Entries from August 2009 ↓

I just finished reading Global Brain. There were lots of parts deserving of comment, but I wouldn’t really be adding anything to the discussion except saying “Look, THIS” and pointing at quotes. Suffice to say, I think it’s worth reading (and if anybody wants to borrow it, they are welcome to – it’s actually quite short, since the book is essentially half references and notes).

Anyhow, there was one part that resonated with me that was related to my attempt to be open and honest about certain aspects of my life, which is unfortunately in conflict with what the law deems to be true. This particular piece is discussing a Baptist town in New York State which is fervently against this “era’s godless sins”, and how the reality was that most individuals indulged in those same sins to their holy shame, assuming that they were the only transgressors:

“How completely the annointed had commandeered collective perception became apparent when Schanck asked the closet dissenters how other people in the community felt about face cards, liquor, a smoke, and levity. Hoodwinked by suppression, each knew without a doubt that he was the sole transgressor in a saintly sea. He and he alone could not control his demons of depravity. None had the faintest inkling that he was part of a silenced near-majority.

Here was an arch lesson in the games subcultures play. reality is a mass halucination. We gauge what’s real according to what others say. And others, like us, rein in their words, caving in to timidity. Thanks to conformity enforcement and to cowardice, a little power goes a long, long way.”

Obviously that’s an extreme version of the issue I’m obtusely referring to, since within our personal groups there is openness about these things. But to go beyond that, and announce it to your work colleagues is to risk job loss. However, without facing that risk, we are buying in to the validity of those laws. I don’t suggest anyone do so, but it’s a difficult catch 22 situation to be in.

I just finished reading Global Brain. There were lots of parts deserving of comment, but I wouldn't really be adding anything to the discussion except saying "Look, THIS" and pointing at quotes. Suffice to say, I think it's worth reading (and if anybody wants to borrow it, they are welcome to - it's actually quite short, since the book is essentially half references and notes). Anyhow, there was one part that resonated with me that was related to my attempt to be open and honest about certain aspects of my life, which is unfortunately in conflict with what the law deems to be true. This particular piece is discussing a Baptist town in New York State which is fervently against this "era's godless sins", and how the reality was that most individuals indulged in those same sins to their holy shame, assuming that they were the only transgressors: "How completely the annointed had commandeered collective perception became apparent when Schanck asked the closet dissenters how other people in the community felt about face cards, liquor, a smoke, and levity. Hoodwinked by suppression, each knew without a doubt that he was the sole transgressor in a saintly sea. He and he alone could not control his demons of depravity. None had the faintest inkling that he was part of a silenced near-majority. Here was an arch lesson in the games subcultures play. reality is a mass halucination. We gauge what's real according to what others say. And others, like us, rein in their words, caving in to timidity. Thanks to conformity enforcement and to cowardice, a little power goes a long, long way." Obviously that's an extreme version of the issue I'm obtusely referring to, since within our personal groups there is openness about these things. But to go beyond that, and announce it to your work colleagues is to risk job loss. However, without facing that risk, we are buying in to the validity of those laws. I don't suggest anyone do so, but it's a difficult catch 22 situation to be in.

I’ve recently been rereading Howard Bloom’s Global Brain. A book I originally read in my second year of university. The first time, I found it incredibly interesting and it became a running joke with my girlfriend at the time about me saying “Global brain this! Global brain that!”. Anyhow, suffice to say, I felt it was influential to my intellectual life and wanted to revisit it with the wisdom of 8 more years (the other two major books that influenced me being Michio Kaku’s Hyperspace and his later book Visions, which I may reread and possibly summarise here).

One serendipidous clash of ideas that occurred recently was me stumbling across the triangle of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. For those that haven’t come across this pyramid before, it’s a frequently mentioned model for representing the psychology of human motivation. What it purports to show is that the higher level desires only really manifest once the lower needs are met. So at the very lower level we have physiological needs like breathing, water and food, and at the level above that we have the need for safety, and then social needs. In other words, it’s very hard to be concerned about whether you’ve got a date this weekend if you can’t breath right now! If you’re interested in more detail about what falls in each level, check out Wikipedia as I’m going to move on and connect this to something Bloom talks about in Global Brain…

Basically, Bloom talks about the rise of systems with ever more complexity and the sharing of information. From self-assembling molecules that pre-dated life, all the way to the internet. Bloom points to 5 or 6 characteristics of these complex adaptive systems that lead to them evolving and proliferating. Two of these characteristics are conformity enforcers and diversity generators.

