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StillBurningInside t1_iv3s551 wrote

Copium and Unobtainium.

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secter t1_iv49o4a wrote

Made the same joke, saw your comment, deleted it lol.

Great minds think alike.

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husk_12_T t1_iv64dt4 wrote

Is unobtainium a reference to avatar?

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whyambear t1_iv6erz7 wrote

It’s a generalized sci-fi placeholder element used in lots of different books and movies

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Sashinii t1_iv2vmja wrote

I think Ray Kurzweil is definitely correct and it's remarkable that it's possible that we're so close to the start of the process of infusing the universe with computronium.

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BinaryDigit_ OP t1_iv2wge7 wrote

Do you think computronium validates pantheism in some way?

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Sashinii t1_iv2ycjb wrote

Universal computronium doesn't validate pantheism any more than Clarketech validates literal magic.

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Gaothaire t1_iv4naqr wrote

Donald Hoffman is a nice science friendly version of philosophical idealism, consciousness is primary and physical matter arises out of it as an interface for some subset of conscious agents to interact within.

And if you're able to accept that Western reductionist materialism is simply one limited perspective, you'll find that the universe is way more complicated and interactive than many people deeply bought in to that cosmology could ever believe.

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turnip_burrito t1_iv3mztv wrote

Did you mean to say pansychism? Also, the answer is No. It doesn't validate it, unless it can find a way to logically prove it is true.

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visarga t1_iv6hdgr wrote

Panpsychism is misguided. Mind is a property of agents, not a "fundamental and ubiquitous" property of the world. The mind and consciousness exists for a purpose - to keep the body alive by adapting to the environment.

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turnip_burrito t1_iv6vmk9 wrote

Panpsychism can also mean a mindlike aspect, such as qualia, not necessarily mind itself, is fundamental and ubiquitous. We truly don't know whether qualia is ubiquitous or not, since we have not so far found, and may never find, a way to test it. In this way, panpsychism is not misguided, but it is also not a scientifically testable concept either.

Thinking is what keeps complex agents alive in the environment, not necessarily qualia. Thinking (computation) and feeling may be separate, or may always coincide.

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visarga t1_iv93rk1 wrote

Wikipedia defines qualia as individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. Thinking is part of that.

How can we think without feeling? We're not Platonic entities, we have real bodies with real needs. Feeling good or bad about an action or situation is required in order to survive.

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turnip_burrito t1_iv9582l wrote

You're right about the definition of thinking. I shouldn't have used the word "think".

I should amend my earlier statement. Replace instances of "thinking" in my statement with "computation". Qualia and survival behaviors due to computation are two circles which form a Venn diagram. Humans are in the center of it. This is what I meant to say.

Here is my argument for why we shouldn't treat computation and qualia as the same: computation can still result in survival, regardless of whether the entity actually feels anything or not.

It is reasonable to extrapolate current trends to hypothesize a robot which survives in the environment as well as any thinking human. But I would hesitate to say they feel anything. Does it feel like anything to be a robot? It's just performing boolean operations. Even rows of dominos can be arranged perform boolean operations. A long enough chain of self-righting dominos can also do sophisticated computations (very very slowly). But I wouldn't grant dominos the status of feeling, that would be preposterous. If you don't like the dominos example, just replace with a mechanical turing complete system of your choice. It seems to me then that intelligent computation (which can be used for survival) and feeling (qualia) are two different matters.

However, it is also possible that computation and qualia are never separate, even outside biological brains. In that case, pansychism would be true. But how could we know? For now, we can't, and we may never know.

Tl,dr: I think you are incorrectly assuming survival computations and ability to feel a subjective experience are both only present together, in a person or animal. I'm suggesting there is also a possibility they can exist separately. There is also a third possibility, that all computation (particle interactions) in the universe coincides with qualia, which is a form of panpsychism. Panpsychism doesn't require everything has "mind", it can just be the "mindlike aspect" of qualia.

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[deleted] t1_iv35hmx wrote

[deleted]

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drsimonz t1_iv8291a wrote

> we may choose to have ASI create the perfect simulation for us and keep us safe inside it, rather than expending energy to expand.

