Future of Intelligence in the Age of Intellectual Scarcity (Session 1)

Hello and welcome to the first session of the Future of Intelligence in the Age of Intellectual Security. This seminar consists of political arguments against three apparently dominant scenarios concerning the rise of future intelligence, whether in the domain of artificial realization or in the realm of political thought. Each session of this seminar presents an elaborate criticism of a series of ideas put forward to unshackle intelligence, technological or social, from the yokes of humanism and rationality. To this end, we shall engage with the deep game, theoretical account of intelligence,

, speculative risk and uncertainty , technological singularity , so as to uncover the shared threads amongst them. Subsequently, it will be argued that it is quite the great sophistication in the way critical insights these trends not only fail to uncover themselves from the aforementioned shackles regress into a form of conservative humanism if not dogmatic and free critical thinking that they initially accept to overcome thank you very much uh as i thank you very much everyone

So as I was mentioning that, you know, this session after the change of the plan, we will look at the work of David Rodin. Next session, earlier for like 30 minutes or 40 minutes, we will look at the work of Sohail Malek. Then in the second session, after that we will look at the work of Nick Bostrom. Third session we will look at the work of Changler and Jodokowski. And fourth session we will look at the work of Land.

And as I was mentioning, the reason for this change of schedule is because I think that the first three have something fundamental in common with one another whereas the fourth one yes it has characteristics of the first three but it has a few other more components we should be addressed and tackled in their own terms. So those of you who haven't taken my classes, essentially this is a very casual one. This is not academia. We are

not having a rigid conversation. Yes, I do read from my texts and notes for like 30 minutes 40 minutes but at every any moment that you feel that there is something confusing there is a term that you don't have a grasp of um anything anything basically no matter how trivial it might be please do interrupt me and we will talk about it we might even diverge because other people will join in the conversation so on so forth but that is the whole point we are not taking you know the regular academy course of teaching here or studying you know a subject

matter of course we will have some break and you know then I will initiate the same procedure and and then please do interrupt me again, and then for the last 30 minutes, I would say, we will open it to questions, discussions, heckling, whatever you want. So, with that said, those of you who have read David Roden's chapter, chapter, Disconnection Thesis in Post-Human Life. First of all, I would like to know if anyone has some sort of overall commentary, ideas,

about the contents of this chapter. And then I will start to explain what this connection thesis is and criticize it and will open it up to questions. Before going to that end, let's hear if anyone has actually any comment, criticism, whatever, defense about this connection thesis. Anyone? Giancarlo? I mean, sorry, I'm starting from people that I know are quite familiar

with these issues, so I'm just trying to bait them to say something. if nobody comes up with anybody any question I have to run random number generator random number generator force you to I can say a couple things I think well the first lesson start from the volunteers and then we go to the you know the kind of the random punishments so I really like David's work and in general I find it really easy to follow I read I think this paper like a year maybe and it strikes me as a kind of formalization of trying to understand

how artificial general intelligence may come up as a sort of wild disconnection from the human substrate substrate and I find it quite self-defeating in a way because it basically says we kind of make particular claims about such and such speculative post-humanism because it would have to happen first. And while I understand that there's some khabib on that, I mean, he actually goes on to say that we may be able to make some ethical claims about post-human life or whatever it is. he weighs heavily on the option of maybe not saying much about it.

And I don't know, maybe this is going forward into the course, but it's kind of like a quietest response to Bostrom and the work of Future of Humanity Institute that heavily relies on AI panic and instead of relying on some sort of stereotype AI optimism rodents choice is to suspend the ability to make any kind of non superficial claims about artificial intelligence or post human

intelligence and I don't know I find it to be quite interesting as a position to all but momentarily however moving forward I don't know that it actually sets out a particular agenda in other words how much the speculative thesis that the future artificial intelligence or post-human technoscientifically realized being disconnected from its existing human substrates, namely Homo sapiens, how much this

thesis can actually tell us anything about how to move forward without rather, you know, out questions or concerns which are themselves predicated upon vagaries of a speculation yeah to me in particular is it leaves rodent with with it with a kind of how to put it without ammunition for any kind of positive forward-thinking philosophical or even practical agenda and it makes no claims

to the future so basically we cannot predict the future therefore the future is canceled we must live in the present and the present is underwhelmingly human uh yeah okay okay fantastic fantastic john uh any any please any person and maybe if no one is volunteered patrick is going to select one at least randomly please please go on please go on is it possible to sort of read this not so much as a disconnection thesis, although that's what he calls it, but as an issue of sort of constant refocusing, just in the sense that... Or renegotiation. Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, as, you know, the human develops towards post-humanity,

the point of disconnection could very well be pushed. And, you know, what this establishes is just that we have a certain horizon in our speculation, A, and B, that there could be a true disconnection point. But that aside, you know, this horizon is constantly shifting. And rather than saying, oh, we can't tell, rather the issue is, well, we have a certain space before the horizon. Why not focus there? Fantastic, fantastic. Well, essentially the entire critique that I'm going to levy against Rodin's thesis is precisely on this issue. And that I would say that if we take it as

a renegotiation, I think we are in a good, solid, robust philosophical scientific ground. But if we call it disconnection, while pretending as if it were a renegotiation, then we are just simply armchair speculation. And armchair speculation really doesn't have any sort of claim about the ethical concerns or anything. And renegotiation comes back to this idea of the critical philosophy. What is renegotiation? essentially dialectics combined with epistemological criteria or epistemological

basically methods capable of distinguishing what is already at a stake or at least at each and every stage of this renegotiation what kind of epistemological concerns we are talking how are we actually renegotiating how can we renegotiate ourselves in our position with regard to a future intelligence if you don't have you know healthy epistemological criteria but also the so-called dialectics. This comes back to Kant really I would say or not probably But the term from pre-critical philosophy to critical philosophy, from Kant to Hegel and the rest of German idealism,

in the sense that a speculation without dialectics and epistemology is simply a vagary. It's what Kant calls a fanaticism. We call it today, you know, whimsicality, you know, in an ordinary language. And that's the whole point. So if it is simply a matter of choice of terms, then Rodin should be forced to accept that there are some dialectical concerns here, so as epistemological concerns.

And those epistemological concerns and dialectical concerns should be as relevant to us as they are relevant to this conception of a future intelligence. Otherwise, it would be just pure disconnection. It would be a pure vagary of speculation. And yes, that's exactly, you know, I would say one of the cornerstones of what I'm going to talk about today. So, let's start. If I apologize for one second, I need to get some soda. One second.

Thank you. Apologies. So, a little bit of background. So, essentially, you know, our emphasis in

this course is certain kinds of posthumanist trends which in one way or another try to overcome the classical humanist conditions, okay, for example, anthropocentrism, so on and so forth, by way of a recourse to future conditions.

Usually such future conditions amount to uncertainty, risk, singularity, so on and so forth. These terms are not essentially synonymous but they can be thought in terms of a set or a family of terms. They are related. Okay? We are not putting our focus in this session only tangentially. We are not putting our main focus on other trends of post-humanism.

We will actually try to show or grasp that certain aspects of this singularitarian thinking, this future is uncertain, future is imbued with risk, future, you know, is not human, so on and so forth. we try to show that some of the aspects of these theses actually overlap with what you might call to be the more egalitarian form of post-humanism, as it is put forward today.

