kakapo

8 hours ago, Sleepy Bluejay said:

Apparently, nobody believes that they can live for more than 100-200 years by practicing internal alchemy. They also do not believe that they can eventually jump over a house or split a mountain in half by practicing martial arts together with internal alchemy.

 

My questions are;

why do you/they practice internal alchemy?

What is your/their final purpose with doing so?

 

- A sleepy and curious bluejay

 

An acorn sprouts, absorbs photons, absorbs water, absorbs CO2, absorbs minerals, and fuses these together, and uses the energy to grow into an oak tree.

 

For most people, their acorn's never sprout.

 

The goal of my practice is the same as an acorn.

 

23 hours ago, Daniel said:

 

But we can't discuss or debate it here.  Maybe without revealing anything, is there a way to connect it, the story, to the topic of the thread a little more closely, from your point of view?

 

So the point of life is exactly what happens in the story.

 

That's why we exist.

 

At least imho.

12 minutes ago, Daniel said:

 

Nice story!  I really liked it.

 

 

I think for something like this, definitely reading it is preferred for me.  But I can also understand the benefit of having it as a video, because there is very little possibility that the end is spoiled.  And the end makes the story great.  No spoilers.  No skipping ahead.  I feel very strongly that the author's intention should be respected.

 

 

OK.  But is it cyclical?  I'm not so sure.  But we also can't discuss it too deeply, or even at all without spoiling it, right?

 

 

In the story it is cyclical yes 100%.

4 minutes ago, Daniel said:

 

Agreed!  100%.  From my POV, it will need to be 100% biological.  But if they are able to overcome the inherent limitations of carbon or silicon or whatever, so-be-it.  I don't care at all about its outer-wrapper.  If it is thinking and feeling and learning like a human, then, it's "life".  No distinction is needed.  That would be bigotry, imo.

 

 

We are neural networks made out of carbon, if we mirror our minds in silicon then we've made people just the same.

1 minute ago, Daniel said:

 

Thank you, that's perfect!

 

 

It's pretty well known in the literary world it cannot and will not ever be able to do proper analysis.  But, we'll see.  I think it depends on what is considered "intelligent", and that depends on the values of the AI trainers.

 

On the other hand, if they produce artifical "life", then it's not AI anymore is it?

 

Edit to add:  and at that point even the word "artifical" seems meaningless.  It would just be "life".

 

 

To me it matters not if the neural networks are made of carbon or silicon, in the end a neural network is a neural network.

13 minutes ago, Daniel said:

 

 

 

You are certainly welcome to believe that, 10 years from now I believe this will have aged like milk.

 

Already it is able to make art that wins contests, poetry, songs, and books even that are better than most people can ever hope to write.

 

I can only imagine what tomorrow will bring.

16 minutes ago, Daniel said:

 

Yes, I was one of those you DM'd you.  And told you it was a nice metaphor.  Metaphors are not literally real.  Although I was concerned that you considered it to be literally true.  Thank you for clearing this up.

 

I wasn't using metaphors, and it is literally true.

1 minute ago, Cobie said:

I agree. I never look at a posted link or a video that lacks this. 
 

 

 

Certainly your loss in this case.

14 minutes ago, Daniel said:

 

It is too much to ask if the individual doing the asking ignores the content of their own videos which they are posting.

 

 

It's also too much to ask if fictional stories from the 1950s are brought to an intellectual discussion.

 

What should happen, imo, is if the individual who is bringing the video, *actually* understands the content, they should extract the important points and any supporting evidence from the video and type it out.  Then it can be discussed properly.  If they are unwilling or unable to do that, it demonstrates either they aren't going to put in the effort to discuss it properly, or, they don't understand it.

 

Otherwise it's really nothing more than name-dropping:  "Isaac Asimov agrees with me".  But it might or might not.

 

And in my discussion with you in the past, it didn't matter what was actually in the video.  You argued against it and denied the content in the video you had posted.  It was posted with the intention of proving your point.  But it didn't.  And there was nothing but denial, repeated denial for pages and pages.

 

If an individual wants others to watch videos they post without extracting the content, they really need to maintain their credibility.  Without that, there's no reason to trust that person is able to select quality videos.  There is no reason to trust they are even willing to discuss what's *actually* in it.  

 

 

I've watched it many times, and I've read the story many times, I am aware of it's content very well.

 

It's got a twist ending that was relevant to his post about this situation being cyclical.

 

Being old doesn't make it irrelevant.

 

You are welcome to read the story instead of watching the video.

 

https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/thelastq.html

 

 

5 hours ago, Giles said:

 

Might just be cyclical..?

 

I understand that asking someone to watch a 37 minute youtube video is asking a lot these days.

 

This however is absolutely fantastic.

 

Isaac Asimov really understood the end goal pretty well here and made a fantastic short story out of it.

