exponentially. Thus it is conservative
to project that within 30 decades (300 years), we would multiply
current computational capacities by a factor of 1090,
and thus exceed Seth Lloyd's estimate of 1090 bits in
the Universe.
We can speculate about identity—will this be multiple people
or beings, or one being, or will we all be merged?—but nonetheless,
we'll be very intelligent and we'll be able to decide whether we
want to continue expanding. Information is very sacred, which is
why death is a tragedy. Whenever a person dies, you lose all that
information in a person. The tragedy of losing historical artifacts
is that we're losing information. We could realize that losing information
is bad, and decide not to do that any more. Intelligence will have
a profound effect on the cosmological destiny of the universe at
that point.
Why SETI will fail
I'll end with a comment about the SETI project. Regardless of this
ultimate resolution of this issue of the speed of light—and
it is my speculation (and that of others as well) that there are
ways to circumvent it—if there are ways, they'll be found,
because intelligence is intelligent enough to master any mechanism
that is discovered. Regardless of that, I think the SETI project
will fail—it's actually a very important failure, because sometimes
a negative finding is just as profound as a positive finding—for
the following reason: we've looked at a lot of the sky with at least
some level of power, and we don't see anybody out there.
The SETI assumption is that even though it's very unlikely that
there is another intelligent civilization like we have here on Earth,
there are billions of trillions of planets. So even if the probability
is one in a million, or one in a billion, there are still going
to be millions, or billions, of life-bearing and ultimately intelligence-bearing
planets out there.
If that's true, they're going to be distributed fairly evenly across
cosmological time, so some will be ahead of us, and some will be
behind us. Those that are ahead of us are not going to be ahead
of us by only a few years. They're going to be ahead of us by billions
of years. But because of the exponential nature of evolution, once
we get a civilization that gets to our point, or even to the point
of Babbage, who was messing around with mechanical linkages in a
crude 19th century technology, it's only a matter of a few centuries
before they get to a full realization of nanotechnology, if not
femto and pico-engineering, and totally infuse their area of the
cosmos with their intelligence. It only takes a few hundred years!
So if there are millions of civilizations that are millions or
billions of years ahead of us, there would have to be millions that
have passed this threshold and are doing what I've just said, and
have really infused their area of the cosmos. Yet we don't see them,
nor do we have the slightest indication of their existence, a challenge
known as the Fermi paradox. Someone could say that this "silence
of the cosmos" is because the speed of light is a limit, therefore
we don't see them, because even though they're fantastically intelligent,
they're outside of our light sphere. Of course, if that's true,
SETI won't find them, because they're outside of our light sphere.
But let's say they're inside our light sphere, or that light isn't
a limitation, for the reasons I've mentioned. Then perhaps they
decided, in their great wisdom, to remain invisible to us. You can
imagine that there's one civilization out there that made that decision,
but are we to believe that this is the case for every one of the
millions, or billions, of civilizations that SETI says should be
out there?
That's unlikely, but even if it's true, SETI still won't find them,
because if a civilization like that has made that decision, it is
so intelligent they'll be able to carry that out, and remain hidden
from us. Maybe they're waiting for us to evolve to that point and
then they'll reveal themselves to us. Still, if you analyze this
more carefully, it's very unlikely in fact that they're out there.
You might ask, isn't it incredibly unlikely that this planet, which
is in a very random place in the universe and one of trillions of
planets and solar systems, is ahead of the rest of the universe
in the evolution of intelligence? Of course the whole existence
of our universe, with the laws of physics so sublimely precise to
allow this type of evolution to occur is also very unlikely, but
by the anthropic principle, we're here, and by an analogous anthropic
principle we are here in the lead. After all, if this were not the
case, we wouldn't be having this conversation. So by a similar anthropic
principle we're able to appreciate this argument.
I'll end on that note.
Copyright © 2002 by Edge Foundation, Inc. Published on
KurzweilAI.net with permission.
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Mind·X Discussion About This Article:
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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What Ray doesn't explicitly state, and I am not sure he is even aware of this idea, is the assumptions (correct ones) he makes about the meaning of life. There IS a definative answer to this question and it is not some dumb thing like "for everyone to find out for themselves". It is to maximize the rate which the universe reaches equilibrium. Like a Bernard cell, we first organize things, going against the natural tendency for equilibrium, (this is evolution) so as to reach a configuration where we can rush as fast as possible to equilibrium. The important idea here is understanding that we are the universe so what it does is what we want to do. (Our free will is determinism, since we embody the particles that are acting deterministically. What "they" do is what we want to do.)
I do, however, agree with people who say that most people do not understand this. So, I see humans (this is already starting) splitting up into those who are enlightened and do bizarre unhuman things like going at the speed of light or whatever, and humans who remain quaint and blissfully ignorant, taking the place of just another lower tier of evolution like animals that don't bother the higher ones at all.
Meanwhile, I speak of evolution as a progressing up- as is normal. But I actually believe that the appropriate understanding is that becoming more complex, etc. is a fracturing and a "going down" to achieve the ultimate death of equilibrium, which is the ultimate good as opposed to the conventional view.
The most important thing about a mindset such as this is that it can be very dangerous (just like, say, how Nietzsche's ideas have been hijacked by wackos so often). There is a fine line between existentialism/nihilism and enlightenment.
Anyone who vehemently hates what I have to say, or anyone who is intrigued, can feel free to email me. It is needless to say that these ideas are very intricate, and are part of a whole subset of a grand worldview, and the full idea cannot be expressed in mere words.
Also, probably most importantly, is that taking of things like the meaning of life is such a touchy issue that everyone who reads this will misinterpret it. Instead of assuming your interpretation of something, ask if it is what I really meant before you assume it. |
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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Here's my theory for what it's worth:
Humans have evolved from a signal that has been transmitted here from another planet. This signal has the code and fundamental formulas for the building blocks of all life here on earth. It has been transmitted out in a random fashion, by an intelligent being like ourselves who have evolved to the state where they have created the 'formula' for the building blocks of life, and now must spread this formula to continue the spread of their species. How else are you going to find a hospitable planet for humans unless you figure out the formula for all life on our planet, then beam this signal out as fast as possible in as many directions as possible with the 'code' so that suitable planets can take the code, run with it, and end up where we are now? Eventually, we will end advancing enough here on earth to create this code, and send it out ourselves. Because ultimately, the creation of life and the evolution of life forms has to be looked at on the large scale - billions of years to get there, find the right conditions, and then to evolve to the point where the cycle can continue, to send the 'code' out again to keep life spreading throughout the universe. In this scenario, there could be millions of life forms out there. Would they be sending a signal that SETI is looking for? Not likely. If they are far enough along, they are sending a signal that contains the code for building life, we've already received it, and we're working our way towards the same solution. And it isn't a quick solution, because the solution is code which contains the formula to create life to create a species that can take the formula and physical environment to recreating and sending it out again. This completely ties in with 'scanning' a human brain and reproducing it digitally, but what ultimately we should be looking to do is to create the code/formula for life that can be transmitted to another planet to continue our species. Isn't that what we do on this planet anyway??? |
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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What happens when you saturate the universe with intelligence, and come to the boundary? What happens when you intrinsically run into the opposite barrier of the "string"
Do you fall into a dyanmic equilibrium, with intelligence constantly chugging away, yet contricted within the bounds of the system? And that we stay that way until the end of time?