Like, for example, I would say, new materialism, so on and so forth. This doesn't mean that they are equal, it's just that they have points of overlap. Okay? And these points of overlaps are extremely important precisely because if we can't really pay attention to them, essentially the conclusion of both the so-called egalitarian posthumanism and this kind of singularitarian post-humanism which tries to overcome, not just simply overcome, humanism or anthropocentrism, but to terminate it once and for all, you know, terminate the face of the human, break from the cage of anthropocentrism in a kind of a violent...

The conclusion of these two thesis, if you don't pay attention to the overlaps, actually do converge. And I actually want to argue that the way that they converge is actually the very philosophy of neoliberal humanism. that they try to break from the cage, that they try to overcome the biases and prejudices of anthropocentrism, but at the end of the day, in one way or another, there is a possibility,

more than a possibility I would say, that they actually converge. And that point of convergence is actually the square one from which we set to escape. Conservative humanism, today encapsulated by the neoliberal politics and neoliberal thinking. So let me begin with David Roden's post-human life.

This is the book I highly suggest. It's a fantastic book, excellently clear. And David is an astonishingly sophisticated philosopher. I have huge amount of respect for him. But nevertheless, philosophy is an impersonal practice when it comes to criticism. Let me read the last paragraph on page 122 from Disconnection Thesis, which brings us back to certain points that Giancolo was talking about.

To take a historical analogy, the syntax of modern computer programming languages is built on the work on formal languages developed in the 19th century by mathematicians and philosophers like Frigge and Boone. Lacking comparable industrial models, it would have been impossible for contemporary technological forecasters to predict the immense global impact of what appeared an utterly rarefied intellectual inquiry. We have no reason to suppose that we are better placed to predict the long-run effects of

current scientific work than our 19th century forebears. If anything, the future seems more rather than less uncertain. Thus, even if we enjoin selective caution to prevent worst-case outcomes from disconnection-potent technologies, we must still place ourselves in situations in which such potential can be identified. You know, this is the reason that I started with this paragraph, rather than actually starting with saying what disconnection pieces is, is that I think that this is a great encapsulation of the disconnection thesis.

Future is uncertain. To say that future is uncertain means that even though we can predict certain trajectories of the present toward the future, But there are also certain trajectories which cannot predict. We can only see them and basically encounter the full impact of their consequences until and unless they are realized. Okay? But what does this amount to? What does it actually give us, this statement, more than the very trivial statement that every ordinary human being already says?

Future is uncertain. Hasn't this been actually the very formula of thinking from the dawn of time? And in that matter, why do we need actually think about the technological repercussions of post-humanity? We can go back to the dawn of evolution, Cambrian explosion around 541 million years ago. When we see an aquatic creature then we flash forward to the mammals, vertebrates, great apes.

evolution can also be thought in terms of the future uncertainty but does a mollusk or any kind of aquatic creature at the Cambrian phase actually think or has the capacity to make ethical injunctions about a future that is fully going to be catastrophic with regard to its current existential register. No. So this is already to pose the very question of these kinds of ethical concerns with regard to the disconnections

of possible future of possible futures is already we are in the domain that we are the platform essentially otherwise there wouldn't be any kind of ethical injunction with regards to the possible catastrophes by catastrophe I mean it in a very technical sense of run-a-thon, in a sense that, for example, you can think of a system and this system morpho-dynamically changes so much that it no longer, by any definition, resembles

to its substrate, like a mammal and some sort of unicellular organism. So, this is I think a very good point to begin with. Essentially, how can we connect to the future? Well, the whole point is the future is uncertain. This is like a matter of fact. But it is also a trivial matter of fact. What kind of uncertainty are we talking about?

Is it an uncertainty that can be epistemologically grasped? is it an uncertainty which is completely outside of the purview of any resources that we have for identifying it i think david is quite cautious about this If he says that it is not fully in the purview of the current epistemological knowledge,

so on and so forth, resources that we have, then it would be just a radical alien. Okay? It would be just a radical alien. a future post-human would be just a radical alien. And in that case, it falls back to one, the question of obscurity, but also more importantly, a point that I will later on expand on, it falls back to a question that Kant makes in the critic of pure reason. With regard to transcendental aesthetics,

namely intuitions of space and time, he says that there might be some sort of extraterrestrial aliens who have radically alien representations of space and time than us. But then, how are we going to talk about that? Well, if the post-human intelligence is a radical alien, then it is not really about the future. We can also pose the same problem here and now, here and now, with regard to some possible extraterrestrials.

Imagine if we actually do see some sort of alien register of intelligence. We are forced to explain why we are calling it an intelligence. What do we mean actually by intelligence when we attribute such an adjective to such a register, such an alien register?

In other words, if Rodin tries to go to full uncertainty of the future such that the post-human is fully epistemologically disconnected from our resources, of knowledge-making, theorization, conceptualization, so on and so forth, then there is no reason for Rodin to actually talk about post-human futurity. He can as well be talking about here and now, about the possibility of extraterrestrials

that are outside of our radar, okay? But of course, he wants to actually talk about post-human intelligence. And to do that, he is cautious. He tries to discuss that a disconnected future intelligence, namely an intelligence that is outside of, that is simply disconnected from its current substrate, namely existing Homo sapiens, existing humans, is not uninterpretable in principle.

Now, that's a smart move, I would say. It's a very sophisticated move. It is not uninterpretable in principle. Because if he says that it is in fact uninterpretable, then the whole question of future post-human AI becomes new and void. We can just talk about other kinds of stuff that are happening right now in the domain of universal cosmology, physics, other kinds of sentience. I mean Boltzmann has already this kind of view that there might be inhabitants in different regions of the universe which can never contact one another.

Precisely because they have different representations of time. Okay? They inhabit different so-called entropic gradient or potential fields. Now, so now that we know that Rodin wants to talk about this with caution, saying that this disconnected future intelligence is not uninterpretable in principle, namely reserving some, you know, hidden threads of connections, not from an evolutionary perspective or similarity point of view,

but in the sense of interpretability, in terms of an epistemic traction on this future intelligence. with that said I want to show that even though he says this the way that he charts the territory of his argument the way that he develops his argument his cautious account of post-human intelligence as different from radically alien actually ends up in the territory of the radically alien. It becomes, it loses

the semblance of sophistication and caution that it purports to give us, that it purports to hold. So, what is this? So, the disconnection thesis and unbounded posthumanism are part of Rosen's thesis. roughly this is the idea that prospective post humans have properties that make their

feasible forms of association disjoint from human or mosh H. This is Ray Kurzweil, acronym for mostly original substrate human forms of association. What is interesting in Rodin's account is that unbounded posthumans mark a discontinuity with both the biological conception of the human, homo sapiens as an evolutionary natural species, and the discursive, aperceptive conception of human persons, namely sapiens as a rational agency.

These two are different. The first one is what you might call to be a natural evolutionary human, homo sapiens sapiens. The other one is human as a functional diagram of the faculties or capacities which make human a human. And they can be, in fact, possibly realized by other kinds of physical substrates, okay? Different than the biological substrate of us.

