Title: Scientific/objective purpose of human species, may be to replicate universes.
Be it atheists or theists, many may feel human life may be purposeless or untenable; i.e. a never ending search or a "why" question that's perhaps not worth asking.
I think there's a viable alternative to especially the "purposeless" based outlook, with the introduction of a recent concept called "teleonomy", which is an atheistic/scientific way to describe nature in purpose driven language. (In fact, as seen on Wikipedia/teleonomy, Richard Dawkins; recently introduced the treatments “archeo” and “neo” purpose. See his video/speech "the purpose of purpose".)
Anyway, for example, using the laws of thermodynamics, we can try to objectively discover non-trivial goals that humans may undertake, as far as nature goes. (i.e. grand purposes for the human species, that reasonably transcend the desires of individual humans, while seeking to be objective, much like how Science tends to follow the evidence, aiming to describe what the cosmos actually is, rather than what people may want the cosmos to be.)
Youtube-link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kB3YhgIUkng
Sources?
Note that you don't need to watch the video, you can alternatively see the following two hypotheses below, which details different grand purposes that the human species may undertake:
Why make this post?
I once talked to a theist years ago, and the person mentioned they felt empty, and they even considered self-termination.
The above is another reason why I'm making this post. As an atheist back then, (I am still an atheist today), I somewhat grappled with purposelessness, although I was shocked to find out that this affected theists as well, especially when they supposedly had a perfect purpose laid out before them; namely to worship some deity.
Both theists and scientists seem to somewhat regard science as valuable; even if some theists disregard/deny many empirically observed scientific principles, they seem to not mind using many products of science, such as internet, and computers. This post is designed to appeal to scientific/objective descriptions of purpose, which may appeal to both theists and atheists.
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I too have come to some of the same conclusions, if perhaps a bit more dark/pessimistic.
I think option 2, is more likely than option one. (Humans create AI, over option one you presented to: advance to the point where humans can replicate universes or some other grand design.)
To me it is pretty apparent human race as a whole, as uniquely intelligent and self aware they are, are held back by baser instincts of survival. Humans race as a whole is traveling in the other direction when it comes to world building let along universe building. Our technologies etc have only further hasten the destruction of the only habitable biosphere island within incomprehensibly vast distances of cold death.
While great people have been born and contributed to the overall advancement of humans, and access to knowledge and information sharing has improved, nothing has changed on other human attributes like consume and compete for scarce resources, hoarding and general lack of suppressing the above mentioned traits for far future planning. Case in point, climate change and biodiversity/mass loss on a scale potentially greater then a large meteor strike to the earth occuring in the last ~2000 years or so. And this does not even go into the newly acquired ability to turn the surface of the planet into a radioactive nuclear wasteland.
I doubt humans as a whole would be willing to use technology to suppress some of these base human traits or for the few to wipe out the many that show these traits.
Option two, AI is definitely more possible, scary stuff though, our intelligence allows us to completely dominate all other life on this planet, an intelligence greater than ourselves could very easily dominate us. We could only hope through its incredible intelligence it has good reason not to (dominate humans,)
Option 3, (the one I consider most likely.)
The human race goes into steep decline, (my guess within the next century.) Along with the rest of the large decline in biodiversity/mass on this planet for a few millennia, with the loss of human interference/domination of life on earth, nature/evolution takes back over, and perhaps intelligence will rise again, but this time with less destructive/consumption oriented tendencies. It could even be very human like, just with less self centered greed etc but still has a drive to innovate and improve.
I dunno, rambling a bit here, but maybe a small group of humans today could actually kick start this process utilizing all the latest technologies to create/build a society that is better able to suppress human's destructive tendencies and nurture the more enlightened educated and positive evolving. Perhaps with the help of a more benevolent AI that can help steer humans in the right direction unburdened by the baser human survival instincts that hold us back.
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▮ I am an atheist that always likes a good debate. ▮
▮ Please include @LogicFTW in responses directed to me. ▮
▮ Useful list on forum usage. A.R. Member since 2016. ▮
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Hey, that's a cool response.
1. I agree that the hypothesis regarding AGI is perhaps more likely. And we can probably verify that in our life times too, especially when the world's top AGI experts predict AGI to likely occur in 5 to 10 years.
2. Based on data, although humanity has demonstrably gotten less violent over the millennia, it is perhaps true that humanity will come to an end before even creating artificial general intelligence.
I am reminded of the article: https://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/in-1973-an-mit-computer-predicted-the-end-of-civilization-so-far-its-on-target.