For some reason that seems ludicrous to me.
The beauty of intelligence is to question. The desire and the force to know. But not only to know, but to experience, to live (as the poets say).
Yet how can we live, how can we experience, how can we know, once we reach the boundaries of the system. How can we reconcile existence (or live) once everything is known. Won't we be dead then? Won't intelligence die, in that moment of true epiphany?
I suppose you could argue that we will break the boundary of the universe itself, and flood out into a multiverse...or whatever is out there.
It would be terribly ironic if there was merely an infinite nothinginess, and voided our existence in a heartbeat. How humans killed the universe...
But hey were going somewhere...and i'll enjoy the ride while it lasts.
Douglas Hall |
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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There is something that really bothers me about Kurzweil's projection.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Kurzweil's most extravagant supposition happened to be correct and it is ultimately possible for an intelligence to expand into the greatest depth and breadth of the universe. Suppose that it is also possible for it to establish instantaneous communication and transportation between every sector. Perhaps, it could even go outside the boundaries of the known universe and begin to manipulate time and space.
We would have an intelligence that spans the extant universe, can manipulate matter at the most fundamental level, and can effectively be anywhere at any time instantaneously. Since humans are conscious, there is no reason to presume that this massive intelligence could not also be conscious'with all the attributes associated with consciousness. We are indeed referring to 'intelligence' as a fundamental force on the scale of every other force in the universe and effectively exceeding them.
Again, for the sake of argument, suppose that the generally held assumption that any one intelligence is unlikely to be first on the scene is also correct. Is it not plausible, even probable, that such a phenomenon had already occurred?
Now, suppose I approached Kurzweil, or any other proponents of such reasoning, and said that I believed there to already be a conscious intelligence that is a fundamental force in the universe, that can be anywhere at any time, and that can manipulate the forces of the universe at the most fundamental level. Would he or any of the other proponents of this idea take me seriously? If they did happen to take me seriously, would they not quickly turn if I gave this intelligence a name?
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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>No. Based on what we see - it hasn't.
But Thomas, I didn't even give it a name?
What is it that we see? Our assumption is that this little bubble of space that began with a Big Bang is the one, only, and first such bubble to appear in the cosmos. Maybe other bubbles of various sorts have already appeared. If Wolfram's ideas about complexity are even partly correct, it is not unreasonable to suppose that one of these bubbles went the same way as our own.
Now, suppose that the proprietors of this previous bubble learned how to go beyond the boundaries of their known bubble and manipulate time and space. Might they not have become proficient at manipulating the evolution of other such bubbles? Could ours possibly be a tailor made bubble?
Once, when I was playing poker with some friends, I was dealt a royal flush. I knew that these friends were all very well acquainted. Based only on the weight of the probabilities, I guessed that the deck had been stacked, said, 'Nice try guys!' and folded. I knew from their expressions that I had been correct.
Haven't you noticed something suspicious about the whole construction of our universe and the way it has unfolded? I seem to recall a line form Albert Einstein: 'The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.' Think about it!
As for what we see, how could we possibly guess the agenda of proficient bubble makers? Maybe they just like to blow bubbles! Why pop a pretty bubble?
>How probable is it, that somebody equally smart as you, has written this post before?
Actually, my post is nearly a plagiarism of something that someone else posted to another article. Something I have learned while perusing the Internet is that it is almost impossible to come up with an original idea. Do you know how I came across this site? I had an idea of something like the 'Singularity', but I called it 'Threshold Technology'. I suspected that someone had thought of it before, so I started punching things into Google until I found the essay by Vernor Vinge. That ultimately led me to this site.
From the standpoint of scientific objectivity, I agree with your assumption that no such phenomenon has already occurred. I just don't think it happens to be true.
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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>intensely complex sytems (ie the universe) can develop in a such a way that seems very "smooth"
Yes, I agree that their 'development' would seem very smooth. But would the 'discovery' of that development necessarily be smooth? Recall that we did not begin trying to discover the development of the universe until it had evolved systems as complex as ourselves. Could it not have happened that by the time we came onto the scene the development of the universe had become completely opaque? On the other hand, could it not have happened that the development of the universe would have remained more or less opaque until at some moment in our history we accidentally discovered the last page of the book and effectively ruined the story? Think about it: Aristotle, Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, Michaelson, Hawking'. Why couldn't Newton have been right and that have been the end of the book? Of course, we all know that for logical reasons Newton could not have been right, but that is in this version of the universe. Did the universe have to be this way?
This is nothing like an argument. It's just 'suspicious'. It raises enough suspicion that, combined with the observation that a universal intelligence is virtually inevitable, it lends weight to the idea that this intelligence may already exist.
Here is another observation. Consciousness'a debatable phenomenon'does not seem to be necessary to the structure of the universe. Why would atoms need something like consciousness in order to smash into one another and bond in their various ways? However, an anthropic principle suggests that if consciousness did not exist in our universe, we would not be aware of it to refute it. However, I suspect that consciousness is such an unlikely phenomenon in any universe, that many tries at it would be required before a universe 'popped out' that supported it. This suggests that ours is not the only universe. Moreover, the idea that our 'Big Bang' is the only big bang that has ever occurred is not unlike the once held belief that our world is the center of the universe. Can any of us think of a single precedent of anything in the universe of which there is exactly one? I strongly contend that ours is not the only universe in existence. This expands the probability of us not being the first on the scene by many times.
None of this amounts to anything like an argument. Science has become so comfortable with the idea that an omnipotent and omniscient intelligence is improbable; I'm just not sure how well it is taking to the idea that it is inevitable? |
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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Scott,
I can't flatly deny that the universe is intelligent... but if it were, the question remains as to the (original) source of such intelligence.
If the obsevable universe-as-we-know-it were actually a simulation, the "simulator(s) would certainly appear "supernatural" to us, but unless we really intend for a (classically) supernatural force to exist, we must admit that even these "simulators" are themselves either "ordinary, bound by (some kind of) physics type beings", or they are themselves simulations run by a further-back set of simulators...
That is to say, at some point, a "real-ground" would be reached, and the "first-simulators" posited to exist. Those beings, and the "real-physik" universe they inhabit, would be one in which "intelligence" arose "naturally" from unthinking background forces, gradually, and haphazardly I would assume.
I am always suspicious of appeals to a "multiverse", (being an ensemble of universes that are by definition unreachable but theoreticlly posited to exist in order to make some calculations work better.) If they could be "reached", they would no longer be "multiverse", but just a revamp of our definition of universe. And how many such "ensembles" could there be? Only one, by definition. Call it "the totality" if you like.