Hence, but what is common to both of them is what you might call to be a certain range of necessary activities. These necessary activities can be thought as necessary enabling constraints. necessary enabling constraints that make us do whatever we do. Practical reasoning, theoretical reasoning, hypothetical reasoning, so on and so forth.

forth. So according to Rodin the cause of such discontinuity understood as a radical cognitive practical asymmetry between unbounded post humans on the one hand and humans and their bounded descendants on the other is technological, although it is not attributed to any particular technical cause, but to more general abstract tendencies for disconnection within technical systems. For example, the autonomy of such systems to functionally

modify and multiply realize themselves in discontinuity with any natural essence or rational norm. It's important here again that to note that there is a continuity, even though this continuity is quite a restricted one, but nevertheless there is a continuity between Homo sapiens, namely biological humans and human as a functional abstraction of necessary faculties for whatever in fact existing humans do if not more okay now the thing is that

this continuity between Homo sapiens and human as an abstraction, as a functional abstraction, already implies multiple realizability in the sense that it actually implies that the faculties of homo sapiens can be realized by sufficient necessary constraints in other kinds of basically physical systems, for example, such as computers, such as machines.

Whereas what Rodin is implying here is that the technological capacities, the technological operations, and it is not specific about the very particularity of how they can do it. he, but nevertheless, he tries to argue that with the advent of these autonomous technological systems, we can understand a different level of multiple realizability, in the sense that we can imagine

a machine, a computer, or for that matter a synthetic biotic life form to have fundamentally different faculties and constraints than those of human one and human two, homo sapiens and human as an abstract functional diagram, simply a list of necessary abilities, or faculties, so to speak, in a Kantian sense, or conditions. So, as I mentioned, the cause of such discontinuity, understood as a radical cognitive practical asymmetry between unbounded post-humans,

on the one hand, humans and their bounded descendants on the other, is technological, although it is not attributed to any particular technical cause, but to more general abstract tendencies for disconnection within technical systems. As a result of this radical asymmetry, we should then understand the emergent behaviors of a future AGI from within a framework and the recalcitrant sealed off from recalcitrant to any well-defined hermeneutics of intelligence because that's well-defined hermeneutics of

intelligence is definitely going to be provided by us the existing humans or the existing descendants or the future descendants of the existing humans. Whereas what Rodin wants to say is that no, as I mentioned, that there will be a radical breakaway from both Homo sapiens as a model and anything that can be artificially realized or models based on homo sapiens okay any question any question heckling whatever

clarifications please No? Okay, I'll go on then. Citing Mark Bedou and Paul Humphries, Rodin suggests that a diachronically emergent behavior or property occurs as a result of a temporally extended process but cannot be inferred from the initial state of that process it can only be derived by allowing the process to run its course

This is what can be called unbounded posthuman, namely disconnected posthuman, as a diachronically emergent phenomenon. We are not talking about regular emergence. We are talking about diachronic emergentism. The medium of this diachronicity in time emergence is a deep time of technology for Rodin.

In other words, unbound posthumans cognitively and practically reiterate what seems to be a prevalent characteristic of complex nonlinear dynamic systems, namely divergence from initial and boundary conditions. In other words, the disconnected post-human, in the sense that Rodin is talking about it, is actually already a register of nonlinear dynamics. A physical

system can fundamentally and radically diverge from its initial conditions no matter what these initial conditions are given a few perturbations beneath the measure the threshold of measurements a dynamic system can evolve in an explosive manner from its initial conditions. Such that, for example, if the human is such and such, given such and such technological perturbations,

the post-human can evolve catastrophically, namely in complete disconnection, in an evolutionary sense from such initial conditions, here and now, the existing human, the existing Homo sapiens, or their descendants, computers or machines which are modeled on the Homo sapiens. Is this clear? don't be shy you should ask questions at this point so I have a question absolutely yeah it's

just so if I understood correctly you're you're saying that nonlinear dynamic systems can predict diachronic emergence it's already in our epistemic grasp that that crop no that chronic emergence or that chronic emergentism is in fact a variation on the theme of non-linear dynamics in the sense that the trajectory of a dynamic physical system can vastly diverge from its initial conditions in an explosive manner, given a few perturbations which might not actually be measurable.

Right, okay. So, whatever may be the initial conditions of realization for humans, either in the sense of humans 1 and humans 2, homo sapiens or their descendants modeled on them, Whatever may be the initial conditions of realization for humans as a natural species or rational persons, whether such conditions are seen as natural evolutionary causes or logical conceptual norms afforded by discursive linguistic activities,

future post-humans can neither be predicted in an epistemically robust way, nor adequately approached with reference to such initial conditions, namely humans. Hence the disconnection, the vast divergence. Disconnections in this sense signify the global diachronicity of the deep technological time as opposed to local emergent behaviors associated with particular technologies of

the past and present. The radicality of Rodin's unbound posthuman or future AGI lies precisely in the double-edged sword of technological time and its abstract tendencies, which cut against both any purported natural essence and any socioculturally or rationally conceived norms of being human. In virtue of the disconnection thesis, when it comes to thinking unbounded post-humans, the artificiality of rational personhood

human as a functional diagram is as a handicapped as the naturalness of biological species, namely Homo sapiens, as a biological species. The images of the posthuman put forward through evolutionary naturalism or rational normativity built on the biological constitution of Homo sapiens or the synthetic makeup of discursive-aperceptive sapiens are quite literally bounded. And hence, this is why that Rodion calls it unbounded posthuman, with regard to the disconnection thesis. Because any kind of other kinds of trajectory of evolution would be bounded.

They are fundamentally, these bounded ones, they are fundamentally inadequate to cope with or engage with the ethical, cognitive, and practical ramifications of technologically unbounded posthumans. And in that sense, they fall back on the very parochial humanism from which post-humanism was supposed to break away in the first place. However, despite the remarkable theoretical sophistication of Rodin's argument and the cogency of his claims regarding the cognitive practical asymmetry of a future artificial intelligence or artificial general

intelligence, none of which should by any means be discounted, upon closer examination the disconnection thesis suffers from a number of glaring loose threads and misconceptions. Coming back to what I said earlier, that even though that there is a great deal of sophistication in this argument, the incoherencies within the argument ultimately shatter the thesis on the very cradle or swamp that it tries to escape from. And that's conservative

of humanism. Rodin's account of diachronic emergent behaviors within deep technological time and their radical consequences for prediction and interpretation on the basis of initial conditions of realization remains negatively metaphorical. Firstly, even if we follow Rodin in ruling out the rational, linguistic, inferential, conceptual, intentional conditions necessary for the realization of human agency, it is

It is still far from obvious how neatly a feature of nonlinear dynamic systems, i.e. divergence from initial conditions, can be extended to all conditions of realization. Not all complex systems and conditions necessary for emergent behaviors can be framed in the context of nonlinear dynamics and the so-called stability analysis in complexity sciences. Now, of course, here it can be objected... My objection to Rodin is in fact Rodin's counterargument

in the sense that he in fact doesn't think that there are such intentional states, conceptual content, so on so forth to the human that characterize the human and in fact all of such contents such norms that specify the appellation human are grounded naturally and that's why he can talk about divergence from the human condition from

the human conceptual capacity so on so forth in terms of a natural physical model namely nonlinear system dynamics now the problem with this is that yes okay let's agree tentatively that okay there is no such a thing as a intentional content conceptual content or norms for defining intelligence or defining human. And in fact they are all

physical. Okay? They are all natural, so to speak, more broadly. not mentioning that disagreements would lead to physicalistic and naturalistic fallacies, which I don't want to talk about, but let's agree that, you know, that is okay and that's why he's applying nonlinear system dynamics to certain aspects of humans, defining aspects of humans, which are not in fact natural, which are normative, conceptual,

so on so forth. But let's say that they are all naturally grounded. They can be physicalistically approached. I would argue from the perspective of the complexity system sciences that the very model of the nonlinear system dynamics in the sense that a system can in sufficient time diachronic emergence in sufficient time can vastly and explosively diverge from its initial conditions is not in fact a physicalistic or naturalistic thesis. It is simply a mathematical

idealization. A mathematical idealization which is useful but it cannot be in fact applied to natural physical systems. Now let me come back to my point via the main component that distinguishes a nonlinear dynamic divergence down the road, the so-called global Lyoponov exponent, which is a measurement for understanding how dynamic systems evolve in time.

