Search Ideas

Yeah, I'm not sure why I wrote this... I remember the option for number of criticisms now. I guess it slipped my mind.

Related to this or not, it could be useful to be able to set a bounty on a set of ideas, rather than just one. "Criticize any of these ideas for n$".

The main thread is ambiguous currently, by that reasoning: it's always gray. Having the whole thing red to indicate one or more pending criticisms below seems useful, and cool. And the offshoots from the main thread (the little curly part leading to each sub-idea) can have the new colors.

E.g.: User scrolls down the main bright red thread, past gray comment offshoots and dim red refuted criticism offshoots, until reaching the bright red pending criticisms offshoot that is the cause of the main thread being bright red. (!)

The link could be put in a new tooltip, or something. Or kept as is, just without the yellow bubble, frankly.

It should be made not red. Gray. Arguable even without the red criticism line idea above, since it already conflicts with the "red = criticism" motif.

Thoughts on an optional "implies" relation for ideas? I find myself commenting on one idea something which it implies, then criticizing that, but the original idea is not marked criticized. Being able to chain or bundle ideas avoids the bookkeeping issue of having to make new criticisms for each step in the chain, if one is criticized.

Ah, so if I understand correctly, there are two knobs affecting speed (elapsed time) for a given algorithm: the hardware, and the implementation of the algorithm. The given algorithm has a complexity, independent of those two, which is how the time and memory scales with an input.

I think this clarifies it, thanks. Used in common speech to express uncertainty and leave room for error, valid mathematically only when all outcomes are known and have a measure.

No, it will or it won't, but "probably" expresses one's awareness of a lack of battletested explanations, or of their own uncertainty or lack of confidence in the prediction, etc. (cf. #4764).

Doesn't it? All explanatory knowledge is in the set of all possible programs, and a random program (or number) generator can generate any of those, given infinite time.

But an AI programmed to make random variations to its conjectures (English or otherwise) can only do so by choosing from an existing set of variations. Again, that knowledge is pre-existing. True evolution must involve variations to the substrate on which the knowledge is based; variations must be agnostic to the semantics of whatever they are acting upon, else they are already implicit from it, in which case their application does not constitute a truly novel conjecture (in the sense defining creativity).

Whatever new "explanations" it creates are derivable from (and by?) the knowledge in the training data. It isn't evolution if all of the variations and selection criteria are stored ahead of time. That's just a search process, as in the case of Move 37 per AlphaGo.

The definition of fitness for DNA also originated outside it, so this doesn't in itself suggest the system isn't actually creating new knowledge.

A person could create the same knowledge that biological evolution does, if only by simulating it. But it could still be true that only people can create explanatory knowledge. (That they can create all possible explanatory knowledge is Deutsch's criterion for personhood.)

"No unconscious creativity" seems the simpler option. But here we arrive again at biological evolution, which is unconscious, yet is creating knowledge. Does this serve as a distinction between explanatory knowledge and non? Explanatory knowledge can only be created by a conscious process?

Either there is no unconscious creativity, or only evolutionary/creative epochs with certain properties are conscious. The most obvious candidate for the property is complexity (in the sense of sophistication): only programs (existing knowledge) of a certain sophistication, once subjected to the evolutionary process, necessitates consciousness. Complex problem solving seems to require consciousness. Meanwhile, we do not seem to be conscious of "simpler" creative tasks, like... Like what? What is a "simple" creative task? What is an example of a creative task we perform unconsciously? How could we determine it was an act of creation (new knowledge), and not an act of deductive inference of the kind characterizing AI?

This suggests that all experience is determined by what programs are being subjected to evolution at any given time, the niches that are being adapted to. But why is not all creativity in the mind conscious? (All consciousness might necessarily be creativity).

But if the evolution is the defining feature of personhood, and the evolution is non-computational, then the personhood is non-computational. And consciousness would then not be a software property.

Programs could be evolved non-computationally. But that process could itself still be simulated, per the Church-Turing-Deutsch Thesis.

By the Church-Turing Thesis, all computation can be specified/programmed. So the evolutionary aspect of a person can be specified/programmed, if it is computational.

The system may not have perfect knowledge of all programs present in it. The repeated independent emergence of winged flight in the biosphere comes to mind.

Because programs present in the system at one time could be no longer present at another time. Previously well-adapted programs could have decayed, been destroyed or consumed. So the same evolutionary path (approximately or not) could be travelled again, in principle.

Actually this is not implied. One experience and an identical later one could be caused by the same program(s) being run again at a later time; if the program which is identical to the given experience is part of an "evolutionary personhood program", that still qualifies: If the second experience is identical, under the above solution that just means that the exact same evolutionary steps are taken in the second case. Maybe this would virtually never happen, but poses no problem of principle.

By the latter standard, neither nature nor random number generators are people, which is sensible; nor can nature create any given possible knowledge tractably -- this is true because the fact that all possible knowledge exists is only by way of the multiverse, which is a process that cannot be simulated in its entirety, even by a quantum computer.

This is a bad criterion because then random program generators are sometimes people.