Andrés Gómez Emilsson | Full-Spectrum Superintelligence: From Shape Rotator to Benevolent Rainbow God @/Andr%C3%A9sG%C3%B3mezEmilsson | Uploaded February 2022 | Updated October 2024, 1 hour ago.
What's a Superintelligence?
The main point of this video is to articulate the fact that we all get "the notion of intelligence that we deserve": if your conception of intelligence is "causal power" or "capacity to solve mathematical problems" you will miss out on a much wider world of possibilities. In fact, you will miss out on the foundational elements needed to understand the potential for what David Pearce calls a "Full-Spectrum Supersentient Superintelligence", a mind capable of exploring, recruiting, and instantiating arbitrary state-spaces of consciousness for computational and aesthetic purposes.
In order to arrive at such a radically enriched conception of superintelligence we need to build up to it by first exploring mainstream modern conceptions of intelligence based on empirical psychometrics. Yes, it is true that "intelligence tests" measure something meaningful that has predictive power. I explain how General Mental Ability (GMA) is a pragmatically useful concept backed up by decades of psychometrics using statistical techniques such as Principal Component Analysis, Factor Analysis, and Structural Equation Modeling. These paradigms, however, suffer from statistical artifacts as a consequence of their faulty assumptions, such latent traits following a Gaussian distribution. We can avoid these problems by grounding GMA on relative problem solving capacity with Item Response Theory, which clearly shows that even traditional conceptions of intelligence do not follow a normal distribution (where outliers like Terrence Tao and Von Neumann are much more common than would be expected otherwise). I also delve into Spearman's Law of Diminishing Returns and its implication for the "battle" between Shape Rotators and Wordsmiths.
But all of this doesn't even touch what I think intelligence is *really* about. Which is, being able to distinguish the trivial from the significant!
High-octane mental power, when pointed in a pointless direction, is not particularly useful. Thus, we must enrich our conception of intelligence to encapsulate philosophical, meditative, and existential cognition. And, perhaps the Crown Jewel of Intelligence: the ability to explore, make sense of, navigate, and recruit exotic states of consciousness for information processing and aesthetic purposes. In particular, I make the case that intelligence is truly about identifying *self-organizing principles* of physics that are energetically cheap which can *solve the problem for you* (cf. "Repulsive Shape Optimization").
Ultimately, the reason why John von Neumann might be a red herring for a Full-Spectrum Superintelligence was his inability to "exit the simulation of his mind", unidentify with his phenomenal ego, and realize the truth of Open Individualism and Valence Realism. These are, rather, factors of intelligence involving sophisticated self-awareness with "frame exiting" properties quite distinct from mathematical ability.
I conclude with a discussion about what a Full-Spectrum Superintelligence would do with its time... perhaps, play a Full-Spectrum variant of the Glass Bead Game!
~Qualia of the Day: Cuteness!~
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Relevant links:
The Biointelligence Explosion (David Pearce) - biointelligence-explosion.com
Empathetic Super-Intelligence (David Pearce) - qualiacomputing.com/2016/09/10/empathetic-super-intelligence
The Supreme State of Unconsciousness: Classical Enlightenment from the Point of View of Valence Structuralism - qualiacomputing.com/2021/11/23/the-supreme-state-unconsciousness-classical-enlightenment-from-the-point-of-view-of-valence-structuralism
God and Open Individualism (Roger Thisdell) - qualiacomputing.com/2022/01/28/god-and-open-individualism
Item Response Theory - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Item_response_theory
A Song of Shapes and Words (Roon) - roonscape.substack.com/p/a-song-of-shapes-and-words
Spearman's law of diminishing returns: A statistical artifact? - sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289613000809
"If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at 5 o’clock, I say why not one o’clock?" - John Von Neumann - qualiacomputing.com/2018/06/21/john-von-neumann
The Truth About Mathematical Ability - lesswrong.com/posts/AXXaXJvf7WcTessog/the-truth-about-mathematical-ability
Great Mathematicians on Math Competitions and "Genius" - lesswrong.com/posts/EdFDwjsLNpgtTMJAp/great-mathematicians-on-math-competitions-and-genius
Innate Mathematical Ability - lesswrong.com/posts/5Xrv5aXfb95uHcseN/innate-mathematical-ability
Terrence Tao blog - terrytao.wordpress.com
Repulsive Shape Optimization - youtu.be/dtYGiCpzzbA
Glass Bead Game playable variants - ludism.org/gbgwiki/PlayableVariant
Glass Bead Game (song by Plini) - open.spotify.com/track/5wZWi4x6afEx6zQ4M1B90h?si=77e23654f10c42c2
What's a Superintelligence?
