Posts
Comments
I tend to think that the most relevant piece of information about the singularity is Moore's Second Law, "the cost of a semiconductor fab rises exponentially with each generation of chips."
Corollary 1: At some point, the rate of increase in computing power will be limited by the rate of growth in the overall global economy.
Corollary 2: AI will not go FOOM (at least, not by a process of serially improved computer designs).
High status individuals, being older, tend to rely on memory more than creativity to solve problems. As a result, their first response to a given situation is often slightly mistuned; the first answer they remember was appropriate to a similar situation but often slightly inappropriate to the current situation.
I'm a chemist; we actually have to use quantum physics on a routine basis. The main reason many-worlds never got traction is that it doesn't make a testable prediction. Most physicists realize that making a model of reality that predicts experiment (as far as possible) is, well, science; BSing about what the implications are is more of a late night and beer thing.
In other words, if the model implies that there may be other worlds, but they can't conceivably be detected, then who cares?
One last thing: there's some pretty good evidence of nonlocal physics these days. It's inconsistent with general relativity, but no biggie. We already knew that general relativity and quantum physics were incompatible. The current situation in physics (for the last 30 years or so) is considerable confusion at the level of fundamental theory, but extremely robust models for every actual physical situation that we can probe. The robustness of the models is exactly what has halted progress.
You seem to be confusing plausibility with possibility. The existence of God seems plausible to many people, but whether or not the existence of God is truly possible is not clear. Reasonable people believe that God is impossible, others that God is possible, and others that God is necessary (i.e. God's nonexistance is impossible).
It depends. We use the term "probability" to cover a variety of different things, which can be handled by similar mathematics but are not the same.
For example, suppose that I'm playing blackjack. Given a certain disposition of cards, I can calculate a probability that asking for the next card will bust me. In this case the state of the world is fixed, and probability measures my ignorance. The fact that I don't know which card would be dealt to me doesn't change the fact that there's a specific card on the top of the deck waiting to be dealt. If I knew more about the situation (perhaps by counting cards) I might have a better idea of which cards could possibly be on top of the deck, but the same card would still be on top of the deck. In this situation, case 1 applies from the choices above.
Alternately consider photons going through a double slit in the classical quantum physics experiment. If the holes are of equal size and geometry, a photon has a 50% chance of passing through each slit (the probabilities can be adjusted, for example by changing the width of one slit). One of the basic results of quantum physics is that the profile of the light through both slits is not the same as the sum of the profiles of the light through each slit. In general, it is not possible to say which slit a given photon when through, and attempting to make that measurement changes the answer. In this situation, case 3 of the above post seems to apply.
My point is that the post's question can't be answered for probabilities in general. It depends.
If we are, in fact, living in the Matrix, then science has already characterized the rules of the simulation rather well. Barring further interference by the sysadmin/God/whatever, it should continue to operate by mechanistic, semipredictable rules. Science has little to say about one-time interventions from outside observable reality, whether you call them "Matrix hacks", "miracles", or what you will. Regarding such matters, the null hypothesis has yet to be convincingly falsified, but absence of proof is not proof of absence.
As Feynman said, one of the characteristics of the truth is that, as you look more closely at it, it gets clearer. Most of the parapsych crowd tends to report results that are have a 1% probability of occurring randomly, after having done hundreds of experiments and failing to report the rest. The difference is that the level of confidence in the best experiment in a real effect doesn't scale simply with the number of experiments. A real effect should show millions-to-one odds in a few trials, once solid experimental procedures have been devised.
Brain functional MRI scans show that, to the best available resolution, conscious states are highly correlated with events in space.
The brain operates by electrical and chemical signals, so a complex circuit seems like a better physics-based model of consciousness than what you propose.
Why would you try to approach consciousness this way, as opposed to through neuroscience? Neuroscience has been making some real progress lately; what is it that you think this approach could add?
I can't help but notice that the "self-monad" looks a lot like a "soul" in a thin, crispy quantum shell. What are the differences? Are there differences? Dressing it up this way allows you to do math with the monad. Does that math tell you anything? Especially, can any testable prediction come out of this?
You describe how to think like a quantum monadologist. If you answer these questions, I'll be able to decide if thinking like a quantum monadologist is worth attempting.
I've always found "Just be yourself" to be particularly unhelpful advice.
"Just be Brad Pitt" is better advice, but still not helpful.
"Analysis" is a common word for dividing a problem into smaller subproblems, and would seem to apply.
There are really two problems here. The first is that single men and women can have a hard time meeting each other. The second is a mismatch between the expectations of each and the reality.
We all have an idea of what we're looking for in a mate. That idea owes a lot to the media, and it isn't all that realistic. She is looking for a man with smouldering good looks and a deep sensitive streak (full disclosure: I'm a man, and most of the time I don't even care about my own feelings). He is looking for a woman who is paying for her math degree by stripping. Only very rarely are these expectations fulfilled.
I don't live near a university (the local Christian college does not, IMHO, count). I've tried dating sites, but never had any luck with them. I tried a meeting of my local professional society, but I was one of three people under 50.
"But if you pick some social event or scene where there are likely to be people vaguely similar to you"
I suspect that for most of us, such scenes consist almost exclusively of dudes.
I have trouble meeting women, and it's due to three major constraints:
1) I'm not religious, so church is out.
2) Bars bore me.
3) I haven't identified any other venues where a 30-something guy can approach women in a sociable context.
These constraints may be typical of the Less Wrong readership.