and how much can they diverge from their initial conditions the framework of of diachronically, or namely diverging, emergent behaviors cannot be extended to all conditions necessary for the realization of human intelligence. For example, it does not apply to those involving computational constraints such as these resource-related constraints and information processing constraints

associated with the instantiation of different types of computational capacities. Secondly, the so-called radical consequences of the divergence from initial conditions, you know, an unbounded post-human intelligence from its existing human substrate, for a given set of emergent behaviors within a dynamic system are themselves based on a false interpretation of the formal property of nonlinear dynamic systems known as positive global lyoponov

exponent it's l y a p u n o v he open of made fundamental discoveries in nonlinear dynamics This has been the root of a complexity folklore that is not only widely popular in the humanities, but also prevalent in commentaries and complexity sciences. In short, nonlinear systems are sensitive to initial conditions.

Okay? The smallest amount of local instability, perturbation, or uncertainty in initial conditions, which may arise for a variety of reasons in different systems, you know, in basically Rodin's case is technological perturbations. perturbations, kind of like a, you know, there are those uncertainties which create a massive uncertainty down the line. The smallest amount of local instability or uncertainty in initial conditions can lead

to an explosive growth in uncertainty resulting in a radical divergence of the entire future trajectory of the system from its initial conditions. This explosive growth in uncertainty is defined by a measure of on average exponential growth rate for generic perturbations and it is called the maximal global or the largest Lyoponov exponent. Roughly formulated, the maximal Lyoponov exponent is a time averaged logarithmic growth rate of the distance between two neighboring points around an initial condition where the distance

or divergence between neighboring trajectories issuing from these two points grows as an exponent. A positive global Lyoponov exponent is accordingly defined as the measure of global and on average a uniform deviation from initial conditions and increase of inestabilities in the system or uncertainties just like the unbounded posterior. Now global Lyoponov exponents come from linear stability analysis of trajectories of nonlinear dynamic systems. Sorry, nonlinear evolution equations in an appropriate status space within an infinite

time limit. The idea of radical global divergence in trajectories or uniform explosive growth of local instabilities is therefore only valid within an idealized infinitely long time limit. But the assumption that exponential deviations after some long but finite time can be properly represented by an infinite time limit is problematic. In other words, the radical conclusions regarding the limits of predictability and analysis, drawn from the interpretation of positive global loop of exponents, hold for only a few simple mathematical models, but not for actual physical systems.

And that is the folklore. And that is also the folklore that is underlying this kind of explosive divergence in Rodin's account or diachronic emergenticism of the unbounded post-Tielmans from their initial conditions, which are the existing ones. An average increase of instabilities or radical divergences from initial conditions is not guaranteed for nonlinear chaotic dynamics. In fact, linear stability analysis within a large

but finite elapsed time and measured by local Leopold of exponents representing the parameters of the stated space of the system point to point show regions on an attractor where these nonlinearities will cause all uncertainties to decrease, cause treasure, in other words causing trajectories to converge rather than diverge, so long as trajectories remain in those regions.

So it is a kind of a tangential point. It's actually very interesting that many of these singularitarian, post-humanist scenarios are in fact implicitly built on complex systems, particularly on nonlinear dynamics models. But in fact nonlinear dynamics, as understood correctly in complexity sciences, never suggest the conclusions that they suggest. Okay? Any questions before I move forward? Otherwise we will have a break.

Anything? Yes, can you, maybe I'm a little lost, but can you explain why in certain regions they tend to converge? Not in certain, you see, you know, the array of the status space in which, so essentially you have a dynamic system. system, I mean in a kind of a, well I would say, a simplified, perhaps even reductively described way. You can think of a dynamic system, any kind of physical system, classically

is defined by its, you know, the ground zero of the analysis of a system, is defined by initial and boundary conditions like a system of gas inside a bottle okay now the thing is that you want with regard to dynamic systems you want to see that given such inputs into the systems this input can be also thought as perturbations okay because they there are something you know that you introduce into the system they are not already in the system given these smallest perturbations like for example in our case some sort of technological very

very local technological advances injected into the human system results in a massive explosive growth or divergence, namely unbounded posthuman. Now the thing is that you can think about this massive growth in terms of a set of possible trajectories which define or plot the evolution of this system. once the perturbation is inside the system, once the system is perturbed, when the input is already a system.

Now, these trajectories of evolution of the system can be represented by certain kind of what you might call to be idealized space. It is essentially a bracketing of the threshold of its evolution as opposed to another trajectory. okay is that what you might call to be something like a state space now within the range of the estate space given certain kind of perturbation and when we when we have a perturbation we

basically we can analyze the range or the sets of these evolutionary trajectories and their corresponding status spaces. When we are talking about certain status spaces, we simply mean this, that given such perturbation, there are this range of status space and trajectories of evolution for a nonlinear dynamic system. And within this certain, this certain, it's a statistical certainty, not any kind of like, you know, metaphysical certainty. Within this statistical certainty of this range of a state of space, actually they do converge more than they do diverge.

Essentially, the amount of uncertainties reduce after a sufficient long time rather than increase. You can think about a diagram. Just like imagine a box. This is your system. Okay? Imagine a box, a system. Then there is an arrow moving to this box. This is your input. it perturbs the system okay then from your box there are some quickly arrows coming out okay these squiggly arrows are defined by a range or threshold each corresponding each having

its own threshold its own space within this range given a sufficient time according in fact to the leoponov exponent which is you know the basis of the linear dynamic and non-linear dynamic systems given a sufficient time uncertainties namely the amount of perturbations do decrease instead of are increasing. Questions, questions? Here is my attempt to criticize this

would be by saying that thinking Because this differential system is something that exists a priori is wrong. When scientists use differential equations, they use them, I mean, they cover them by looking at the systems which already exist. And I mean, for example, if they want to consider energy of Earth, right, of usable, like useful energy of Earth that can be used by life on Earth, maybe we can consider first a very simple set of equations. We should only take into account the energy which comes from the sun.

