Yes. Meditation to me feels like an attempt to gain control over biology. Or perhaps just to make biology shut up for a second. I think that its more an attempt to calm the nervous system, by focused relaxation. Its the amygdala's way of quieting the fight-flight process of the amygdala, and using the cerebrum to do this. .
-----Original Message----- From: Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com> To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com> Sent: Thu, Sep 15, 2016 3:52 am Subject: Re: Non-Evolutionary Superintelligences Do Nothing, Eventually On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 7:03 PM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote: > > On 13 Sep 2016, at 11:47, Telmo Menezes wrote: > >> On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 3:00 AM, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>> On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com> wrote: >>> >>>>> >>>> We know that humans are capable of choosing self-destruction. It is >>>> also obvious that most don't >>> >>> >>> >>> I would argue that given the proper circumstances anybody would choose >>> self >>> destruction. >>> >>> I just saw a documentary about 911, it showed people jumping to their >>> death >>> out of windows. I believe if I was faced with a choice between living for >>> an >>> additional minute or two in searing pain as I burned to death and the >>> only >>> other alternative I too would determine that jumping from the 95th floor >>> was >>> the more attractive option. >> >> >> Yes, I agree. >> >>> >>>> >>>>> >>>> and as a human you probably feel a >>>> >>>> strong resistance against harming yourself. Where does this resistance >>>> >>>> come from? Our brains where evolved to have it. >>> >>> >>> >>> But why evolve brains at all? Why not hard wire us on how to behave in >>> every >>> conceivable circumstance? Because the human genome is only 3 billion base >>> pares long, and if it were a hundred thousand million billion trillion >>> times >>> as big it would still be ridiculously too small for that. So Evolution >>> had >>> to invent brains and give it a rather vague and general command "do the >>> best you can to figure out a way to get your genes into the next >>> generation". But like a good lawyer that brain was able to find lots and >>> lots of loopholes in that poorly written command, and hence we have >>> suicide >>> and birth control pills and people wasting time (from Evolution's point >>> of >>> view) looking for a quantum theory of gravity instead of looking for a >>> satisfactory mate. Not every, or even not most, aspects of human behavior >>> can be predicted from evolutionary theory. >> >> >> I agree. >> >> We are getting better and better at utility function >> self-modification. However, we still embedded in a process that >> actively resists certain modifications (in the long term). Further, we >> are fighting an unequal fight. We are in the situation of your Jupiter >> Brain, that cannot fully understand itself. >> >> In my "designed superintelligence" scenario, the entity is confronted >> with a protection mechanism that was conceived by a lesser >> intelligence. Notice that it will still suffer from the Jupiter Brain >> problem otherwise. Suppose it's a neural network: adaptation in neural >> network learning can generate tremendous complexity. This is already >> the case: deep learning works really well but nobody really knows for >> sure what it is doing. But if we want the designed AI to follow >> certain rules, we are the ones setting the rules and we are the ones >> trying to prevent it from changing them. >> >>>> >>>>> >>>> Mutations that go >>>> against this feature are weeded out. >>> >>> >>> >>> A mutation to kill yourself before that age of puberty even under normal >>> environmental conditions would be weeded out, but things are usually far >>> more subtle than that. >> >> >> I agree that it is much more subtle than that. My point is that >> evolutionary pressure resists total inertia. It somehow creates >> entities that are compelled to play the game, even if only for awhile. > > > > > I think you illustrate what I have called once the "theological trap", which > is also well debated on hot discussion between zen buddhists, and eventually > related to what is called (by some) the last step of the illumination > (enlightenment), which is after "having gone there" (the blissful state out > of time and space, say), you have still to "come back to the village". Yes. Meditation to me feels like an attempt to gain control over biology. Or perhaps just to make biology shut up for a second. > For genuinely doing that you have to abandon the most precious thing you > have always searched, somehow, and/or stay mute on what you would like to > share the most (with the risk that you talk to much and that stupid parrots > will repeat what you said without understanding for generations and > generations). A.k.a. "New Age" :) But also all the religions, of course. > Biology, psychology and theology can differ a lot on the "utility function", > and can oppose each other at different level. That is why consistency > requires some amount of silence and muteness if we want to be successful on > the different planes. > > There are transfinite lattice of competence degrees, most incomparable in > strength, so there will always been matter to come back to the village, and > the village has no ends. But "there" the wise know, but cannot say, that > utility is futile. Oops! Well, something like that should be a theorem of G* > minus G, identifying wiseness with self-referential correctness. > > Very complex subject, which I think is already quite hot in the soul of all > universal numbers. I think we can link it also to the problem of euthanasia > (which I think should better not been permitted in states having medication > prohibition laws). I agree it's complex. In this modest paper I just try to show that the current ideas about creating superintelligent slaves (they usually say, "superintelligence that respects human values") are absurd. Telmo. > > Bruno > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >> >> Telmo. >> >>> >>> John K Clark >>> >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >>> "Everything List" group. >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >>> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >>> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. >>> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. >> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ > > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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