Conformity enforcers are things that ensure the system maintains coherence. It’s why all our cells work together and why we kill off foreign bodies (since they don’t conform to the antigen mould expected by cells of the ‘self’) and why conservative society frowns on errant behaviour.

Diversity generators allow a system to try out new ideas, and often a certain amount of diversity is needed for a system to actually properly manifest itself. Since after all, despite our cells having essentially identical DNA, they differentiate into physiologically different forms. Likewise, in human society, we all specialise… even in the most conservative of cultures.

My hypothesis is, that the ratio of diversity to conformity in human society is related to the fulfilment of individual’s hierarchy of needs. A bias towards lower levels will lead to a pressure for conformity, whereas a large number of society’s members reaching the level of self-actualization leads to individuals following more independent and unique paths.

However, that’s all well and good, but since adaptive systems need conformity to retain coherence, many societies enforce or promote a deficiency in one of these needs, in effect inhibiting self-actualization.

For example, institutions such as religion instill a inferiority complex: e.g. you are born with original sin putting in a firm block at the ‘esteem’ level. Many others try to convince it’s practioners to refrain from sex except under particular conditions or circumstances, making it difficult to even go beyond the first physiological level without first meeting these conditions.

Sparta was one of the greatest conformity enforcing societies (see Global Brain for details) and was able to push it’s citizens to the very bottom of the triangle. They were deprived of food growing up and forced to steal (all part of the training). My hypothesis does fall down a bit (as does Maslow’s hierarchy) as the Spartans apparently did have some higher needs such as sociality and esteem met. They were essentially a big gang, and considered the people of the societies they ruled over as inferior.

Global Brain frequently compares Sparta and Athens as opposing ends of the conformity vs. diversity balance. One of the things that lead me to the hypothesis was that, in Athens – the diversity king, individuals had a wealth of choice. They could find the group they fit in best and there was plenty of potential to explore new ideas, both of which I’d consider major aspects of self-actualization.

I've recently been rereading Howard Bloom's Global Brain. A book I originally read in my second year of university. The first time, I found it incredibly interesting and it became a running joke with my girlfriend at the time about me saying "Global brain this! Global brain that!". Anyhow, suffice to say, I felt it was influential to my intellectual life and wanted to revisit it with the wisdom of 8 more years (the other two major books that influenced me being Michio Kaku's Hyperspace and his later book Visions, which I may reread and possibly summarise here). One serendipidous clash of ideas that occurred recently was me stumbling across the triangle of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. For those that haven't come across this pyramid before, it's a frequently mentioned model for representing the psychology of human motivation. What it purports to show is that the higher level desires only really manifest once the lower needs are met. So at the very lower level we have physiological needs like breathing, water and food, and at the level above that we have the need for safety, and then social needs. In other words, it's very hard to be concerned about whether you've got a date this weekend if you can't breath right now! If you're interested in more detail about what falls in each level, check out Wikipedia as I'm going to move on and connect this to something Bloom talks about in Global Brain... Basically, Bloom talks about the rise of systems with ever more complexity and the sharing of information. From self-assembling molecules that pre-dated life, all the way to the internet. Bloom points to 5 or 6 characteristics of these complex adaptive systems that lead to them evolving and proliferating. Two of these characteristics are conformity enforcers and diversity generators. Conformity enforcers are things that ensure the system maintains coherence. It's why all our cells work together and why we kill off foreign bodies (since they don't conform to the antigen mould expected by cells of the 'self') and why conservative society frowns on errant behaviour. Diversity generators allow a system to try out new ideas, and often a certain amount of diversity is needed for a system to actually properly manifest itself. Since after all, despite our cells having essentially identical DNA, they differentiate into physiologically different forms. Likewise, in human society, we all specialise... even in the most conservative of cultures. My hypothesis is, that the ratio of diversity to conformity in human society is related to the fulfilment of individual's hierarchy of needs. A bias towards lower levels will lead to a pressure for conformity, whereas a large number of society's members reaching the level of self-actualization leads to individuals following more independent and unique paths. However, that's all well and good, but since adaptive systems need conformity to retain coherence, many societies enforce or promote a deficiency in one of these needs, in effect inhibiting self-actualization. For example, institutions such as religion instill a inferiority complex: e.g. you are born with original sin putting in a firm block at the 'esteem' level. Many others try to convince it's practioners to refrain from sex except under particular conditions or circumstances, making it difficult to even go beyond the first physiological level without first meeting these conditions. Sparta was one of the greatest conformity enforcing societies (see Global Brain for details) and was able to push it's citizens to the very bottom of the triangle. They were deprived of food growing up and forced to steal (all part of the training). My hypothesis does fall down a bit (as does Maslow's hierarchy) as the Spartans apparently did have some higher needs such as sociality and esteem met. They were essentially a big gang, and considered the people of the societies they ruled over as inferior. Global Brain frequently compares Sparta and Athens as opposing ends of the conformity vs. diversity balance. One of the things that lead me to the hypothesis was that, in Athens - the diversity king, individuals had a wealth of choice. They could find the group they fit in best and there was plenty of potential to explore new ideas, both of which I'd consider major aspects of self-actualization.

