Douglas Hofstadter on the Singularity

[@dazraf]

Fascinating to hear his thoughts back then and now more recently on LLMs.

[@ucantSQ]

Skepticism is rare. Douglas Hofstadter is a reliable intellectual in a sea of pseudosmarties. All too often I hear emotional arguments dressed up in intellectual garb. Hofstadter states quite clearly what any skeptic should be aware of: "Perhaps my doubts are emotionally motivated, these are certainly valid possibilities, but WE DON'T KNOW." He isn't an exciting or entertaining speaker, but he is a true skeptic. That's why I appreciate him. I'm glad to see he was at that conference.

[@illygah]

it is nice to see him make ray squirm there.... this is my new favorite video.

[@illygah]

Kurzweil was corrupted by the Clinton mechanation.

[@HardKore5250]

Bionaut

[@micahtewersofficial]

Douglas is America’s greatest thinker by far, imo. Kind of amazing how few views he’s gotten across KZbin.

[@daithiocinnsealach1982]

I think he wasn't enough of a raving new atheist back in the naughties. That's how Dawkins, Harris and Dennett made it.

[@Gayathri-qt1bn]

Wow! Looking back, hofstander was totally and Ray looks like a prophet

[@daithiocinnsealach1982]

I am loving this comment section. I feel like I'm home. Would love to have a group of buddies who were this devoted to rational skepticism.

[@alonlavie9240]

LessWrong might interest you?

[@johnphilips9509]

Be warned, when Douglas hits the stage he is a man with a plan, pure occam's razor in action, slicing and dicing all around. America needs more rationalists as him. He shows some of the guts Voltaire and Descartes had.

[@daithiocinnsealach1982]

He's my kind of human.

[@dylancope]

Hofstadter hits the nail on the head. I had never heard him talk about this subject before, but I have for a long time felt the same way about Kurzwiel-like attitudes

[@polemicize4542]

25:05 How he concludes the cartoon R-B-t sequences (in characteristically loopy fashion)

[@KevinWard992]

Such an aw3some author, scientist, and philosopher...I have thoroughly enjoyed every one of his books!!! Thank you for a great video!

[@approved7397]

“very short introduction” wraps at 1:00 that is actually pretty brief as far as Hofstadter introductions go, thanks OP

[@stevelawrence5268]

Nice vid sir, quite invigorating.

[@DavidComdico]

There is no knee in an exponential curve! Goddammit!

[@moeal5110]

@11:26 can someone please share the name and title of the book he mentions there?

[@pyb.5672]

"The singularity is near". But spare you the read, it's just science-fiction to make money. "Godel, Escher, Bach" will actually help you understand these things, based on reality.

[@kiqyou]

hey! it's theil!

[@schmetterling4477]

I already feel like half a person without an internet connection.

[@danielraju4458]

'Ray takes an exponential curve and makes it a linear curve by plotting logarithmically", no wonder Douglas is a genius very few understand let alone accept. His legacy will continue in 2493 AD as well.

[@SamuelHulick]

Actually starts at 1:12

[@dansmith3662]

Is that Peter Thiel introducing him???👁

[@kiqyou]

hahahahahahah kurzweil got ROASTED.

[@kosteaproduction]

he should apply cold water

[@laurenth7187]

Life on silicon is not possible because according to Monod, life isn't build, it growth. So unless machines can replicate, they are not living.

[@REDPUMPERNICKEL]

Consider... Silicon is already smart enough to drive trucks to mines to pick up iron or tungsten or germanium ore mined by robots then deliver the ore to automated smelters, foundries, stamping plants etc. When robots do all the manufacturing jobs currently done by people then automated trucks will deliver all their myriad component products to the plant where robots spend night and day assembling more robots and voila, there are robots replicating and all this may be conducted and coordinated by self improving descendants of IBM's Watson via internet and cell phone. Robotic prospectors on the moon is an easy stretch for the imagination and only hints at the direction along which things one day can be moving. Cheers!

[@crossdressfet-ish]

You never had pistachio ice cream? Oh dude! You haven't lived!

[@crossdressfet-ish]

You never had sex? Oh dude! You haven't lived!

[@crossdressfet-ish]

You never phased through to another universe? Oh dude! You haven't lived!

[@judahpereira6764]

With all due respect to Douglas Hofstadter, he looks like a Who (i.e. Dr. Seuss' cartoons).

[@HardKore5250]

That is true.

[@pyb.5672]

Title should be "Hofstadter on the shallow intellect of Kurzweil." He can look at his watch in haughty fashion as much as he wants, he's getting schooled here and everyone knows it.

