> it would be true for aliens that one can get better at something by practicing
We get better by practicing only because of our brain's neuroplasticity, which one might argue, is a mechanism of adaptation, and thus a result of evolution. An intelligent life might have developed other ways of coping with change, and not necessarily through a neuroplastic brain, but for example, through an instant rewiring of the brain that doesn't require any practice.
The same can be said for justice, even though it might seem as a social construct, it's still rooted in our biology (emotions are still "physical" reactions in our body) and so an intelligent life might have developed a different biological system different than that of emotions.
> an intelligent life might have developed a different biological system
One theory is that some intelligences evolved the opposite to us. They started in pure silicon form and developed super-intelligence in the early stages and didn't evolve from carbon. They were /born/ computers and evolved from there into hyper-intelligence capable of exploring galaxies with Von Neumann probes[0]
> for example, through an instant rewiring of the brain that doesn't require any practice.
You might have an alien species that can copy the brain state of someone who already knows a task, or one that can gain skills extremely quickly through practice, but I don't think practice is going away. The fact that neural networks have been the only way we've been able to solve a lot of problems, which approximate the way that the human brain learns, is pretty strong evidence of this. You start out with some weights, you measure loss, you adjust weights, and then you try again.
Justice as an emotion might go away or exist in a different form, but the underlying reason why humans have a sense of justice is evolutionary psychology / game theory. Probably any life form which is shaped by evolutionary forces would have some similar instinct. (Certainly not all possible intelligent life forms though, I'd agree.)
(1) The examples he gives of "non-mathematical" concepts are pretty mathematizable. Randomized controlled testing -- mathematics can prove why this is a good idea. Occam's razor - usefulness can be formalized in the machine learning context. Different conceptions of justice, fairness, etc. can be modeled mathematically (at least certain aspects of them can), which helps one understand and distinguish them. (Examples: utilitarianism, equality of outcome versus equality of opportunity.)
(2) The question of "functionally equivalent" is interesting here. If an alien species accurately predicts the trajectory of a complex rocket, many of us would say they must be using math, because we know that our mathematics governs how rockets move. Even if they cannot communicate their method in a way we can understand. Economists sometimes use the phrase "as if", e.g. the alien acts "as if" they have a utility function, regardless of whether that's how they conceptualize their own action. Similarly. they would certainly act "as if" they had math and physics. But the question of whether that would imply they "do", I'm less sure of.
> I wouldn't want to bet that all intelligent beings would understand the concept of justice, but I wouldn't want to bet against it either.
Given that even people (loosely) in the same culture often disagree about what constitutes "justice" and use the term in mutually exclusive ways, we should definitely bet against the proposition that "all intelligent beings" understand it.
For a person to have an opinion about what constitutes justice is for them to demonstrate an understanding of the concept of justice (assuming their opinion is cogent). So, if people are disagreeing about what precisely justice is, it actually means that they do understand the concept of justice.
Tit-for-tat is a highly effective strategy when playing an iterated-prisoner's dilemma[0]... ie the "concept of justice" can emerge through natural selection if "intelligent beings" were forced to play such games on which their survival depends (a plausible model of "society").
> we should definitely bet against the proposition that "all intelligent beings" understand it
Hey, we can always claim that those who disagree with us are not intelligent.
I'm only partially joking. Lots of today's "justices" have so many internal contradictions that I feel like we should separate them into their own category.
PBS SpaceTime notes the fine structure constant (~1/137) is dimensionless and ubiquitous in physics. As a result, transmitting that ratio would be a good and clear indication we are intelligent enough to have at least that much physics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCSSgxV9qNw&t=564s
This might be better than mathematical constructs which conceivably do not require technology, "just" thought to discover.
Another good signal could be transmission at the frequently of free hydrogen times pi, or times e, or both.
The problem here is not even in the need to spend colossal amounts of energy to signal one's presence. The question is whether such advertising is a good idea if the civilization strives to survive; very likely it is not.
But this constant is an artifact of our symbolic encoding of universal properties. What reason is there to believe that alien civilizations would encode physics exactly as we do and would recover the same constant?
I think this discussion of convergent evolution is pretty interesting in context [0]. Namely, "intelligence" arises from natural-selection (ie from some non-intelligent predecessor that developed incrementally to better fit its environment)... and the process of natural-selection would necessarily lead to various commonalities between intelligent creatures that came to be independently.
PG's essay seems to (implicitly, not explicitly) compare between technologically-sophisticated intelligence - ie not between octopuses and humans, but between species that could at least communicate through inter-stellar distances, if not traverse them directly. If so, convergent evolution would have imposed even more onerous similarities between such species: to develop a radio-transmitter, intelligent creatures would also likely to have been very socially developed, or how else would they have been able to transform the resources around them to build a transmitter?