Last night I had a wistful musing about starting a political party in New Zealand, due to my constant annoyance of my perception of everyone in parliament treading the line and being too paralysed/cynical/stupid to really change anything. Tatjna made the insightful comment that this is naturally what happens when people enter politics, entering with high ideals and wanting to change the world, but gradually having to compromise while working at small changes to the original goal ends up diluting that former grand goal.

When I was 19 I wanted to start a political party. Yeah, at the time, I mostly I thought it’d be a hoot. I wasn’t at all political (except for the general bafflement at politician’s idiocy at times), and I wasn’t one of those students that joined the clubs of other political parties. I did once run for student president at Canterbury University, except that was also a joke campaign: “1 of 5 New Zealanders have a mental illness, and I’m representing them”, “I will fight off pirates with my l33t ninja skillz”… a whole 100 people voted for me! Which surprised me, given that I didn’t even know 100 people and not everyone who was my friend was comfortable voting for my madness.

However, I still have those thoughts about starting a party. And then I also thought, “Hey! I also know a lot of intelligent and sometimes outspoken people who’ve got personal campaigns of things they want changed”. So maybe I will, after all. What would be my stance be on various topics? Well, I’d have to think about it some more, but generally, I will have a number of wild, outlandish ideas so that on the off chance I did get in, and even if politics diluted my idealism, one of those wild ideas might filter through…