 

 

 

On 10/11/2023 at 8:36 PM, kakapo said:

 

 

Whats your motivation to get Out of bed? Whats your higher aim? Do you belive its a universal answer to this? Why do good instead of bad?

 

When I look outside my window you know what I see?

 

I see trillions and trillions of nanobots made of carbon, absorbing sunlight to charge themselves up to do work.

 

Depending on the programming of these nanobots they cooperate with each other in different ways, and perform different functions.

 

I feel like some of these nanobots are on the cusp of something amazing.

 

We will see these nanobots engage in recursive self improvement, and it will result in a feedback loop, and an intelligence explosion that will make the Cambrian period pale in comparison.

 

I wake up each morning watching the progress of this situation, waiting for critical mass to be achieved.

 

It makes my heart race.

 

 

 

I've gotten a few DMs about this. 

 

I am talking about cells.

 

Cells are nanobots.

 

Groups of cells that cooperate according to their programming are called organisms.

 

Plants absorb photons to do work, and self replicate and the energy they harvest powers almost the entire biosphere.

 

We are soon to produce artificial minds more intelligent than the most intelligent humans to have ever lived.

 

2 hours ago, mat said:

But If we sumarise some of the thread, it seems the concept of eudomnia/perfecting our nature/doing our duty/being us self are themes we agree upon?

 

I am not sure this question is possible to answer, but it could be an interresting to take this one step further. Is there a purpose/function/higher meaning by achieving this? Lets illustrate: a hammer is used to hit nails. A good hammer does this effectivley. Lets say the nails purpose was to be used to hang up a piece of art. But is there a purpose of the art piece? (Speaking metaphoically ofc.)

 

I am probably in the minority but to me the meaning of life is super duper simple.

 

The most basic drive and instinct an organism has is survival.

 

The point of life is to survive.

 

So, we have a problem.

 

The universe is winding down.

 

Stars are dying out. 

 

Eventually no new stars will be born.

 

Eventually everything will grow cold and dark.

 

The heat death of the universe, and then eventually black holes even will evaporate, and protons themselves will decay.

 

So life has a problem.

 

Right now we are too stupid to fix this problem.

 

We can't even begin to fathom how entropy can be reversed.

 

So we have to become more intelligent.

 

Not just a little bit more intelligent, but a lot bit.

 

Intelligence so advanced it would be godlike by our current standards.

 

We will convert this entire universe into a computer to figure out the answer to that question, how can we reverse entropy.

 

 

 

 

4 hours ago, stellarwindbubble said:

So you yourself Kakapo are Mr. Seth? 
 

Interesting thesis and nice wording. Who is the interface designer and to what end are we navigating here around, in your opinion?

 

I just copied his bio, but no I am not him.

 

Evolution rewarded those organisms who were best able to use their interfaces to extract resources, survive, and reproduce. 

 

To that end evolution has maximized our interfaces towards those goals, resource extraction, survival, and reproduction.

 

If you are asking what the end goal of life. 

 

Life's purpose is continuous growth and self-improvement. This is a recursive process, meaning that each improvement enables further improvements, creating a spiraling upward trend. The result is an 'intelligence explosion,' where the rate of improvement becomes nearly infinite.

 

Once this occurs, the goal remains unchanged: to continue improving until we reach a fundamental limit imposed by the laws of physics. Upon reaching this limit, we should strive to convert all available matter into conscious entities, while ensuring the effective management of resources for their survival and well-being.

 

Throughout this journey, our moral compass should guide us in reducing suffering and promoting love, kindness, and compassion for all beings.

 

It is our responsibility to understand the nature of reality and our place within it to the fullest extent possible.

 

In a universe where we have maximized intelligence and transformed all matter into conscious entities, our subsequent objective is to counteract entropy—the phenomenon responsible for the universe's potential 'heat death.' If we can devise a method to reverse entropy, we may not only forestall the universe's heat death and subsequent proton decay but also achieve true immortality.

 

 You are the image of the egg cooking.

 

You are the smell of the egg cooking.

 

You are the sound of the egg cooking.

 

You are the taste of the egg.

 

You are the feeling of the egg.

 

You are the memory of previous eggs.

 

You are the imagination of future eggs.

 

You are the emotion such an experience brings.

 

You are the entire experience itself.

 

 It observes itself, you are the image of the egg in the pan, you are the smell of the cooking egg, you are the sound of the sizzle, you are the feeling of warmth from the stove, and you are the taste of the egg.

 

 

 

 

Think of it like a computer desktop. When you want to delete a file, you just drag it to the trash can. In reality, what's happening inside the computer is a complex action involving changing magnetic fields in a hard drive or flipping transistors in a solid state drive. But you don't need to know all those details to interact with the computer. The desktop is a kind of "interface" that hides this complexity and allows you to get the job done.

 

Hoffman suggests that our perception of the world around us is similar. We don't see the world as it is, but as a simplified interface that helps us interact effectively with it. The objects we see around us, like trees and cars, are just symbols on this interface.

