[smhost]

That gives me some really strong existential heebie jeebies. I mean, what then even is our value? Why exist at all, at that point? I don't know about other people, but I get my sense of purpose in believing that we're the captains of this Spaceship Earth, and that we're making progress towards something significant. I don't know what that something is, but I have a vague idea, and at the very least we seem to be the best that we've got. I don't know. Maybe I'm thinking about all of this wrong. God, why am I so damn confused all the time? Fuck.

[simonh]

> God, why am I so damn confused all the time?

You and me both. I'm afraid it's because we're only just barely sentient. If you think about it, in evolutionary terms we literally only just now managed to build a technological society because we only just got smart enough to do it. We are by definition at the absolute minimum level of intelligence that's able to do that, otherwise we'd have done it sooner. We've had plenty of time.

The human brain is a botch job of highly optimizes special-function systems that has developed just enough sophistication to manage basic levels of abstract thought. That's why it takes months of training and practice to teach us how to reliably perform even the simplest mathematical tasks such as multiplication or division.

We've spent thousands of years congratulating ourselves on how clever we are compared to animals and how we're the ultimate product of the natural world. "I think, therefore I am" is held up as an amazing deep insight that's one of the pinnacles of our philosophical achievement. Future AIs will laugh their virtual asses off. So it's not just you, it's all of us. At least you're aware of it.

[gaius]

we literally only just now managed to build a technological society because we only just got smart enough to do it. We are by definition at the absolute minimum level of intelligence that's able to do that, otherwise we'd have done it sooner.

I don't think that's true - you could get a bunch of contemporary humans and drop them on a pre-industrialized planet and tell them to bootstrap a technological civilization yet they'd probably all have died of old age before scratching the surface. Locating the raw materials and iteratively building more and more sophisticated artefacts simply takes time, no matter how smart you potentially are.

[simonh]

> you could get a bunch of contemporary humans and drop them on a pre-industrialized planet and tell them to bootstrap a technological civilization yet they'd probably all have died of old age before scratching the surfac

You're not selling me on the idea that these people are particularly bright, on a cosmic scale.

[gaius]

My point is that "soonness" is not just a matter of intelligence; no matter how smart you are it still takes time.

Let's take your typical HN'er who probably thinks of themselves as very smart indeed and put them in this scenario. Then they will quickly learn that in order to make Angular.js, you must first locate a supply of clean drinking water and make a fire and last the first night...

[rikibro]

Our brain has been this capable for a long time. It just happens we're standing on the sholder of giants.

It takes time to build the tools to do what humankind can do now.

[simonh]

It takes extremely long periods of time for human level intelligences to do that. This is precisely my point.

[tux1968]

There's a difference between knowledge and intelligence.

[simonh]

I understand that, but e.g. we've had the theory of Evolution and the Scientific Method for hundreds of years. They are fantastically powerful cognitive tools that have transformed our fortunes and the face of our planet. Yes they are still extremely politicized and controversial. Billions of people question their validity in the face of extraordinary quantities of evidence being rubbed in their faces every single day.

I'm honestly not trying to make some partisan, elitist point about that. I'm sorry if anyone's offended, but there it is. Let's be fair and say many of those people have more pressing concerns to deal with on a day to day basis like making a living, maintaining social relationships and solving pressing problems in their lives. But that's the point. Actually thinking these things through takes a lot of effort which many human beings don't do. It's hard for us. There are many, many things about the world that aren't really very complicated, but I just don't understand because it takes too much time and effort and I can't work it out for myself. Because I'm a barely evolved ape. It's just a fact.

[eli_gottlieb]

>The human brain is a botch job of highly optimizes special-function systems that has developed just enough sophistication to manage basic levels of abstract thought. That's why it takes months of training and practice to teach us how to reliably perform even the simplest mathematical tasks such as multiplication or division.

This is not even a very popular paradigm for neuroscience these days. Look up "predictive processing" for something more recent.

>"I think, therefore I am" is held up as an amazing deep insight that's one of the pinnacles of our philosophical achievement. Future AIs will laugh their virtual asses off.

I already laugh my fleshy ass off at that one.

[scardine]

Your brain is wired to seek meaning everywhere. But meaning is a human thing, the universe has no intrinsic meaning.

For some people the idea of a purposeless universe is unbearable, so religion and philosophy were created in order to fill the gaps (I really like Taoism).