Yeah. This video made me wonder, what if there are as-yet-unknown natural limits to intelligence? What if minds pursuing greater intelligence universally lose interest in that goal once they reach a certain level, and pursue other things like entertainment, creativity, or even self destruction? Since we have zero examples of ASI, how can we possibly know? And consider how tiny a percentage of people alive today who actually consider intelligence a goal at all? Most people don't even seem to have a concept of intelligence being a good thing, let alone being something you can change. I think people like Ray (and to be fair, myself) like to assume that the obvious choice is to continue increasing intelligence forever, since it increases your future capabilities for any other goals you might have.

Also worth noting that "saturate the universe with computronium" thing obviously isn't compatible with the existence of other intelligent species. Unless we're unique in the universe, it's extremely unlikely we just happen to be the first species to have a chance to trigger a singularity, which we'd have to be since we can look in any direction and see billions of non-computronium stars.

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[deleted] t1_iv87l0x wrote

[deleted]

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drsimonz t1_iv900iu wrote

I have a good friend who believes reality is subjective - that events may be determined more by where you choose to focus your attention, than by some universally consistent instance of the laws of physics. If that is true (which I think it would have to be, if we were an attention-oriented simulation like you describe), then it seems pretty difficult to come to any conclusions at all. If causality doesn't have to be globally consistent, it should be possible to "break" the laws of physics and get things like free energy or faster than light travel. I highly doubt Mr. Kurzweil would want to entertain such notions, since the possibilities are already so exciting even if we assume that universe is objective (i.e. the laws of physics apply everywhere simultaneously).

Of course, the possibility of us being the only intelligent species certainly would depend on whether we're in a simulation designed specifically for us. But I don't see any reason to prefer that idea over a simulation with 1 billion intelligent species per galaxy. To prefer the former seems no better than assuming the earth is the center of the universe.

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Mazzaroth t1_iv3t98c wrote

He lost me when talking about sending nanobots through wormholes.

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subdep t1_iv4e7rp wrote

Sounds like something the Borg would do. Resistance is futile.

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vernes1978 t1_iv522ny wrote

Just like in this video, Destiny 2 also doesn't explain HOW the Vex converts planets into giant computers as the minerals are rearranged into computronium.
But that's the thing with scifi, you don't need to explain it, it just needs to sound cool.

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TheHamsterSandwich t1_iv82v1h wrote

It will be understandable after the singularity.

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vernes1978 t1_iv8ap3s wrote

So 1: You also have no clue
and 2: Something something
3: Profit
Did I summarise it correctly?

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footurist t1_iv5a0iw wrote

The funniest comment I read on that video some years back was that he threw his last bit of rationality together with that stone in the sea, lol.

Obviously not true, but he does feel way too confident and somehow some angry internet man needing to write that made me laugh.

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Kinexity t1_iv3agtf wrote

"computronium" is bullshit. What we are spreading everywhere is order. If you think about it before life emerged everything was just growing in entropy. Life keeps the local entropy low. Intially it was singular cells, later evolved into multicell organism, animals and finally humans. Compared to other species humans not only are ordered as organisms but started spreading order everywhere in form of buildings and products of our civilizations. We gotten increasingly good at that up to a point where we can arrange a limited number of atoms the way we want. The problem is that we cannot just change anything into a useful computer. One could say that a rock is a computer which computes itself but it doesn't mean it can do anything useful. It can only compute itself as there is no order to start off of. We will increase number of computers even more and start infusing them in wierder and weirder places but computronium belongs on the shelf with other sci-fi concepts which cannot exist in reality.

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KidKilobyte t1_iv3mfb4 wrote

I actually heard an in person lecture by Freeman Dyson on this very issue and the only reason we build up order on earth is because there is an outflow of energy from the Sun that goes through the Earth and then is re-radiated the space. With out an incoming source of energy that flows to a lower lower place of order there is no building of order. Our gains in order are because the Earth is not a closed system entropy wise. Our order here is offset by disordered elsewhere. Eventually the suns will burn out and disorder will only increase — the heat death of the Universe.

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Kinexity t1_iv3ytgf wrote

That is true that we need the energy from the sun for that order to appear. Idk if it's called like this in English but I know it as "energy stream" (after translation) from thermodynamics lecture I attended. We are limited by the amount of energy there is but from our perspective the energy is "endless" so it doesn't make sense to bother yourself with heat death of the Universe.