And it would actually explain quite a big chunk of Earth history. But now we get like nuclear power, then it's a different set of different... Or we start mining for oil on Mars or not, I don't know, I don't remember what they mine for where, probably not oil, right? So we get a completely different system of equations and with like to which, not only to which system with our turn but also at what point of time and in what order can influence quite a lot right yes no i agree i agree with this you see the point is that first for example

when we are for example talking about uh let's say um we try to bracket you know serbian way the the you know the kind of a set of energy lines that are relevant to our system the planet okay and this is we are going to basically turning these energy points these energy indexes into into a system obviously the first thing that we need to have is a set of criteria for recognizing and defining the initial and boundary conditions of our system right that is is like basically

there's a it's like a ground zero of an uh of a stability analysis you have to have a initial condition initial and boundary conditions criteria from which then you can launch you know uh and study the evolution of the system i do agree i do agree that the equations can fundamentally differ and that's why there are you know different systems different models of the system so on so forth but the thing is that if we are simply talking about this kind of explosive divergence then we are actually talking about nonlinear system dynamics and inside that

Lyoponov exponent is still considered to be the canonical model of not the equations, but the very space of possibilities, mathematical space of possibilities that can happen within such a physical system, within this given order of time, such initial and boundary conditions, and so on and so forth. The whole point is that this whole idea of explosive growth, it is not necessary. It can happen. It can happen. It can happen in a nonlinear system dynamics. But it cannot be taken as if it was a priori natural law

because it's a mathematical idealization. Not every physical system, as you say, follow this trajectory. And let's assume that Rodin actually believes that we are simply physical systems. Not anything spooky, norms and reasons and stuff. but then you know how can we actually talk about this coherently if such conclusions are drawn from the mathematical idealization rather than

the application of the matter the exact application of the mathematical idealization to a particular physical system as you say it you see that is a problem. I don't have any problem with that there are different, you know, evolutionary courses for in terms of nonlinear dynamics. It's just that the umbrella way of applying it or the selective term of applying it to the humans, it's just, you know, doesn't really hold any ground in complexity science or in physics? What are the measurements? What are the initial conditions? What are

the boundary conditions? Can we see them? I have no problem to actually... you see this This is one of the things that you probably know it already. That I can put on the mask of a pure rationalist and fight you the great normative fight, but also I can put the physicalist mask and actually show you that this choice is completely arbitrary. But yes, superbly, fantastic comment. Yes, no, I agree with it.

I agree with it. OK, shall we have a quick five minutes break and then come back? Yes. Super. Excellent. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Whenever you are ready, shall we continue?

Good. Sure. Yeah, sure. Okay, excellent. So essentially, this is one of the first ones of the problems with the disconnection thesis. It essentially tries to say that, okay, we cannot infer the characteristics and features of the unbounded posthuman from its initial conditions, namely us. uh, MOSH, uh, you know, uh, mostly, uh, uh, sub-strait humans, uh, and their descendants. And this is, you know, uh, so he needs to actually, Rodin needs to, uh, explain, so

So now that he has got rid of all the intentional conceptual contents of the human and treating human almost like a natural kind, he should explain why is that he's modeling this, what you might call to be divergence. on something that awfully looks like a model of nonlinear dynamic systems, a folkloric model of nonlinear dynamic systems. And what is it supposed to

actually tell us if by virtue of it being folkloric namely an idealized mathematical model applied to only a specific physical systems how can we drive conclusions from it. I don't see any at this point, I'm sure that Rodin will definitely work more on this front, but I haven't seen anything in the disconnection thesis, which is a you know quite a very strong singularitarian hypothesis with regard to these issues

and another thing is that But this idea that we cannot, this nonlinear dynamic idea that's so-called, so-called, because we just talked about it, it is actually not about physical systems. It's actually an idealized mathematical model. This idea that we cannot infer the future of the system from its initial conditions only holds, in fact, for dynamic systems. But there are also static systems, which are, can also be understood complexity

under a different register of complexity. Non-linear dynamics by no means is a sufficient register of complexity in physical systems. systems. I would like you to read, some of you are already familiar with it, James Ladyman, What is a Complex System? Where he gets rid of some of these, what might call it to be, dogmas about the idea of complexity as understood in complex science. In a sense that complexity means variations, differences,

as nonlinear dynamics. No, no, no, no. Actually, that is not correct. These are only very, very narrow characteristics of complexity, special cases, so to speak. We do, in fact, have aesthetic systems which are complex. So, work is the discussion with regard to the question that in fact human can be understood as in fact an aesthetic complex system.

why the thesis of nonlinear dynamics in this folkloric sense is being applied to naturally evolved humans if such humans cannot be brought under the purview of a linear dynamic system or linear dynamic physical systems. These are I think all you know things that should be elaborated it. But regardless, there are more glaring, I would say, flaws inside the disconnection

thesis than just this one. You know, aside from the highly debatable extension of a very particular feature of physical complexism to all conditions of realization of sapience natural and or rational the main issue here is that there is simply no such a thing as an emergent behavior diversion from initial conditions in an unconfined or unbounded manner To say that it is an unbounded manner that risks idealization.

An idealization which in Rodin's case becomes a reification. There is no guarantee of uniform divergence or convergence toward initial conditions. This is, as Valentin was talking about, is quite fundamentally relative to the specificities of the physical system in question. A specificity that should be, in fact, talked about in its own physical particularities. And these physical particularities are in fact constraints, structural complex constraints, which Roden tries to erase from the purview and generalize them and make an umbrella conclusion, an overarching conclusion from them.

But the whole point is that, you know, Homo sapiens, if we are talking about Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens can be understood as a physical system in its particularity. It has constraints. It has enabling constraints and negative constraints. It has certain kinds of characteristics. characteristics and any application of such models to the physical human as a substrate for future posthuman should be quite specific about what these constraints are, which of course we don't see them in the disconnection thesis.

Another contentious claim in this connection thesis is that the cognitive practical abilities of posthumans might be founded upon the abstract general tendencies of technological systems. More broadly, the technological deep time. Which I really still don't understand what technological deep time actually means.

And this is the whole recurring motif among the singularitarians. What is deep technological time? How do you extrapolate such time? What is what you might call to be the launching path to in fact speculate such deep technological time? If not the constraint of the temporal consciousness of the existing humans. Okay? So, another contentious claim in the disconnection thesis is that the cognitive practical abilities

of post-humans might be founded upon the abstract general tendencies of technological systems. Rodin claims that speculating about how currently notional technologies might bring about autonomy for parts of white humanity affords no substantive information about post-human lives. End quote. This is a careful consideration here, that a post-humanity realized by the extension of current technologies presents another form of bounded post-humans. Okay? That's a very smart move.

Not to mention that drawing conclusions from particularly historically instantiated technologies or technical causes does not imply the radical claims of discontinuity and divergence that Rodin seeks to underline. being aware of these problems Rodin's solution is then to single out salient disconnecting namely self-modifying tendencies of technical systems and to present them as diachronically emergent behaviors of the deep technological time so rodin actually is not interested in

the particularities of the technologies are present here and now their specificities of the restrictions their constraints so on and so forth he's trying to single in single out an abstract tendency from these, you know, kind of technological advances that are being unfolded here and now. And then use this in order to show that given such abstract tendencies, which are in common and can be generalized among these, you know, kind of momentous technologies like nanotechnology, biotechnology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence,

we should be compelled, we should be compelled to speculate or extrapolate an unbounded posthuman who realized by these technologies no longer convergent or connected to where it has come from, the existing humans. Not to mention, sorry, sorry, But there is no evidence of the methodological basis upon which these particular tendencies

or salient features have been singled out and assigned such high degree of probability or magnitude. Essentially, so he's making an abstraction here, a generalization of the technological singularities, of technological divergences or disconnections. But where is really the method by which he's actually making such a move from the historically evolved technologies, which we have right now, to this kind of abstract tendency of the deep technological time. Any form of abstraction or generalization requires an elaboration about the method of the abstraction.