Therefore it is the physical world in which we live that most likely leads us to conceive "math" similarly... and even "justice." [1]
Perhaps a little off topic, but I have thought about this a bit: the type of consciousness and ways of acting in physical reality would probably be very different for digital vs. biology-based life. As strangely different alien biological life might be, true AI will be stranger, unless it is designed and evolves to emulate us in some sense.
I am reading the sci-fi book The Sea of Rust right now, that takes place on earth after AI’s have finally killed the last humans. In this fictional work, AIs take on human traits and I don’t find that “believable” even for sci-fi.
I disagree. "AI" even if it were to exist independently of humans or other pre-existing life still needs to process and dissipate energy in order to perpetuate itself... ie it needs to be "life" first. Intelligence requires the processing of information, and the processing of information requires energy.
For example, even if silicon-based AI replaced humans on earth, it would eventually [0] need to find a way to power itself / continue itself. Ultimately, it would have to revert to solving the same "problem of life"... how do we transform energy/entropy available in the environment into something that "perpetuates the system." When that happens, this AI will itself become subject to the forces of natural-selection, and - over a long enough period of time - naturally-selected traits will be re-aquired (even if such traits were "lost" during a human-to-AI hand-over).
[0] Yes, of course, there could be a very large period of time during which currently constructed energy infrastructure continues on... and this period could be measured in hundreds/thousands of years... very long in terms of human lifespans, but not in geological terms.
Indeed. Intelligent alien life is likely to have evolved out of other forms of life, so concepts as competition, survival, cooperation, are likely to be innate somehow (not necessarily in a conscious way). AI does not need to share that basis at all.
I really liked this essay. It poses some interesting questions, but it's short and it doesn't try to do too much.
There is overlap between pg's ideas and what in the classical tradition is called Natural Law Theory. PG may or may not be interested in drawing out the connection, but since he references Aristotle I have to believe he is at least aware of a touch point.
To give a distilled definition, Natural Law Theory is the application of the laws of nature to rational creatures.
In the context in which NLT developed, the only free rational creature was the human being. But both AI development, and concepts from evolution through natural selection, potentially allow us to apply aspects of the theory to different rational agents.
I chuckled at this one because one of the first things I was taught early in science class was that the root of "to invent" is latin "invenire", which translates to "to find", "to discover".
Kind of a humbling moment to realise we're not creating anything, merely too blind to see, groping in the dark for truths that lay out there for us to trip upon.
I appreciate what he is saying, but this also feels like the speech given at the beginning of a sci-fi/horror movie where you realize you’re completely wrong.
> The truths of mathematics would be the same, because they're true by definition. Ditto for the truths of physics
These are pretty strong statements for which there’s no arguments provided for but serve as assumptions for the rest of the article. I don’t think there’s consensus among mathematicians, philosophers, cognitive scientist, or biologists on this.
Mathematics is most definitely a human endeavor, and so we can’t really make claims about its existence in the universe independent of humans. I think alien analogs to mathematics are unlikely to match ours. If we are lucky, I think it could be the case that the various structures could be similar, but the likelihood the implementations resemble each other are slim. It’s even a stretch to assume the structures would relate. Even humans do not fully agree on mathematics. There is no “one” mathematics because mathematics is the human exploration of idealized objects using a variety of human logical systems.
And then there’s the possibility that our mathematics and overall perception of reality is shaped by our biology in far deeper ways than we imagine and currently understand.
> Mathematics is most definitely a human endeavor, and so we can’t really make claims about its existence in the universe independent of humans.
I think the idea is that math is not created by humans, but documented by humans. Sure, the specific terminology may be our invention, but there are basic mathematical properties that seem (from our perspective) like they should be universal. For example, whatever names a being has for the numbers 1 and 2, if you take that 1 and add 1 more, you must get 2 (or the "local equivalent") as the result.
My guess is that, if what we call math isn't truly universal, it's probably at least universally true within the realm of physical life, and there's likely some massive causal chain from the root properties of physics itself to the mathematical properties that we call "math". When it comes to raw, untethered "consciousness" (or whatever one would prefer to call it), this may not hold true even in the slightest.
Yes, this comment steps slightly outside what could ever be determined purely by the scientific method at the end. I feel it is useful to do so in discussion, even when that cannot directly enter into research. There are some truths to the larger universe that I don't think the scientific method will ever truly be able to uncover, just due to it's rigor. Some aspects of the universe are just simply not falsifiable, but they're still worthy of discussion with an open mind.
> I think alien analogs to mathematics are unlikely to match ours.
So aliens won't be able to count? They won't have a concept of zero? They won't have a concept of 1=successor(0)? I find this very, very hard to believe, and a lot of mathematics follows from the structure of the natural numbers.
If you accept evolution by natural selection is a universal law, then I think it naturally follows that ability to count must evolve. After all, it's pretty important to know whether there are 0, 1, or many predators/food/prey/enemies.
I think alien analogs to mathematics are unlikely to match ours.