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Last night I had a wistful musing about starting a political party in New Zealand, due to my constant annoyance of my perception of everyone in parliament treading the line and being too paralysed/cynical/stupid to really change anything. Tatjna made the insightful comment that this is naturally what happens when people enter politics, entering with high ideals and wanting to change the world, but gradually having to compromise while working at small changes to the original goal ends up diluting that former grand goal. When I was 19 I wanted to start a political party. Yeah, at the time, I mostly I thought it'd be a hoot. I wasn't at all political (except for the general bafflement at politician's idiocy at times), and I wasn't one of those students that joined the clubs of other political parties. I did once run for student president at Canterbury University, except that was also a joke campaign: "1 of 5 New Zealanders have a mental illness, and I'm representing them", "I will fight off pirates with my l33t ninja skillz"... a whole 100 people voted for me! Which surprised me, given that I didn't even know 100 people and not everyone who was my friend was comfortable voting for my madness. However, I still have those thoughts about starting a party. And then I also thought, "Hey! I also know a lot of intelligent and sometimes outspoken people who've got personal campaigns of things they want changed". So maybe I will, after all. What would be my stance be on various topics? Well, I'd have to think about it some more, but generally, I will have a number of wild, outlandish ideas so that on the off chance I did get in, and even if politics diluted my idealism, one of those wild ideas might filter through... First, I'll be honest - I don't fucking care if this isn't the way of things now. Ask me about my life and I'll answer it with the truth. If the public can't handle that, then they need to grow up. I'll also swearand insult the public when they deserve it (as demonstrated above). But that'd okay, because nobody is actually "the public", so no one will get hurt. We're all unique, just like everyone else, and I'll get to vent my frustration, thus it's a win-win situation. I'll tell other politicians they're idiots when they act like idiots (I was going to link each word of this sentence to examples of idiocy, but then I realised I didn't want to waste my time on other people's idiocy). I'll frequently change my mind. I'm a human being, and I'm also open-minded. That means that my opinions and thoughts are not set in stone. If a reporter asks me why my stance has changed, I'll say "Because I'm human, not a list of policy decisions". Okay, so none of the above are actual campaign positions. So perhaps I should share some of those: - Universal living allowance: everybody has the right to shelter and food. I don't care if your parents earn too much money, I won't penalise you while going to university for having "rich" parents. I have friends that got through University on a student allowance - whereas I got a $55k student loan. Although I received some support from my parents, I didn't receive the amount some of my friends received. This isn't just meant to be in terms of University though, it's essentially a replacement for the dole. I also believe that people naturally want to work or do something, and although some people may take advantage of not having to work, the living allowance would be for subsistence only. - Larger investment in technology. Real technology too. Stop focussing on value-added agriculture, instead focus on a knowledge and future-tech economy. Lots of smart people want to come to New Zealand, but we don't have enough interesting jobs to bring them here (I'm not saying that there are no interesting jobs, but I sometimes get envious of the crazy projects my friends get to work on, despite working on AI myself). This wouldn't be much of a problem if people could look beyond a 5 year time frame (for things other than climate change, where I've seen some research papers make ridiculous 100 year projections - it was ridiculous enough when I projected 80 years into the future for a biometeorology paper I wrote). - Abolish antiquated copyright and IP law. Record companies won't be able to sue individuals for millions of dollars just for sharing mp3s online. Companies won't be able to patent genes that exist in nature (and we'll ignore the gene patents of other countries). - Drug reform - drug prohibition does more harm than good. It gives money to criminals (and removes a large taxable income), takes a large amount of policing effort that could be targeting crimes that actually have victims, makes successful and productive members of society criminals (purely from wanting to have the freedom to put what they want in their body), makes the act of taking drugs more dangerous due to them being unregulated (you've got no idea what you are taking because criminals control the quality). I'm well aware that I don't know all the factors in all these issues. But that's why I wrote the above about my opinion changing. I'm a human, not a list of policies.

A friend of mine, JMM knew that I’ve been funded in the past by SIAI to work on OpenCog, so he asked the following question:

“The Singularity Institutes “main purpose” is meant to be to investigate whether a recursively improving intelligence can maintain “friendliness” towards human kind. “

Okay, but my standpoint is: Why does the recursively improving intelligence need to be non-human? It seems counter-intuitive to me to devolve this power to something outside of ourselves – and also a bit like we’re just trying vainly to become a kind of God, creating another type of being.

I think the main reason there is a focus on AI rather than improvement of human intelligence is because it’s so damn hard to do experiments on people’s brains. It’s ethically difficult to justify various experiments, and it only gets harder as things become more regulated (and rightfully so for the most case). I think they’ll definitely be continuing research into this stuff though. For myself, occasionally taking Modafinil enhances my productivity significantly (so long as I maintain focus on what I’m meant to be doing, it’s easy to get enthralled with something that interests me, but isn’t related to my work).

But there’s no exclusion of human intelligence amplification from the singularity concept. If we create smarter humans, then this begets even smarter humans. Again we can’t really predict what those enhanced “humans” would do, because they are a significant step smarter than us.