What were your particularities such that you now have general abstractions? Do we see them? No. Sorry. So, to repeat, but there is no evidence of the methodological basis upon which these particular tendencies or salient features have been singled out and assigned such a high degree of probability or magnitude, such that they basically result in an unbounded post-human intelligence.

Selection of salient features or behaviors, in this case, disconnecting tendencies, make no sense other than through an analysis of past and present technologies, namely the particularities of technologies, technologies, an analysis that would precisely bring into play the missing question regarding particular technical causes and a specific data with regard to their frequency and context in today's world, in today's technological world. Essentially, this is very much in tandem with what Hegel would have called an indeterminate

negation, an abstract negation, as opposed to a determinate or concrete negation. The movement from abstract to concrete, the movement from particular to universal, requires precisely such determinations, and such determinations require methods of their own. They require exact historical analysis. But in so far as they are not existent in the disconnection pieces, it seems as if the generalization of disconnecting technological

tendencies which define the deep technological time that leads to the post to unbounded post-human intelligence is just like a kind of a very wishy-washy indeterminate decision it's pure personal arbitrarism. If it is simply an indeterminate abstraction, then what does exactly distinguish it from a psychologistic determination, in the sense that I'm a madman, which usually I am, and I say that things

might actually all become come back to certain kind of initial state or humans might evolve to some sort of platonic god or something. You know, if there is no real concrete arbitration, then all sorts of arbitrations are allowed. Then why should we choose this one as opposed to others? Okay? The inductive generalization of specific tendencies in such a way that they enjoy a disproportionate degree of likelihood of occurrence is a well-known type of base-rate fallacy in Bayesian inference and judgment under uncertainty.

You see, humans are really bad at heuristics. They think that they are distinguished by heuristics. But heuristic is their curse. Any time that they actually engage in some sort of inductive heurism, they are going to be biased. Because usually such judgments are made under uncertainty. And under uncertainty, literally, the curse of arbitrariness, of the judgment, haunts you. You know, anything that you say might actually, you know, be true, be inductively true. So Bayesian inference problems comprise of two types of data.

The background information, which is called base rate information, and the indicant or diagnosed information. The base rate fallacy with regard to the judgments under uncertainty occurs when diagnosed information or the so-called indicators, for example, causally relevant data, are allowed to dominate the base rate information in the probability assessment. In other words, the absence or weakness of calibration between base rate and indicant information results in flawed prognostic judgments.

In case of Rodin's disconnection thesis, some diagnosed features, representatives, such as propensity for autonomy and disconnection in certain technical systems, are taken as general tendencies of future technologies, but in a completely biased way. And that's the whole base rate fallacy is about. The outcomes of technological evolution are outlined precisely on the basis of the over-determination of some representatives, i.e. the selection of certain diagnosed data or features as causally relevant as opposed to others, other causal factors, okay?

The problem of arbitraryness of judgment. But it is exactly the seemingly innocent notion of relevancy selected on the basis of a diagnosed prominent causal role or representative feature that is problematic. It leads to judgments in which base rate data, such as other non-salient or irrelevant features of technical systems that apparently lack any explicit causal role, as well as those uncertainties associated with specific historical conditions around technological evolution are ignored. So it becomes simply a matter of subjective selectivity.

Subjectivist, in fact, subjectivist or psychologistic selectivity. Consequently, the final result is an overdetermined prognostic judgment regarding how the tendencies of the disconnecting technologies unfold within the overall evolution of technology, i.e. the claim about the abstract tendencies of deep technological time. Firstly, there is no proposed methodology with regard to the criteria of selection and diagnosis of disconnecting technologies as I mentioned that this whole movement of singling out certain concrete or abstract tendencies is quite undetermined

at this point in Rodin's thesis. We do not know what the criteria of selection for these technical systems are, or how their disconnecting features have been diagnosed and singled out. Instead, what we have is a tacit vicious circularity between diagnosed features of some emerging technical systems and the criteria used to select those systems based on the proposed features. Absent this methodological epistemological dimension, we are adhering to a psychological account of technology that is a trademark of an ideal anthropocentrism,

habituated to relying on its evolutionary deep-seated intuitions for making diagnostic and prognostic judgments about that which is not human. See, falling in trap of anthropocentrism is not just if you are cursing norms and rationality. Even if you are doing probability analysis, you can fall back into the dogmas of anthropocentrism. Questions here before I move forward?

I understand that this is the first session and, you know, everyone is trying to behave. But please, you know, there is no reason to behave at this point. Any comment would be appreciated. even off topic i mean just you know we can we can tie back different threads i have a comment absolutely yes i uh it's just uh maybe an off topic comment but somehow may seem related um about the the ideas

behind option pricing theory and statistical modeling yes and uh the idea of uncertainty behind uh some of the models which seem to be non-linear absolutely and how the idea of uh volatility seems to be ever present just just a quick the order of risk the order of financial risk yes right and that's this is why i'm actually i use this as as a launching pad um roberto are are you familiar with the work of sohail malek i have i've read some passages i'm not really fully uh familiar read read uh his essay for uh uh the latest collapse it's called i can't

remember what is it. Giancarlo, do you remember what it was? The title is something called Financial Risk or what is it? Does anyone remember that title? So in any case, it's basically, it's absolutely on this idea. And essentially we see see in Sohail's, who is a dear friend by the way, in Sohail's idea of risk and contra-contemporary and this idea of, you know, basically volatility as the order of risk and the way that he's

handling it is quite actually very similar to what Rodin is talking about about future uncertainties of the unbounded posterior and they can in fact be approached and criticized if not by the same methods of criticism but by you know the same family of critical methods because there are essentially I would say that yes as you say there are fundamentally equivalent my apologies I had forgotten to my I need to

connect this to the plug. One second. So yes, definitely, absolutely. This is, yes, that is already the case. and and we are going to talk about this next session yes so any any any other comments yeah this is our man here yes yes so you mentioned so what I'm getting is that

rodent basically his claims lack lack um methodological rigor um will we see different levels i would say on different levels the probabilistic the epistemological so so his okay so will we um see um like how would you go about uh solving this not solving this but uh going for or more of a less anthropocentric um view of post-humanism well this is okay uh if i can excuse myself uh just for the sake of uh you know um

today's session that i would like to finish this critique if i can actually give you the response at the beginning of the second session essentially in a very very brief sentence I think that there is no way that we can come out of this idea that we can actually speculate without the current epistemological methodological and conceptual resources of existing humans about something in the future.

This does not mean that the future, as Rodin said, can be fundamentally different. A future that we may no longer exist, the name of the human, whether human one or human two, in the sense that I said, has already been expunged. But to go and actually overcome human one and human two toward the future intelligence, artificial intelligence, requires a systematic exploitation and modification of our existing conceptual resources.