Almost certainly not, but they're probably isomorphic. And either way if we show them our axioms they will be able to validate our mathematics and vice versa.
The truths of mathematics are of the form 'if A then B'. Even if they don't start at A or even accept A as true, but will should still get B if they assume A.
> Even humans do not fully agree on mathematics. There is no “one” mathematics because mathematics is the human exploration of idealized objects using a variety of human logical systems.
Maybe not in its entirety, but I find it hard to imagine that any civilization as advanced as ours (let's say a civilization that manages to harness nuclear fission, just to set a baseline) will not come up with concepts such as prime numbers, real number, complex numbers, calculus, etc. If they do that, they will inevitably find the same structures we found using function theory. They will know about differential equations and prove similar theorems about them as we did. And the Pythagorean theorem is a universal truth that holds everywhere.
The statement that "the truths of mathematics would be the same, because they are true by definition" is correct. Mathematics exist independently of biology or perception of reality. It is just a collection of arbitrary abstract definitions and what follows from them. The alien species may come up with different base definitions that they find more useful or interesting. But they would derive the same conclusions as we would if they were starting from the same definitions and applying the same abstract rules.
Isn't the basic math largely driven by attempts to understand and quantify the world around us? In such case, it depends on more universal concepts like distance, time, speed, acceleration etc. Concepts which I would imagine to be familiar to any intelligent being that takes a physical form. I can't imagine an alien wondering about a period of a pendulum and arriving at an answer that's really different from ours.
In any case, any model which includes infinity (and Peano arithmetic already does) is pure convention and unconsciously assumes a lot of things.
Finitary induction may make sense as something "universal". Further than that, we are making things up as we go (and I am a professional mathematician). The fact that they work to solve real problems does not make them more real.
I think mathematics could be defined as that part of philosophy which is self-evident and universal. The value of Pi isn't contingent?
Aliens may have different biochemistry, but it would be made from the same chemical elements as ours. Likewise their formal systems may be wildly different from ours, but they will still be based on form (even implication is ultimately a very simple formal structure. Math doesn't even require causality as a prerequisite!)
Last but not least. many people (Kurt Gödel among them) believe that mathematical thought is actually perception of real phenomenon in a "higher" plane of reality, which, if true, seems to me to imply that alien mathematicians would be perceiving the same phenomenon as humans, literally. In this view, the "truths of mathematics" are literally the same "objects" for them and for us.
> there’s the possibility that our mathematics and overall perception of reality is shaped by our biology in far deeper ways than we imagine and currently understand.
Almost certainly true. We as evolved creatures do not perceive objective reality, but only enough reality as to enable our ancestors to survive our very niche environment (niche relative to the entirety of the universe). Our science and mathematics model only our perceptions of reality, and not reality itself.
It is folly to assume that an alien, evolved along an entirely different set of initial conditions, would share our perceptions of reality. Our mathematics, modeling as it does our perceptions, serves human needs and perceptions only.
Fully agreed, the way I'd approach this would be that the said mathematical proofs about certain truths "by definition" rely on human logic as the main building block and substrate. Logic is a human basis of agreeing which seems necessary evolutionary. Counting and separating observable objects turned out to be quite necessary for survival as well. Hence this statement seems to imply that aliens would need to have a corresponding logic reasoning system and observational abilities. If that was the case perhaps there would be a strong inclination to believe that the isomorphic reasoning would be deduced.
> Mathematics is most definitely a human endeavor, and so we can’t really make claims about its existence in the universe independent of humans.
Can you give an example of a mathematical concept which could be different?
I believe that math is universal. We may use models to understand it (infinity, perfect circles, etc.), but the underlying mathematical truth is independent of humans. The same is true for science. There are physical laws which we look to discover. We use models in science to understand them, but the models are not the same as the underlying truth
While it's true that there's no consensus on this topic, that doesn't imply that people can't make claims one way or the other. In fact, the claims that the essay makes (Platonism) are very commonly made.
Somethings in mathematics are constant, both here and on alpha centauri, like the circumference of a circle divide by its diameter is Π or the hypotenuse squared is the sum of each leg squared in a right triangle etc.
> There is no “one” mathematics because mathematics is the human exploration of idealized objects using a variety of human logical systems.
But isn't the whole point to to do our best to bypass human-centric systems of understanding, and arrive at the "core truth" of the matter? Whether that's possible is another matter, but even if it's not possible, surely it's something that can be theoretically approached, and I would wager is precisely what PG means by "one mathematics."
> And then there’s the possibility that our mathematics and overall perception of reality is shaped by our biology in far deeper ways than we imagine and currently understand.
Yes, but also no. Consider some first principles:
-We have every reason to believe that any and all life would not live forever, or if the life in question is "intelligent" (a nebulous/human-centric term, for sure) would at the very least conceive of other things not lasting forever (such as stars, or even the universe itself [or, if you want to be really generous, "this current iteration of the universe"]).
