Rationality
A superintelligent system could have disastrous effects even if it had a neutral goal and lacked self-awareness. “We cannot blithely assume,” Bostrom wrote, “that a superintelligence will necessarily share any of the final values stereotypically associated with wisdom and intellectual development in humans—scientific curiosity, benevolent concern f
... See moreMeghan O'Gieblyn • God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning
As scientist and writer Carl Sagan explains in The Demon Haunted World, A multitude of aspects of the natural world that were considered miraculous only a few generations ago are now thoroughly understood in terms of physics and chemistry. At least some of the mysteries of today will be comprehensively solved by our descendants. The fact that we ca
... See moreRhiannon Beaubien • The Great Mental Models Volume 1: General Thinking Concepts
Whenever there has been progress, there have been influential thinkers who denied that it was genuine, that it was desirable, or even that the concept was meaningful. They should have known better. There is indeed an objective difference between a false explanation and a true one, between chronic failure to solve a problem and solving it, and also ... See more
David Deutsch • The Beginning of Infinity – Explanations that Transform the World
“So, an interesting thing is that evolution didn’t give us reproductive success as a reward signal. They gave us rewards for predictors.”