From: Mike (mikew12345@cox.net)
Date: Sat Nov 29 2003 - 11:25:19 MST
The thread on infinite parallel universes went on and on for a couple
months with no complaint, while a discussion of alternate hardware
platforms is deemed off-topic. Where's the logic in that?
Mike W.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-sl4@sl4.org [mailto:owner-sl4@sl4.org] On Behalf Of Eugen
Leitl
Sent: Saturday, November 29, 2003 9:58 AM
To: sl4@sl4.org
Subject: Re: META: Killthread; (Re: Edge.org: Jaron Lanier)
On Sat, Nov 29, 2003 at 06:59:03AM -0800, Tommy McCabe wrote:
> Technology, at least under my definition, covers a
> very wide range of topics, and simply lumping
No one is talking about "technology". That's
a mild straw man you got there. We're talking
about computation, though.
Is computation irrelevant to intelligence, whether
natural or artificial? That'd be sure novel for sl4@.
> something in with "technology" doesn't make it
> relevant to SL4. IBM, Intel, AMD, etc., are doing a
> very nice job of making chips, and unless AI somehow
How do you know that? I happen to disagree vehemently.
The only kind of unquestionable progress there is affordable integration
density. That's the only straight line on the semi log plot, with about
a decade yet to go. It is not obvious what will happen after that. That
alone is a sufficiently interesting result to not ignore the physical
layer.
> requires either specialized types of hardware, or very
Absolutely.
> thorough knowledge of the hardware it is being
Absolutely.
> programmed on, there is no need to waste time
If both of your premises weren't wrong, I'd
be agreeing with your conclusion.
> discussing it. If it isn't broken, don't fix it, and
> don't spend valuable time discussing it. Quote from
> Staring into the Singularity- "Ever since the late
> 90's, the Singularity has been only a problem of
I'm completely immune to quotes. As long as you can
show me that hardware is not a problem, and more and
better hardware isn't a very powerful tool to circumvent
this software (the separation between software and
hardware is a yet another sterile meme of the complex
we started this discussion with) you could be as
well quoting from Mao's Little Red Book.
> software." The hardware companies can handle the
> problem of making fast chips- but we need the code to
No, they can't. That's the whole point of this discussion. Johnny can't
make fast chips, and if you want AI, you better understand why.
> make the chips become a Friendly Seed AI. And that's
> where SIAI comes in.
I'm not feeling like joining the F issue before the
hardware and the software part isn't addressed.
Unless, of course, that's off-topic for this list.
It it is so, this list is about plucking virtual
lint from our nonexisting navels.
-- Eugen* Leitl leitl
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