Count Lucanor wrote: ↑Today, 12:08 pm
1. Earth Smallness: importance is, evidently, a matter relative to the criteria and context you choose. The point I made about how ridiculously unimportant our planet is, is justified by the criteria and context I chose, and everyone is entitled to use another one, in fact I have done it myself, as it has been made clear. So I don't think it's worth insisting that the statement is a mistake, objectively speaking, because it is not.
The claim that the Earth is “ridiculously unimportant” is
semantically wrong. I get it - I was a space fan before you were even a gleam in your father’s eye. The universe and its large structures are so immense that Earth is a grain of dust by comparison. So yes, in terms of scale and relations, Earth is akin to an organelle within a cell of the Milky Way.
However, if our galaxy does not have a galactic empire, then “unimportant” is an inappropriate description. It has a disparaging semantic that underplays this remarkable and unique planet, and the impossibly complex forms it has evolved.
Count Lucanor wrote: ↑Today, 12:08 pm
2. The word "evolution": I was very doubtful that it was coined in the 19th century, so I had to look it up. I avoided asking ChatGPT because it always flunks at history. Turns out it was not invented in the 19th century, as it entered the English language around the 16th century, which makes sense, given that the word comes from the Latin term evolutio. Romanic languages took from that root, so in Spanish we have "evolución¨,"évolution" in French and "evoluzione" in Italian.
Sorry, I did not phrase it well. “Evolution” was first used in terms of
Darwinian evolution in the 19th century. Yes, the word referring to chance in general preceded that. I didn’t know it was the 16th century. Learn every day.
Back to the point,
everything evolves. I disagree with the academic tendency to hijack the word “evolution” and then claim that only biology evolves. It is misleading.
“Evolution” should ideally be termed “biological evolution”. There was significant geological and chemical evolution on the Earth before abiogenesis. Life was not going to merge from simple basalts and obsidian. Further, there are
always selection pressures in every aspect of reality – not biological selection – but similar in many ways.
For instance, the evolution of planets from the proto-planetary disc, as described earlier. You can see evolution in technology. A fascinating example that illustrates the point is the evolution of stone axes from crude chips of rock to relatively detailed and precise tools, even decorated at times.
And yes, AI is evolving. Future AI with self-replication and self-improving abilities are inevitable. Is AI intelligent? No, it is a tool that boosts human intelligence. However, AI will continually have more autonomy. At what point does autonomy equal agency? When might "the lights come on"? If so, how would we know?
Count Lucanor wrote: ↑Today, 12:08 pm
3. Self-replicating machines: in case I did not make myself clear, I don't endorse the idea that the process to build them is in the early days. The context in which we are arguing about self-replicating machines is focused on the possibility of life-emulating technology recreating the processes of living beings, starting from non-organic, inanimate matter. It is more than obvious that xenobots, made from frog cells, do not fall into that category. So, these are no primitive self-replicating machines, these are organic cells being reengineered.
Are you arguing that self-replicating machines will always be impossible? Why would you think that advanced future AI will never have access to 3D printing capabilities? The examples I gave were basic. That will obviously change. For instance, once people needed abacuses to perform calculations. Times change.
Count Lucanor wrote: ↑Today, 12:08 pm
Anything that needs humans inputs as blueprints, maintenance, materials, etc., is not self-replicating. The term is deceiving, a better word that encompasses what we should be looking for is self-sustainable (collectively).
Is that like how anything that is human could not possibly have emerged from an ape? DNA is a blueprint, a plan.
Re: “self-sustaining. Just as “evolution” does not only refer to biological evolution, “replication” does not only refer to biological replication.
Count Lucanor wrote: ↑Today, 12:08 pm
4. AI enthusiasts: As I said: they don’t advance a comprehensive theory of HOW it would be technically done, they simply rely on the purely theoretical assumption, taken from the computational theory of mind, that from sophisticated algorithms, agency and consciousness will emerge.
They don’t need to know how. There are two broad possibilities:
a. AI never develops any kind of sentience whatsoever
b. AI develops some kind of sentience.
Logically, any emergent AI sentience will not be the same as biological sentience. It would be shaped by different internal and environmental drivers. Instead of DNA, AI will have schematics. Instead of food it will have electricity. Instead of emotions, it has subroutines.
If AI has 3D printing replication capacities, then it could apply random or designed variables to each blueprint. It could experiment with the aim of innovating.
Count Lucanor wrote: ↑Today, 12:08 pm
They also take for granted that mind-body dualism is true, so intelligence can be a thing on its own, just accidentally attached to a physical body. So, somewhere some time, robotics will be thrown into the mix and…eureka! you will have artificial organisms. All of those assumptions are highly debatable.
It’s about emergence, not dualism. You still seem to be thinking in terms of dozens of years rather than millennia, or millions of years.