But how can we go on about this? That is the question. And that's the question that, yes, I have a few answers, which might be fundamentally rudimentary. But nevertheless, I think that there are, they would, at least in my current state, of philosophical research, I would say that they can, in fact, do point out toward, that kind of, you know, post-human condition as Rodin imagines it. Well, maybe, okay, so another thing, before I continue with the critique, basically,

I if I remember correctly every session one or two of you should give some sort of summary or response to my you know course so next session I actually want to select Giancarlo to talk a little bit about a response with regard to this problem that you pose and someone else, any person who can volunteer. That would be fantastic. And the reason I'm suggesting this

is precisely because, you know, I have been in conversation with a couple of you. I think that the question of artificial intelligence, which is in fact the question of the posthuman in the most consequential sense, is really the question of a design space. How can you design an intelligence as vast as possible? okay of course you can say oh well this is just vast but in abstraction this vastness is no good you have to make it you have to design it to design a vast space you have to

start from your current constraints your current resources so on so forth i would say that there are four four dimensions four aspects which are currently you know the pillars of reaching toward the heavens to the art this unbounded post human as Robin says one is a question of probability I'm not going to go into this is an extremely technical question. Second, the question of perception. As a probabilistic self-optimizing model with regard to an environment,

and we see in current applied, you know, parts of it are basically used in the current paradigms of AI, neural networks, so on and so forth. Third, the question of conceptualization and logic and logical influences. You know, the fourth one is the one that is the key to the post-human intelligence in a Rodanian sense. So, so far we have had three. These three share something with one another. that are either about perception or conceptualization. Essentially, they define the perceptual noetic poles

of any sorts of cognitive agents. We can talk about different sorts of perception, different accounts of probability, so on and so forth. We can model them differently, different models of conceptualization, logic, and so on and so forth. that doesn't matter the entire point is to redefine the perceptual noetic pole essentially make new worlds in which for example a jar of honey

Taste sweeter. What does that mean? It is neither sweet nor bitter. It is sweeter. It is a different combination, a different synthesis from the existing perceptual, conceptual elements that we have. you see until we reach that point when a robot sees as for example Salars or Goodman would have said sees a flock of blight crows in the sky we cannot claim

that we have reached an unbounded post human what is a blight flock of crow when we see a flock of crows in the sky, we see them as either black or white. We don't have, actually, white crows. We have black. By the virtue of our perceptual capacities and also conceptual capacities, the concept of black means that it is not white, means it's not green, means it's not red, so on and so forth. But imagine that a robot can construct its perceptual noetic or perceptual conceptual nodes so thoroughly that it can seize the universe fundamentally differently than ours.

That is the question of world building. And that is the very aspect of unbounded post-humanism. Which, of course, to do that, the robot should be able to sufficiently master the perceptual, conceptual resources that we have at our hand right now, black and white. what does it mean to perceive black? What does it mean to perceive something white? What does it mean to conceptual about something black? And what does it mean to conceptual about something white? But more importantly, what does it mean to hypothesize,

make a counterfactual argument, a counterfactual unnatural predicate, such as blight, black and white? and it sees the crows as blight and is capable of making universe something like that with redefined perceptual noetic poles Reza during the interlocatories in January you had a conversation with Mikey yes yes yes you referenced Goodman's ways of world making yes absolutely it is I think one of the

greatest works of philosophy You see, that work is essentially, has written for a different purpose. The points of Goodman's ways of world making, which I really, really suggest to all of you to read. I know that I've suggested this before to my previous students. So this book is essentially about a version of irrealism. that any concept, a rigid concept of reality, is actually contradictory to our conceptual, epistemological, methodological ways of thinking. It's essentially self-contradictory. So the only way that we can think about how we can render consistent

and talk about coherently about our epistemological, conceptual, perceptual resources is by thinking about an irrealist thesis. This irrealist thesis is about making different worlds. When I'm saying that making different worlds, this is not just a capricious statement. We are not making worlds just for the sake of making a different world. every world that we should make should be a new way of knowing about other worlds so for example let me just make a very simple example

both Ptolemaic system and the Copernican system can be thought in terms of world buildings and also in connection with one another. Essentially, in the Ptolemaic system, you see that the sun revolves around the earth. You have chosen a specific frame of reference. And by virtue of that, you are subjected to certain kinds of consequences, perceptual, conceptual consequences. whereas in the Copernican system you have chosen another different system, sun as the center

and the earth revolving around it and for that matter you are living in a different world but the thing is that these two worlds are not totally disconnected they are actually made from the ingredients that they share at the base and And the whole point is that this diversification of worlds or world making, Ptolemaic and Copernican, allows you to see the world differently, to pose questions that are not permissible in the other world. Like, for example, in the Ptolemaic system, you can actually ask, how long does it take for the sun?

And this is quite a justifiable question. And it is a good question, which is totally scientific. How long does the sun take to revolve around the Earth? Whereas in the Copernican system, you're only allowed to ask the question of how long the Earth? How long does it take for the earth to revolve around the sun? And it's only in connecting these two worlds again to make new worlds, kind of like a ramification of worlds, that you can see the movement of celestial bodies moving from the opposition between Ptolemaic system and the Copernican system

to the Keplerian system, to the Newtonian, to the Einsteinian, so on and so forth. So this is the idea of world-making. And you can think of this as an allegory also for AI. A future AI. Great, thanks. Absolutely. So let me go a little bit, like talk 10 minutes. And we are, as usual, those who have taken my class know that I always fall behind with the schedule. But don't worry, we will figure it out at the end. So let me continue with regard to Rodin's thesis.

So I talked about the first one, which was the first, you know, probabilistic or heuristic objection. this methodological epistemological dimension we are adhering to a psychological account of technology that is the trademark of an ideal anthropocentrism habituated to relying on its deep-seated intuitions or making diagnostic and prognostic judgments secondly even if we accept the diagnosis about disconnecting features as a verdict obtained non arbitrarily non selectively and not psychologically, we are still left with statistical fallacies in the

inductive generalization of these features in the form of an over-determined judgment about the abstract tendencies of deep technological time. This over-determination, over-determined judgment becomes the locus of a disproportionately high probability, giving a sense of false radicality or impending gravity to its consequences. It's kind of like, you know, the 9-11. What was it called? The unknown unknown? Something like that. You see, when you are actually trying to judge under such uncertain conditions,

so-called judgment uncertainty you're always predisposed to assign high magnitude of probability to your probability consequences or your probability posteriors here the disconnection thesis the unbound post humans so they are fundamentally disconnected or disconnected from the their human substrate. But just because some representative features of technical systems may play more prominent causal roles does not mean that they are more likely to dominate the evolution of technology

in the form of diachronically emergent tendencies, which lead to an unbounded post-human intelligence as defined by Rodin. In other words, even if we accept that local disconnections are salient features of emerging NBIC, nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science, a claim, which by the way, already calls for methodological assessment, there is no guarantee that these local representatives will become global tendencies capable of generating radical discontinuities. There is no guarantee that such salient features can actually be thought

as the very generalized tendencies of the deep technological time. Assigning high probability significant weight to these features and then drawing radical conclusions and wages from them is another form of what Nick Jabo, I really would like you to read his blog post, Pascal's Scams. His name is Nick Jabo. I think he's Hungarian. S-Z-A-B-O. Nick Jabo, I mean, I know that he's American, but I think he's coming from a Hungarian lineage.

Nick Jobo calls Pascal's scams. These are scenarios in which there is a poor evidence and probabilities lack robustness. Owing to this lack of robustness and poor evidence environment, addition of new evidence, for example, the defeat of human player against a computer in the game of Go or a breakthrough in one of the branches of cognitive science, can disproportionately change the probability and magnitude of outcomes. This new evidence is as likely to decrease the probability by a factor X as to increase it by a factor X. And the poorer the original evidence, the greater X is.

