There's this wonderful thought exercise Harlow Shapley, an American astronomer, did many years ago. He said, what happens to one breath of air?
for - BEing Journey - argon gas - Gedanken - thought experiment - Harlow Shapley - intertwingledness - David Suzuki
what would happen if I begin to self-referentially and try to embody a part of a collective intelligence including the three of us in such a fashion that we were actually leveraging that qualitatively distinct um mind to inform the conversation we're having to get us there
for - Jordan Hall - gedanken - collective intelligence of a group - Michael Levin & Jordan Hall conversation
if we fail to control our numbers and our appetites well then yes our society will start to to crash in a similar way to that of 00:35:32 easter island only on a worldwide scale and that means the whole industrial civilization will break down and 00:35:45 our descendants will essentially be uh savages to use that term very advisably and savages in the sense that they will have lost 00:35:58 the fruits of civilization and hate us
for - progress trap - dark futures scenario - like Easter Island but on a global scale
comment - The potential global breakdown of global industrialized society, rupturing supply chains so that our highly interdependent world becomes the very Achilles Heel that hastens its demise is chilling - It could mean a huge disruption to the most important aspect of civilization - the continuing accruing and inter-generational transmission of knowledge - It would be catastrophic to lose that, but it is entirely possible - As Wright himself famously said, to use a computer metaphor, we humans are like 50,000 year old hardware, running modern software - By that, he meant that our cognitive physiology (brain and sensory processing system) has not changed for tens of thousands of years, yet cultural evolution happens at exponentially faster rates, so much so that our biological systems are not adapted to keep up with the pace, and that spells disaster - When we no longer have the sensory or cognitive apparatus to sense danger, and we are offloading that to AI, we are in an extremely vulnerable situation
progress trap - Gedanken - Think of our ancestors from 50,000 years ago. - What Wright is saying with his metaphor is that if that child from 50,000 years ago were transported by a time machine to modernity, (s)he would have little problem integrating into modern society - LIKEWISE, if we lose all the knowledge fruits of accumulated over so many thousands of years, it would be like being born into a human tribe 50,000 years ago. - We would likely still have language, but all our technology may have to start from scratch!
what life might be that baby could be 00:38:31 born in an era 10,000 years ago and would be coming into its World learning to make sense of the relationships and the way that you 00:38:45 survive in this world
for - Nora Bateson - response to interview question - Is English language more separating? - Gedanken - Entangled Worlds podcast
response - Nora Bateson - Entangled Worlds podcast question - Is English more separating than other languages? - yes - Gedanken - Nora responds by posing a Gedaken that shows how culturally relative our worldviews are - Our enculturation plays a major role in shaping our worldviews - Ronald Wright's famous quotation about how the human brain has not substantially changed in the past 50,000 years implies that - between the present and anytime less than 50,000 years ago, - if we were transported back in time, we would simply adapt the same culturally norms at that time
epiphany - time travel and a clue to the deepest part of nature within human nature - This Gedanken suggests something important, namely that - if the seemingly immovable worldviews we adopt are a consequence of enculturation - then perhaps that which is the most fundamental aspect of our nature is not dependent on culture? - In other words, if we remove our enculturation, what is left is the most profound set of qualities of being human, - one that transcends all relative cultural perspectives
reference - Ronald Wright computer metaphor on progress traps - Ronald Wright's computer metaphor helps us see how fluid the enculturation of a neonate is - https://hyp.is/6Lb6Uv5NEe2ZerOrftOHfA/www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/321797-a-short-history-of-progress
the attempt to prolong life infinitely
Suppose we have an AI whose only goal is to make as many paper clips as possible. The AI will realize quickly that it would be much better if there were no humans because humans might decide to switch it off. Because if humans do so, there would be fewer paper clips. Also, human bodies contain a lot of atoms that could be made into paper clips. The future that the AI would be trying to gear towards would be one in which there were a lot of paper clips but no humans.