The main point of this video is to articulate the fact that we all get "the notion of intelligence that we deserve": if your conception of intelligence is "causal power" or "capacity to solve mathematical problems" you will miss out on a much wider world of possibilities. In fact, you will miss out on the foundational elements needed to understand the potential for what David Pearce calls a "Full-Spectrum Supersentient Superintelligence", a mind capable of exploring, recruiting, and instantiating arbitrary state-spaces of consciousness for computational and aesthetic purposes.
In order to arrive at such a radically enriched conception of superintelligence we need to build up to it by first exploring mainstream modern conceptions of intelligence based on empirical psychometrics. Yes, it is true that "intelligence tests" measure something meaningful that has predictive power. I explain how General Mental Ability (GMA) is a pragmatically useful concept backed up by decades of psychometrics using statistical techniques such as Principal Component Analysis, Factor Analysis, and Structural Equation Modeling. These paradigms, however, suffer from statistical artifacts as a consequence of their faulty assumptions, such latent traits following a Gaussian distribution. We can avoid these problems by grounding GMA on relative problem solving capacity with Item Response Theory, which clearly shows that even traditional conceptions of intelligence do not follow a normal distribution (where outliers like Terrence Tao and Von Neumann are much more common than would be expected otherwise). I also delve into Spearman's Law of Diminishing Returns and its implication for the "battle" between Shape Rotators and Wordsmiths.
But all of this doesn't even touch what I think intelligence is *really* about. Which is, being able to distinguish the trivial from the significant!
High-octane mental power, when pointed in a pointless direction, is not particularly useful. Thus, we must enrich our conception of intelligence to encapsulate philosophical, meditative, and existential cognition. And, perhaps the Crown Jewel of Intelligence: the ability to explore, make sense of, navigate, and recruit exotic states of consciousness for information processing and aesthetic purposes. In particular, I make the case that intelligence is truly about identifying *self-organizing principles* of physics that are energetically cheap which can *solve the problem for you* (cf. "Repulsive Shape Optimization").
Ultimately, the reason why John von Neumann might be a red herring for a Full-Spectrum Superintelligence was his inability to "exit the simulation of his mind", unidentify with his phenomenal ego, and realize the truth of Open Individualism and Valence Realism. These are, rather, factors of intelligence involving sophisticated self-awareness with "frame exiting" properties quite distinct from mathematical ability.
I conclude with a discussion about what a Full-Spectrum Superintelligence would do with its time... perhaps, play a Full-Spectrum variant of the Glass Bead Game!
~Qualia of the Day: Cuteness!~
--------
Relevant links:
The Biointelligence Explosion (David Pearce) - biointelligence-explosion.com
Empathetic Super-Intelligence (David Pearce) - qualiacomputing.com/2016/09/10/empathetic-super-intelligence
The Supreme State of Unconsciousness: Classical Enlightenment from the Point of View of Valence Structuralism - qualiacomputing.com/2021/11/23/the-supreme-state-unconsciousness-classical-enlightenment-from-the-point-of-view-of-valence-structuralism
God and Open Individualism (Roger Thisdell) - qualiacomputing.com/2022/01/28/god-and-open-individualism
Item Response Theory - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Item_response_theory
A Song of Shapes and Words (Roon) - roonscape.substack.com/p/a-song-of-shapes-and-words
Spearman's law of diminishing returns: A statistical artifact? - sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289613000809
"If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at 5 o’clock, I say why not one o’clock?" - John Von Neumann - qualiacomputing.com/2018/06/21/john-von-neumann
The Truth About Mathematical Ability - lesswrong.com/posts/AXXaXJvf7WcTessog/the-truth-about-mathematical-ability
Great Mathematicians on Math Competitions and "Genius" - lesswrong.com/posts/EdFDwjsLNpgtTMJAp/great-mathematicians-on-math-competitions-and-genius
Innate Mathematical Ability - lesswrong.com/posts/5Xrv5aXfb95uHcseN/innate-mathematical-ability
Terrence Tao blog - terrytao.wordpress.com
Repulsive Shape Optimization - youtu.be/dtYGiCpzzbA
Glass Bead Game playable variants - ludism.org/gbgwiki/PlayableVariant
Glass Bead Game (song by Plini) - open.spotify.com/track/5wZWi4x6afEx6zQ4M1B90h?si=77e23654f10c42c2
