2 replies to this topic

[bacopa]

After reading some of Kurzweils 'The Age of Spiritual Machines,' some questions came to mind.

Regarding consciousness and thinking in general: Would a smarter being than us think in the same basic way we do, using basic cause and effect that we would call logic, and if not what would be the differences?

I wonder if there are beings out there or one's which we could manufacture that could experience states of mind like enjoyment to a greater degree than us, Pearce's Hedonist Imperative mentions cognitive states far beyond anything known to us in our non-enhanced brains, it makes sense to me that one day we'll have all sorts of ways of enhancing sensory awareness, nano-chips, engineered future drugs, and bio-tech enhancements...I wonder what it would be like to experience feelings stronger and even more subtle than feelings we experience now.

Why haven't we heard from other civilizations as stated in Dvorsky's article Not the Final Frontier... could the 'Rare Earth Hypothesis' be true?

And in general I'm always curious if intelligence, general intelligence that we have over other animals, is a universal or, if unique only to our species how could it possibly be different from other types of intelligences? If someone could give a good argument for this that would be great!

[ocsrazor]

Quick response D:

In terms of general intelligence, the way biological brains abstract and use information is probably guided by the basic physical principles of the universe. These fundamental properties are probably at work in all systems, but we DO NOT use logic for the majority of our thought (logic is a VERY late arrival in our intellectual toolboxes). Our artificial computational systems do use logic, but biological systems are probably using statistical abstraction and filtering. The likely difference between us and a greater than human intelligence, is the ability of that intelligence to choose to use different modes of thought in order to make the fastest computations necessary for a given problem, question, task, etc. We use statistical methods because biological systems must react quickly and robustly within a given time window to survive, a more advanced intelligence may use a combination of methods given different constraints.

Embodiment is tightly tied to our sense of enjoyment, so while I definitely think an enhanced intelligence would have greater control of its pleasure/pain and more subtle feedback systems, that would have to also involve controlling the state of the 'body' the intelligence was embedded in.

My personal best guess based on systems theory thinking is that Rare Earth Hypothesis is probably bunk, that near-intelligent life is incredibly prevalent in the universe, but also that we are incredibly unlikely to hear from them because they will have little reason to communicate with us. The incredibly rapid pace of technological advance by a civilization with a greater capability than ours will make communicating with us pretty much pointless. I tend to agree with John Smart that we may be headed inward, not outward, and that this is the likely path for intelligent societies which don't destroy themselves.

Best,
Peter

[bacopa]

thanks that was a thourough and quite detailed response to my questions. From what I've been reading it seems that heading inward is the best way we can control the survival of our species once we become intelligent and organized enough to live much better in some ways than we presently do. Kurzweil makes predictions in his book all the way up to 2099 and he incorporates ideas of humans upgrading their minds through nano chips wired directly to our neural pathways that serve as databases for memory, learning, reasoning, and pleasure.

Also the virtual environments, and virtual learning he talks of give great hope to our continued intellectual progress far beyond what we have now. I guess if we can maintain to upgrade ourselves and advance sufficiently than we may one day be ready to communicate with species far more advanced, maybe even exponetnailly according to the law of accelerating returns, than us.