On Dec 9, 2007, at 3:05 PM, Ed Porter wrote:
John,
What I found most interesting in the article, from an AGI
standpoint, is the evidence our brain is wired for explanation and
to assign a theory of mind to certain types of events. A natural
bias toward explanation would be important for an AGI’s credit
assignment and ability to predict. Having a theory of minds would
be important for any AGIs that have to deal with humans and other
AGIs, and, in many situations, it actually makes sense to assume
certain types of events are likely to have resulted from another
agent with some sort of mental capacities and goals.
Why to you find Dawkin’s so offensive?
I have heard both Dawkins and Sam Harris preach atheism on Book TV.
I have found both their presentations interesting and relatively
well reasoned. But I find them a little too certain and a little
too close-minded, given the lack of evidence we humans have about
the big questions they are discussing. Atheism requires a leap of
faith, and it requires such a leap from people who, in general,
ridicule them.
A leap of faith is precisely what it DOES NOT require. It does
require a leap of faith to proclaim that there is a God. That is
part of their point.
I personally consider knowing whether or not there is a god and, if
so, what he, she, or it is like way above my mental pay grade, or
that of any AGI likely to be made within the next several centuries.
You don't know if there is an invisible pink unicorn in the room but I
doubt you would claim it is above your mental pay grade to deny such
without very strong evidence. So why the reticence over something
much more fantastic that the invisible unicorn? This seems a very
fine question.
But I do make some leaps of faith. As has often been said, any AI
designed to deal with any reasonably complex aspect of the real
world is likely to have to deal with uncertainty and will need to
have a set of beliefs about uncertain things.
It will need a probability matrix about such things but this is not
any sort of leap of faith.
My leaps of faith include my belief in most of the common-sense
model of external reality my mind has created (although I know it is
flawed in certain respects). I find other humans speak as if they
share many of the same common sense notions about external reality
as I do. Thus, I make the leap of faith that the minds of other
humans are in many ways like my own.
What? It is certain the minds of other humans are much like your own
since you are of the same species. Where is there any necessary leap
of faith there?
Another of my basic leaps of faith is that I believe largely in the
assembled teachings of modern science, although I am aware that many
of them are probably subject to modification and clarification by
new knowledge,
That knowledge is contextual and growing as we gain new abilities and
facts in no way necessitates any "leap of faith" that its results to
date are valid. To see it otherwise seems to require a very strange
epistemology perhaps warped by notions of religious revelation of
"absolute Truth".
just as Newtonian Physics was by the theories of relativity. I
believe that our known universe is something of such amazing size
and power that it matches in terms of both scale any traditional
notions of god.
I see no direct evidence for any spirit beyond mankind (and perhaps
other possible alien intelligences) that we can pray to and that can
intervene in the computation of reality in response to such
prayers. But I see no direct evidence to the contrary -- just a
lack of evidence.
No evidence means that you have no rational basis for entertaining
such a possibility whatsoever. So what are you doing exactly? Why
would such a powerful Being care to rearrange parts of the universe
due to your pleadings anyway?
I do pray on occasion. Though I do not know if there is a God
external to human consciousness that can understand or that even
cares about human interests, I definitely do believe most of us,
myself included, underestimate the power of the human spirit that
resides in each of us.
How does underestimate the human spirit lead you to pray to you know
not what that you doubt exists and/or is interested and that you have
utterly no evidence for? Are you hedging in some odd way or what?
And I think as a species we are amazingly suboptimal at harnessing
the collective power of our combined human spirits.
So? How does this connect?
- s
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