-Therefore we can reasonably assume that all "intelligent" life in the universe would understand the concept of scarcity (either via finite lifespans/time, food/energy sources, both, or something else), non-infinity. I'd go so far as to say that any life form that doesn't understand its own mortality or other such limits should be not be considered "intelligent," at least for the reasons of this discussion.
-Therefore we can reasonably assume that said intelligent life would somehow conceptualize a binary state (you're either alive or you're not, you either have access to an energy source or you don't, etc), and consequently would somehow or another understand the concept of "zero," "nothing," etc, as well as its opposite, "something." And from there, would necessarily discern the differences between two states of "somethings" (the state of "something" that is "one" is different than the state of "something" that is "two").
I know I'm using a lot of loaded terms here -- "reasonably," "assume," "discerning" -- but just like we look for life by looking for the markers of life that we know were necessary for Earth (carbon, water, etc), we can look for intelligence that exhibits the properties that we understand it to have. We need some sort of frame of reference, after all, if we are to do anything other than simply flail. If that frame of reference is to be proven wrong, that's wonderful, but until that's the case, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that the universe's "primitives" would be perceived in any truly, truly different way such that the species' interpretation would cause humans to rethink our own understanding of the universe's "primitives" from the ground up.
After all, conceiving a difference between hydrogen and helium requires being able to tell the difference between one and two (electrons, as well as separate elements themselves). And considering we have every reason to believe that those make up the majority of the mass in the universe, any "intelligent" life (there's that human-centric term again) can be expected to somehow conceptualize that difference, and thus, do something like counting, and thus, approach the same primitives of mathematics that we do. The approach might be different, but what they're approaching -- the very fabric of reality, hopefully as objectively as possible -- must be assumed to be the same (again, that is, until we're given compelling evidence to believe otherwise).
That said, I've never studied the philosophy of mathematics, so I could be talking out of my ass here, this is just the reasoning of a layman after all. If anyone reads this and goes "no you're way off base," I'd love to hear it!
These beliefs you quoted from the article, which unfortunately most people don't even recognize as beliefs, form the basis of the dominant religion of the western world (scientism).
The worrying thing is that the majority of people who believe in this religion don't even realize they are believers.
In the late 1600s, Christian Huygens proposed that aliens would share our geometry (circles, spheres, etc) and even our rough musical ratios (like an octave is a doubling of frequency and a fifth is 3:2)
Music is an interesting one. There's a lot of subjectivity in the understanding of music, but there are some very basic principles that seem near-universal in human cultures at least. Octave equivalence, the consonance of small-number frequency ratios.
Presumably aliens wouldn't experience music the same way we do, especially if they don't have ears or physical bodies. But music itself might be interesting to them even if they don't really "get" it, due to the mathematical relationships involved. And they might have something analogous that we can't fully understand.
On the other hand it's also at least possible that aliens would understand our music perfectly well, and find it boring or atrociously bad due to our obliviousness to phase relationships, or the inherent out-of-tuneness of modern music, or how the tempo of the music is untethered from its pitch, or because our range of human hearing misses out on all the good stuff that happens above 15-20khz.
It's also worth thinking about the exact opposite of this, what truths are we least likely to share with aliens?
The beauty and importance of art and culture comes to mind, and so does humor and jokes. Try explaining, in scientific terms, what makes a joke funny, and the task turns out to be far harder than expected.
In addition to alien truth there are probably also alien games: ones so simple for their level of depth and enjoyment that you would expect them to be independently discovered. For example, Hex [1] is reasonably deep and has been invented at least twice. Go, with something like the Tromp-Taylor rules [2] might be as well? Probably not Chess, though!
What happens upon contact with aliens? I believe that to be an important question, and one look at the warfaring, fearful history of humankind makes it clear, as best said from the most reprehensible book on philosophy I have ever read:
"477. "If intelligent entities from other parts of the universe exist at similar or superior technological levels to ours, would they draw the same or at least similar philosophical conclusions to us?" That is a very good question. And my answer is this. They better f#%*ing do if they want to have any hope of withstanding our relentless, merciless onslaught."
These threads seem to invite lots of comments of the form "[I|someone I know of|both] [am|is|are] smarter than PG for xyz reasons". These can be interesting to read if you want to get into the nitty gritty.
But they don't often seem to engage with the overall point. In this case, I think that point is that there are probably local truths and universal truths, and wouldn't it be neat to focus on the universal ones, or figure out which ones are only locally true, and why? But who knows, that's just my interpretation.
>For example, I think we'd share the principle that a controlled experiment testing some hypothesis entitles us to have proportionally increased belief in it.
This isn't even a shared principle among humans. How many experiments does it take for you to have 50% belief in a hypothesis?. What is the number of experiments? It's literally impossible to answer. It's not even clear what "belief" is or what 50% means.
