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0 pointsben_w2y ago0 comments

I mildly disagree (although your final conclusion is correct: it indeed does nothing for science).

The deepest fundamental structures in the brain[0] are quantum fields, which are also the deepest fundamental structures in everything else.

There is no known quantum field of "soul" or "intelligence".

The right abstraction is higher, and could still be a whole lot of things; but as maths can be implemented in logic, which can be implemented in electronics or clockwork or hydraulics, it doesn't matter what analogy is used — and my mild disagreement here is that such inspiration has been useful and gotten us this far.

[0] that we know of

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mjburgess2y ago· 1 in thread

The process of evolution acts on organic systems, it doesn't act on quantum fields.

I appreciate there's some (imv strange) sense of 'intelligence' where 'finding the right puzzle piece' counts. I cannot fathom why we care about such a notion, and it seems to have almost nothing to do with what we do care about re 'intelligence'.

We care about that thing animals do, that thing which some do better than others. That thing which evolution brought about for (rapid) adaptive fitness to one's environment.

'Everything else is stamp collecting'

We already have a perfectly good understanding of puzzles and their solutions -- animals are their inventors

Intelligence isnt in the solution to a puzzle it's in its design, and especially, in what one does when one cannot solve it -- ie., how one adapts

The csci view of 'intelligence' is an act of self-aggrandising, it turns out to be: csci!

This is none-sense.

ben_wOP2y ago

We can simulate evolution in a computer, and this is used as a form of AI directly.

That said, the way you're using biological evolution in your comment sounds as much like a strange analogy as all of the others: we may have some genetically programmed responses to snakes (bad) and potential mates (good), but we can also say that a loss of hydraulic pressure in our brain is a stroke, and use electrical signals to both read from and write to the brain.

What we evolved to think, while interesting from a social perspective, seems to me like the least interesting part of our brains from an AI perspective — it's the bit that looks like a hard-coded computer program, not learning, on the scale of a human life and seen from within.

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