Test
- Inputs
- Intelligence, Cognition, Creativity
- Many definitions of intelligence have been proposed. Max Tegmark, for example, argued that intelligence is the ability to accomplish complex goals.
- A more comprehensive definition was given by AI researcher Francois Chollet in his seminal paper On the Measure of Intelligence, as the ability to turn experience into future skills .
- David Deutsch defines the similar concept of creativity as the capacity to create new explanations i.e. an endless stream of innovation. To solve a new problem we create explanations about the problem to understand it, conjecture a solution and eliminate bad explanations by criticizing them. This process requires creativity.
- I argue that on the scale of humanity, achieving goals, attaining future skills, or solving problems, can be equated with making progress.
- Importantly intelligence i.e. cognitive processes can be augmented by Cognition Augmentation Technology as I'll elaborate below.
- Knowledge
- Problem Solution Definition
- > “While awaiting that sight, they had numerous fears as well: fear of storms; fear of mighty, unknown creatures; fear of sickness on board; fear of being becalmed; fear of that wavy immensity opening up all around them; fear of uncertainty. But they also had their charts, their instruments, the technology used to build their vessels. [T]hey had knowledge—information that is capable of self-perpetuation.”
- Deutsch summarizes his view on progress in his Principle of Optimism—All evils are caused by insufficient knowledge. "Evils" here include all natural and technological problems intentional and unintentional.
- The evil of nuclear war is solved by the knowledge of game theory international relations. The evil of cancer can be eliminated if we figure out the required gene editing or drug technology. The evil of governments that regulate flying cars or supersonic planes can be solved by better regulatory institutions.
- Accumulation and Evolution
- definition
- Knowledge evolves. Variation and selection in genetic knowledge are analogous to conjecture and criticism in human knowledge. Unlike genetic knowledge, human knowledge evolves accumulated and is not contained by any genomic bottleneck (for comparison, the algorithm that also makes up our intelligence is contained by the 50-100k protein-coding genes). The amount of knowledge we can store and process is infinite given the technology to do so.
- Once physically embodied in a suitable environment, knowledge tends to cause itself to remain so. Once we invent planes the knowledge of their construction lives on in our society, in our brains, in our books, and in the physical plane itself. Note that it only has the tendency. Knowledge can be superseded, get lost, or simply get burned (as in the case of the library of Alexandria).
- A down stream force against the accumulation and evolution of knowledge are errors (or anti-rational memes), especialy in our societie's rules and organizations. Errors, among others, consits of conformity seeking, the supression of curiosity and creativity, and a lack of mechanisms for error correction. On the level of society error-corrections means removing bad leaders, policies, and regulations.
- Concluding, knowledge evolves, accumulates, and is the raw, abstract resource we need to solve problems and make progress. However, knowledge acculumation is also hindered by anti-rational memes.