annotate org/comprehend-singularity.org @ 83:0653ed4b00a3

learning to teleport.
author Robert McIntyre <rlm@mit.edu>
date Tue, 31 Dec 2013 11:29:49 -0500
parents eae81fa3a8e0
children
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rlm@31 1 #+title: The Singularity might be Understandable after all.
rlm@31 2 #+author: Robert McIntyre
rlm@31 3 #+email: rlm@mit.edu
rlm@31 4 #+description:
rlm@31 5 #+keywords:
rlm@31 6 #+SETUPFILE: ../../aurellem/org/setup.org
rlm@31 7 #+INCLUDE: ../../aurellem/org/level-0.org
rlm@31 8
rlm@31 9
rlm@31 10 People like Ray Kurzeweil think that eventually, it will become
rlm@31 11 impossible to understand what the entities of the future will be
rlm@31 12 thinking, and their actions will be inscrutable, since their minds are
rlm@31 13 so much more complicated than ours. The idea is that the Minds of the
rlm@31 14 future will be to us as we are to ants.
rlm@31 15
rlm@31 16 But if you search through the space of all possible programs with the
rlm@31 17 goal of coming up with one that describes something in the world, you
rlm@31 18 will find some common patterns no matter what type of mind you
rlm@31 19 have. Things like addition, concatentation, recursion, and induction
rlm@31 20 are all easy and immediate to find, and you will find them almost no
rlm@31 21 matter what way you search through program-space. In the world of
rlm@31 22 stories and language, these translate to simple patterns like revenge,
rlm@31 23 phyrric victory, success, failure, etc. The pricinple of simplicity
rlm@31 24 must be a driving, universal aesthetic force, since without it Minds
rlm@31 25 wouldn't be able to manange their own hardware and software, and would
rlm@31 26 not be able to grow.
rlm@31 27
rlm@31 28 So, far in the future, when synthetic life rules the stars, it is
rlm@31 29 likely that their behavour will still be describable in the simplistic
rlm@66 30 terms of the human stories of old.