From: Ben Goertzel (ben@webmind.com)
Date: Sat Nov 18 2000 - 14:56:58 MST
hi,
> > First: I don't think that insanity has to do with thinking fast
> or thinking
> > slowly -- if so, why
> > do intelligent people go nuts just as often as stupid people?
>
> My instinctive response is to say "They don't", after which we
> could try to
> look up the statistics... but that really wouldn't settle anything.
According to the statistics I have seen (when I was a psychology professor
a few years ago), incidence of mental illness is not significantly
correlated with intelligence
Of course the measurements of intelligence and mental illness are both
moderately
problematic, but still, the result is not meaningless...
> The essential argument here is that a transhuman can *occupy*
> such a state,
> but ve is unlikely to *reach* such a state. The transhuman would see it
> coming; if ve didn't see it coming, there would be early warning signs,
> flashing red lights on the exoself console, and so on. Before a
> transhuman
> can reach such a state, ve would need to first need to desire
> such a state.
I believe this is wrong.
This assumes that an intelligent system can predict its own course of
development.
Well, this is plainly wrong for humans...
It's also unlikely from a mathematical perspective: in general, the
trajectories
of a dynamical system are too complex for them to all be recognizable using
the
system's own intelligence...
This doesn't rule out the possibility that there are SOME systems that can
predict
their own future trajectories. But the existence of such intelligent
systems is a pure
speculation -- as far as I know. What evidence do you have that such
systems exist?
My intuition is that the complexity and flexibility required of intelligence
DIRECTLY
CONTRADICTS the "system can predict its own trajectories" property that you
posit
> In any case, the original argument was not that SOME transhumans might go
> insane by choice, but that ALL transhumans would go insane inevitably; the
> latter statement is almost certainly false.
Agreed, of course!
> I think that transhumans will have the power to be intrinsically
> sane.
It's a very interesting question, but I remain unconvinced...
ben
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