There can be only one "everything". :)
The Multiverse completely sidesteps the issue of an understandable universe (or one in which consciousness exists). If trillions of universe are formed, and 99.99999% of them are life-hostile (no intelligence arises) then in that 0.00001% where intelligence does arise, beings develope who will eventually say "how curious that the universe has exactly the right proportion of forces to allow life and consciousness to arise. Must be an intelligence at work ..."
Finally, I think the "smooth understandibility" of the universe is actually a misrepresentation, induced by the fact that history books try to make history understandable. We (scientists, historians, etc.) are in the business of explaining things to make them understandable. So, whether we are "on track", or merely creating a facsimili of reality that happens to "map well" to observations, our explanations always tend to be "understandable", by design.
Cheers! ____tony b____ |
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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Since we are on the subject on Extreme Cosmology here's my 'How to build a universe in 4 steps'.
1) Take a set of mathematical axioms (the laws of Physics would do, if your local multiverse-market hasn't got them they try something equally rich).
2) Conjure up an initial state for your universe.
3) Let the next state be logically determined by 1)
4) Bake until golden.
I'll phrase my position differently: The substrate of the universe is mathematics. I haven't read Wolframs book but this is similar to the cellular-automata universe theory, but not centered on one branch of mathematics.
There is a reason why we say mathematical theorems are discovered and that is because no particular knower of a theorem is needed for the theorem to be true, the truth of a theorem is completely contained in the axioms and formal rules of the system.
When you run a cellular automata with the same rules and the same starting state you get the same nth state. Do the same thing with Physics and the starting conditions of the universe, Does there need to be an instance for the nth year's state to be determined ?
Now I've conveyed the easy stuff onto the more wacky consequences.
Which set of mathematical axioms do we inhabit ?
Well the possible collections of axioms and formla rules is infinite. Call the set of all collections of axioms M. A particular universe U would result from more than one element from M as some axioms will be equivalent, some axioms will generate similations of universes constructed from other axioms, So a particular universe will result from an infinite subset of M. Some of the elements of M would be very inefficient generators of U, with highly redundant axioms like "there is an orange at coordinates (0,0,0), a table at (10,5,3)... There would also be more parsimonius elements of M, those with fewer axioms, the laws of Physics would be one element of M. I think that the more parsimonius elements would be more numerous (though all types have a measure of infinity), and therefore we are more likely to unhabit a parsimonious universe.
I'll get my coat ;) |
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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Stacy,
I would rephrase your program as "How to Model a Universe in 4 Easy Steps".
For the sake of argument, consider an alternative universe, a lot like ours, except no intelligent (or even sentient) life happens to exist. In such a universe, are there "perfect circles"? (planar objects of constant radius whose circumference is 2*Pi*radius)? Says who?
Are there two of some things, and three of others? Do atoms have mass? Are some heavier than others? Says who?
Mathematics is a conceptual view, constructed in the intellectual mind. Yes, once you have "chosen" (invented) a nice set of Axioms, all that follows regarding their interrelationships are "discovered". But that is NOT the same as saying those theorems "existed independent of the invention of the concepts".
One can apply mathematics, and axiomatization, to the game of chess, and prove theorems to be true about chess (whether a particular arrangement of pieces is "winnable" for one side or the other, forinstance.) But it makes no sense to say that theorems about chess (even those not yet formulated) are, or are not true, BEFORE the game of chess was invented.
Mathematics is like chess. You invent rules, and then investigate the consequences of your invention. The universe cannot "begin" with mathematics. However, most reasonable descriptions of the universe begin with mathematics.
And out of pure efficiency and pragmatism, we seek the most parsimonious descriptions.
Cheers! ____tony b____ |
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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> The key problem that I see for cosmology is Why this and not that. The universe exists yes, existence exists. But no specific existent is necessarily existent. That we find numerous existents existing is not proof that they are necessary.
Necessary? Necessary for what? Necessary for whom?
> So what are the minimum requirements of existence ? Certainly not a Big Bang, the laws of Physics. None of these is necessary. What is the minimum ingredient needed to be these things come about.
You're taking the essentialist position. What is the essence? What is the minimum set of properties that allow all others to emerge?
> I can't think of anything more minimal yet with more potential than mathematics.
How about an eight-state turing-complete programming language like "BF" (I believe it is called)?
> You say that Mathematics is a conceptual view. I think it is a property of existence.
Mathematics is inherently metaphorical. Let's say you have 5, but 5 of what (metonymic, isn't it)? If you ADD, what does that actually entail? If you ADD 1 fish to 5 fish, you might think that 1 + 5 = 6. But if you mean by "ADD" that you place them in the same fish tank, and 1 is a shark, while 5 are salmon, then 1 + 5 = 1.
On a deeper level, why do we need the cardinal/ordinal distinction when we think about transfinite numbers, while we do not make the cardinal/ordinal distinction when we think about finite numbers? Why are imaginary numbers conceptualized as angles?
> I hold with Aristotle that one cannot say of a particular existent that it both possesses and does not posses a particular characteristic in the same degree and the same respect. i.e. Reality, existence, is non-contradictory and given that perceiving reality is a neat evolutionary trick our minds have evolved to comprehend this.
We do not "perceive" reality. Our perceptions are filtered both by the limits of our bodily sensors and our nervous systems and brain-resident ideas.
In order to say that two objects are "the same" you must ignore small (and often, not so small) differences between them.
> The mathematics we hold in our head is a copy of that which is a necessary attribute of existence.
Please explain. I don't understand what you mean by "the mathematics we hold in our head".
You couldn't be referring to subitizing, could you?
> Here is a challenge: Define me a reality in which logic does not apply.
Alice's Wonderland.
> I believe that you will fail because you cannot reason about such a thing.
It's just a concept. Just like Pi is the concept of the ratio of diameter to circumference, and e derives from the concept of a curve whose value at any point is it's slope at that point, and the angle-concept of imaginary numbers derive from the concept that the negative numbers are a diametrical rotation of the positive numbers, and the golden-ratio, the gravitational constant, etc.
There's a recent new conceptualization: called Omega (though other mathematical concepts have the same name), it is the most inner of surreal numbers, and thus is maximally numerically incalculable.
These are all defined conceptually (like much of geometry), the numerical value is a result, not a cause.
> Hence I believe that logic is necessarily so and all the consequences, all the theorems, interalations, that arise are also necessarily
so.
It all depends on WHICH logic you decide to use. Modal? Predicate? Linear?
Recommended reading: _Where_Mathematics_Comes_From, George Lackoff & Rafael Nunez
_Mathematics_:_The_Loss_of_Certainty_, Morris Kline
From _Mathematics_:_The_Loss..._, p.6:
"It is now apparent that the concept of a universally accepted, infallible body of reasoning--the majestic mathematics of 1800 and the pride of man--is a grand illusion." |
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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Stacy,
> "Answer this then: How would you know the difference ? If you were a self-aware series of states in a cellular automata, the observable result of which (i.e. the functional relations of series of states in the cellular automata) was the same as Physics how would you know ?"
