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by amunozo 73 days ago
You are supposing it's possible to know that much about some things that maybe are not knowledgeable to us, even with these tools. Life is extremely complex, more than it's typically assumed by engineering-minded people. Let's be humble here and acknowledge it.
2 comments
stavros 73 days ago
Life might be complex, but it isn't unknowable. Claiming life is unknowable isn't being humble, it's being naive.
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amunozo 72 days ago
Why couldn't it be unknowable? I am not saying that it is, but it could be. The human brain has its limits and things could me too complex for us to understand enough to be able to modify them at will. We could understand a lot, but not enough to manipulate it with certainty. Biology is not physics.
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stavros 72 days ago
Because physics is knowable, and I don't think an unknowable thing can be created from a knowable thing.
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amunozo 71 days ago
Why not? Human mind has its limits. The complexity of physics is orders of magnitude smaller than biology, let alone any kind of social science. Physics is the exception, not the rule. The rest of sciences are way more messy.
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stavros 71 days ago
What are the limits? What have we run up against that we couldn't understand, no matter how much we tried?
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amunozo 68 days ago
Almost anything outside physics is not predictable. Anything that involves human behavior is totally not understood, especially if it involves a bunch of humans (economy, sociology...). You could describe it, sure, but that is not the same as understating and modifying at will.
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kypro 73 days ago
I would acknowledge that. I don't think these things are remotely possible any time soon with current rates of progress.

However, I think people tend to fail to acknowledge the product of exponential trends, so the question in my mind is more whether or not you believe AI will unlock an exponential increase in the rate of progress and understanding. Extremely complex is still finite complexity at the end of the day.

Maybe AI won't significantly increase the rate of progress across all scientific fields. I am fairly confident it will significantly increase the rate of progress over at least some though, and it seems likely to me that biological progresses will be much easier for us to model and predict with AI. I'm much less sure about progress in domains like physics and robotics.

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