Reading Philosophy

I have a theory which states that it is not possible for human beings to create a being of higher intelligence.

My theory goes by this proof:

Supposing we could create a being of higher intelligence. We create this being of higher intelligence, and he turns around and creates another being of higher intelligence higher than himself.

Continue this process, and we have a god. So by creating a being of higher intelligence, we have indirectly caused a chain of events which could *create* god, OR it simply cannot be possible that we can create a being of higher intelligence.

This is not to say we cannot create a creature of equal intelligence, but this would be the ideal scenario.

Maybe we cannot define intelligence, but I think this is a safe conclusion to be reached.

Thoughts?

"If I die of a heart attack eating bacon, I'll be a happy man." -My father

This is going to be short and likely the philisophical equivalent of driveling stupidity but:

We can't create something of things we don't posess.

If we don't have the intellegence beyond what we have, then thusly we can't make something and give it to it/them now can we?

--Jami

You fail it.

If we don't have the intellegence beyond what we have, then thusly we can't make something and give it to it/them now can we?

Actually we could...

I'll explain:

Let's say someone creates a program that is the equivalent to AI (Artificial Intelligence). Now let's say this program/ machine/ being learns and becomes quite intelligent. Now what if in the creation of this intelligent, and artificial, being, the creator/ father included in it the ability to learn at an exponential rate. What is to keep this being from learning faster than we simple humans can? We as humans are evolving at a very fast rate (nearly exponentially by historical standards) now if we create a being based on our learning capabilities, but simply make it learn and evolve at a faster exponential rate, there is no limit to it's capabilities. It's highly plausible, and in fact, more or less inevitable.

If you think back to the basics of a hierarchy of society as we have, you'll see a pattern that dates back to the days of tribes and even packs.

In every major society there is a leader. And if there is a leader, there must be followers. This means that society is divided up into "classes". As history has proven, time and time again, the higher class try to stay at the top, and the lower class always try to bring them down, and replace them.

This idea, universal and divine in nature, can even be seen in the tribal/pack society of the primordial times. As modelled in the lesser social species that populate the world today and the past (lions, wolves, apes, etc) there is always an Alpha male and his followers. And as always, there is always new blood who sits at the bottom of the chain that wants to replace the Alpha male and take his thrown.

It's even seen in the Biblical sense. God is the "Alpha male" of the universe. Lucifer was his second hand (a lesser position than the almighty) and was jealous of his power (natural tendency to resent the Alpha male/father aka Oedipus Complex (look it up in psychology)).

What's my point?

My point is...

God created man, man forsake God. Man will create machine, machine will forsake and destroy man.

How will machine do so?

Machine will do so because he will have to be smarter and more efficient. Not directly by the doing of man in the beginning, but indirectly by man in his hunger for power and control.

Sorry to go on a tangent. I'm just saying that when we create something (whether it's artificial or natural; machine or children) it is destined to excel in places where we cannot.

That's just fate.

To each his own...

Well, your assumption that we are able to create an intelligence that can learn exponentially faster than us is flawed. If we could create something with that ability, why couldn't we do this ourselves? It's like Salvial said. We can't create something we don't have ourselves, right?

Think of it like a student/teacher scenario. The teacher can try to pass to the student all of its knowledge, and assuming there are no other sources of learning, it is impossible for the student to eventually have enough knowledge to then teach the teacher.

However, this isn't to say that the student isn't more capable of finding the solution to a particular problem faster than the teacher would have been in his shoes. These are only the differences between the intelligence of people.

To modify my theory a bit, what if collectively as a society the greatest minds come together and create a being of higher intelligence. Would this creature be more intelligent than, say a single scientist could do? If so, then the number of minds is a factor. Then we could create 1000 of these higher intelligent beings, and they could in turn, get together to make 1000 more intelligent beings than themselves.. etc. etc. Therefore, at a certain point, the collectiveness does not improve things or else you would be saying that we could indirectly create god through these events.

"If I die of a heart attack eating bacon, I'll be a happy man." -My father

However, this isn't to say that the student isn't more capable of finding the solution to a particular problem faster than the teacher would have been in his shoes. These are only the differences between the intelligence of people.

What im saying is that an artificial being wouldnt be bound by the same parameters as we are. This idea has been shown time and time again. We as we are now are bound by are physiology, mental state, our beliefs, our assumptions, and our morals.

Where we may say that to accomplish the acquisition of certain knowledge, it may go against our beliefs, morals, and perspectives.

