From: Peter C. McCluskey (pcm@rahul.net)
Date: Wed May 19 2004 - 13:05:25 MDT
ag24@gen.cam.ac.uk (Aubrey de Grey) writes:
>
>This is just to say that I hope this discussion continues and especially
>that Eliezer finds time to set out his refutation of John's point in a
>fair bit of detail, because it is the key problem that I have always had
>with FAI of whatever form but I have never had time to delve thoroughly
>enough into the field to discover a cogent refutation (or lack of one!).
>By "refutation" I only mean a minimal one: I can't see how the problem
>of unpredictability of complex self-learning systems can be avoided even
>in principle.
I hope Eliezer has more productive uses for his time. An intelligence
looking at a DNA-based replicator 3 billion years ago could have made
an educated guess as to whether that would do a better job of maximising
replication than the available alternatives, even if it was impossible
to predict most of the effects of replication.
Similarly, humans can do a better than random job of comparing the
effects of different proposed designs for an AI.
Our lack of omniscience is a problem. Get used to it.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter McCluskey | I see no greater impediment to scientific progress
www.bayesianinvestor.com | than the prevailing practice of focusing all of
| our mathematical resources on probabilistic and
| statistical inferences while leaving causal con-
| siderations to the mercy of intuition - J. Pearl
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