A high-speed overview of Deutsch current views on universal constructors at this space conference.

Excerpt From: Day 2 - Breakthrough Discuss 2024: A Cosmic Tapestry for Exploration
Link to Source: • Day 2 - Breakthrough D...
Creator: Breakthrough
Date of Publication: Jul 19, 2024
Big shoutout to Breakthrough for the awesome content in this clip. Keep rocking!

[@bertpineapple3738]

I listen to everything DD says multiple times getting gold each time. Like he says in the Fabric of Reality. You can send knowledge on a journey of millions of light years and it can utterly transform its destination. His words on knowledge have transformed my view of reality utterly.

[@perwis9893]

The talk is called "What a Universal Constructor can and can't do" on the conference website. Maybe change title?

[@ankan666]

Why would an AGI have the same rights and freedoms as a person unless we assume it’s conscious?

[@stegemme]

if an AGI turned around and said "I don't want to waste my time doing what you want", if was in effect disobedient, how are you going to resolve that.

[@ankan666]

@@stegemme when my car won’t start, he’s in effect disobedient. I will fix it or get a better car. There’s not ethical problem if it is not conscious

[@justcurious-tl8ts]

​@@ankan666you think your car is a sentient being?

[@justcurious-tl8ts]

but you're right. It's based on the assumption that AGIs will be conscious since there are good epistemic reasons (besides the only general intelligence that we know of being conscious) for this

[@ankan666]

@@justcurious-tl8ts I could in principle build an AGI out of water pipes with pressure valves, rather than transistors. Even if it yields intelligent output, I won’t believe it’s conscious, because there’s no conceivable way in which the water chain of causation would produce conscious experience

[@AaronMartinProfessional]

Can someone help me understand the proof for the universal constructor David is speaking about here? I can’t quite wrap my head around it. 😅 From what I understand the classical laws of motion + initial condition worldview of physics can only account for necessary transformations, not for possible ones. David says according to constructor theory, there can be no fundamental theory of exact initial conditions. “The future is affected by knowledge we don’t have yet.” Therefore exact prediction of the future is impossible. In the same way exact prediction of the past is not possible, because knowledge of the past has been lost. On to the proof that universal constructor can exist. David say only finitely many kinds of objects that could be needed in constructions can possibly form spontaneously, i.e without knowledge. Everything complex either evolves in which case it can be made given the right knowledge or it can be made by a constructor, which can itself be made and so on to a chain of finite depth - using knowledge that can itself be created. Is David saying, that there is no law that would forbid a universal constructor to exist, which means it must be possible? I feel like I’m missing some key pieces 😅

[@neilhudson6734]

I think the elephant of emergence is in the background of his proof. Emergent abstractions and laws that are immune to micro level factors mean that the class of possible transformations is immune to the precise initial conditions. If something complex and emergent evolves in a branch of the multiverse but not in another, I take his position to be that in that other branch it could be constructed as long as the right knowledge is created each step of the way, via constructors. After all the evolution in the other branch shows that it is not prohibited by any law of physics.

[@neilhudson6734]

I think the elephant of emergence is in the background of his proof. Emergent abstractions and laws that are immune to micro level factors mean that the class of possible transformations is immune to the precise initial conditions. If something complex and emergent evolves in a branch of the multiverse but not in another, I take his position to be that in that other branch it could be constructed as long as the right knowledge is created each step of the way, via constructors. After all the evolution in the other branch shows that it is not prohibited by any law of physics + I should add a reference to the Church Turing Deutsch principle en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church-Turing-Deutsch_principle. So if something complex and robust has evolved in one branch of the multiverse nothing prohibits simulation of its behaviour in another branch of the multiverse except lack of knowledge. Similarly nothing prohibits simulation of its robust prerequisites etc etc

[@drxyd]

I don't think he has proven/disproven the possibility of the universal constructor just yet, the theory is still a work in progress but there are some interesting results regarding information theory, evolution and quantum gravity.

[@neilhudson6734]

@@drxydI assume that the fact we have evolved and are therefore possible, and we have explanatory universality means that unless there is an unknown regularity so also are UCs. After all, the knowledge to make each of our precursors back to the Big Bang is something we presumably could create. In some sense UCs are less universal than us.