Let me try to understand your question(s), as best I understand it/them.
A (classic?) cellular automata (CA) is a deterministic state machine, and (according to QM) our universe seems evermore impossible to describe as a deterministic system. Where it might contain deterministic subsystems (such as Conway's game of "Life"), it is unknown whether such CA-type systems can become self-aware. But let us suppose that it could, that the universe (as we experience it) were a CA, (running on something, somewhere), and that I was a manifestation of this CA. I then observe the behavior of this "universe" (derivative of the state transitions), and I might formulate what I think are the "rules", and formulate such conjectured rules in a language I invent and call "mathematics".
Until I make those observations, and codify what I think are the "rules of behavior" in my mathematics language, there is no mathematics. And the "universal CA" certainly needs no expressible mathematics language in order to proceed from state to state. Only our description of it needs such a language.
A falling apple does not need to calculate its mass, mass of the earth, distance between their centers, and apply the inverse-square force law in order to fall with a certain acceleration. If the universe were a CA, it would simply be in the nature of the state transitions that the apple accelerates and falls to earth. The "inverse square law" (a mathematical abstraction) would simply be a way to generalize the behavior, NOT knowing the universe was a CA and all motion was due to CA state transitions.
But if the universe were really such a CA, then pick any one of its simplest "cells", and ask "what state might it be in, at any given moment, and what would materially distinguish that state from another state it might assume later?" Is it an electron spin that is either up or down? CAN'T BE, since electrons as (we assume) manifestations of the universal state machine. Quarks? Gluons? Every CA I can think of, except as a pure abstract mental concept, is manifest in some material substance for which at least some physical characteristic distinguishes cell-state-X from cell-state-Y.
Thus, to conjecture the universe as a giant CA is to avoid, from the start, the investigation of the fundamental physics of the universe, which would be the "real-physik" upon which the CA were operating.
> "Question two: Provide me with something else other than mathematics which is Necessarily so, i.e. something that can be potent enough to be unavoidably existent."
Why do you feel that there must be anything that is "Necessarily So"? Do you think the universe cares that we have invented a system of logic, wherein "statements" can be assigned Truth, Falsity, Consistency or Inconsistency?
I don't believe there is such a thing as a "true assertion" as far as the universe is concerned. However, if we create systems of "concepts", and "logic rules" for relating concepts to other concepts, we can demand that assertions made about these concepts are either True or False (or Undecidable) with respect to the concept-system in question. In the universe of "chess concepts", the statement "My pawn can take your rook" is false if your rook is aside my pawn, rather than diagonal to it, etc.
There are (thus) things that are Necessarily So about chess, since it is definitively a construct of rules. There is no proof that the universe is a construct of rules, only that we can invent rules that tend to match universal behaviors.
If we decide to describe the universe in terms of positions, velocities, masses, forces, etc, then "energy" is a "Necessarily So" fundamental quality. But all of these terms are really mathematical inventions that we "assign" to qualities of observation. If we decide to describe the universe in some completely different way, there may be nothing that corresponds to the "energy" concept, or at least, not fundamentally so.
But however we try to formulate concepts that "map well" to the observable universe, we run into increasingly unusual problems. On the one hand, if we want all of our "true concept statements" to be self-consistent, they tend to diverge from real observations. On the other hand, if we try to make them always match observations, they tend to become inconsistent.
There is no "rule" the universe must follow that says, "you must behave in such a manner that some system of true-false statements is sufficient to completely describe you."
There is no rule that says "the universe MUST be amenable to some axiomatization". Rather, WE impose that rule on OUR descriptions of the universe, because WE abhor inconsistency. The universe does not care about the rules we make to describe it.
Cheers! ____tony b____ |
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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Stacy,
> "The essential differance between our positions, the difference from which all our other disagreements stem is that you regard mathematics as a human construct, whilst I regard it as an unavoidable aspect of existence"
Well, not so much a human construct, as a construct of conceptualization (for which on earth, I assume, only humans are capable.)
In mathematics, we can formally distinguish infinite sets that can be "mated" to the counting numbers, and infinite sets (such as the "reals") that cannot be given any such correspondence, and are thus definitively "greater" infinities (in terms of set cardinality.)
We do not know whether the universe is, or is not actually infinite, but for the sake of argument, let us suppose that it is finite (huge, but finite). Then there is no reason for transfinite numbers to be an "unavoidable aspect of existence", in the sense that the universe needs to entertain such notions in order to operate itself, to "exist", etc. And yet, we can play the numbers concepts against one another to produce all manner of conjecturable sets, including various transfinite sets. In what sense could these relationships among transfinite sets be said "exist" as part of the universe, before anyone of sentience exists to consider numbers in the first place?
It is tempting, when we consider the seemingly inescapable "truths" of mathematics, to imply from their apparent universality that these truths "exist", whether or not there are conscious entities to "discover" them. But when you examine the very foundations at a deeper level, you always find that every such system of mathematical logic is based upon a handful of premises (axioms) that are simply "given to be true", and it is really the consequences of those premises that are being "discovered".
Although the universe reveals a great deal of observable self-consistency, there is no a-priori reason to hold that the universe must be self-consistent (as measured by any assignments to statements in a system of predicate logic, for instance). Consequently, if we demand that our conceptual formulations about the universe be free from contradiction, it is possible that every such formulation will fail to capture the universe with complete accuracy.
And yet, try we must, for in the rational framework of explications, that is the only game in towm.
Cheers! ____tony b____
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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> There can be only one "everything".
That's a good point. I'm not certain that it is true, but it is a good point.
I can see that I am not convincing anyone. That's just as well, because I doubt we are getting out of the game any time soon.
When Kurzweil finishes his new book written specifically about the singularity we may see a storm of misinterpretations, reinterpretations, and misinformed counter arguments. People aren't very good at waiting to see what happens: this debate could get really hot.
Unfortunately, as others have observed, not very many people are prepared to deal with these ideas. I've directed numerous people to Vinge's essay, and I am surprised at how little of it they understand. Everyone tries to interpret it in terms of historical precedents. Sadly, people throughout history have cried 'wolf' so many times that when something like this comes along, everyone is set to dismiss it.
I keep running into people that say things like: 'Computers have run their course.' and, 'Technology is about to reach a plateau.' I can't make up my mind as to which is the best approach. Does the situation call for more general scientific education, education directly about the singularity, or a hard sell? Maybe a movie really would be a good idea. Maybe even a miniseries comparable to 'Taken'.
Scott
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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Some thirty years ago, I speculated that mankind would be "superceded" by artificial intelligence. I reasoned that it would have more durability and expandability and thus ultimately
succeed the state of the art "Human".
However, no one I ever had discussions with could
believe that "we" would allow this to happen. And it was a great conversation stopper; even most "computer" people told me there would always
have to be some one to "turn the machine on"!!
