Humanity, Post Humanity, A.I & Aliens

[dimreepr]

2 hours ago, Alex_Krycek said:

A worthy dialogue.  In my view, the questions of aliens and A.I. are crucially important because they represent potential extinction level events for mankind.  A.I. could escape the pandora's box quite easily and run amok.  Similarly, a highly advanced extra-terrestrial species could show up to our doorstep one day with the intent to take over the planet and annihilate our species.

Instead of ridiculing those who raise these questions we should be forming concrete action plans in case they really happen, similar to NASA's NEO action plan.  As the nuclear age was a catalyst for a new level of international cooperation forged to deal with the specter of nuclear war; so too should A.I. and aliens spur international cooperation with respect to these existential threats.  

 Because the alien part of this is nonsense, it's like preparing to fight a ghost.

But if you want to see what a world with G.A.I. could look like, facebook et al is a very good metaphor; human intelligence is responsible for the algorithm,

another good metaphor, is "Mickies Fantasia" he set the brooms a task that he didn't think through.

The computer doesn't care, it has no purpose other than what we give it.

The fantastic part is that it can develop a consciousness that we'd recognise. 

21 hours ago, Genady said:

I guess I can. I don't work - let's see - about half of my life by now.

If you've never been thirsty enough to drink from an animal trough, you'll never know how sweet that water is...

[Genady]

38 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

If you've never been thirsty enough to drink from an animal trough, you'll never know how sweet that water is...

And it is not OT, how?

[Alex_Krycek]

46 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Because the alien part of this is nonsense, it's like preparing to fight a ghost.

Not a logical analogy.

[dimreepr]

46 minutes ago, Genady said:

And it is not OT, how?

38 minutes ago, Alex_Krycek said:

Not a logical analogy.

Have you ever seen a ghost?

 

 

51 minutes ago, Genady said:

And it is not OT, how?

What is your take on the topic of the fantasic?

[Genady]

33 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

What is your take on the topic of the fantasic?

"Humanity, Post Humanity, A.I & Aliens"

[TheVat]

4 hours ago, Intoscience said:

f you are a scientist who believes in aliens or A.I sentience (or intelligence that is equal to humans at least) your are sneered at. Yet if you believe in god that's fine.

I find is sad and ironic. 

I always feel caught in the middle, when chats polarize along these lines.  I'm open to most astonishing hypotheses, so long as there's as a path to clean data, Ockham's razor is handy, and basic logic and probability isn't molested.

I would speculate that scientists are more likely to sneer at ET reports, not because ET contact seems so improbable but because of the history of tainted data, hearsay, biased data collectors, and eyewitness reports that always seem so precisely fit whatever popular culture is generating at that time and place.  God(s), OTOH, seem beyond the purview of science, so maybe there is less sense of scientific principles being trod upon - there's no data involved, and it's generally understood that someone's god beliefs are metaphysical intuitions or faith-leaps.  God beliefs don't involve science, so they don't involve sloppy science.  

I agree with @Alex_Krycek that, given the high stakes for humanity, if there were alien contact or alien observation, that any such hypotheses deserve more attention even if low-probability events are being considered.  Just as with asteroids - an asteroid strike is highly unlikely within a human time frame, but the consequences could be so catastrophic, we really need to know as much as we can. 

 

[Alex_Krycek]

7 hours ago, TheVat said:

an asteroid strike is highly unlikely within a human time frame, but the consequences could be so catastrophic, we really need to know as much as we can. 

Are they unlikely?  The most recent comet impact is thought to have happened only 13,000 years ago.

Edited March 14, 2023 by Alex_Krycek

[TheVat]

Just now, Alex_Krycek said:

Are they unlikely?  The most recent cometary impact is thought to have happened only 13,000 years ago.

Depends on size.  I meant mass extinction wallops, the kind that have come every 50-100 million years, most recent 65 MYA in the Bay of Campeche strike.  It was really just to example the concept of low probability (within a lifespan) events with very high stakes.  The impactors of several kilometers diameter, as in the est. 10 km Chicxulub impactor. 

[Genady]

10 hours ago, TheVat said:

Depends on size.  I meant mass extinction wallops, the kind that have come every 50-100 million years, most recent 65 MYA in the Bay of Campeche strike.  It was really just to example the concept of low probability (within a lifespan) events with very high stakes.  The impactors of several kilometers diameter, as in the est. 10 km Chicxulub impactor. 

I see an important difference between this example of a low probability event and the event of intelligent aliens' invasion: we know with certainty that there are plenty of flying rocks in the Solar System.

[Genady]

Here is an interesting plausible possibility that I didn't see mentioned yet.

Given that a physically accessible part of the Universe is finite, there can be only a finite number of intelligent civilizations in it. Among this finite number of civilizations there is one which is the most scientifically and technologically advanced. Which one is it? It is plausible that we are the one.

[dimreepr]

1 hour ago, Genady said:

I see an important difference between this example of a low probability event and the event of intelligent aliens' invasion: we know with certainty that there are plenty of flying rocks in the Solar System.

Indeed, which leaves only one topic worth discussing in this "fantastic" topic.

AI is here already, with a very powerful potential from what can be bought today; for instance, it only takes a few grams of explosive to kill a person, face recognition is available and compact drones are sophisticated enough to independently perform coordinated display's, all of which could be bought at a very low price.

Which means I could, potentially, kill everyone in london for the price of, a tank and an anti-tank missile.

That's just one example of today's threat, we have to consider GAI as tomorrows potential, which is far more powerfull, because the threats would be far more insidious. 

[Genady]

21 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Indeed, which leaves only one topic worth discussing in this "fantastic" topic.

AI is here already, with a very powerful potential from what can be bought today; for instance, it only takes a few grams of explosive to kill a person, face recognition is available and compact drones are sophisticated enough to independently perform coordinated display's, all of which could be bought at a very low price.