Quote - AI Gedanken - AI risk - The Paperclip Maximizer
what are the things you've done or you're doing now that your 10 year old 00:10:51 self will be so happy for but if he was in front of you right now he'd just be hugging you and high fiving you nonstop the things you're doing that he will appreciate in ten years and then what are a few things that he's 00:11:04 gonna say man i really wish you wouldn't do that right now
!- Gedanken : future self question to present self
what i want you to do is to now imagine somebody whose body you would like to have 00:28:23 as your own either for a few minutes or maybe long term i'm not going to ask you why you want that body i don't want to get that deep into your psyche and that might be very personal um 00:28:35 but i'll tell you whose body i'd like to have and for how long just to give you a warm-up feel for this i really would like to have usain bolt's body of a few years ago for 9.6 seconds 00:28:47 because i would love to know what it feels like to run 100 meters that fast now when i form that does i think it's a coherent desire how do i why do i think that because i really do desire it i would love it i'd pay a lot of money to 00:28:59 do that um but what i don't want is to be usain bolt because usain bolt is already the same bolt and that doesn't do me any good um what i want is to be me 00:29:12 j with usain bolt's body so i can know what it feels like to run really really fast now i'm not claiming that this is a coherent desire i'm not claiming that it's 00:29:24 possible for me to remain jay and have usain bolt's body but i am claiming that i can desire it and if you are anything like me for some body or other you can desire to 00:29:36 have it for some time or other if you can form that desire then you in deep in your gut don't believe that you are your body you believe that you have a body and that 00:29:48 you might have a different body just like you might have a different hat or a different cat and if you believe that then you really do believe that whatever you are you are not your body 00:30:01 now you might think well that's obviously true i've never thought i was my body um but maybe on my mind i don't think you really believe that either and i want to do the same thought 00:30:13 experiment to convince you of that now i want you to think about somebody's mind that you'd really like to have maybe not for a long time maybe only for a few minutes um i'll tell you mine again i'm really 00:30:25 big and divulging you know hyper sharing over sharing personal secrets um i would really love to have stephen hawking's mind when he was still alive of course not now um and i'd like to have it only for about five or ten 00:30:36 minutes because what i would really like is to be able to really understand quantum gravity and i can't really understand it but if i had stephen hawking's mind for a few minutes then i could understand it now i obviously 00:30:48 don't want to be stephen hawking for one thing he's dead for another thing he was already stephen hawking and it didn't do me a damn bit of good what i want is to be me jay with his mind so that i can 00:31:00 use it to understand quantum gravity um i think that'd be really cool again i'm not claiming this is coherent i'm not claiming that it's possible but i am claiming that it's a 00:31:11 psychologically possible state to be in to crave somebody else's mind and if you like me can form that desire then you like me deep in your gut do not believe that you are your mind 00:31:25 you believe that you're something that has a mind just like you have a body um and that you possessed that mind and you could still be you with another mind and another body i mean just imagine having 00:31:37 the same bolts body in stephen hawking's mind that would be totally cool then i could understand quantum gravity while setting a new record for the 100 meter sprint um but that's not going to happen alas 00:31:50 um the moral of these experiments um takes us right back to chandragiri serpent i think the moral of these experiments is that deep down at an atavistic gut 00:32:02 level we believe that we are something that stands behind our minds and our bodies that thing is the self the thing that is not the mind in the body but possesses the mind in the body that's the thing 00:32:14 that sean decurity identifies as the serpent in the wall our arguments are going to be aimed at that not at our bodies not as our minds not as our personal identities they're 00:32:27 going to be aimed at that self that we really atavistically believe stands behind all of those that's the illusion that's the thing that causes us to be incompetent morally that causes us to be 00:32:41 confused about our own identities and to be confused about our role and our place in the world
!- BEing journey Gedanken : imagine yourself to have different body, different mind - if you can imagine this, then you believe you ARE NOT the body or mind, but the SELF that HAS the body or mind - examples of imagining having another mind or body: what would it be like to be there mind of wife? My husband? My child? My friend? My enemy? My dog? My cat? A bat ( Thomas Hagel)? Isn't this imagination salient for empathising? To imagine being another person, don't we need to imagine being in their mind and body to imagined experiencing like they do?
Actually, certain simple facts can be visible to the mind’s eye rather than to our direct vision. Owen Gingerich once made me realize how Galileo reached the conclusion that all bodies fall to the Earth at the same speed even if they have different weight, besides the obvious restrictions due to their shape
!- gedanken : Galileo falling objects and gravity - Owen Gingerich teaches about Galileo's reasoning - Galileo used his mind's eye rather than empirical experiments to reach a profound conclusion in physics - He drew a Reductio Ad Absurdium argument - by imagining tying a heavy object to a light one - causing a contradiction to occur - therefore, light bodies and heavy ones could only fall at the same rate