Quick Links Tuesday, Jan 5 2010
random 1:37 pm
Here are some quick links I’ve been meaning to post.
Video: Julian Savulescu: “Genetically Enhance Humanity or Face Extinction”
Nanowerk: A nanocomposite for electronic skin
Nanowerk: Bacteria make the artificial blood vessels of the future
LiveScience: New Device Prints Human Tissue
Alan Darwst: The Importance of Wild Animal Suffering
Science Daily: CR: Scientists Take Important Step Toward ‘Fountain of Youth’
Call for Papers: Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference on Consciousness
UK Telegraph: Alcohol substitute that avoids hangovers in development
UK Telegraph: Toby Ord’s philosophy is one we all could learn from
Technology Review: The Year in Biomedicine
Michael Crichton: Complexity Theory and Environmental Management
Mark Gubrud: Nanotechnology in Warfare
Fabbaloo: O’Reilly Names 3D Printing Best Tech of The Decade, Sorta
Weird Things: Taking Brain Mapping to the Next Level
East Bay Express: Berkeley High May Cut Science Labs
The New Republic takes apart Malcolm Gladwell: Mr. Lucky
Eliezer Yudkowsky: Darwinian dynamics unlikely to apply to superintelligence
Have a Happy New Year!
I disagree with much of “Darwinian dynamics unlikely to apply to superintelligence”.
Basically, it just fails to make its case with the ‘there is no reason to suppose’ sentence. Superintelligences probably won’t have much use for random mutations – but those are not really the core of Darwinism.
Hi Tim, here is one of the core parts from the argument:
And when the variable definitions in a replicator equation do correspond to simple physical properties, there is still the question of whether one is dealing with infinitesimal quantities that obey a replicator equation, or large quantities; small handful of generations, or millions of generations; whether there is enough selection pressure, over a long enough period of time, to produce complex information of the sort we’re used to seeing in biology.
To sum up, natural selection *as we know it*, which is to say, natural selection in any noticeable quantity, is not an automatic consequence of physics. It applies to butterflies, but not pebbles, even though the math can be defined for both cases. Even if blue pebbles survive some tiny amount better, it doesn’t mean that in 20,000 years all the pebbles on the seashore will be intensely blue.
Do you agree with the point that the above is trying to make?
Natural selection takes place in clay minerals – on a small scale – e.g. promoting screw dislocations in some crystals. That is pretty close to being a direct “consequence of physics”. Maybe I notice that and Eliezer either doesn’t notice it, or doesn’t think it is significant.
Not that that bit seems very relevant to superintelligences. With superintelligent agents, copying information is very far from the problem.
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