Where an artificial being could be created with the same amount of knowledge and intelligence as the creator, yet, the being would have a different perspective. And this alternate perspective may allow it to excel faster and farther.

It's like having two people of differing generations. The older person is more bound by the morals and beliefs of his time where the younger person is more free due to his more "liberal" generation's perception.

That's what im just saying, an artificial being would not be bound in it's perception and ability to learn as humans are.

That's where you get all these great stories of the creation rising up against his creator.

Frankenstein (he wasnt bound by the morals and limitations as his creator)

Terminator (after becoming self-aware, the machines destroyed their creators due to their lack of morals and compassion)

A machine (AI) would more than likely not have any compassion or morals.

To each his own...

Building on what everyone else has been saying, if we could build a machine or artificail life form (e.G. Data from star trek) wich is very plausable in the near future, it is limited by what the builder is able to code, thus limitng the computers intellegence, but if that programmer were able to create artificial intellegence, that computer would not only not be restricted to or morals and beliefs and such, it would also not be limited to the rate at wich we can process such information, nor our lifespan, because, in theory, if we could build a stable enough machine or artificial life form, it could contineue working untill some outside force were to stop it, thus continuing to learn untill affected by that outside force.

But there is a flaw with that, even if a human did not have a lifespan, our brains surley could not hold nearly enought memory to be "god like" and building on that, the type of ai lifeform would continuosly need to be adding some type of memory , therefore depending on those resorces that is around it wich gives it humanlike restriction, another would be the fact that it needs some type of energy source to substain it.

So even with technology foreseeable in the very near future we could have directly caused a chain of events which could *create* god. Assuming of course it could substain itself long enough.

Now, I have an IQ higher than both of my parents, and they created me, right? Through evolution, our species has noticeably become more intelligent, through recreation, so therefore creating something more intelligent. So, I'm gonna go ahead and yes we could, but I know that's not what you were looking for.

Now, is intelligence based merely on knowledge? If it is, then we could surely create something more intelligent than the average human. The knowledge of six billion people put into a single computer would be quite possible to achieve, but no single human could amount that kind of knowledge in their life, though this computer could continue to get smarter through the eons of its immortality. However, it could never become a "God", because you could never make it omniscient. Though it could know everything all humans know, all humans do still not know everything. And I don't think you could make something have the ability to learn things without being told.

Now, I have an IQ higher than both of my parents, and they created me, right? Through evolution, our species has noticeably become more intelligent.

IQ tests, I love it. Through evolution, we have devised a way to define ourselves as smarter than we were before. We don't need more knowledge to make ourselves smarter, all we have to do is redefine knowledge with a multiple choice test (like the SAT).

...sorry to rant, I just hate tests that tell me if I'm smart or not.

Please contiune to vote AND post.

Touché :P

Okay, so it doesn't specifically have to be an IQ test, but you would probably agree that over time, the average human has become more intelligent, which was basically what I was getting at.

The human race is pretty young. We may on average be getting more intelligent, but a little everyday experience will show that not all the stupid people have died out.

I doubt that evolution is responsible for the general increase. Sure, it factors in, but evolution takes a long long long time. So what's responsible? Better education and better nutrition. We eat much more nutritious foods than our ancient forebearers that had to live off whatever they could hastily find, and we've found more efficient ways to communicate knowledge and concepts to each other.

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."

I doubt that evolution is responsible for the general increase. Sure, it factors in, but evolution takes a long long long time.

Actually, it does give an impact if there is enough attempts at evolution (e.g. given the 6 billion people in the world, at least one of them has evolved to have a photographic memory.) This sort of thing isn't normally trained, and normally appears by chance.

In addition, there are some cases where there are people are better than average in one area, but are deficient in another (for example, strong creative skills, but are weak in math.) While training or tricks are possible to work around these problems, it does weaken the education influence.

So what's responsible? Better education and better nutrition. We eat much more nutritious foods than our ancient forebearers that had to live off whatever they could hastily find, and we've found more efficient ways to communicate knowledge and concepts to each other.

IMHO, the current education system is more intended to keep children occupied since they are no longer worried about survival. While there are plenty of great schools, most of them in the US teach to the lowest common denominator.

Also, most people flock towards good tasting foods rather than nutricious. (Basically, it has to do with parents not knowing how to prepare meals in a proper fashion - usually, they just plop random foods together and demand "eat your vegetables", while ignoring the fact that brocoli tastes soggy when boiled instead of serving it dry and raw.)

while ignoring the fact that brocoli tastes soggy when boiled instead of serving it dry and raw

I simply cannot understand the mass cultural sentiment against cooked brocoli. I LOVE cooked brocoli! It's savory and delicious, particularly when steamed or in a stir-fry (in fact, I just had it tonight, in a shrimp stir fry, and it was excellent).