This ambiguity of the word isn't even the main problem. If I run the same experiment with perfect observational tools 10 billion times and it verifies my hypothesis. Does that raise my belief further? What if on the 10 billionth and first time the test shows a negative result? That literally invalidates the hypothesis. Keep in mind we are assuming my observational tools are perfect. Does this make my belief shoot down to zero?
If this possibility of a negative result remains true after any number of tests then what does it say about belief? Why should I believe anything if a single negative experiment can invalidate 10 billion positive experiments (assuming perfect observational tools of course)?
Let me bring a more concrete example. I hypothesize all zebras have stripes. I observe zebras 10 billion times. They all confirm my hypothesis. Then on the 10 billionth and first time I see a zebra with spots. My hypothesis is wrong. This can happen any time.
Anyway to bring it back to his point. Don't assume shared axiomatic truths. PG already assumed that it's shared among humans. He's wrong. The nature of science and the scientific method is not universally shared or even fully understood among humans. He's likely also wrong about aliens as he is about humans.
I already disagree here. Simplicity is a heuristic in the brain. Like all heuristics it helps you solve some problems easier, but behind the word stands the entire life experience of someone, and whatever is "simpler" depends on way too many human things in his life. "Simple" is something human. So is Occam's razor.
In the ancient Greece there was a tradition of studying math. To the outsiders it appeared as if a bunch of dudes in white robes studied triangles, but the inner circle studied the absolute truths that happened to be represented well by geometry. The Pythagora's triangle wasn't just a shallow numeric relationship to them, they saw the inner truth behind it.
> What should we call the search for alien truth? The obvious choice is "philosophy."
Minor nitpick, but the subfield of Epistemology (or Alien Epistemology) might be a better term. Literally the study of knowledge, or how we know what we know and what is true.
But trying to look at it from an alien (or AI) point of view is a really interesting thought experiment. What are universal truths in the literal sense of the word "universal"? And what are merely helio-centric cultural trends masquerading as universal truths.
I wonder if that's ever been done before. There's a little bit of discussion of it online, but not much it seems:
[+] [-] theboywho|3 years ago|reply
We get better by practicing only because of our brain's neuroplasticity, which one might argue, is a mechanism of adaptation, and thus a result of evolution. An intelligent life might have developed other ways of coping with change, and not necessarily through a neuroplastic brain, but for example, through an instant rewiring of the brain that doesn't require any practice.
The same can be said for justice, even though it might seem as a social construct, it's still rooted in our biology (emotions are still "physical" reactions in our body) and so an intelligent life might have developed a different biological system different than that of emotions.
[+] [-] vmoore|3 years ago|reply
One theory is that some intelligences evolved the opposite to us. They started in pure silicon form and developed super-intelligence in the early stages and didn't evolve from carbon. They were /born/ computers and evolved from there into hyper-intelligence capable of exploring galaxies with Von Neumann probes[0]
[0] https://futurism.com/von-neumann-probe
[+] [-] notshift|3 years ago|reply
You might have an alien species that can copy the brain state of someone who already knows a task, or one that can gain skills extremely quickly through practice, but I don't think practice is going away. The fact that neural networks have been the only way we've been able to solve a lot of problems, which approximate the way that the human brain learns, is pretty strong evidence of this. You start out with some weights, you measure loss, you adjust weights, and then you try again.
Justice as an emotion might go away or exist in a different form, but the underlying reason why humans have a sense of justice is evolutionary psychology / game theory. Probably any life form which is shaped by evolutionary forces would have some similar instinct. (Certainly not all possible intelligent life forms though, I'd agree.)
[+] [-] simonh|3 years ago|reply
How does the rewiring system know what the ideal end state is in advance, and how does the alien evaluate if the new state is fit for purpose?
I'm with you on justice though. A parasitic species might have a completely different view of rights and obligations than we do.
[+] [-] bo1024|3 years ago|reply
(2) The question of "functionally equivalent" is interesting here. If an alien species accurately predicts the trajectory of a complex rocket, many of us would say they must be using math, because we know that our mathematics governs how rockets move. Even if they cannot communicate their method in a way we can understand. Economists sometimes use the phrase "as if", e.g. the alien acts "as if" they have a utility function, regardless of whether that's how they conceptualize their own action. Similarly. they would certainly act "as if" they had math and physics. But the question of whether that would imply they "do", I'm less sure of.
[+] [-] randallsquared|3 years ago|reply
Given that even people (loosely) in the same culture often disagree about what constitutes "justice" and use the term in mutually exclusive ways, we should definitely bet against the proposition that "all intelligent beings" understand it.
[+] [-] garbagetime|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] songeater|3 years ago|reply
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#The_itera...
[+] [-] hbrn|3 years ago|reply
Hey, we can always claim that those who disagree with us are not intelligent.
I'm only partially joking. Lots of today's "justices" have so many internal contradictions that I feel like we should separate them into their own category.
[+] [-] rfreytag|3 years ago|reply
This might be better than mathematical constructs which conceivably do not require technology, "just" thought to discover.
