My Circus Sideshow
If a fossil of an an alien, or any alien artifact, were put it on display, it would attract millions. Sure some would see it because of its objective importance. But most would come just because it is weird.
People used to see a traditional circus sideshow for similar reasons. But consider: once you know that there exist dwarves, sword swallowers, and women with beards, what do you learn more by seeing them person? Yes, in part you just want to brag about how much you’ve seen, but you are also actually curious about what such things look like up close.
Circus side shows are weird, but they are also far from maximally strange. Many ocean creatures are far stranger. The attraction is in part a mixture of the strange and familiar. Once a familiar thing has changed in one very big way, one naturally wonders what other aspects of it are changed and how. One doesn’t wonder that about something where all its features are strange.
Tyler Cowen suggests this as the appeal of my upcoming book The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life When Robots Rule the Earth:
The ostensible premise of the book is that people have become computer uploads, and we have an entirely new society to think about: how it works, what problems it has, and how it evolves. .. But this is more than just a nerdy tech book, it is also:
Straussian commentary on the world we actually live in. ..
A reminder of how strange everything is .. It’s a mock of all those who believe in individual free will.
An attempt to construct a fully rational theology ..
An extended essay on the impossibility of avoiding theology ..
A satire on the rest of social science, and how we try to explain and predict the future.
A meta-level growth model in which energy alone matters and the “fixed factor” assumptions of other models are relativized. ..
A challenge to our notions of wherein the true value of a life resides. (more)
I describe an entire world in great detail, a world that is a mix between a strange alien civilization and our familiar world. Any world described in enough detail must raise issues that look like theology, including free will and where true value resides. And any detailed strange yet familiar world can be seen as satire on social science and Straussian commentary on our world.
So the key is that, like a circus side show, my book lets readers see something strange yet familiar in great detail, so they can gawk at what else changes and how when familiar things change. My book is a dwarf, sword swallower, and bearded lady, writ large.
Okay, yeah, I can accept that as the main appeal of my book. Just as the main appeal of seeing an alien fossil to most would be its strangeness. Even if understanding aliens were actually vitally important.
You need to do more reading on the human brain.
Reducing it to a neural network of inputs and outputs is not possible due to nonlinearity, in addition neural networks are not a magic bullet technology where you can train a neural network to do anything, it is difficult enough just to get a neural network to identify cat pictures.
For direct simulationsThe computing power needed to simulate a billion neurons covering every degree of freedom in order to accurately emulate the human brain would be impossible.
It seems Robin is hoping we can emulate humans by reducing the brain to an input-output economy, with neurons instead of industrial sectors. There was much optimism about that approach in the 1960s, but it petered out. I think the problem is interactions are highly nonlinear, so empirical correlation analysis will never get far.
Thus, we need to complete understand human nature, our hierarchy of emotions, desires, affects, and reason. If we figure that out, ems will basically be irrelevant, because we would then know the meaning of life, and all have a clear guide to optimal human flourishing. I'm all for it, but not very optimistic.