Science is all there is, and it’s probably enough with one major caveat. Science depends on gathering data, constructing models (theories), making predictions and testing them (experiments). We can do all that, but it falls down if the model is chaotic or emergent.
My view is that there are indeed things even simple brains do that were created haphazardly by evolution and that defy model building. The only model for the brain of an earthworm is an earthworm brain, or a replica of one.
But in the mammalian cortex or the avian equivalent evolution found a shortcut: neuronal columns that are parallel in structure and work across all sensory and motor modalities. I think there is a real prospect of modelling that, perhaps with brains we grow in the lab with deep instrumentation. This is where AGI resides.
I have no interest whatever in trying to make sense of human behaviour or introspection until after we have AGI. Indeed, AGI may just be the tool we need to model other aspects of brain function, scientifically.
[BTW science is a philosophy, not a religion, regardless of how scientists and others view it.]
Science is a broad term. It can refer to the body of accumulated knowledge about our shared objective reality, or to the process of accumulating said knowledge. The extent to which an individual chooses to believe in the accuracy of the knowledge gained about a particular concept/phenomenon through the scientific method says a lot about their willingness to place their faith in other humans/scientists (to follow the scientific method, to be diligent in their work, and willing to make and/or accept corrections to their theories based on the weight of accumulated evidence), rather than to place their faith in whomever can tell a compelling story or otherwise hijack your attention with irrelevant distractions.
The brain is made up of the same stuff as the rest of the universe. Yes, it is a moderately complicated organ with a fascinating tissue structure which, when coupled to a body, allows it to manifest very complex behaviors.
However, you underestimate the curiosity of scientists and the ingenuity of engineers. History has shown that engineers are capable of making increasingly sensitive devices that allow scientists to make increasingly precise measurements of complex systems, and to formulate increasingly sophisticated models of those systems. I’ve seen no evidence that the behavior of the brain itself is somehow immune to the scientific method or otherwise excepted from this historical trend.
There are different fields of science, with different standards because of different intrinsic complexity of their subject. The same terms, like proof or evidence, mean different things. That’s in the best case, it’s much worse when we see physics envy in neuroscience, etc.
We propose that a 2 month, 10 man study of artificial intelligence be carried out during the summer of 1956 at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it. An attempt will be made to find how to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves. We think that a significant advance can be made in one or more of these problems if a carefully selected group of scientists work on it together for a summer.
I think brain-based AI is a special problem because we’re brains. We think we know the functions of the brain, but we won’t see those exact things in the circuitry. There’s a lot going on under the hood, which you can guess from the shear complexity, and plainly see when brain injuries cause strange problems.
Figuring out exactly what’s going on under the hood takes a long time. E.g. TBT’s location thing. That’s not just from people at numenta, it’s also built on lifetimes of research. It’ll take thousands of people’s lifetimes.
Solar panels took 175 years to become cheaper than coal. Also, solar is cheaper than coal now. That makes me optimistic about the long term, and about the modern rate of progress.
One is that it generally isn’t necessary to rely on trust to go with science. A whole bunch of data points and predictions from theory are readily available to ordinary observers using simple tools. I have fossils; I’ve seen an eclipse and Mercury and an ISS flash turn up as predicted; I’ve derived constants like g and c from my own observations. Science is a philosophy, not a trust system. Compelling stories don’t make testable predictions, but science does.
The second is that science in general only allows models of chaotic systems to make limited stochastic predictions, and that probably isn’t enough in many cases. We can predict probable weather out a few days, but there is no way, even theoretically, to predict weather years into the future other than running the real thing and seeing what it does.
Evolution can try out umpteen stupid ideas over millions of generations to find a few that work, but it can’t explain why they work. They just do, and we can’t model them any more that we can model the weather. We can possibly model single neurons and structures like columns but there are limits in modelling overall brain function that I think we cannot get past.
If we give our brain to a caveman, and say to him do whatever you want to do with that. In the end you need to come up with a theory on how it works? Can he able to do that?
Philosophy is about logic, logic is about assumption, assumption is about experience, experience is about attention, attention is neurons getting inputs, neurons input is about energy, energy is about …(I don’t know how to distill it further)
I found these:
Philosophy is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language.
Science is (knowledge from) the careful study of the structure and behaviour of the physical world, especially by watching, measuring, and doing experiments, and the development of theories to describe the results of these activities.
To call science merely an activity is far too narrow. It’s the philosophy and a host of practices based on it.
But the point was that unlike religion nothing in science is so just because someone said so, it has to be shown objectively from data and models. We can never create an AGI until we understand the science and derive the engineering.
Philosophy has two mode of problems. 1. Intrinsic problem 2. Extrinsic problem
Intrinsic problem - has no definite solutions, every philosophers has to come up with their own individual solution to their satisfaction eg. ‘life is nothing’ problem.
Extrinsic problem - has definite solution, bcoz the problems originated from the external world, everyone has to agree with solution that comes from observation. Due to the fact that everyone is seeing the same external environment. Eg. Take two scientist from two different world, in the 1st world gravity pulls down, but in the second world gravity pulls - here the extrinsic problem has to be solved by individual scientist, they will never agree with each other bcoz their the origin of the problems ( a force - gravity) is same but the type( down-pulling gravity, up-pulling gravity) is different…
But science has only extrinsic problems - you know we can all agree to the solution.
In my opinion both philosophy and science has doing the same thing but they face different problems… correct me if im wrong…