[+] [-] nine_k|3 years ago|reply
The problem here is not even in the need to spend colossal amounts of energy to signal one's presence. The question is whether such advertising is a good idea if the civilization strives to survive; very likely it is not.
[+] [-] koyanisqatsi|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] songeater|3 years ago|reply
PG's essay seems to (implicitly, not explicitly) compare between technologically-sophisticated intelligence - ie not between octopuses and humans, but between species that could at least communicate through inter-stellar distances, if not traverse them directly. If so, convergent evolution would have imposed even more onerous similarities between such species: to develop a radio-transmitter, intelligent creatures would also likely to have been very socially developed, or how else would they have been able to transform the resources around them to build a transmitter?
Therefore it is the physical world in which we live that most likely leads us to conceive "math" similarly... and even "justice." [1]
[0] https://www.quantamagazine.org/arik-kershenbaum-on-why-alien...
[1] tit-for-tat being one of the best strategies to solve an infinitely-recurring prisoner's dilemma
[+] [-] mark_l_watson|3 years ago|reply
I am reading the sci-fi book The Sea of Rust right now, that takes place on earth after AI’s have finally killed the last humans. In this fictional work, AIs take on human traits and I don’t find that “believable” even for sci-fi.
[+] [-] songeater|3 years ago|reply
For example, even if silicon-based AI replaced humans on earth, it would eventually [0] need to find a way to power itself / continue itself. Ultimately, it would have to revert to solving the same "problem of life"... how do we transform energy/entropy available in the environment into something that "perpetuates the system." When that happens, this AI will itself become subject to the forces of natural-selection, and - over a long enough period of time - naturally-selected traits will be re-aquired (even if such traits were "lost" during a human-to-AI hand-over).
[0] Yes, of course, there could be a very large period of time during which currently constructed energy infrastructure continues on... and this period could be measured in hundreds/thousands of years... very long in terms of human lifespans, but not in geological terms.
[+] [-] gpvos|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jondeval|3 years ago|reply
There is overlap between pg's ideas and what in the classical tradition is called Natural Law Theory. PG may or may not be interested in drawing out the connection, but since he references Aristotle I have to believe he is at least aware of a touch point.
To give a distilled definition, Natural Law Theory is the application of the laws of nature to rational creatures.
In the context in which NLT developed, the only free rational creature was the human being. But both AI development, and concepts from evolution through natural selection, potentially allow us to apply aspects of the theory to different rational agents.
[+] [-] lloeki|3 years ago|reply
I chuckled at this one because one of the first things I was taught early in science class was that the root of "to invent" is latin "invenire", which translates to "to find", "to discover".
Kind of a humbling moment to realise we're not creating anything, merely too blind to see, groping in the dark for truths that lay out there for us to trip upon.
[+] [-] mikkergp|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bmitc|3 years ago|reply
These are pretty strong statements for which there’s no arguments provided for but serve as assumptions for the rest of the article. I don’t think there’s consensus among mathematicians, philosophers, cognitive scientist, or biologists on this.
Mathematics is most definitely a human endeavor, and so we can’t really make claims about its existence in the universe independent of humans. I think alien analogs to mathematics are unlikely to match ours. If we are lucky, I think it could be the case that the various structures could be similar, but the likelihood the implementations resemble each other are slim. It’s even a stretch to assume the structures would relate. Even humans do not fully agree on mathematics. There is no “one” mathematics because mathematics is the human exploration of idealized objects using a variety of human logical systems.
And then there’s the possibility that our mathematics and overall perception of reality is shaped by our biology in far deeper ways than we imagine and currently understand.
[+] [-] LocalH|3 years ago|reply
I think the idea is that math is not created by humans, but documented by humans. Sure, the specific terminology may be our invention, but there are basic mathematical properties that seem (from our perspective) like they should be universal. For example, whatever names a being has for the numbers 1 and 2, if you take that 1 and add 1 more, you must get 2 (or the "local equivalent") as the result.
My guess is that, if what we call math isn't truly universal, it's probably at least universally true within the realm of physical life, and there's likely some massive causal chain from the root properties of physics itself to the mathematical properties that we call "math". When it comes to raw, untethered "consciousness" (or whatever one would prefer to call it), this may not hold true even in the slightest.
Yes, this comment steps slightly outside what could ever be determined purely by the scientific method at the end. I feel it is useful to do so in discussion, even when that cannot directly enter into research. There are some truths to the larger universe that I don't think the scientific method will ever truly be able to uncover, just due to it's rigor. Some aspects of the universe are just simply not falsifiable, but they're still worthy of discussion with an open mind.
[+] [-] naasking|3 years ago|reply
So aliens won't be able to count? They won't have a concept of zero? They won't have a concept of 1=successor(0)? I find this very, very hard to believe, and a lot of mathematics follows from the structure of the natural numbers.