So I felt a little like Rip Van Winkle when I first heard of Ray Kurzweil's book "Age of Spiritual Machines" in early 1999. It kind of blew my mind. I had always presumed that these were far into the future ideas, not to worry about, only to speculate on. Now here was someone with extreme technical accomplishments AND a profound vision of the possibilites of the future, and the future was only 30-40 years away.
Not that his views will turn out to be the ones
to unfold in the future, but he has caused many of us to take the possibilities seriously, and to address the what if's. I personally now discuss these ideas with young people whenever I
can, advising them that it will be their input that will determine the "morality" of future intelligence. We must procreate "responsible" Intelligence, not shrink in fear of the unknown.
Kurzweil wrote in a recent article that he was"amazed" how few people understood the implications of the rapidly changing technology.
That statement indicates how much needs to be done to educate most of us. Medical advances amaze us and cause moral controversery, but those problems will be overwhelmed by the moral issues of intelligence.
Diversity is a universal safeguard, and its even
more important in this higher speed Intelligence evolution. It is incumbant on those of us who grasp the possibilites, good and bad, to spread the discussion. Its our childrens future.
As to where it all ends, who can possibly know. But the ride has been great so far and continues.......and I appreciate being a "human" more than ever................................ |
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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>Our current social structures could not withstand the impact of a singularity.
I can't make up my mind about that. The problem is that our social structure is dissolving in an acid bath of cultural experimentation, scientific progress, and technological innovation. Just the other day, I ran into a magazine article called 'Designer God'. The subject was how people are creating their own mix-and-match religions. Do we still have a social structure? The issues are already getting so jumbled that it's hard to know where to start sorting things out.
People are less resistant when they have less social cohesion. That could be a bonus. On the other hand, people are more easily frightened when they are not part of a well-defined group. That fear will certainly stand against us.
And what will be the repercussions of all this fear and lack of cohesion? Did you know that in his essay 'Why the Future doesn't Need Us' Bill Joy cites Theodore Bundy? Are we going to see a lot more Theodore Bundys? One time, as an experiment, I went around to the people where I work and told them that the subject of Jerry Springer that day was 'Fathers that are sleeping with their daughters and want to break up'. Most of them were a little miffed, but none of them doubted me. Are we going to see people that have absolutely no sense of what is reasonable?
The thing is, we could slide into the post-singularity world without a hitch. It could be just like showing up for Thanksgiving dinner at grandma's house. We might all find ourselves in the most wonderful world imaginable, and without the vast majority of us having to lift a finger to bring it about.
Or, we could all be fuel.
Scott
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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* people are more easily frightened when they are not part of a well-defined group. That fear will certainly stand against us. *
I think the oposite would be true. Fear, esspecially fear of the unknown, grows rapidly in groups of people with similar beliefs. As an individual, all desicions on how to react to a situation can only depend on one point of view, either discounting or reinforcing previous fears. fear in a group spreads faster and gets reinforced by others much easier. mob mentallity as it were.
It is important to change the social structure, and to hear that it is moving in that direction gives me a little more hope. One thing we need less of, is large groups going out and destroying something they don't understand for the simple reason that they don't understand it (angry mobs destroying things they have intimate knowledge of and good reason to, that can still have a positive purpose). The frankenstein monster might never had gone on a wild rampage if an angry mob hadn't come after it with torches, intent on killing it. ( I hope that wasn't just a holywood added scene, I'll admit up front I haven't read the original book. But the message behind the scene still stands whoever created it.)
maybe the sign that the social structure is changing is a good indicator that the singularity is coming and soon or maybe even starting now. Has a paradigm shift in evolution ever been witnessed? looking at shifts in the past never give a very good account of the shift on a day to day basis, all we see is one century it was this, the next century it was different..... |
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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* people are more easily frightened when they are not part of a well-defined group. That fear will certainly stand against us. *
I think the oposite would be true. Fear, esspecially fear of the unknown, grows rapidly in groups of people with similar beliefs. As an individual, all desicions on how to react to a situation can only depend on one point of view, either discounting or reinforcing previous fears. fear in a group spreads faster and gets reinforced by others much easier. mob mentallity as it were.
It is important to change the social structure, and to hear that it is moving in that direction gives me a little more hope. One thing we need less of, is large groups going out and destroying something they don't understand for the simple reason that they don't understand it (angry mobs destroying things they have intimate knowledge of and good reason to, that can still have a positive purpose). The frankenstein monster might never had gone on a wild rampage if an angry mob hadn't come after it with torches, intent on killing it. ( I hope that wasn't just a holywood added scene, I'll admit up front I haven't read the original book. But the message behind the scene still stands whoever created it.)
maybe the sign that the social structure is changing is a good indicator that the singularity is coming and soon or maybe even starting now. Has a paradigm shift in evolution ever been witnessed? looking at shifts in the past never give a very good account of the shift on a day to day basis, all we see is one century it was this, the next century it was different..... |
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Re: Goedel
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Bijan,
I'm not sure I see the connection.
A "universal truth machine" would be able to answer the question, "Are there infinitely many prime pairs (29,31), (71,73) ?", (the question having been suitably codified).
Goedel demonstrated that in any sufficiently expressive system of knowledge (such as the predicate mathematical logic), there will always exist "true statements" about the system that cannot be established as true within the system. So a "universal truth machine" is impossible.
But that does not preclude the universe from being permiated with intelligence, whether "our" intelligence, or simply being a giant intelligence all its own.
It can be a "universal intelligence", and yet still not know whether there are infinitely many prime pairs, for instance.
A universal intelligence need not know the answers to all questions.
Cheers! ____tony b____ |
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Re: Goedel
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Thomas,
> > "A finite universe is not limited to only conjectures about finite sets."
> "No, in fact you need only a finite chunk of mathematics. Not "the whole thing"."
True, if you will only apply the math to the study of a finite universe (the calculus would be difficult to develop in only finite terms, however. Approximations approach the exact theoretical values only through the taking of infinite limits.)
> "Instead of mathematics, one could study the finite set, of all possible (human) brain states."
(Why only human ones? :)
> "Or even the _finite_ set of all possible clouds of particles. It's not THAT huge, at all! About 2^(10^90). Inside that number, every conceivable infinite set is accounted for."
I assume you mean "every conceivable FINITE subset of the cloud, assuming the cloud is itself finite.
> "I find the isomorphism between the finite set of all possible clouds of particles up to the size of Universe on one - and the transfinite mathematics on the other side, a very important anchor, to the finite reality."
We don't know if "reality" is, or is not finite (or even by which measure it might make sense to call it infinite or finite.) Length? Duration? Number of particles?
> "Those infinite games ... are they any better then the game of chess? Aren't they even more useless?"
In a finite universe, such "infinite games" are merely tools of the language. Their consequences tell us more about the nature of our axioms, and our system of logic, than they tell us about the universe. Perhaps that is useless.
But my central point, really, is that the very conceptualization of "number", even over only "finite sets", is an invention that we apply in an attempt to describe what we perceive, and may bear no real relationship to "what is".
