# Artificial intelligence and human self-esteem



## Electra (Oct 24, 2014)

How can we prevent humans ending up feeling inferiour to robots, cobots, computers and machines as these take over for our skills, jobs and talents?


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## Rift (Mar 12, 2012)

have an assortment of pamphlets on alternative lifestyles:

becoming a trappist monk/nun

becoming a buddhist monk/sister

joining the amish

living off grid

tinyhomes & rv conversions real estate 

'insert here' the ins and outs of robosexuality








coming out as robosexual


why put granny in a home when you can let her live out the best years of her life in Virtual Gardens? Donate her body today to help fight global warming while getting an electric credit for every year she's alive for all your family's usage. don't let the weak, affirm, otherwise old or just plain useless be a burden on society when they can power the systems for our matrix a.i. making life a little easier for everyone today!.

need to research more; I'll be back


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## Celtsincloset (Feb 17, 2014)

Every machine needs its master. They can become an extension of ourselves, but without us, they are meaningless. Machines cannot care for things.


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## KindaSnob! (Nov 15, 2020)

Rift said:


> have an assortment of pamphlets on alternative lifestyles:
> 
> becoming a trappist monk/nun
> 
> ...












You are really good at blurring fine line between trolling and craziness. I really find your posts interesting. Lol. When will your research be done? I'm here waiting.


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## Electra (Oct 24, 2014)

Forgive me, I am being dystopian again.


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## Rift (Mar 12, 2012)

KindaSnob! said:


> You are really good at blurring fine line between trolling and craziness. I really find your posts interesting. Lol. When will your research be done? I'm here waiting.


I keep telling myself I'll go through the terminator tv series and the rest of the movies but I haven't yet.



Celtsincloset said:


> Every machine needs its master. They can become an extension of ourselves, but without us, they are meaningless. Machines cannot care for things.


so, they need a queen, a borg queen?


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## Allostasis (Feb 2, 2021)

By merging with them. This is the only reasonable solution in the long-term, I think. AI will be a means towards the next step of the evolution of humanity.


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## Trueself (Dec 8, 2020)

Hey, maybe your question can be answered as follows:
Human’s attitudes, behaviors, and thinking frameworks are inevitably influenced by tools and technologies, including AI and AGI. (see Peter Paul Verbeek, Mediation Theory)
As a result of large-scale changes in attitudes and expectations, it's inevitable that humans will erroneously compare themselves to “machines”, feeling inferious or even outraged.
Human hubris knows no boundaries - whether it's a war against nature or machines, it will always be there (see Charles Eisenstein, The Ascent of Humanity). In the past, humans deliberately fought bears to show off their strength. More recently, the quantified self community willingly experimented with augmenting technologies, to show how artificialy enhanced selves are better than “natural” and limited ones.

Humans handle change in various ways. Some oppose it, some take it personally, others chase it.

I personally believe that technologists have the power to make machines relatable and appealing, reducing feelings of inferiority. However, I think it's the community leaders and ethicists who will help the masses snap out of this “master”/”slave” narrative and help them relate healthy to AI, while changing ways of living that are decrepit.


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## Electra (Oct 24, 2014)

Trueself said:


> Hey, maybe your question can be answered as follows:
> Human’s attitudes, behaviors, and thinking frameworks are inevitably influenced by tools and technologies, including AI and AGI. (see Peter Paul Verbeek, Mediation Theory)
> As a result of large-scale changes in attitudes and expectations, it's inevitable that humans will erroneously compare themselves to “machines”, feeling inferious or even outraged.
> Human hubris knows no boundaries - whether it's a war against nature or machines, it will always be there (see Charles Eisenstein, The Ascent of Humanity). In the past, humans deliberately fought bears to show off their strength. More recently, the quantified self community willingly experimented with augmenting technologies, to show how artificialy enhanced selves are better than “natural” and limited ones.
> ...


Yeah. I had a classmate who is also working; told me that at her job, robots are walking around in their hallways telling her to "get out if the way". And at sertain cruice ships bartenders have allready lost their job in favor of robots. Where I once cobsidered to work a long time ago; employers couldn't keep up with the speed of the machines and allmost everybody were angry and misreable. So I hope that the change from robots to cobots happens soon...


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## Rift (Mar 12, 2012)




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## Trueself (Dec 8, 2020)

Technologically induced job displacement is not new. Calculators (humans performing algorithmic calculations) were displaced by portable “calculators” indeed. Today, it's deeper and accelerated. If you're talking about the low esteem as a result of being displaced, please - focus on people skills, project management, collaboration, emotional intelligence. These are hugely impactful skills in business that will help you as “robots” get introduced into the workplace. Not sure where you're based but here is what the UK is doing to help - FutureFit


Electra said:


> Where I once cobsidered to work a long time ago; employers couldn't keep up with the speed of the machines and allmost everybody were angry and misreable. So I hope that the change from robots to cobots happens soon...