3. However, AGI may actually be able to help with these issues, including climate change, aging, cancer etc, as reasonably all facets of human thinking can be augmented by Ai.
The common application of the word "purpose" implies an external guiding force. Regretfully, I reject "purpose".
I do agree on most of the post, but my interpretation is that the human race still has a long way to do down the evolutionary path, and barring self-destruction, we will eventually have the capacity to explore and colonize other planets.
I somewhat agree with your response above. (I upvoted your response too)
However, note that the type of purpose the OP refers to, is disparate to, or opposite to religious/theistic endeavour.
Religion does not have a monopoly on the word purpose, and the scientific concept teleonomy was introduced as an atheistic/scientific model that describes nature in purpose driven language. (It seems you didn't know about teleonomy before entering this post, which is expected, as it is not a widely known topic.)
What motivates us as humans is our biological drives that have been co-opted by analogical social systems. What we eat, what we do to other people, the way we want to be treated are determined by our biological evolution. What would motivate an GAI is incomprihensible to me. Why would it do anything? What need would the GAI have to find truth, create an universe, or dominate people, or what ever really? Why would a GAI even feel curiosity?
Fun-tip: Ai already has curiosity. As to what could motivate GAI's creation, see the hypothesis in the OP about AGI.
Purpose must be defined by our minds. Is purpose not completely subjective? One could say "a bee's purpose is to pollinate flowers" but does the bee see it as "purpose" or does the bee just follow it's instincts? Now I understand that bees may not display the cognitive abilities that humans do, so it might seem outrageous to ask what a bee interprets. The thing is, with all our cognitive strengths come extra shit... Such as false pattern recognition and the undying desire to feel special. Those [in my opinion] are the two factors that drive people to induce and define a specific "purpose" in life. It's all subjective.
Teleonomy underlines quite quantifiable things in nature. Just as we can analyse the functions and goals of species in nature, based on environmental pressures, the human species is not exempt from this scientific analysis.
Crucially, Science can describe how species came to be (using evolutionary principle, entropy etc), and also where species perhaps seek to go (using again, evolutionary principle, entropy etc)
Not challenging your reply. I'm saying that Purpose is entirely subjective.
Well Sound the Alarm, because now we can disagree. At no point in time did I say that religion holds a monopoly over purpose. I have been very well-read on the subject of teleonomy long before you posted about it. I am simply stating that the idea of purpose is always defined by human interpretation whether it's scientific or religious. We observe something empirically and can decide to call it purpose based on interpretation. Even with those parameters the idea of purpose is totally subjective. Also you should not assume what another person knows or does not know... especially if we've only interacted twice.
I upvoted, because I mostly agree.
However, consider a later reply taken from elsewhere:
Which makes a lot more sense. In my POV it just seems as if yes, they do seek to be objective, but they ultimately end up being subjective
Personally, I don't think we are significantly closer to this "AI" than we were 40 years ago, many even 80 years ago. But perhaps my standards are a bit high.
@Nyarlathotep
The question of:
What is intelligence is one of my favorite thoughts to ponder.
Sure we can try to objectify and measure it, intelligence tests for humans (like IQ test or others) or even more base tests like the Turing test.
We can even pit "AI" against humans in games like chess or GO, (I think all of us here already know how that is going!)
But we may first have to more clearly understand and define what intelligence is before we can make artificial intelligence in a way that is different and more advanced than simply following instructions from humans. Even stuff like: machine learning, look at 1 million pictures of cats, and we humans will help at first, until you "learn" how to identify cats in pictures of them (or better yet recognize there is not cat in a picture.) And we realize we are still telling a computer exactly what to do, but not exactly how to do it. (It is more like we just do not fully understand how some of these machine learning programs do what they do.)
Is the ultimate measure of a properly advanced "AI" be one that can write its own code, without direction to do so? Do we humans even want that? It can lead to scary scenarios we do not have full control over. A computer even with just the same "intelligence" capabilities of a normal human actually far exceeds a human. Operating potentially at near speed of light, unlimited ability to expand, nearly unlimited "energy" to tap to perform calculations, not constrained by size of skull, not constrained by death or self preservation, etc.
I like to think we will never create "ai" how we think it will turn out. Comparing abilities of a computer to the abilities of the human brain is erroneous thinking, two very different paths and rules.
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▮ I am an atheist that always likes a good debate. ▮
▮ Please include @LogicFTW in responses directed to me. ▮
▮ Useful list on forum usage. A.R. Member since 2016. ▮
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"Comparing abilities of a computer to the abilities of the human brain is erroneous thinking, two very different paths and rules.