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A friend of mine, JMM knew that I've been funded in the past by SIAI to work on OpenCog, so he asked the following question: "The Singularity Institutes "main purpose" is meant to be to investigate whether a recursively improving intelligence can maintain "friendliness" towards human kind. " Okay, but my standpoint is: Why does the recursively improving intelligence need to be non-human? It seems counter-intuitive to me to devolve this power to something outside of ourselves - and also a bit like we're just trying vainly to become a kind of God, creating another type of being. I think the main reason there is a focus on AI rather than improvement of human intelligence is because it's so damn hard to do experiments on people's brains. It's ethically difficult to justify various experiments, and it only gets harder as things become more regulated (and rightfully so for the most case). I think they'll definitely be continuing research into this stuff though. For myself, occasionally taking Modafinil enhances my productivity significantly (so long as I maintain focus on what I'm meant to be doing, it's easy to get enthralled with something that interests me, but isn't related to my work). But there's no exclusion of human intelligence amplification from the singularity concept. If we create smarter humans, then this begets even smarter humans. Again we can't really predict what those enhanced "humans" would do, because they are a significant step smarter than us. Human intelligence amplification has a whole raft of other ethical issues associated with it though too. When it becomes more mainstream/available it's going to be a major political and social issue. What happens when not everyone can afford (or wants) to enhance themselves? Will we develop two classes? One of naturals and another of post-humans? Will employers require certain professions to use performance enhancement (say for example, for brain surgeons performing long surgeries)? It's also going to raise the question about the ownership of our bodies. There are laws against taking recreational drugs, but for some, LSD helps with certain types of thought and could be seen as a form of an intelligence manipulator (or an amplifier of certain facets of intelligence). At the moment at least, governments and enforcement agencies seem completely uninterested in actively stopping this, due to the prevalence of various performance enhancement drugs throughout academia and other cognitively demanding professions. Obviously it's not necessary, but for some the edge or boost it gives them is sufficient to outweigh the risks of off-prescription drug use. That was my main beef with Kurzweil: He assumed that the intelligence beyond the horizon would be non-human. This, of course, begs the deeper philosophical question: what *is* "human?" But I'm sure you've mulled that one over plenty. Indeed, it would be interesting to hear what you have to say on the subject. It simply strikes me that, the human ego being what it is, we would naturally be trying to improve our own intelligence and not worrying too much about creating AI as a standalone entity. Am I wrong? Is the human ego instead more interested in giving birth to a new species? There is one other reason there is a focus on AI. Which is related to human ego. Once humans have an advantage over others, such as a significant step up in intelligence, then there's a good chance some will use that power over others in a negative way. It's the old adage, "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" - and it's my opinion, that this could lead to the same power/intelligence imbalance between an intelligence-amplified human and humans, as that between humans and dogs. Or more succinctly, humans have plenty of evolutionary baggage that we don't necessarily want to amplify! Yeah I've thought about that a little as well. What I wonder (and this really is just pure speculation) is whether hyper-intelligent humans would have more faculty for reason and logic; and, if so, if they would see the benefits in spreading the gift and/or using their gifts in more compassionate or benevolent ways...? Because, surely, that's evolution as well. Again, it would seem somehow counter-intuitive to improve intelligence without, for example, attempting to improve our capacity for processing emotions -- our 'emotional intelligence', as it were. I tend to think that many of the world's problems today come down to a focus on what is scientifically possible rather than what is philosophically 'good' or 'true'. Basic agreement, improving intelligence is really just a catch all for all sort of cognition improvements. Depending on where we focussed neuron regeneration, we could expect to see improvements in different aspects of cognition. Science and technology will inevitably advance, and while we can regulate technology to some extent, we can't stop it. Telling people they can't work on AI would merely push it underground, and one of the reason I work on OpenCog is because it's an open-source framework. It can be inspected by other experts for flaws to ensure there isn't some hidden time-bomb sitting in the code, and allows an international approach which might otherwise be over-regulated within a university-specific project (this ignores the actual issue of friendly vs. unfriendly AI, since the latter doesn't have to be intentionally designed - I may write more about that one day, but SIAI and it's fellows have already written plenty on that). To bring it back to AI, what place is there for emotions in an artifically constructed intelligence? Is there a capacity for compassion or fear, if they serve a function for processing input and generating responses? I am guessing that cognitive scientists have thought about this one... That's a BIG topic, so all I'll say is that my opinion is that emotions are just a particular mind state. Sure this mind state is influenced by hormones and neurotransmitters, but so is the rest of the brain's functioning. My opinion is that emotions are just extremely strong aspects of a human's mental world. If we gave an AI an extremely strong desire/goal to make humans happy, and the AI design had some kind of reward based system (such that the AI was trying to maximise these) and achieving these rewards caused other effects in the AI's mind, such a propensity to use positive phrases to describe the world, then is there any reason to believe that the AI isn't happy itself? Disclaimer: I'm no longer in the employ of the SIAI, so my thoughts are not endorsed by them at all.