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## Electra (Oct 24, 2014)

Trueself said:


> Technologically induced job displacement is not new. Calculators (humans performing algorithmic calculations) were displaced by portable “calculators” indeed. Today, it's deeper and accelerated. If you're talking about the low esteem as a result of being displaced, please - focus on people skills, project management, collaboration, emotional intelligence. These are hugely impactful skills in business that will help you as “robots” get introduced into the workplace. Not sure where you're based but here is what the UK is doing to help - FutureFit


Hehe, AI are not exactly there _yet_ when it comes to people skills. 🤖 Don't get me wrong. A lot of tecnology helps us. I use an app called photomath a lot. As long as we don't abuse the opportunity to become lazy and cheat it's pretty helpfull. All you have to do is to photograph your question and it will guide you through the challenging algorythms step by step. Another friend of mine told me how a machine lifted elderly people in her work place. She found that heavy lifting a great help. Washing machines are a gift from heaven. But then again people need jobs. Do you think the majority of people will be given artificial jobs in the future to help give them a sense of purpose?


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## Rift (Mar 12, 2012)




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## Electra (Oct 24, 2014)

Rift said:


>


Ye you got to treat cobots like humans in the future imo because they are so simmilar to us that if you make a habit of mistreating them for simple machines that habit could slip over to humans. But maybe the machines will infact teach humans how to behave in quite high ethic standards, maybe even higher then our current ones.


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## Ewok City (Sep 21, 2020)

Assuming robots and AI will live forever, they will envy us. 

_"They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now."_


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## Rift (Mar 12, 2012)

Sologamous Wedding


I'm basically asexual, or incredibly low libido which amounts to the same thing, but I love the idea of romance a lot. The problem is no matter how much I dated, no one was willing to commit to me. Today I was browsing through Facebook, and discovered there was a celebrity that identified as...




www.personalitycafe.com


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## Trueself (Dec 8, 2020)

Precisely, that's why I encouraged you to invest in YOUR people skills. These are unlikely to be displaced soon by AGI. Hence, you'll protect your self esteem and work well with humans, while other jobs are displaced.


Electra said:


> Hehe, AI are not exactly there _yet_ when it comes to people skills.


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## Rift (Mar 12, 2012)

Electra said:


> teach humans how to behave in quite high ethic standards, maybe even higher then our current ones.


by what standards, ethics?


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## Trueself (Dec 8, 2020)

Check out the Human Wellbeing framework from IEEE or the EU framework for ethics in AI. Both were created by high-quality people, collaborating across countries to find a few pretty solid technology ethics principles that could be reinforced.
Other than that, each country has its laws reinforcing verifiably “good” behaviors like - “not damaging properties”, “not inflicting pain”, “protecting personal freedom” etc these are negative ethics as old as our own human language. Normative ethics are not perfect and they change. So feel free to follow virtue ethics instead.


Rift said:


> by what standards, ethics?


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## Electra (Oct 24, 2014)

Trueself said:


> Precisely, that's why I encouraged you to invest in YOUR people skills. These are unlikely to be displaced soon by AGI. Hence, you'll protect your self esteem and work well with humans, while other jobs are displaced.


Now this is a great tip! But what about the people who are less socially skilled.


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## Electra (Oct 24, 2014)

IDontThinkSo said:


> There is an infinity of problems we have yet to solve that take skills we have yet to graze.
> 
> If people valued problem solving, they wouldn't be threatened by the automatization of well known solutions to well known problems.
> 
> ...


Do you agree or disagree that the need to ace stem from a psychological need to be seen, accepted and feel appreciated and recogniced?
If so; do you suspect this need can be solved through therapy or biological treatment or brain stimulation which produces the feeling of reward?
Would this fake reward stimulation screw up our reward-hunting?
I also think fighting with npc's in videogames are boring for some reason, it doesn't matter how perfect the bot is. Even if I achieve some in game reward for it, it doesn't satisfy my need to interact with real humans, maybe not all humans feel the same way? Maybe some humans appreciate the bots more? If find the only reason to play chess with a computer is to learn a new skill but I'd much much mu h more rather learn that skill in real time from a human. It feels draining to learn things from a computer, book or video.
When the computer sets the resistance to low so that I get to win over it the achievement feels fake. When I set rsistance real high the computer allways tend to win and I end up feeling crappy with low selfesteem and dystopian thoughts about the future. For example the computer moves the horse faster then the blink of an eye. Thats not even fair in a million years.