If you accept evolution by natural selection is a universal law, then I think it naturally follows that ability to count must evolve. After all, it's pretty important to know whether there are 0, 1, or many predators/food/prey/enemies.
[+] [-] dagw|3 years ago|reply
Almost certainly not, but they're probably isomorphic. And either way if we show them our axioms they will be able to validate our mathematics and vice versa.
The truths of mathematics are of the form 'if A then B'. Even if they don't start at A or even accept A as true, but will should still get B if they assume A.
[+] [-] mr_mitm|3 years ago|reply
Maybe not in its entirety, but I find it hard to imagine that any civilization as advanced as ours (let's say a civilization that manages to harness nuclear fission, just to set a baseline) will not come up with concepts such as prime numbers, real number, complex numbers, calculus, etc. If they do that, they will inevitably find the same structures we found using function theory. They will know about differential equations and prove similar theorems about them as we did. And the Pythagorean theorem is a universal truth that holds everywhere.
[+] [-] agent008t|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrianN|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] p0pcult|3 years ago|reply
https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/artificial-intelligenc...
Different truths that describe the same system.
[+] [-] exitb|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pfortuny|3 years ago|reply
In any case, any model which includes infinity (and Peano arithmetic already does) is pure convention and unconsciously assumes a lot of things.
Finitary induction may make sense as something "universal". Further than that, we are making things up as we go (and I am a professional mathematician). The fact that they work to solve real problems does not make them more real.
[+] [-] carapace|3 years ago|reply
Aliens may have different biochemistry, but it would be made from the same chemical elements as ours. Likewise their formal systems may be wildly different from ours, but they will still be based on form (even implication is ultimately a very simple formal structure. Math doesn't even require causality as a prerequisite!)
Last but not least. many people (Kurt Gödel among them) believe that mathematical thought is actually perception of real phenomenon in a "higher" plane of reality, which, if true, seems to me to imply that alien mathematicians would be perceiving the same phenomenon as humans, literally. In this view, the "truths of mathematics" are literally the same "objects" for them and for us.
[+] [-] rendall|3 years ago|reply
Almost certainly true. We as evolved creatures do not perceive objective reality, but only enough reality as to enable our ancestors to survive our very niche environment (niche relative to the entirety of the universe). Our science and mathematics model only our perceptions of reality, and not reality itself.
It is folly to assume that an alien, evolved along an entirely different set of initial conditions, would share our perceptions of reality. Our mathematics, modeling as it does our perceptions, serves human needs and perceptions only.
[+] [-] pattt|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dbsmith83|3 years ago|reply
Can you give an example of a mathematical concept which could be different?
I believe that math is universal. We may use models to understand it (infinity, perfect circles, etc.), but the underlying mathematical truth is independent of humans. The same is true for science. There are physical laws which we look to discover. We use models in science to understand them, but the models are not the same as the underlying truth
[+] [-] slibhb|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sovande|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rewgs|3 years ago|reply
But isn't the whole point to to do our best to bypass human-centric systems of understanding, and arrive at the "core truth" of the matter? Whether that's possible is another matter, but even if it's not possible, surely it's something that can be theoretically approached, and I would wager is precisely what PG means by "one mathematics."
> And then there’s the possibility that our mathematics and overall perception of reality is shaped by our biology in far deeper ways than we imagine and currently understand.
Yes, but also no. Consider some first principles:
-We have every reason to believe that any and all life would not live forever, or if the life in question is "intelligent" (a nebulous/human-centric term, for sure) would at the very least conceive of other things not lasting forever (such as stars, or even the universe itself [or, if you want to be really generous, "this current iteration of the universe"]). -Therefore we can reasonably assume that all "intelligent" life in the universe would understand the concept of scarcity (either via finite lifespans/time, food/energy sources, both, or something else), non-infinity. I'd go so far as to say that any life form that doesn't understand its own mortality or other such limits should be not be considered "intelligent," at least for the reasons of this discussion. -Therefore we can reasonably assume that said intelligent life would somehow conceptualize a binary state (you're either alive or you're not, you either have access to an energy source or you don't, etc), and consequently would somehow or another understand the concept of "zero," "nothing," etc, as well as its opposite, "something." And from there, would necessarily discern the differences between two states of "somethings" (the state of "something" that is "one" is different than the state of "something" that is "two").
I know I'm using a lot of loaded terms here -- "reasonably," "assume," "discerning" -- but just like we look for life by looking for the markers of life that we know were necessary for Earth (carbon, water, etc), we can look for intelligence that exhibits the properties that we understand it to have. We need some sort of frame of reference, after all, if we are to do anything other than simply flail. If that frame of reference is to be proven wrong, that's wonderful, but until that's the case, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that the universe's "primitives" would be perceived in any truly, truly different way such that the species' interpretation would cause humans to rethink our own understanding of the universe's "primitives" from the ground up.