In some formulations, the universe contains some 10^n "electrons". In another formulation, the universe only contains 1 electron, which has been forward-backward scattered in time to yield the appearance of multiplicity of "identical" particles. So, what is it that we are attempting to assign "number" to, in the first place? Only to what we conceptualize as reality.
In applying math in our conjectures about the universe, what we REALLY end up studying is the relationships between invented elements of our universe-concepts, in terms of yet more abstracted invented concepts (number, order, member-of, subset-of, etc.)
If the universe is really and entirely inter-connected at some deeper and more fundamental level, the whole concept of set and membership may not map at all to "reality". But we pretend that the universe can be broken down into truly separable parts, and then begin counting ...
Cheers! ____tony b____
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Re: Goedel
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> the calculus would be difficult to develop in only finite terms, however. Approximations approach the exact theoretical values only through the taking of infinite limits.)
Actually, limits are a relatively recent development in calculus, at least they were not commonly used until more recent times.
Before limits, the concept of "infinitessimals" which do not obey Archimedes Principle were used instead of epsilon-deltas with limits.
These are the Hyperreal numbers: Around every real number, there is a number-line of infinitessimals. You cannot add any number of infinitessimals to get to the next real number. Thus they form a "Monad" around the real number and do not follow Archimedes Principle of well-ordering.
In calculus, this is what you do instead of using limits:
Take the derivative of: 2x^3
Let D denote an infinitessimal number.
then ((2(x+D)^3) - 2x^3)/D defines the derivative.
And we have:
= (2x^3+6x^2D+6xD^2+2D^3 - 2x^3)/D
= (6x^2D+6xD^2+2D^3)/D
= 6x^2+6xD+2D^2
Since we are only concerned about the real part of the number, we leave the monadic components out (Anything with a factor of D), and we can represent this by R, the funcion that maps numbers to their real number, which produces:
R(6x^2+6xD+2D^2) = 6x^2
Which is the correct derivative. Notice that everthing is finite, the only thing we have to do is abandon Archimedes Principle. This abandonment of Archimedes Principle was the reason that mathematicians eventually turned to limits rather than using "infinitessimal" numbers. |
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Re: Goedel
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Dimitry,
You are right, the calculus can be defined and worked without appeal to the idea of "infinitely many terms", or infinite limits to such sequences.
But, in terms of "mapping" to a (conjectured) "finite-state universe", the monad approach is equally "un-real". The concept of a non-zero value, so small that no finite multiple of it can amount to anything definitively "bigger than zero" (the violation of the Archemidean principle) is just as hard to realize in a universe of finite elements, as would infinite sequences of diminishing real positive values.
In some ways, the monad concept is more elegant, as the limit arguments become unnecessary. In another way, the limit method is more elegant, as no new "type" of numbers needs to be introduced.
(Scott, the worst part for me was not the chalk dust, but my feet, from standing on a concrete floor N-hours a day. Still, enjoyable overall :)
Cheers! ____tony b____ |
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Re: Goedel
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Tony,
> the calculus would be difficult to develop in only finite terms, however
We don't need it. Anymore.
Historically we need it, but not now, when Mathematica is a string of bits, very capable of doing even old fashioned calculus, we can do without the _ideal_ SMOOTH calculus.
The path through infinity was useful. The leather which we climbed, and can be disposed now.
>> Or even the _finite_ set of all possible clouds of particles. It's not THAT huge, at all! About 2^(10^90). Inside that number, every conceivable infinite set is accounted for.
> I assume you mean "every conceivable FINITE subset of the cloud, assuming the cloud is itself finite.
The set of all possible clouds of particles. My head is one of those clouds. Your head and my head is another one. The oldest oxygen atom inside our Sun, plus the youngest whale is another one.
All those clouds represents, what can be represented, at all.
- Thomas |
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Re: Goedel
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Thomas,
You are right (if the universe is finite-state), then infinity and "smoothness" become unnecessary. All that is needed is "finity" to represent all that can be represented...
But again, my central point is to focus upon the word "represented".
As I said earlier, the very conceptualization of "number", even over only "finite sets", is an invention that we apply in an attempt to describe what we perceive, and may bear no real relationship to "what is". We assign "number" only to what we conceptualize as reality.
In applying math in our conjectures about the universe, what we REALLY end up studying is the relationships between invented elements of our universe-concepts, in terms of yet more abstracted invented concepts (number, order, member-of, subset-of, etc.)
If the universe is really and entirely inter-connected at some deeper and more fundamental level, the whole concept of set and membership may not map at all to "reality". (Perhaps, even "True" and "False" become inappropriate labels to anything real.) But we pretend that the universe can reduced to truly separable parts, that Boolean propositions made about those parts are (thus) either true or false. Then we begin counting "things" according to (equipotently) arbitrary divisions and categories we have invented and assigned to "reality", in order to determine what is "true or false" about the universe. Yet what we have really done is determine what is consistent with, or inconsistent with our particular concept-system.
Do "concepts" make the universe? Only if you believe that the universe is "God's Concept", that all existence can be traced to God saying "Let it be so".
But then, who's concept is "God"?
Cheers! ____tony b____
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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Perhaps I misunderstand Ray, but I feel the coming changes to the way humans live and think are to be welcomed.
I do however, see the "Amish of the future"; a large percentage of humanity who choose to accept a level of technology, and live happily in that controlled environment.
It seems clear to me that not too far in the future, un-enhanced humans will not able to assimilate changes in paradigm rapidly enough.
Ultimately, I predict at least 8 races of human-kind:
1) Traditional and purely biological Human beings.
2) Cybernetically and computationally enhanced biological Human beings.
3) Virtual Human beings. Duplicates of once biological humans, now running in hardware.
4) AI-Human beings. Beings created from the lessons learned from reverse engineering the biological brain and who utilise the speed of computers naturally.
6) Humanimals. Human consciousness inhabiting the body of an animal, either natural or created.
7) Humandroids. Human consciousness inhabiting any physically mobile artifical device, be it body or vehicle.
8) Human^^ being. Where ^^ is a collective consciousness contributed to by numbers 3 through 7.
Humans may, from No.3 onwards, migrate seemlessly between states, and abilities.
It would seem that the concept of what is human is going to be pushed a long way. Also, clearly, that there will be a split within the various races of Humans.
The optimist would argue however, that very advanced Human consciousness, whether artifical, natural, or enhanced would be able to remove or negate the bad side of human nature, and become truly civilised. I live in hope, anyway!
Advances in social engineering, and in understanding human nature will ALSO advance at incredible rates, making it easier to allow people to be happy in their chosen role(s).
