Recent comments in /f/singularity

[deleted] t1_j49jvdw wrote

Reply to comment by srasmus97 in Breakthrough milestone in understanding the reversal of aging by duffmanhb

Wrong.

Entropy is disorder. The Second Law of Thermodynamics holds that entropy must increase over time in all closed systems. That is all.

Biological organisms are not closed systems, so like you said, the Second Law does not apply.

Entropy increasing over time does not cause aging in organisms, it causes rotting or decomposition. This is an extremely rapid process. Without maintenance and upkeep, cells would rot in days, hours, or even minutes in some cases. Tissues therefore rot quickly too, once they are mostly-closed systems and no longer receiving input energy and therefore no longer running maintenance via metabolism.

Aging is only caused by the slow accumulation of errors and failures in the maintenance processes. It is not directly related to increases in entropy, any more than any other slow changes in an organism over time are. The error here is reasoning by analogy too closely with non living machines. Machines like cars do not have metabolisms. They rot extremely slowly, over decades, not hours or minutes.

Here’s another way to see it: You wouldn’t say that growing from an infant into an adult is because of entropy, would you? Yet that is very similar to what causes aging: imperfect maintenance of the organism’s existing structures. In the case of growth and development, those imperfections lead to changes that are “positive” or “desirable” from our subjective viewpoint. But that’s just arbitrary. Aging is just as much a part of “natural” development as, say, puberty.

Talking about entropy at the level of aging and development in an organism instead of at the level of metabolism is an error in the basic unit of analysis.

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Magicdinmyasshole OP t1_j49ijir wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in Made a sub for brainstorming about ways to address impeding psychological fallout from the realization that the singularity or somthing like it is probably going to happen in our lifetime. by Magicdinmyasshole

Yup, I'm mostly okay with that future or something like it. I also think this will move very quickly and it might be nice for people who are fucked sideways by it to have some resources that help them feel better about the absurdity of it all.

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te_alset t1_j49ibdx wrote

Reply to comment by bjt23 in Don't add "moral bloatware" to GPT-4. by SpinRed

Yet it’s still preferable to macOS.

I have to use a mac for work and I hate it so much. I’m getting carpal tunnel in my left hand from the cmd key. The only way macOS is usable is with keyboard commands.

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[deleted] t1_j49fzwy wrote

Reply to comment by Magicdinmyasshole in Made a sub for brainstorming about ways to address impeding psychological fallout from the realization that the singularity or somthing like it is probably going to happen in our lifetime. by Magicdinmyasshole

You're not taking one big thing into account.

We’re not going to turn into some Star Trek type society, one thing ignored by almost all science fiction (because it’s hard to write and potentially boring) is intelligence amplification. And humanity at this point basically needs to say hey, mr superintelligent AI, can you give us one of those chips? Or hey, can you upload our consciousnesses into an inorganic body or a mainframe. And so on. Certainly, some people will remain as they are now. But the vast majority will be nothing short of gods compared to current humans. There won’t be any interest in money, sex, eating, or arguably basically anything you’re interested in now. You’re so smart that your goals are likely entirely unpredictable. Not to mention that you may have one superintelligent AI made chip in your brain, but the AI will have trillions or even quadrillions while running on nuclear fusion or some form of energy not yet conceptualized. So humanity has no place at that point for being scientists certainly either because highly augmented or not you’re still an amoeba compared to the AI. Perhaps we’ll become explorers of some sort, but it won’t be like Star Trek because, again, augmented humans will have significantly different goals and interests.

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Magicdinmyasshole OP t1_j49frng wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in Made a sub for brainstorming about ways to address impeding psychological fallout from the realization that the singularity or somthing like it is probably going to happen in our lifetime. by Magicdinmyasshole

I agree with most of your points, I just think we're talking about a different time horizon. I think some people will twist themselves into knots starting like, today, about how much AI is going to change the world in the immediate future. They may need a little help to get over the hump.

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Magicdinmyasshole OP t1_j49fbk4 wrote

Reply to comment by ElvinRath in Made a sub for brainstorming about ways to address impeding psychological fallout from the realization that the singularity or somthing like it is probably going to happen in our lifetime. by Magicdinmyasshole

I guess the fear is that some people will be negatively impacted, at least temporarily, by the true understanding that we are just biological computers and AI will surpass us. If that's not so for you, great! But it will probably fuck some people up. This is about how we might get them through that.

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srasmus97 t1_j49f3l4 wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in Breakthrough milestone in understanding the reversal of aging by duffmanhb

Entropy is the tendency of any system to devolve into chaos given enough time. It isn't chaos itself. The breakdown of the epigenome with age is the maintenance system slowly changing over time until it doesn't work anymore. That is entropy. Now, biological systems aren't closed, and we could ship of Theseus ourselves until the end of time, but without that reset, entropy will creep in

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