After all, conceiving a difference between hydrogen and helium requires being able to tell the difference between one and two (electrons, as well as separate elements themselves). And considering we have every reason to believe that those make up the majority of the mass in the universe, any "intelligent" life (there's that human-centric term again) can be expected to somehow conceptualize that difference, and thus, do something like counting, and thus, approach the same primitives of mathematics that we do. The approach might be different, but what they're approaching -- the very fabric of reality, hopefully as objectively as possible -- must be assumed to be the same (again, that is, until we're given compelling evidence to believe otherwise).
That said, I've never studied the philosophy of mathematics, so I could be talking out of my ass here, this is just the reasoning of a layman after all. If anyone reads this and goes "no you're way off base," I'd love to hear it!
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] tambourine_man|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cloogshicer|3 years ago|reply
These beliefs you quoted from the article, which unfortunately most people don't even recognize as beliefs, form the basis of the dominant religion of the western world (scientism).
The worrying thing is that the majority of people who believe in this religion don't even realize they are believers.
[+] [-] dr_dshiv|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elihu|3 years ago|reply
Presumably aliens wouldn't experience music the same way we do, especially if they don't have ears or physical bodies. But music itself might be interesting to them even if they don't really "get" it, due to the mathematical relationships involved. And they might have something analogous that we can't fully understand.
On the other hand it's also at least possible that aliens would understand our music perfectly well, and find it boring or atrociously bad due to our obliviousness to phase relationships, or the inherent out-of-tuneness of modern music, or how the tempo of the music is untethered from its pitch, or because our range of human hearing misses out on all the good stuff that happens above 15-20khz.
[+] [-] miki123211|3 years ago|reply
The beauty and importance of art and culture comes to mind, and so does humor and jokes. Try explaining, in scientific terms, what makes a joke funny, and the task turns out to be far harder than expected.
[+] [-] jefftk|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hex_(board_game)
[2] https://senseis.xmp.net/?TrompTaylorRules
[+] [-] apriljest|3 years ago|reply
"477. "If intelligent entities from other parts of the universe exist at similar or superior technological levels to ours, would they draw the same or at least similar philosophical conclusions to us?" That is a very good question. And my answer is this. They better f#%*ing do if they want to have any hope of withstanding our relentless, merciless onslaught."
[+] [-] ifyoubuildit|3 years ago|reply
But they don't often seem to engage with the overall point. In this case, I think that point is that there are probably local truths and universal truths, and wouldn't it be neat to focus on the universal ones, or figure out which ones are only locally true, and why? But who knows, that's just my interpretation.
[+] [-] simonswords82|3 years ago|reply
Answering these questions is significantly harder - impossible given today's science.
This essay reads like the ramblings of a man who's smoked too much weed.
Paul should stick to tech start ups - if you want serious insight around science, space and the universe hit up people like Richard Feynman...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36GT2zI8lVA
[+] [-] deltasevennine|3 years ago|reply
This isn't even a shared principle among humans. How many experiments does it take for you to have 50% belief in a hypothesis?. What is the number of experiments? It's literally impossible to answer. It's not even clear what "belief" is or what 50% means.
This ambiguity of the word isn't even the main problem. If I run the same experiment with perfect observational tools 10 billion times and it verifies my hypothesis. Does that raise my belief further? What if on the 10 billionth and first time the test shows a negative result? That literally invalidates the hypothesis. Keep in mind we are assuming my observational tools are perfect. Does this make my belief shoot down to zero?
If this possibility of a negative result remains true after any number of tests then what does it say about belief? Why should I believe anything if a single negative experiment can invalidate 10 billion positive experiments (assuming perfect observational tools of course)?
Let me bring a more concrete example. I hypothesize all zebras have stripes. I observe zebras 10 billion times. They all confirm my hypothesis. Then on the 10 billionth and first time I see a zebra with spots. My hypothesis is wrong. This can happen any time.
Anyway to bring it back to his point. Don't assume shared axiomatic truths. PG already assumed that it's shared among humans. He's wrong. The nature of science and the scientific method is not universally shared or even fully understood among humans. He's likely also wrong about aliens as he is about humans.
[+] [-] machina_ex_deus|3 years ago|reply
I already disagree here. Simplicity is a heuristic in the brain. Like all heuristics it helps you solve some problems easier, but behind the word stands the entire life experience of someone, and whatever is "simpler" depends on way too many human things in his life. "Simple" is something human. So is Occam's razor.
[+] [-] akomtu|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SkyMarshal|3 years ago|reply
Minor nitpick, but the subfield of Epistemology (or Alien Epistemology) might be a better term. Literally the study of knowledge, or how we know what we know and what is true.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/
But trying to look at it from an alien (or AI) point of view is a really interesting thought experiment. What are universal truths in the literal sense of the word "universal"? And what are merely helio-centric cultural trends masquerading as universal truths.
I wonder if that's ever been done before. There's a little bit of discussion of it online, but not much it seems:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22alien%20epistemology