With wisdom, and good fortune, Humans will conquer the universe quite rapidly. They might not look anything like you or I, (unless they feel a bit nostalgic) or have much in common with us, except our curious nature, our nurturing, caring, inventive natures. Our love of life, and freedom, and family. |
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I sense much fear in you
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I'm a recent high school graduate, so I understand that I may or may not be on the same intellectual plane as many of the thinkers in this forum. Regardless, many of you seem very afraid of what Kurzweil is talking about, and I don't understand why. You seem to think that integration between humans and technology will turn us into a plague that has no emotion and coats the universe with the plaque of intelligence. And intelligence used to be such a positive word... It seems to me that if you stop thinking fearfully about what will go wrong and think creatively about how beautiful things could be you'll be much less, well, negative! I'm pretty convinced the singularity is a very real prediction, but even if it isn't the universe won't stop changing. If the singularity isn't the particular path that change will take, then so be it. But I hope you all won't be afraid of that too. I see a lot of "what will we use all of that computation and intelligence for?" How about learning to put away our weapons and live peacefully. Or lessening the required labor for sustaining life so that we don't have to work at least 40 hours a week. And in all that free time we'll use our computation and intelligence to make and enjoy art in all it's forms. An actual, feasible heaven because we could be more like souls living in harmony than fearful hateful animals. Of course it is only a possiblity and it's highly optimistic. But it seems to me with more power we would have to learn to be less destructive, or ourselves be destroyed. And less destruction doesn't sound like a humanless cancer to me. We could control the our surroundings in ways not even comprehendable, and if we didn't use that power for the classic "good" and our sheer entertainment we'd probably go extinct in a day. Now why would we do that? Where did the idea come from that we must lose everything good to fuse with technology? |
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Re: The Intelligent Universe - Dynamics
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Hi Ray and Board Users,
By way of introduction I am a neuroengineering grad student at Georgia Tech who is studying signalling dynamics in cultures of ~10,000 neurons using computational modeling, microscopy, and multi-electrode arrays.
I am currently assembling my thoughts on mind uploading and other similar neuroscience flights of fancy. I am finding that most authors typically ignore dynamics in thinking about the human brain.
While I find that Kurzweil's writing on the subject to be highly inspirational, I believe there are some errors in the description of the physical systems that if could corrected would make the arguments much more believeable.
The human brain is THE most complex (most information dense) object we have yet encountered in the Universe. So when Ray says that it has a manageable complexity, he is saying we can manage to understand any level of complexity in the Universe. While I would agree with this statement in principle, I don't think we are quite there yet.
The hardest part about understanding how the human mind works is going to be the mathematics. The physical description of the parts of the nervous system is becoming routine, but it is the description of the incredibly complex dynamics you find in even the simplest nervous systems that boggles our attempts to understand it.
There is going to have to be a revolution in the understanding of complex dynamical systems in order to fully understand how highly evolved biological nervous systems process information. I am confident this can be achieved, but it will be an intellectual accomplishment on the same scale as Newton's Principia. It is no mean feat, and will require a flash of genius that is only seen once in a generation, not just an increase in our technical abilities.
Once we have this understanding of the brain and complex dynamical systems in general, we really are on way to understanding any physical system we might encounter and any barrier to Spiritual Machines will be lifted.
A final note, please regard this as an advertisement for young mathematicians. Mathematical description of biological nervous systems are THE hardest problems you can find in applied mathematics and it is a wide open field.
I am a biologist trying to become a mathematician, but I realize that I may be outclassed by the problems I face. For those who have huge intellectual ambitions, this is the problem to be working on.
Best,
Peter |
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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All this 'scientific' discourse is really amusing on a number of levels. Firstly, the fact that it basically ignores all the great thinkers of consciousness from Heidegger to Merleau-Ponty and, secondly, because it fails to address any of the critiques Lyotard, Foucault and others have made of its supposed legitimacy.
It is rather ridiculous that Kurzweil has been accused of having an 'impoverished view of spirituality' when his thinking is so shamelessly theistic and dialectical. The blatant resurrection of the One (one consciousness, one intelligence saturating all space and time, etc.) is so awfully theistic has no right to claim itself as anything other than some kind-of mystical fiction. Reading Kurzweil and the other thinkers of Strong AI, one is confronted with extremely Hegelian (another thinker not mentioned anywhere) notions of 'rising' towards Absolute Spirit; notions so backwards and silly it is small wonder the topic hasn't been taken more seriously by the philosophical community at large (Badiou, Zizek, etc.).
In the Kurzweilian narrative humanity is exponentially progressing towards a 'Singularity' (a point beyond which nothing can be reliably conceived). Isn't this in fact nothing more than a tautology parading as scientific discourse that serves to legitimate such theological ideas as the One? Scientific, mathematical and/or technological events, like all events, are unpredictable, they don't follow the simple-minded teleology put-forth by Kurzweil, so in a sense, this 'singularity' could take-place tomorrow.
All of these articles and all of this chatter can essentially be boiled down to the claim that humanity is 'progressing' towards One Super Intelligence ... Yet, none of it makes an even slight advance towards solving the fundamental problems confronting Strong A.I. (proof of consciousness whatsoever, a definition of the subject, a software or mathematics that would make self-reflexivity possible, etc.) Furthermore, these backwards theistic dialectical ideas of progress (to move forward or develop to a higher, 'better', more advanced stage) which have been completely destabilized by philosophical postmodernism are so preposterously assumptive they warrant no well-reasoned criticism (Better??!! Positing a faster, more complex intelligence, with more information at its disposal does nothing in the way of addressing the consciousness of consciousness as such ' Nor does it explain this whole mystical assumption of better-ness).
I am believer that the technologies being celebrated here have the potential to answer some of the most profound questions imaginable, and am certainly open to the idea that this is the last generation of humans that will be biologically identical to those from 10,000 years ago, but all this backwards religiosity parading as science does nothing to help this goal.
One MUST contend with not only the poltical dimension implicit in the developement of technology, but its narrative dimension and what that narrative legitimates and privelges and for what reason it does this... None of this is addressed here. On top of that, as said earlier, all of the REAL attempts at defining subjectivity philosophically (outside of Hofstader ... like Deleuze, for example) are completely ignored here.
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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All this 'scientific' discourse is really amusing on a number of levels. Firstly, the fact that it basically ignores all the great thinkers of consciousness from Heidegger to Merleau-Ponty and, secondly, because it fails to address any of the critiques Lyotard, Foucault and others have made of its supposed legitimacy.
It is rather ridiculous that Kurzweil has been accused of having an 'impoverished view of spirituality' when his thinking is so shamelessly theistic and dialectical. The blatant resurrection of the One (one consciousness, one intelligence saturating all space and time, etc.) is so awfully theistic has no right to claim itself as anything other than some kind-of mystical fiction. Reading Kurzweil and the other thinkers of Strong AI, one is confronted with extremely Hegelian (another thinker not mentioned anywhere) notions of 'rising' towards Absolute Spirit; notions so backwards and silly it is small wonder the topic hasn't been taken more seriously by the philosophical community at large (Badiou, Zizek, etc.).
In the Kurzweilian narrative humanity is exponentially progressing towards a 'Singularity' (a point beyond which nothing can be reliably conceived). Isn't this in fact nothing more than a tautology parading as scientific discourse that serves to legitimate such theological ideas as the One? Scientific, mathematical and/or technological events, like all events, are unpredictable, they don't follow the simple-minded teleology put-forth by Kurzweil, so in a sense, this 'singularity' could take-place tomorrow.