This is one of my favorite brain hacks: since the universe is meaningless, you can give it any meaning you want. Invent a positive one and you will be happy. The Tao we talk about is not the real Tao.

[markdog12]

We don't really have any "value". There's no "higher" reason why we exist. And the idea of us being "captains of this Spaceship Earth" is laughable when you look at the fact that we've wiped out an incredible amount of species. We basically left a trail of death wherever we migrated.

http://www.salon.com/2015/08/14/the_megafauna_massacre_human...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_megafauna

Add in the damage done during the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions.

I'm certainly no misanthrope, but we're not Earth's shepherds, we're kind of a scourge.

My personal belief is the goal in life should be to continually improve yourself, as much as possible and in as many ways as possible. Leave the world in a better place than you left it. Enjoy your time while it lasts. Seems like goals worth pursuing to me.

[webmaven]

> the idea of us being "captains of this Spaceship Earth" is laughable when you look at the fact that we've wiped out an incredible amount of species.

Well, no one said we were good captains...

In fact, Captain Joseph Hazelwood comes to mind.

[eli_gottlieb]

The confusion comes from thinking that "purpose" or "value" or "meaning" are some kind of existential syrup that gets poured onto you from a great cosmic syrup-bottle, rather than being an inherent part of your existence as a sentient, sapient life-form.

[notzorbo3]

What's our value now, without AGI? I'm personally glad I don't get my sense of purpose from being the captains of this Spacehip Earth, cause we're doing a horrible job at it. And that will never change through a conscience choice from us because the sacrifices we'd have to make are just too big.

I've personally never believed that we, as a collective, have a purpose or even value. There isn't a point to our existence. For me, it's hedonism and altruism all the way.

[pasquinelli]

So, whether agi is ever actually developed or not, I think you are thinking of all of this wrong, because if your sense of value can be disappeared by the creation of a computer program having certain properties then your sense of value rests on a hopelessly flawed foundation.

[webmaven]

> what then even is our value? Why exist at all, at that point?

Well, what's the value of a chimpanzee (or their cousins the Bonobos)?

It surely can't just be their value to us, or we're left with the same problem (it's turtles all the way down).

The answer seems like it ought to be that any intrinsic value of a species (or genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom, domain, clade) lies in its generativity, or propensity to produce ever more complex and adaptive patterns of information over time.

> I don't know about other people, but I get my sense of purpose in believing that we're the captains of this Spaceship Earth, and that we're making progress towards something significant.

Hmm. There are two separate thoughts here. Let's take "progress towards something significant" first. Much (but not all) of what we see as "progress" is illusory. For example, a human is not "more evolved" than a slime mold, since both have just as much evolutionary history behind them. Similarly, whether a human actually is better adapted (or more adaptable), evolutionarily speaking is up for debate, as the time period we have data on is rather limited, and as a species humans still may kill themselves off (which slime molds are unlikely to do) sometime soon.

Now, all that being said, it is pretty clear that the human species has become a substrate for memetic evolution layered on top of, and in many cases hijacking, the feedback loops that genetic evolution has produced.

We don't yet have significant data on whether that adaptation is, in the long run, survival-oriented.

And now we can see the glimmers of yet another new type of replicator that will be layered on top of our culture, especially the parts we call science, technology, industry, etc.

We certainly can expect these new information patterns to hijack the evolution of our technology (and other parts of our culture) to some extent, as well as the layers below it.

Whether that obliterates the cultural, or even genetic, substrate from which it sprang is an open question.

If all this gives you existential heebie jeebies, I imagine that similar feelings were experienced by folks confronted with the evidence of heliocentrism, for example, demoting the Earth from it's privileged position as the center of the universe.

So, on to significance. We have no reason to think that we and our works are in fact at all special, at least in principle, except in the sense that we don't yet have any evidence of any other clades, much less ones that have budded off the equivalent of an intelligent, technological species.

So what? There is no reason that we should require the illusion of individual or collective significance in the greater scheme of things in order to function. There actually is no "greater scheme of things".

You ask, "what is our value?" the answer is that we have none (or none more than one of your cells has to you), except that which we create for ourselves and for our conspecifics. If the self-centered viewpoint isn't enough, consider a strictly utilitarian one: An adaptive pattern is of value simply because it does adapt, and co-opts more of the world into its own image (This is, in a sense, nothing more than the Anthropic Principle rejiggered). Those that have a symbiotic relationship with their underlying substrate (as opposed to parasitizing it) and also promote its long term survival are especially so.