I think in the future we will probably be able somehow to project our thoughts directly without having to type.

If we are going to have a chip planted into our brain how would that impact the growth of our brain, maybe we would need to get that chip as adults. I think it could be a potentional stressfactor on kids knowing this and also I wonder if that would not leave our brain more vulnerable to hackings.

There was people who got knee implants and biological rhings started to grow on the implants, kinda like when a ship sinks in the sea and things start to grow on the wreck it self, in this case like seaweed and shells or whatever it is. I wonder if that would happen in the pain too.


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## Behnam Agahi (Oct 27, 2020)

No we can't. That's not actually because humans are inferior. The whole idea of feeling inferior to someone or something is a subjective feeling which is caused by injustice.
It's the same thing that Karl Marx says. Whenever there is unbalanced justice because of minor superiority in a certain field, there will be blood and war. You can't blame anyone.
But there might be a possibility that those so called AI would develop a really objective and just measure for justice itself so they will end the wars that all of the biological things created. Just like how we can really accept unconditional love for your neighbor or any living thing as human beings.
But my own prediction is that these AIs can't develop those good feelings and will fall victim to the same rule of jungle as every biological thing has.


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## IDontThinkSo (Aug 24, 2011)

Electra said:


> Do you agree or disagree that the need to ace stem from a psychological need to be seen, accepted and feel appreciated and recogniced?
> If so; do you suspect this need can be solved through therapy or biological treatment or brain stimulation which produces the feeling of reward?
> Would this fake reward stimulation screw up our reward-hunting?


I think the need for competence and ability simply stem from the fear of vulnerability and failure. Then it's up to everyone to not confuse it with their specific fear of exclusion and build a psychological system of reward around such conflations.

It is a constant in human history that those who go beyond others' expectations (skill-wise), are not driven by external validation. Would it be the case, they would stop improving as soon as they fulfill others' expectations, or, if they were already excluded, have their own expected revenge. Pushing boundaries takes a more authentical approach to one's fears and accomplishments.

Self improvement is the ultimate answer to a fear of vulnerability. If it is parasited by other drives, such as a need for predictability, it is also due to a history of failures to exceed one's expectations and to persist until that happens. I don't think the solution is as simple as stimulating or hindering one or two hormones with drugs.


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## Celtsincloset (Feb 17, 2014)

Electra said:


> So you don't think human made will be looked down upon as full of errors?


No. Do you think a robot would be able to author poetry? Or paint a portrait that is meaningful? Human-made would probably be the meaningful artefacts; they'll be valuable.


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## Electra (Oct 24, 2014)

Celtsincloset said:


> No. Do you think a robot would be able to author poetry? Or paint a portrait that is meaningful? Human-made would probably be the meaningful artefacts; they'll be valuable.


I think it can at least make poetry and I am unsure about the meaningfull portrait but if it is programmed to copy our human values, who knows? I doubt I personally would but I can't garantie it 100%. Android and mobile phones in general has become more intuitive then lets say in 1999. At this stage most bots utterly and compleyely SUCK in psychology and deep and meeningfull communication with humans still and it just seems that they allmost have no clue what they are doing at all. That would have to be put a lot of emphasis on, but still, even if they could learn to understand where we are coming from there is something special about humans. A bot is more lke a reflection of human actions, even if smart, quick and clever. At this stage I find bots for example in a bank stiff, rigid and too strict.


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## Allostasis (Feb 2, 2021)

@Squirt 


> You talk of having super-intelligence so we can... what? What are we looking to gain? Is it for the hell of it? Do we want to reduce suffering? Is it so we can appreciate one another more? Is it to live longer? Will it do any of those things?


Whatever it is we were doing, we would be able to do it more efficiently. If you are interested in problem-solving, why wouldn't you be interested in getting more efficient at it. Or at writing poetry, or at playing games or at anything.

I am not sure why the increase of overall efficiency has to be necessarily associated with some concrete goal at hand. I never implied that this merge is a goal in itself, efficiency without use is, well, useless.



> You seem to be into highly centralized government control from your comments


It doesn't necessarily have to be the government. I just suspect that without some global careful centralized supervision that would guarantee uniform and fair integration there will be all sorts of issues. Maybe there is another solution, sure.


@Celtsincloset 


> No. Do you think a robot would be able to author poetry?


If it is the real AI we are talking about, it would be able to do anything that you imagine only human can. It will shoot poetries penetrating every inch of your soul like a machine gun.