Which means I could, potentially, kill everyone in london for the price of, a tank and an anti-tank missile.

That's just one example of today's threat, we have to consider GAI as tomorrows potential, which is far more powerfull, because the threats would be far more insidious. 

This is right. However, I don't see what the place of GAI in this threat is specifically. Any terrorist organization can do something like this.

[dimreepr]

37 minutes ago, Genady said:

This is right. However, I don't see what the place of GAI in this threat is specifically. Any terrorist organization can do something like this.

GAI would be better at it...

[Genady]

48 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

GAI would be better at it...

Maybe. IDK. We are not closer to GAI now than we were 50 years ago. The recent advancement in AI is tangential to that direction.

[dimreepr]

18 minutes ago, Genady said:

Maybe. IDK. We are not closer to GAI now than we were 50 years ago. The recent advancement in AI is tangential to that direction.

A Moby Dick, perhaps... 

[Genady]

6 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

A Moby Dick, perhaps... 

Please, explain.

[Alex_Krycek]

2 hours ago, Genady said:

Here is an interesting plausible possibility that I didn't see mentioned yet.

Given that a physically accessible part of the Universe is finite, there can be only a finite number of intelligent civilizations in it. Among this finite number of civilizations there is one which is the most scientifically and technologically advanced. Which one is it? It is plausible that we are the one.

Plausible but unlikely.  Out of millions of intelligent civilizations we're the most scientifically and technologically advanced?  Anthropocentricism.

[TheVat]

 

He's comparing the pursuit of GAI to Captain Ahab's obsessive pursuit of Moby Dick, the great white whale.  The whale ends up eating him.  Not sure that analogy works well, but I sorta can see it.  

9 minutes ago, Genady said:

Please, explain.

 

10 minutes ago, Genady said:

Please, explain.

 

Edit function really leaves something to be desired.  

Edited March 14, 2023 by TheVat
trying to post i was replying to dammit

[Genady]

3 minutes ago, TheVat said:

 

He's comparing the pursuit of GAI to Captain Ahab's obsessive pursuit of Moby Dick, the great white whale.  The whale ends up eating him.  Not sure that analogy works well, but I sorta can see it.  

 

 

Ah, I see. No, I don't see an obsession with the pursuit of GAI.

5 minutes ago, Alex_Krycek said:

Plausible but unlikely.  Out of millions of intelligent civilizations we're the most scientifically and technologically advanced?  Anthropocentricism.

Unlikely but plausible. About 1/millions chance. The same as any other intelligent civilization.

It becomes an anthropocentrism only if one believes in it, not by suggesting it as a plausible possibility. 

[TheVat]

4 minutes ago, Alex_Krycek said:

Plausible but unlikely.  Out of millions of intelligent civilizations we're the most scientifically and technologically advanced?  Anthropocentricism.

The Drake equation has many conjectures as to each of its factors.  Not all of them yield millions of intelligent civilizations.  While I could agree that if there are millions, some will be likely higher on the Kardashev scale than us, we just don't know at this point how often intelligent civilizations happen or how long they last on average.  Our data point is one such civilization, us, still struggling not to annihilate ourselves.

[Genady]

3 minutes ago, TheVat said:

The Drake equation has many conjectures as to each of its factors.  Not all of them yield millions of intelligent civilizations.  While I could agree that if there are millions, some will be likely higher on the Kardashev scale than us, we just don't know at this point how often intelligent civilizations happen or how long they last on average.  Our data point is one such civilization, us, still struggling not to annihilate ourselves.

I'd like to add that we are not latecomers to the game, considering that we evolved on a planet that exists about a third of the age of the Universe, and considering that the chemical content of the Universe was poor most of the time before that.

[Intoscience]

2 hours ago, Genady said:

Here is an interesting plausible possibility that I didn't see mentioned yet.

Given that a physically accessible part of the Universe is finite, there can be only a finite number of intelligent civilizations in it. Among this finite number of civilizations there is one which is the most scientifically and technologically advanced. Which one is it? It is plausible that we are the one.

Yes, I'm rather fond of this idea, for a couple of reasons. 

It appears though not conclusive that we - a technological life form are a rare possibly anomaly amongst life in general. certainly looking at evolution on the Earth we are the latecomers and the odd ones out.

The age of the universe though old from our perspective is still very young compared to its own life span. The universe could still be very much in its infancy in which case we could be very early to the party. 

So its most plausible that there is only one and we are it. 

Going with the A.I theme I feel this is a topic to be a more serious and mostly likely near future scenario to consider. 

Aliens, well if they are out there, how advanced are they, how far away are they, and what period of time do they/have existed in.  

[TheVat]

55 minutes ago, Genady said:

I'd like to add that we are not latecomers to the game, considering that we evolved on a planet that exists about a third of the age of the Universe, and considering that the chemical content of the Universe was poor most of the time before that.

Debatable.  Early supernovae were massive and blew out a rich broth of heavier elements.

https://beta.nsf.gov/news/potential-first-traces-universes-earliest-stars#:~:text=The very first stars likely,distinctive blend of heavy elements.

 

 

 

[Genady]

19 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Debatable.  Early supernovae were massive and blew out a rich broth of heavier elements.

https://beta.nsf.gov/news/potential-first-traces-universes-earliest-stars#:~:text=The very first stars likely,distinctive blend of heavy elements.

 

 

 

Yes, it started early, but is there any estimate of how many of them were needed / how long did it take to accumulate significant amount of heavy elements throughout the universe?

[TheVat]

"Significant amount" sounds like a really difficult question.  Will post if I find such an estimate.  I guess a lot hinges on planetary condensation, crustal plate movements, cometary water contributions later, and other factors.