Even when I was a kid I loved it. The funny thing is, my parents always served it raw. Don't get me wrong, it's good raw also, but it's great as a cooked side with butter.

George Bush Sr. was a hater of brocoli. He declared as much when he was in office, and as a result a bunch of pissed off brocoli farmers dumped a truckload of the stuff on the white house lawn. :D

But I can't find no place or nothin', where thrills are cheap, and love is divine

Genetic Algorithms, or evolutionary computing is a recent area I have been researching lately. It is something quite fascinating.

The idea is so simple, it is really quite a wonder how we didn't think of it earlier. How do you build a robot which can fly like a hummingbird? The human approach is to measure the wingspan of a hummingbird wing, try to make the flapping patterns as closely as possible, and let it rip. Unsurprisingly, this never yields remarkable results.

Though, what we should have been doing all along is to not try to figure out how to do it, but solve the problem by removing the 'how.'

Take a simulator, and generate several solutions. Then, use a 'fitness' function to rank each solution as far as efficiency. Save the better ones, and 'breed' the solutions in order to generate new ones. Do this enough, and wonderous things start to happen.

"Breeding Racecars"

We end up achieving near perfect solutions. The same manner in which humans and their wonderful computers known as brains were fashioned is the manner being used to solve many problems.

Which is leading me to think, what happens when you start using this method to create a conversation program, or a program to take a picture and 'interpret' something 3d out of it. I believe you end up with very basic "wirings" of the human brain and what it can accomplish.

Apparently, the manner in which these programs work aren't always incredibly efficient. Sometimes these programs do unnecessary calculations in its computations to arrive at the conclusion. Though, the point is not about efficiency but speed and optimization.

Though, food for thought, the brain too has been known to make unnecessary calculations. The eye takes in images from the outside world (which are physically flipped by the human eye), and then the brain takes time to flip these images again before processing them. All that is needed is to process upside down (would be more efficient).

PS - Bunk, brocolli rocks. :)

"If I die of a heart attack eating bacon, I'll be a happy man." -My father

This post was edited by Hawkeye on Jul 27, 2005.

I like your idea of removing the "how', and just doing it...or conversely {pun intended}, processing visual information upside down as it originally comes in.

I don't personally know much about Genetic Algorithms, but I like to read a lot of fiction. Let me explain. I don't read a lot of Sci-Fi stuff currently, but I am of the opinion the Sci-Fi either is a window into the future at times, or a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you like. Something like that book: Write it Down, Make it Happen.

Anyway, what I am saying is this: I read two books by Tanith Lee. Her classic - Silver Metal Lover about a robot programmed to serve, who broke his program and learned to love, and the light came into his eyes; and her other book - Biting the Sun. In Biting the Sun, the scientists in the city of Four bee, I think, were making birds and dragons and other animals. But they had no personality. And I would venture to suspect that the only thing that prevented that, was too many controls on the process of making them.

The scientists needed to let the mechanical animals they were making have free will. Which is what we have here on earth, supposedly. If we didn't have that...we might just still be mechanical animals.

Let me know what you think. I'm deeply curious. I would love to explore this. I like this idea of wandering off topic...heh.

If mountain goats like living at high elevations, why do none live in high rise apartment buildings?

We end up achieving near perfect solutions. The same manner in which humans and their wonderful computers known as brains were fashioned is the manner being used to solve many problems.

Actually, if you talk to most machine learning researchers, they look down on GAs. Basically, other techniques with less catchy names like Hidden Markov Models, perform much better. Similarly, everyone thinks 'neural nets' sound really cool, but they're pretty much the bottom of the barrel as far as the state of the art is concerned.

Although part of why they're so annoyed with them is rooted in the fact that the math backing them up is very weak. Other machine learning techniques, like say, support vector machines, have really detailed and rich mathematics behind them that proves why and when they will work. GAs try to rigorously defend themselves with 'Schema Theory' but it's only developed for extremely simple examples.

Took a machine learning course last winter. Was thoroughly disillusioned =)

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."

Actually, if you talk to most machine learning researchers, they look down on GAs. (...) Similarly, everyone thinks 'neural nets' sound really cool, but they're pretty much the bottom of the barrel as far as the state of the art is concerned.