They may have different paths and rules, but if the outcome is the same, why is it erroneous? I'm sure theres plenty of things, like remembering, that were once thought exclusive to human beings. I don't think consciousness or intelligence will be any different.
@ʝօɦn 6IX ɮʀɛɛʐy
I strongly suspect, (hey just my mostly non evidenced opinion, I do have education and professional experience in programming but not machine learning or more advanced AI.) That: because the rules and paths are so different that they will NOT arrive at the same destination at all. And trying to mold AI into more human like intelligence is erroneous and a waste of effort. We need to stop trying to "humanize" everything.
So far like Nylar hinted at, we have made little to no progress in true self learning, self evolving AI, and so far we just improve computer's ability to carry out are instructions more easily and precisely. We are a long ways away from a "self aware" AI. We have never even really given any sort of AI the opportunity to even do so. All we have done so far is make very complex and powerful calculators, that can do nothing but what it was specifically designed for and told to do.
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▮ I am an atheist that always likes a good debate. ▮
▮ Please include @LogicFTW in responses directed to me. ▮
▮ Useful list on forum usage. A.R. Member since 2016. ▮
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Sure, but I don't think I understand why molding it into something more human-like is erroneous? I only agree in the sense that, perhaps "animalizing" instead of humanizing it is an easier task.
The primary purpose of the brain, I would argue, is to move the body. Whatever the processing system is called that lets robots move (the type you see in Boston Dynamic videos), I would argue, has already defeating half the battle. Most of our fancy human cognition, is there to support this movement and action. Vision and sensation is obviously there to perceive the environment in which we move. Memory is there to serve perception, build spatial representations of the environment, and guide future movement. Your sense of identity and autobiography is born out of, and intimately related with, your memory system. In other words, a sense of self, or even "self-awareness" could be a natural bonus of having all of these things. Consciousness is obviously hard to define; yet consciousness is to psychologists, what the "theory of everything" is to physicists. Consciousness is the final frontier that unites all other cognitive functions, like perception, attention, memory, etc.
In other words, the fancy stuff like consciousness, is built upon the mundane stuff. Computers and robots can already achieve movement, have memory, have perception...
I for the most part agreed with most everything you said. I suggest to stray away from humanizing computers for a couple of reasons. One we are nowhere remotely even near replicating the brain. With more connections in the human brain then there are stars in the known universe trying to humanize programing on a system that is far different is going to run into a lot of possibly insurmountable issues.
Additionally humans are not just "hardware" that you can feed replicated instruction to, any parent knows raising a child to operate at an adult level is a whole lot more than just inputting instructions into a child. It is rather likely for a "computer" even a future incredibly powerful computer (compared to today's standards) it would still require the social interaction and teaching and learning similar to that people receive. A sort of 24/7 intensive effort to teach potentially for years. Part of what makes human, human is those decades of learning, at a slower pace, done in perfectly in a non uniform way. Even if a computer was capable of processing like a human was, the end result would likely not very human like.
The robots that have memory, or specialized ones that can do certain movement. Sure we have robots that can use cameras etc to map out and do surroundings avoid new obstacles etc, but ants with a brain the size of a pin hole are also capable of that and more. Additionally robots that can move, are hyper specialized to do just that. You may have an arm that can observe a human arm then replicate that movement precisely. Movement? Yes? Human like? No. If the arm was expecting a 2 by 4 piece of wood but instead recieves a beach ball it would not know what to do with it except to shut down and stop and seek assistance.
The "progress bar" of human like AI or greater is probably at about 1 or 2% so far. AI that is at the level of human intelligence may one day happen (and nothing to stop it from being greater) but we wont be fooled by a robot into believing it was human anytime soon.
Is even a small child will not be fooled for long that Alexa, or Siri, or google not a human talking through a machine like a person through a phone. And that is a hyper specialized single task, can any of those robots sit down and do written math homework for you? Nope, it may be able to do long division in fractions of a second, but it cannot possibly hope to find a piece of paper, recognize what needs to be done and pick up a pencil and start writing out math home in messy font that would actually fool a teacher. Yet a small child can fill out a grade appropriate math homework exercise.
Nyar is reasonably quite wrong on that matter.
See my response below:
@Avant Brown
Like I said in my first post, it really comes down to how you define "AI"
You could potentially say the first sliding rule, or abacus is "AI" Or you could say AI is human like intelligence but made artificially.
Or somewhere inbetween.
If you take the 2nd option the more extreme end of "human like ai or greater" the experts in the field will tell you: we are nowhere near close. Like I said in my longish post, the latest top of the line supercomputer running self learning, machine learning broad artificial intelligence struggles to operate even at an insect's brain's level.