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Quealdlor t1_iv4r4r1 wrote

Naming it aside, I think that Ray is basically correct, just wrong in his timing of things. I do think and hope that we will be turning everything into some kind of computronium to create simulations where anything and everything is possible. Who knows what we will do there with greatly amplified intellect? And if not, the total mass of computers in existence will still go up, not down. Their efficiency will improve as well of course.

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TheHamsterSandwich t1_iv4t4au wrote

If the universe hasn't already woken up yet, one could assume that means we are the first form of intelligent life to make it this far. Which is equally exciting and terrifying.

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pigeon888 t1_iv5jo2m wrote

Interesting but creepy.

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Ale_Alejandro t1_iv5q1cn wrote

Yeah everytime anyone suggest getting past the speed of light or that we’ll somehow beat entropy I just tune out, if there is something true about the universe is that entropy is king and the speed of causality not only unbeatable but it’s not even reachable!

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TheHamsterSandwich t1_iv83atq wrote

If nobody believes we'll beat entropy then we won't. You have to be optimistic otherwise you'd never start trying. Don't you think it's worth giving a shot?

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Ale_Alejandro t1_iv8fywu wrote

Sure I guess there’s value in giving it a shot, not because we’ll be able to do it but we don’t know what we’ll learn attempting to do so, and there’s also value in the ideas as entertainment, but I for one don’t think entropy nor the speed of light are things anyone or anything can defy so I just don’t take those claims very seriously

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TheHamsterSandwich t1_iv9abkj wrote

Why are you so convinced that the heat death of the universe is 100% undefeatable and certain to happen?

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Cr4zko t1_ivbcgjo wrote

Computronium is cool but eh. Don't see how you could pull it off.

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Down_The_Rabbithole t1_iv4vmid wrote

Entropy makes most of these assertions mathematically impossible. Kurzweil needs to stop sniffing his own farts and selling fairy tales to people, and just stick to the singularity.

Computers aren't magic. AI aren't gods. These things are still beholden to the laws of physics.

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TheHamsterSandwich t1_iv501rt wrote

"any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"

Maybe stop trying to debunk things that haven't happened yet? Would be kind of cool if you could drop your pessimism for 2 seconds.

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Down_The_Rabbithole t1_iv50d89 wrote

No, that would be pseudoscience. By definition things are always beholden to the laws of physics. Else they wouldn't be the laws of physics.

This is not a religion based on hope. It's a science based on observation and mathematical constructs.

That Arthur C. Clarke quote is just that, a funny quote. It isn't actually factual or something you should adhere to. It's just a funny remark.

Concepts like Entropy however are actual real science and the laws of physics are things everything in the universe by definition adheres to. These things are not the same.

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TheHamsterSandwich t1_iv56d74 wrote

Who said our understanding of physics is complete?

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ratsoidar t1_iv63vns wrote

They are stuck in Plato’s cave allegory. Imagine 300 years ago suggesting there are atoms that can be split to release unbelievable amounts of energy. Or that computers can be created with tiny rocks and electricity. Speaking of electricity, pretty new too. We can vibrate our food to temperature in a little box in the kitchen now. Without modern tools and a foundation of research and development we would have never had any idea. How can anyone believe we are simply done learning anything new now? It’s a litmus test of ignorance imo.

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KSRandom195 t1_iv5bwon wrote

Our laws of physics are based on our current understanding of the universe. They used to think the Earth was flat. The best science at the time believed it was this way.

Further, we already know we have some pretty big unknowns, for instance, dark matter and dark energy exists solely to fill a gap in our understanding. And we also know we have some big assumptions that the same laws of physics apply everywhere.

For the applications we typically use these assumptions for, stuff we’re doing around Earth and the Sol system it’s fine. For principles of the universe these assumptions and unknowns are a much bigger deal.

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[deleted] t1_iv61dud wrote

I don't see how this will go against entropy, computation does not decrease the entropy of the universe in any way. if it did it would go against the laws of physics. What made you make that statement?

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KSRandom195 t1_ivazyt0 wrote

It decreases the entropy of the thing being computed.

Deriving that 2 + 2 = 4 necessarily orders the location that the 4 is stored.

However, the computation itself consumes energy from an external source.

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turnip_burrito t1_iv56f3b wrote

Sounds like you just need to belieeeeeeve.

We can run computronium off of these farts if they are plentiful enough

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