Hence, the high proportional magnitude of the judgment. In such an environment, the magnitude of possible outcomes, not just their probabilities, are over-determined to such an extent that uncertainties become the basis of decision-making and cognitive orientation, forcing us to make ever more expensive bets and form ever more radical beliefs with regard to uncertainties and future scenarios that can neither be falsified, that can neither be falsified nor adequately investigated by analyzing the specificities of the historical conditions of realization. Just very much like the 9-11 terrorist attack paranoia.

You know, all of these guys can be goddamn terrorists. You know, that is the whole point. and if under this kind of uncertainty judgment all of these guys can be terrorists then they should all be treated as terrorists the same thing can be applied to this discussion with caveats of course but nevertheless the base of them is just biased heuristics under judgment with uncertainty what is unlikely in so far as it is only probable under uncertainties

methodological semantic paradigmatic and epistemic becomes likely then what is likely under the same uncertainties becomes plausible. And what has now become plausible only because it is probable under implausible conditions becomes weighty and truth indicative, becomes gained some gravity. Such is the process through which the Pascal scam is sold to the unsuspecting. and pascal scam is just you know an equivalence is a probabilistic equivalence of the pascal wager imagine that if god was real

you know a judgment under uncertainty you move from uncertainty to implausibility from implausibility plausibility so on so forth and then you try to scam other people that if you don't pray to god you will be banished to hell because what what if the god was actually real in short we are swindled into taking the magnitude and probability of such scenarios seriously, treating what is at best an unfounded conjecture and at worst a flight of metaphysical fancy, no more substantial than counting the magical properties of angels in heaven,

as if it were a plausible possibility, not entirely foreclosed to rational assessment and epistemological procedures. In attempting to retain their claim to plausibility without exposing themselves to any criterions of robust analysis and assessment that might debunk the purported radicality, such extreme scenarios have to formulate their wagers, not in terms of epistemological problems about the, you know, post-human intelligence and so on and so forth, or hypotheticals that can be adequately tested from the perspective of current resources.

But in terms of aesthetic and ethical pseudo-problems, often structured as, but what if? But what if God really existed? But what if this is really going to be the future of humanity? Okay? Questions. Desperately begging for a response, an engagement, or sympathy for their plausibility. It is in this fashion that the genuine import of the artificial realization of mind or the consequences of post-human intelligence are obfuscated by pseudo-problems whose goal is to maintain a facade of significance and seriousness. existential risk of AGI, security analysis of post-human intelligence, or in the case of

disconnection thesis, ethical complications arising from the advent of unbound dead post-humans. In such trends, the post-human is disconnected from the human only to be reconnected back to the human and the level of discourse and hollow speculation that feeds on the most dogmatic forms of human effect, heuristic biases and intuitions. This is the first, this is the, you know, I still have one more point with regard to the critique of Roland's disconnection thesis, but I leave it for the next session.

But that should give us good materials to see that, you know, a lot of, you should be able to single out some of these themes. And as we move forward, you will see that these singled out themes actually are the undercurrent motifs of all singularitarian branches with regard to the posthuman intelligence. Heuristic biases, methodological underdetermination, metaphysical overdetermination, so on and so forth.

questions questions before you say goodbye for today I just posted the themes on the sidebar that you meant super fantastic fantastic I think that would be that that's gonna be very interesting to charge. I mean, in regards to Rodan, I think, I don't know. We can maybe do a table or express. Yes, let's do this. Do we have Google Classroom set up, by the way, already? I think so. I think so, yes. Yeah, we do. OK, let's, you know, a bunch of us

try to basically make some sort of diagrammatic table for these agendas. Yeah, especially because, like, contracting all the different thinkers, I do think that there is, like, a very strong similarity, not in terms of prose, obviously, But in terms of content with David's account of disconnection, intelligence going astray, going wild, and Nick Land's account of intelligence as well, it is very much in how they respond to that challenge of, you know, intelligence leaving its human substrate.

and whether they want to think about, whether they cheer it on, whether they are scared to bits like Nick Bostrom. Yes, I would say that Rodan, so this is how I think about it. So Rodan and Land are rather different. Essentially that they have a few components in their arguments which doesn't allow for their pure convergence. You know, yes, they overlap, but they don't converge. And the thing is that, yes, but I think that, as you say, essentially Nick Bostrom, or not Nick Bostrom,

the whole idea of the panic, AI panic, artificial intelligence panic or AI over optimism essentially malevolent AI which Nick you know worships it you know come and get us and benevolent AI in the vein of Yudokovsky they are coming as you say from the same table of categories. It's just that we need to kind of distinguish this table of categories and kind of you know make sure that the subtleties of how they overlap

but also how they can be distinguished are recognized. Yes definitely let's do it let's do it. And just put it on the Google Classroom for everyone to see. And I'm going to make, like, I don't know, an Excel spreadsheet with the findings. I think I will rewind a lot of this first session in order to, like, make concrete notes. Sure, sure, sure. I will definitely put some stuff in. Yeah, that would be fantastic. Essentially, I have, you know, a few, I have, I think, two or three criticisms left,

this connection thesis, and then also Peter Wolfendale has a fantastic criticism, which I think that is superb. And that comes back to this very idea that, you know, the whole point is that Roden and tries to retain certain philosophical components such that these philosophical components allow about a post-human future intelligence and not a radical alien here and now. And in the sense that Once you show and debunk such philosophical components,

the posthuman intelligence no longer become a hereditary problem. As if it is like the, basically, it's like the children of human after going through extensive space-time translation. But it actually comes back to the very question of the possibility of alien here and now. And with the possibility of alien here and now, as Kant would have said it, then you have to explain why you in fact are capable of recognizing this alien and how can you manage to explain what does it mean that you identify this alien as an intelligent agent without simply engaging in vagaries of a speculation in fanaticism yeah and

speaking of content and Pete I am surprised we haven't touched on like the reformat in of homo sapiens is written article on angelaki I will go from the classroom because it's quite magnificent it's quite it's touching on this similar it is superb it is absolutely superb it's absolutely superb yes let's let's we will talk about it and let's uh not worry about the the timing and stuff uh one thing i have to say i mean any quick question would be appreciated for some reason i don't know why uh my uh cord does not charge my computer i'm on six percent so if you have questions please do uh

and pose it. If not, just pose it on the Google Classroom, and some of us will answer to it. I have one question. Sure. It's quite a technical question. Who will be the presenter and the responders? Sorry. I couldn't hear it. OK. We're still looking for respondents and presenters. Yes, OK, so Giancarlo would be the first. And who is going to be it? Let's toss a coin. Wait, I'm going to be the first? Wait, how did this happen? Yes, yes, you are. You are. That is unfortunately your. This is disgraceful.

You are going to be. What is the reason? Yes, you're. You will be fine. Someone else, any person who is volunteering. If not, we will pick one randomly. I would be happy to. Superb. Fantastic. Fantastic, Sam. Fantastic. Excellent. Thank you so much. Sure. Excellent. All right. OK, my friends. Thank you so much for your participation and being in the class. We'll see you next week. And I hope you have a great night or week,

based on your time zones. Love you and take care. Thank you for the very thorough section of David's work. Thank you. JOHN MUELLER