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by IdealeZahlen 352 days ago
Sabine Hossenfelder's video on this: https://youtu.be/mxWJJl44UEQ
3 comments

In my perception Sabine’s quality degraded over the last year or so.

Maybe it’s also the topics she covers. I’m not sure why she is getting into fantasies of AGI for example.

I liked the skeptical version of her better.

Agree in general -- I think the tiktok/shorts wave is biasing strongly for shorter video and then the time format kills any followup/2nd iteration-explanation

But this one was pretty good.

As far as I've seen, her position is only that AGI is pretty much inevitable. What's so fantastical about that?
I think plenty of people don't think it's inevitable. I'm no ai researcher, just another software engineer (so no real expertise). I think it will keep getting better but the end point is unclear.
The reason it's inevitable is because because it follows from physics principles. The Bekenstein Bound proves that all physical systems of finite volume contain finite information, humans are a finite volume, ergo a human contains finite information. Finite information can be fully captured by a finite computer, ergo computers can in principle perfectly simulate a human person.

This + continued technological development entails that AGI is inevitable.

Although the reasoning is clear, you (and her) jump from "possible in principle" to "inevitable in practice".

Just because something is physically possible doesn't make it "inevitable". That's why it's just a fantasy at this point.

As I said above:

> This + continued technological development entails that AGI is inevitable.

Everyone takes the above as a given in any discussion of future projections.

I don't know if it's just the persona she plays in these videos, but it's so so so creepy and cringe.
Agreed, she's pumping out too many videos I think. Perhaps she's succumbed a bit to the temptation of cashing in on a reputation, ironically one built on taking down grifters.
I found https://www.quantamagazine.org/epic-effort-to-ground-physics... much more informative. Sometimes you can't digest everything in 10min.