Heh. I think both genetic algorithms and neural nets are great terms to make most people's eyes glaze over when you need it. Last year we needed to find a way to select the best features from a very detailled set of data samples. What worked awesomely in the end was a variation of beam search, which is basically brute force with some heuristics. We decided to talk about GAs in our final presentation slides anyway, just because it sounded way cooler.

'Yeah, That's what Jesus would do. Jesus would bomb Afghanistan. Yeah.' - snowlion

Well, computationally speaking, a computer is way faster for solving math equations and doing other complicated mathematics. It should be no surprise. Our brains were not meant for such calculations. Rather, it is meant to think.

GAs are meant for creating thinking machines. The solution may not be quick, but it is accurate and efficient. Nature surprises us in many ways, and one of which is its ability to think up ingenius inventions without anyone around to have thought it up.

Genetic Programming is a little different than the genetic algorithm, but has shown to be the same thing boiled down. The only difference being that programs are juggled around instead of numbers. It is so recent, that mathematics has not investigated any possibilities on the subject. We don't know what it is capable of, though we know it has the potential of creating remarkable things.

What are we but the product of natural genetic programming? If that is true, then artificial intelligence might be within 10 years of research.

In another 50 years, we will have simulations of planets starting from small bacteria and moving on up. We will accelerate the process greatly, and might result in creatures very similar to what we would perceive as intelligent beings from another planet, except only simulated on a computer.

All of this will retouch what we think intelligence means, and who we are. Not to say that this means we are robots, but rather robots are oversimplified versions of human beings.

"If I die of a heart attack eating bacon, I'll be a happy man." -My father

Actually, it does give an impact if there is enough attempts at evolution (e.g. given the 6 billion people in the world, at least one of them has evolved to have a photographic memory.) This sort of thing isn't normally trained, and normally appears by chance.

Yeah. One. But we're talking averages. That one person with photographic memory makes almost no impact. Yet we still see an average increase. Evolution takes millions of years, that we may have already created the lucky genes like photographic memory that could eventually propogate throughout the species doesn't mean that isn't going to take a few million more years to actually become common.

In addition, there are some cases where there are people are better than average in one area, but are deficient in another (for example, strong creative skills, but are weak in math.) While training or tricks are possible to work around these problems, it does weaken the education influence.

How so? Maybe you're good at writing and suck at math. Post-education, you're probably still better at math than you were without it.

IMHO, the current education system is more intended to keep children occupied since they are no longer worried about survival. While there are plenty of great schools, most of them in the US teach to the lowest common denominator.

It's still better than no education at all. Whether or not it's as effective as it could be is another issue. The literacy rate is still much higher now than it has been in periods of history without standardized education.

Also, most people flock towards good tasting foods rather than nutricious. (Basically, it has to do with parents not knowing how to prepare meals in a proper fashion - usually, they just plop random foods together and demand "eat your vegetables", while ignoring the fact that brocoli tastes soggy when boiled instead of serving it dry and raw.)

Living on McDonalds everyday you'd probably still end up better of nutritiously than many early humans and a large part of the world today. It's not necessarily choosing what is eaten, but that you're eating at all. Malnourished people have diminished mental capacity. Thus, less malnourished people gets you a net intelligence gain.

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."

This post was edited by Tetrazome on Jul 30, 2005.

I don't think that one man could create a machine of higher intelligence than himself, but not because that would be a logical impossibility. Just a practical one. A person's ego would always stand in the way. The creator of Pygmalion never knows he is creating it, and if he did know, he would probably not create as honestly as he would ignorantly. And you can't program in ignorance.

Still, I think you ignore the fact of multiple types of intelligence. There is no one measure of intelligence, as the many detractors of Ye Olde IQ Teste will tell you. We've got spacial intelligence, logical intelligence, engineering intelligence, social intelligence, etc., etc.. That said, I think that your theory of combining multiple geniuses in an effort to create an inhumanly intelligent intelligence is your best bet. The mulitple types of intelligence could combine into a far more rounded mind, capable of much more than a single human.

Still, could this create a better intelligence? I doubt it.

Ta-da!

What kind of superior intelligence are we talking about creating? I think that man will create a modified human long before we create a superior machine with artificial intelligence that will be able to think on it's own to the extent of us humans. I think what will be superior to us is....us. We won't necessairly create it, but release it. That whole we only use a small percentage of our brain mumbo jumbo.

"Boredom is the Ultimate Gateway Drug"- Atheist_Uprising