[@cube2fox]

Hofstadter changed his mind though. Look up the article "Douglas Hofstadter changes his mind on Deep Learning & AI risk".

[@pyb.5672]

⁠@@cube2foxThanks for mentioning this. After reading it, it seems that he changed his mind about the pace of improvement of the tech, and what his definition of consciousness is. Although he seems genuinely scared, I would contend that the vast majority of his opposition to Ray’s ideas (such as immortality, etc) still hold. The problem is that Ray’s livelihood is to write science fiction and formulate it in a way thay convince people it could be true. He’s like an advertising executive, someone who knows how the limbic system works and exploit it well to sell his ideas. He’s not interested in the ideas themselves, he’s interested in optimizing how to convey these ideas so they trigger curiosity in us, leading us to throw money at him to know more.

[@MohamarKadaffi]

How many living authors or books of technology or science or philosphy of science in the world have raisen a summit in a very prestigious university? Ray Kurzweil is great among giants!

[@sprink88]

six. six people.

[@kiqyou]

kurzweil is obnoxious.

[@jhirai20]

Dam Kurzweil looks so triggered, his eyebrow won't stop twitching.

[@HardKore5250]

What you mean?

[@iceyred6668]

I got the Victory' ...///Nd.D

[@shanejohns7901]

I think Hofstadter doesn't seem to realize that a simulated universe doesn't need to instantiate anything where there are no simulated consciousnesses present. It only has to be fully generated if/when it is being 'measured'. In World of Warcraft, the world is made up of 'zones'. If there are no players in the 'Badlands' zone, then the game can unload that zone from active memory. When a new person enters the zone, the zone can be quickly reinstantiated by reloading the saved zone state and doing some simple clock comparisons (current time minus the saved zone time) and then lots of math to bring that zone 'current'. Being skeptical is great to a point. But shouldn't a full-on skeptic also be skeptical about skepticism? If Godel implies that even logic itself is incomplete, then the very tools that Doug is using to make these pronouncements about AI are potentially insufficient. For someone who likes to communicate his distaste for computers, he sure does seem to like to talk about them and their limits quite a lot. I cross-trained in Philosophy and Computer Science right there at that same campus in Bloomington. And I am simply not willing to state with any confidence that computers will forever be inferior to human minds at intelligence. It seems like little more than hubris. And his lack of curiosity about computers reminds me of the types who saw no reason to investigate whether or not massive things fall faster than less massive things. Calling every human a 'miracle' is bad enough. Saying that all life is a 'miracle' is really stretching it.

[@benschulz9140]

Regarding thermodynamic law. Every single person in the panel has hydrogen atoms as part of their structure that was created a few minutes after the Big Bang. Each of Hofstadter's criticisms are going to fall; Bach, Language, common sense reasoning...GPT-9 will find this amusing.

[@evenzero]

hey come on i am not exactly suggesting we heat humans with microwave here

[@brainsanitation]

uh

[@MoneylessWorld]

9:56 "...the low IQ end of humanity, talking about being smothered by self-reproducing techno dust". This portion is about morgellons which affects all life on earth, some people in horrendous fashion. The talk is great but that part tasted foul. Moreover, smothering isn't the main issue, rather biology being converted in synthetic life. Well sorry not sorry Sir, that real life nanotech struggles were steamrolling over your intended talking points. Before the denials flood in, mainstream science admitted the existence of these fibers in 2010. Don't you worry, there's plenty of downplaying and misdirection in those studies but, there is an admission in the cesspool of corporate funded "science".

[@reaganwiles_art]

how terrible to say humans subsumed in computers or robots of some sort instead of computers or robots subsumed in humans lol

[@REDPUMPERNICKEL]

I think it doesn't matter much what name entities apply to partners in such an intimate kind of marriage if the result remains conscious in the way we are, or conscious in a 'better' way, if that's possible.

[@crystaldragonwoman]

I so wish Richard Feynman was presently alive .. his analysis of Computers, no matter at what level of sophistication.. they are sorting machine .. no matter how much data or speed. I’d love is updated view. A cohesive ‘I’ is an unfoldment of a integration of a certain amount of impressions … my sense is if an apparent ‘I’ of some sort can arise out of trillions of bits of computer information.. it possibly could be colored through the ‘I’ of the programmer.. I find that the concerning part … who is selecting and orienting the data.

[@petermerelis]

Kurzweil has daddy issues, full stop. Wasting his intellect wishing for immortality.

[@HardKore5250]

Daddy issues