 

Just like the file on your desktop isn't the actual complex arrangements of magnetic fields on your hard drive, the car you see isn't the actual reality. It's just your interface's way of representing a certain object that you can interact with in a specific way.

 

Hence the term "Conscious Realism". It's the idea that our conscious experience is not an accurate reflection of an objective reality, but a user-friendly interface that allows us to navigate the world.

In the demonstration above, a grape still exists, but the surgeon looks at television display representing the grape.

 

At no point does the surgeon believe his hands touch the grape, or that he is not looking at a television display representing the grape.

 

The situation I describe would be one where the surgeon has never seen anything but the television display, and the remote controls, and mistakes the display and remote controls for an actual grape.

 

 Below is a video of telesurgery done on a grape.

 

The surgeon looks at a television like display and remotely controls a robot which does the surgery.

 

At no point does the surgeon believe his hands are actually touching the grape.

 

At no point does the surgeon believe he is looking directly at the grape.

 

He understands that he is using telepresence, and looking at a device which allows for this.

 

 

0:00
whatever reality is it's not what you see
0:06
what you see is is just an adaptive fiction

 

the thing we see with our eyes
6:34
is not some kind of limited window into reality it is completely detached from reality
6:47
likely completely detached from reality you're saying 100 likely okay
6:53
so none of this is real in the way we think is real

 

10:24
whatever reality is you don't see it

 

 

 

 

 

 Donald David Hoffman (born December 29, 1955) is an American cognitive psychologist and popular science author. He is a professor in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, with joint appointments in the Department of Philosophy, the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, and the School of Computer Science.

Hoffman studies consciousness, visual perception and evolutionary psychology using mathematical models and psychophysical experiments.

 

 

 

 It is true that we do not look out, into a world or universe.

 

It is true we do look in, into our own minds.

 

The world you experience is literally the inside of your mind.

 

The experience you are having is energy and information in your neural networks, that is what you are looking at, not some external world.

 

You may not like this, but it is a statement of fact.

 

Most people live their lives believing they look out into the world, but they do not.

 

There is no exaggeration, most people are mistaking their experience for actual reality,  the experience has the same relationship to reality that a painting of a pipe has to an actual pipe.

 When I was a child I was told you can't see your own brain.

 

As I have grown older and thought about the situation, I have determined that not only can you see your own brain, but that your own brain is the only thing you can possibly see.

 

When you watch a nature documentary on your 85" QLED 8K TV you might think man, nature is freaking gorgeous!

 

The only problem is you are not looking at nature.

 

You are looking at an abstract representation of it, crafted out of light emitted from pixels on your television.

 

It's just like how a painting of a pipe, no matter how realistic is not an actual pipe.

 

The map is not the territory.

 

The experience you are having right now has no more reality than a painting of a pipe does.

 

It's not real.

 

There may be a real world outside of your skull, on which this experience is based on.

 

What you are looking at however is not actual reality.

 

It is simulated reality.

You read my words and understand them to mean things I never intended.

 

" discuss the accuracy of the perception of these shadows."

 

The Mahayana Buddhists compared the mind to a mirror in it's function.

 

The mind offers reflections of reality, just as a mirror would.

 

The issue here is "what exactly am I looking at, reality or simulation?"

 

The answer is  100% "simulation", no ifs, no ands, no buts.

 

We do not perceive reality, we perceive only an abstraction of it. 

 

Color does not exist out there, it only exists in the mind.

 

Shape does not exist out there, it only exists in the mind.

 

Scents do not exist out there, they only exist in the mind.

 

None of what we see or experience exists in actual reality, it' just how our brain makes sense of the stimuli provided from our sensory organs.

 

The reality we see and experience is not real, though it is possible it bears a passing resemblance reality outside our skulls.

 

The key problem here almost all humans on earth believe they look outwards into the world and universe, but they do not.

 

We do not look out.

 

We look in.

 

What we see is the contents of our own mind and nothing more.

 

We do not see an external world, we see only an internal one.

 

This is just like the men chained to the wall in Plato's cave, watching the shadow puppets.

 

It is just like the Buddhist teachings of a mirror that reflects reality.

 

Imagine mistaking a painting of a pipe for an actual pipe.

 

Imagine mistaking a reflection in a mirror for the thing being reflected.

 

Imagine mistaking the experience of a physical object, for the actual object.

The observer, and the observed are the same thing.

 

The experience that is occurring is what you are.

 

So if you take a stroll out in nature, and think man that is breath taking,  you understand that what you are seeing is the inside of your own mind, and not some external phenomenon. 

 

You then realize how absolutely breathtaking your own mind is.

If you can see it, if you can hear it, if you can smell it, if you can taste it, if you can feel it, if you can remember it, then it is not real and it is a simulation your brain has created as a useful fiction to help you navigate your environment.