All of these articles and all of this chatter can essentially be boiled down to the claim that humanity is 'progressing' towards One Super Intelligence ... Yet, none of it makes an even slight advance towards solving the fundamental problems confronting Strong A.I. (proof of consciousness whatsoever, a definition of the subject, a software or mathematics that would make self-reflexivity possible, etc.) Furthermore, these backwards theistic dialectical ideas of progress (to move forward or develop to a higher, 'better', more advanced stage) which have been completely destabilized by philosophical postmodernism are so preposterously assumptive they warrant no well-reasoned criticism (Better??!! Positing a faster, more complex intelligence, with more information at its disposal does nothing in the way of addressing the consciousness of consciousness as such ' Nor does it explain this whole mystical assumption of better-ness).
I am believer that the technologies being celebrated here have the potential to answer some of the most profound questions imaginable, and am certainly open to the idea that this is the last generation of humans that will be biologically identical to those from 10,000 years ago, but all this backwards religiosity parading as science does nothing to help this goal.
One MUST contend with not only the poltical dimension implicit in the developement of technology, but its narrative dimension and what that narrative legitimates and privelges and for what reason it does this... None of this is addressed here. On top of that, as said earlier, all of the REAL attempts at defining subjectivity philosophically (outside of Hofstader ... like Deleuze, for example) are completely ignored here.
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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I believe, there is a more powerful force behind. The force of perfection. This force drives all the other forces, to an end: the perfect mind. This "Perfect Mind" is no other than the "Mind of God".
I always remember a 60's movie in which an actor was put inside a time machine and sent to the future, millions of years from now...when this guy came out from the machine, he had a super developed brain and explained to the scientist that operated the machine that he had attained an understanding of everything and had reached ultimate peace.
When I say perfect, I say: a mind with all what we consider good. The bad is set aside in this path to perfectness. Bad is unstable, good is permanent and perfect.
Evolution is guided by this law also. The chemistry in the known universe is the same, ADN is the LIFE chemistry of all the Universe.
Carbon, is the perfect material, and is the main component of ADN, I heard we are entering in the Diamantine era, Diamond, (Carbon) is the perfect material.
Yo will see many new applicatinos of diamantine materials in the near future (Graphite structures for motors is an example).
So, life is a consequence of this chemistry, life is a Universal phenomena.
The life in the universe, as the most complex manifestation, is driven by this force of perfection.
And the Brain, has become a short cut in the evolution, it has attained the proper complexity very fast compared to the body evolution.
And the brain is subject to this force too. If you look at the evolution of man, from barbaric to the most elevated forms of his intelligence, you see a permanent drive to correct the path to perfection. Is like a control system with a set point but with low control gain. It osclllates and in the end is better.
I don't want to say we are now more perfect than several years ago, perhaps we are in an oscillation from the main path.
Any change in the evolution of the human mind , will also be attained in any other civilizations in the universe, before or after us.
Remember the Christ?, he represents one major step change in the human mind, the human mind acquired the comprehension of the Pardon and God's Mercy.
Before him, there was the Law of Talion and of a punishing God.
This divided history in two, B.C and A.C.
You might think then, that this will happen in all civilizations in the Universe, in one point of their evolution.
What will be the next major step?...
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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Ray, I don't know about the anthropic principles accouting for us being the only ascendant intelligent life at least within our light sphere. What about the notion that at some point of advancement, intelligent matter just hits the paradigm shift of ceasing to base itself on matter and leaves the constraints of the physical universe, it's laws and time, all behind just like other paradigm shifts you have already alluded to? I think when you get to this point in the speculation, you are basing it on too many assumptions. If some of those assumptions are changed, you get totally different results, I imagine. One big assumption is that we sufficiently understand what the universe is. What would you assume about whatever framework the universe and possible other parallel universes all perhaps exist within? Maybe this evolutionary progression of intelligence just goes up to some point where it needs to keep on going in some state or sense that is beyond this universe of ours, as we currently conceptualize it, at least.
Hope that is food for more thought and feedback from you, cause I'd be curious to hear it. |
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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I think sometimes too much effort is spent on trying to differentiate between biological life/intelligence, AI and non-living matter.
In fact the boundries are pretty grey, maybe they don't even exsist.
Biological life has evolved from natural selection but AI, although created by design, is going and will go through a process of natural selection, and only the 'fittest' will survive/succeed.
The most important difference between living and non-living, as stated in this discussion before, is that life decreases entopy. Now entropy overall, in a closed system, can not decrease. In fact the increase in entropy signifies the direction of time i.e. entropy will increase with time. But life decreases entropy around itself while increasing it elsewhere, like making cars (made by decreasing entropy) in factories who emit heat and smoke (entropy).
Death is increase in entropy. But again, entropy is based on the thermodynamic behaviour of particles in a system - which is governed by Heisenberg's uncertainity principle. So fluctuations of increase or decrease in entropy are possible. Given these fluctuations, even non-living matter is not totally non-living. It has occasional 'blips' of life - when enropy decreases randomly. And when you apply natural selection to these 'blips', some may become more elaborate and may start self-propagating, thus becoming more clearly living.
We can only live at the expense of something else.
As to the idea of an intelligent Universe, it is not possible if we consider the Universe as a closed system. If the whole Universe becomes intelligent, entropy would have decreased, but that's impossible in a closed system. Of course, the concept of access to other universes is a way out. |
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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I don't think that "saturating the universe with our intelligence" alludes maximum order in the universe (minimum entropy). We simply learn all there is to learn and explore every corner and master every possible ability. Since we will be using actual subatomic particles to store data, this could be the "saturation".
I actually have a religious theory about this. Living beings are inherently self propogating. We all want to keep our species alive. Its hard coded. Combined with intelligence, this gives us curiosity, because the smarter we are, the more likely we are to propogate (though many high school nerds would disagree). Curiosity makes us want to know everything. If we knew that, then we would inherently be all powerful. This power would allow our species to propogate without limit, until eventually we exist everywhere. These three traits (omniscience, omnipotence, and omniprescence) are defining characteristics of god, as an idea.
My theory is that we find these traits so desirable as a species that we spend our time filling the gap between our current state and the near infitity of those three concepts. So, we "project out" to near infinity those traits and the image that we see as god is nothing more than our desire to increase those things in our own species.
Just my two cp.
- Enosch |
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Re: The Intelligent Universe
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Is it possible that, We, the human race are the most evolved biologicals in the Universe. If this is true it is are duty to populate the Universe, terra-form planets, watch the galaxy grow, move beyond this galaxy, and ultimately create a big bang "baby" Universe.
To do this we must first understand the true nature of matter. Can matter be created through processes yet unknown, maybe solar, electro, thermal, photosythesis?
What is dark matter/energy? Is it compressed matter/light/engery from the processes of black holes? Is dark matter a falisy? |
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