I agree with the premise on verifiability being the philosophical stopping block though I would say I am less pessimistic (belief in science is a philosophy, one that seems to have had tremendous, though never guaranteed, success). Some philosophical ideas that are bad just die and we don't hear about them because, well, they're pretty bad and reading philosophy books about them is kind of boring. No one is really pulling for Zoroastrianism or monadology or Gnosticism these days.
I would like to contest the example of analytic philosophy which I see few co... (read more)
I very strongly agree with the posing of the question "wouldn't a superintelligent maximizer seek to exist beyond the lifespan of the universe?" I am not sure my answer is "yes," but this does seem a relevant question. It gets at how superintelligence would 1. perceive the universe (what if it's actually a block universe to them, for example) and 2. perceive life/death. The second question is something I have been churning around in my head but have not taken the time to research. It is also a question where the risk of anthromorphizing AI to fit our prefe... (read more)
Hello! Also new, my name is Jacob. I am really interested in AI development in China - my Chinese friends are always remarking to me how different the culture is with respect to AI (they don't always agree on how it is different, though).
I actually assumed there would already be lots of posts on the topic on LessWrong but it does not seem like so! There are sometimes news roundups and, of course, lots of geopolitical speculation but really not much at all about maybe the most important country on Earth. Staggering! Please write or just message me and share... (read more)
Hello! I am also new here, but this question of artificial (or "artificial," if you want) desires has also been massively consuming my thought lately.
Personally, I don't care much for the consciousness debate. I've read the literature for human consciousness and, frankly, philosophers are still pretzeling themselves trying to figure it out. There's a reason the major philosophical movements in continental philosophy have been the ontological turn (moving away from phenomenology) and then speculative realism (which extends 'consciousness,' in a way, to all... (read more)
Hello everybody! My name is Jacob and I have been a long-time lurker on LW, especially as of late when the front page is basically my daily reading list. I am not a very online person and am pretty private but I value this place a lot.
I work in nonprofits and data analysis but have been personally studying philosophy for about half a decade now. I mostly use it for somewhat abstruse personal projects. Though it is much maligned, I have found significant value in philosophy's "continental" tradition, though my practice in decision making is much more ratio... (read more)
I agree that all probabilities are relative to method, but doesn't this mean that the probability of utopia is also method contingent? If that's the case, then it is about what the trade-off is between methods of development and their distribution of outcomes. I would think there is some basis here for seeing variance manifest is longer tails on both sides, meaning that it's not necessarily that utopia and doom trade off, but that they are both produced by variance.
The question then becomes more of risk preferences than anything else and, reading this thre... (read more)