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## Electra (Oct 24, 2014)

I think bots at this stage needs to get better in improvisation and to cope with unexpected events generally speaking.


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## Celtsincloset (Feb 17, 2014)

Allostasis said:


> If it is the real AI we are talking about, it would be able to do anything that you imagine only human can. It will shoot poetries penetrating every inch of your soul like a machine gun.


Robots/etc don't feel. Their poetry would be empty, and most likely nonsensical. Real poetry comes from the heart. I wrote a poem called 'The One', and I cannot imagine an AI writing it, and thinking it's a good poem.


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## Squirt (Jun 2, 2017)

Allostasis said:


> Whatever it is we were doing, we would be able to do it more efficiently. If you are interested in problem-solving, why wouldn't you be interested in getting more efficient at it. Or at writing poetry, or at playing games or at anything.
> 
> I am not sure why the increase of overall efficiency has to be necessarily associated with some concrete goal at hand. I never implied that this merge is a goal in itself, *efficiency without use is, well, useless.*


Exactly. So isn't it valuable to ask "efficiently doing what", in this case, with the merge?

I'm trying to get some more meat on the bones of this potential initiative is all.

I see some pieces here about how synthesis might bypass issues surrounding "making humans obsolete" which is a common fear when adapting to a new technology. What you're saying reminds me of Diaspar in Arthur C Clarke's novel "The City and the Stars", a utopia where humans are freed from any constraint to express themselves however they wish with "limitless computing power"... except for their wish to leave the utopia.

In my view, technology is a tool, not a savior, and so advancing technology doesn't_ advance us, _especially if we're expecting it to do so. It is a fundamental distinction.



Allostasis said:


> It doesn't necessarily have to be the government. I just suspect that without some global careful centralized supervision that would guarantee uniform and fair integration there will be all sorts of issues. Maybe there is another solution, sure.


The issues wouldn't be as bad as the issues centralized supervision would invite, imo. We're already seeing consolidation of power around the use of digital technology and AI. I would advocate for _decentralizing _access if we're worried about humanitarian implications.


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## Squirt (Jun 2, 2017)

Electra said:


> I think bots at this stage needs to get better in improvisation and to cope with unexpected events generally speaking.


I need to get better at this, too.


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## CountZero (Sep 28, 2012)

Allostasis said:


> @Squirt
> If it is the real AI we are talking about, it would be able to do anything that you imagine only human can. It will shoot poetries penetrating every inch of your soul like a machine gun.


AI can already create poetry. 









Haiku Generator


Automatic haiku generator tool. Choose some keywords and we will automatically create a poem in seconds.



www.poem-generator.org.uk





Whether it’s any good you’ll have to judge, LOL. Hint: the results aren’t pretty, not yet anyway.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Allostasis (Feb 2, 2021)

Squirt said:


> Exactly. So isn't it valuable to ask "efficiently doing what", in this case, with the merge?
> 
> I'm trying to get some more meat on the bones of this potential initiative is all.
> 
> ...


Do you have your own goals, plans, things that you want to see unfolding in reality? I certainly do. Now imagine yourself moving many, many times faster towards them. That's it. And towards anything that you may want.



> So isn't it valuable to ask "efficiently doing what", in this case, with the merge?


Everything, whatever your goal is. Again, it is useless to view it as an end in itself and as a savior, but that isn't necessary.

Have you played into Stellaris or any other strategy game that has a technology tree where you can research more powerful rockets and etc? Wouldn't you want to get technology that allows you to research subsequent things X% times faster?



> and so advancing technology doesn't_ advance us_


It is merely a stepping stone. Or mountain, to be more accurate. 




Celtsincloset said:


> Robots/etc don't feel. Their poetry would be empty, and most likely nonsensical. Real poetry comes from the heart. I wrote a poem called 'The One', and I cannot imagine an AI writing it, and thinking it's a good poem.


I think you are yet to realize the power we are talking about right now fully. Real AI is not your current generic dumb neural network producing funny random pictures with dogs or other nonsense.
As far as results are concerned, it would write as if it feels much more deeply than you and has a bigger heart than those from any humans that you met put together.
"Make human cry using words" can be considered as an engineering problem.
There is nothing intrinsic about feelings that would make them impossible to emulate/reproduce/predict.




CountZero said:


> AI can already create poetry.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


that's not an AI I talked about. 






Artificial general intelligence - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org


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## Celtsincloset (Feb 17, 2014)

I can't imagine an AI living the life of a human and could write something that tells of their own personal story. The sort of poetry, which I think in the way far-off futuristic world, could only be the product of a human. It seems impossible for an AI to achieve this meaning amongst humans, that speaks to them, unless they lived like a human, and wanted to procreate with a human, and die as a human.