So far computers are just really fancy calculators. Crunching binary math at blazing speeds, with all kinds of hardware and software tricks that speeds up the more complex calculations, "short cuts" may be the best way to describe it.
The human brain however, is very very different then even the most advanced computer today. At minimum advanced quantum processors that can operate billions of instructions every cycle is needed (currently we have quantum processors that can only do 2-8 qubits and they have not yet left the lab. (good thing too, our cyber security is not anywhere near ready for what quantum processors represent - making all encryption techniques worthless-)
Also another large roadblock. The number of possible connections in a human brain. Far exceeds all the connections of every computer, processor, switch, router, network, ever made in the entire world combined. Trying to replicate a human brain is currently beyond our reach.
Worse still, when it comes to moore's law, it has reached mostly a dead end. We are at 7nm for traditional silicon processors, and it was an incredible effort to get there from just 9-11 n/m processors (billions of dollars!.) You may have noticed, a decent processor from 5 years ago is probably only 10-20 percent slower than a comparable (in price) decent desktop processor of today. So even if there was hope one day our compute capabilities on silicon could begin to rival the human's brain, that hope is gone now, we have reached a "dead end" when it comes to creating more powerful processors. Now we are just lowering power requirements, refining them and of course doubling , quadrupling etc the core counts.
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▮ I am an atheist that always likes a good debate. ▮
▮ Please include @LogicFTW in responses directed to me. ▮
▮ Useful list on forum usage. A.R. Member since 2016. ▮
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Side note: Kurzweil is director of engineering at Google, and his predictions are known to be accurate.
There isn't anything factual or objective in the entire video. If a theist made the video it would be ripped apart.
Your feeling is noted.
However, feelings are not facts.
Facts are that the video discusses quite real scientific models, including entropy, and evolutionary theory. I will hazard a guess and say that you didn't bother to look at any of the hypotheses presented in the video description or in the OP, and you probably think that religion has a firm monopoly on purpose.
[Richard Dawkins would disagree, as does other Scientific data.]
No it does not. You are not listening. It is as hypothetical as ancient aliens. Currently it is nothing but WooWoo. _"Objective Meaning for Natural things - Teilionomi: The quality of APPARENT purposefulness. " (NOTE THE WORD APPARENT!)
"The video opens with, " I use quantum entanglement and some other UNKNOWN METHODS (35) to get data from a far away place. (BULLSHIT!!!!!!!)
"NAMELY, PROBABLY to create artificial intelligence (44) HINT: (PROBABLY!!!!)
"HYPOTHESIZED" (48) Hypothesis: supposition (SUPPOSITION) or proposed (PROPOSED) explanation made on the basis of limited (LIMITED) evidence as a starting point (STARTING POINT) for further investigation.
There is much more hemming and hawing as nothing at all is said and all assertions are qualified with mights, maybes, seems or suppositions.
THEN WE HAVE THE GRAND CONCLUSION!!!!
"PURPOSTE IS FOUND IN SCIENCE IN AN OBJECTIVE WAY! ? HORSESHIT!!!
1. Nothing at all has been proved. This is an hypothesis.
2. Why in the hell does the natural world need purpose? Why ascribe purpose to the universe in the first place?
3. The conclusion the video makes is not supported by anything. No facts, are stated at all! NONE!!!
THIS IS SCIENTIFIC WOOWOO.
The "OBJECTIVE PURPOSE" could just as easily be to breed bacteria/
Hell, now that I think about it the objective purpose of the universe could be to rid itself of all life. This is absolutely as valid a position as any other.
@avant
How do humans replicate universes?
Probably by writing software code on string theory powered hardware?.
On a serious note, I don't know.
We human beings have two close "cousins", the chimpanzee and bonobo. Chimpanzees are hostile to any other chimp not of their tribe. But for the bonobo, they are less hostile, they have learned to accept strangers. That too is a human trait. We humans like to believe that we are the ultimate animal, the peak of the evolutionary tree. But I am of the opinion that humans are just part way on their journey of development, and just like the comparison between chimp and bonobo, in a hundred thousand years humans may take on other traits that make our present attitudes appear barbaric.
It is very possible that we have attained more technology than we are prepared to deal with, sort of like giving a spoiled 3 year old an atomic bomb.
I somewhat agree.
In the hypothesis about Ai from the OP, it underlines that humans may ultimately not survive, although general intelligence may survive in the form of artificial intelligence. This underscores that humans may not be relevant after the creation of this technology.
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