When your AI reads another AI's poetry, what is usually a meaningful activity for a human, I wonder what would occur. What are they actually achieving by doing this, I wonder, because there is no feelings in them.


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## Allostasis (Feb 2, 2021)

@Celtsincloset


> I can't imagine an AI living the life of a human and could write something that tells of their own personal story.


This problem is not intrinsic to the concept of AI, but more to your understanding of it, I think.
There will be feelings or whatever properties of them required for the execution of goal.
Think of a human with "1000 IQ", roughly speaking, that could understand what is it that you expect out of him, that understands how human psychology works better than any human, and would know which inputs are needed for target outputs. It doesn't matter what task you will set for him, no human will be able to surpass him in equal conditions, including anything art/emotions related (unless we assume some limitations to AI implementation)


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## Electra (Oct 24, 2014)

Imagen then, if someone uses AI to emotionally manipulate us. Hit us right in the heart. Auch!


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## IDontThinkSo (Aug 24, 2011)

Nobody will invent a smarter mind than one's own. Upgrading calculation power won't change anything. Thinking faster like a fool is spreading one's foolishness at a higher rate if anything, not solving it at a higher speed. It's not about power but proper heuristics and people who use the latter will understand how bad of an idea it is to boost their own calculation power a billion times. It builds an impatient brain that will find comfort in the analytic process.

Going straight to the point. This fear of artificial intelligence is nothing but a denial and deviation of one's fear of human intelligence. It's not machines that make another's contribution obsolete but their inventor. The loophole is how humans are wired to overestimate their own which makes it hard for them to deliberately support a political war against intelligence. And whenever a country is being more aggressive against the smart, with all the problems that ensue, others see an opportunity to boast about how they're more civilized.

Humanity has understood all its local issues. Issues that can always be avoided. A local predator, shortage, disaster, each of those issues can be solved with various survival strategies. Hence we settled. Then we entered the era of global issues. A supervolcano, an asteroid, a global disaster, a global shortage, issues that follow us everywhere, aging, boredom, madness, they all have one common point : Fecondity, trickery, brutality, evasion, compassion, parasitism, none of those strategies work. Only skills, talent, intelligence.

We've stepped into a bottleneck of survival strategies that will only let talent and skills prevail. The sooner you accept and try to be part of that new adventure, the better for you. Because the most pressing problem is those who don't, leading to overpopulation, overconsumption, etc. Expect that issue to be solved in a near future and at its own expense.


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## Squirt (Jun 2, 2017)

Allostasis said:


> Do you have your own goals, plans, things that you want to see unfolding in reality? I certainly do. Now imagine yourself moving many, many times faster towards them. That's it. And towards anything that you may want.


Yes, we can certainly accelerate on our path towards extinction.


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## Allostasis (Feb 2, 2021)

@IDontThinkSo 
It is not about a boost of raw computational power to simply magnify foolishness or what was there before, but about upgrading the hardware that in turn produce skills, talent, and said intelligence. Not excluding natural ways of nurturing these attitudes. 


> Nobody will invent a smarter mind than one's own.


This statement means in this context that strong AI is impossible, but that is arguable at this point.

@Squirt 
Well, I guess I failed to communicate my point then, okay.


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## IDontThinkSo (Aug 24, 2011)

Giving machines free skills has no value in itself. The value of a skill pertains to the fundamental nature of the problem that it contributes to solve. There are an infinity of problems to solve, and questions to ask. Understanding how much they relate to one's issues is what intelligence is for. In the last century, so-called scientific community has been stuck with the fantasy that a powerful algorithm could list and analyze all questions on its own, and their obsession with the P vs NP problem.

That's all fun and game till their impassible computer takes an eternity to finally look into the most important question, which is : what is the 2nd most important question? >> How to figure out which one is 3rd.

What are the odds that a computer ignoring how it's gonna run out of juice will take this problem seriously instead of fantasizing about unrealistic threats and coming up with absurd answers and skills?

Humans all start with pretty much the same hardware, some spend it asking the right questions, others spend it being antireptilian flat-earthers. A 1M IQ anthropomorphic computer won't be any different.

Can you picture that, mankind gives half of its production of electricity to a supercomputer so that it finds a better energy source but it ends up obsessing with doing 5 dimensional origamis instead.


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## Allostasis (Feb 2, 2021)

"Merge" wasn't meant in metaphorical sense.
Human will keep learning, asking questions, build skills and etc, just better/faster, more will be achievable within individual lifetimes.


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