I think you're mistaken about this. Once the philosophical and technical breakthroughs are made that allow us to build an AGI then it will get all the data it needs from its environment. It would be 'unsupervised' in the sense that human children are i.e. no pre-processing of data required but it would still need parenting.
I like the way the narrator-hero is trapped in a sinister bell jar world and yet works optimistically to improve his knowledge of it. Regardless of outcome he sees no malevolence built into reality.
That reductionist view of politics is part of the problem. Politics is the process of making decisions applying to all members of each group. It's essential and a part of what makes us human.
Consider that the machinery to make group decisions and allocate resources already exists (laws, institutions, government, etc). It is imperfect and can be improved. But what is relevant here is that groups of people wish to alter the machinery in certain fixed (uncreative) ways. The unconscious motive is that of preserving their own identities.
An extreme case would be a Dr Evil figure who will not examine his own heart and needs the world to burn just so he can pretend to himself that he's a good person. So he makes the world burn. At every stage convinced of his own righteousness.
This explains why 'war is the continuation of politics by other means'. What passes for peace is trench warfare where the only progress is sideways. Improving the machinery may be desirable but in practice politics is dominated by preventing inevitable perturbations from escalating into open hatred and violence.
(More parochially one can tell when politics is influencing the discussion because there is always blaming going on.)
Politics is even more about how society wants resources to be allocated than it is about how they are allocated. That makes it an important and all-pervasive topic
I agree, but from a restaurant perspective. Hearing that distinct change in sound for a bottle that's being squeezed while empty can lead to a quick replacement by attentive staff.
Indeed. And just as most people can't see things accurately, not can they sense what's going on inside their mouths. AFAICT each accent has a signature pattern of muscle tension and positioning of jaw, pharynx, etc.
Perhaps this comes under 'defenders of the realm', but: dogs bark at strangers thereby acting as an alarm system.
I wonder if dogs domesticated themselves, at least to begin with. By following a human camp around they would be more likely to breed with other human-liking and human-tolerated dogs.
Self-domestication is one of the current leading theories for the evolutionary history of dogs. Under that theory, wolves would scavenge scraps around the periphery of human encampments. The more pleasing a wolf was to humans, the closer it could get to the settlement. The closer it could get to the encampment the more food the wolf would receive, and the more it received the more likely it was to reproduce.
Over time, the differential rate of reproductive success emphasized traits that were not only useful but pleasing to human emotions and actions, in particular those related to our social interaction, bonding, and nurturing instincts. Dogs may not even be "domesticated" in the strictest sense of the word, but rather a symbiotic species that co-evolved with humans.
It occurs to me that domestic animals are (certainly in a moderately-warmish climate) all that's required for a "fine", "humane", "quiet pleasant" human civilization. Not a highly industrialized one perhaps, or a highly complex hierarchy of state and formal roles, but still, if & as long as humans could use enough of their gray matter to reign in their own breeding in sync with pasture-land availability and domestic-animal breeding.. seems even for metal-working and old-school defence (perhaps useless in the nuclear age) is quite doable without industry or slavery indeed. Something the doomsday preppers would be wise to keep in mind and focus on, rather than memorizing what small proportion of calorically meagre, highly seasonal, local herbs/mushrooms/nuts/berries aren't immediately deadly / long-term damaging, or wasting valuable pasture space trying to sprout a some silly freedom fries ;) one cow feeds a man for 12 months, or absent freezers, 12 men for a month, with full nutrition and copious kcals, nothing else will ever beat that. Smaller animals are a decent hedge and for variety.
>hear of a name before you hear of a concrete achievement
That's an excellent criterion.
I often wonder if many famous past intellectuals were mere celebrities where I can't recall a single achievement. And if one can't name a famous true idea in an current academic field, perhaps the field itself is worthless.
It is a poor criterion, because it is so subjective and dependent on PR machines.
The OP just has not heard of any accomplishments, but anyone with a little expertise in deep (reinforcement) learning knows about the major contributions to the field by Schmidhuber.
Using this criterion you are using popular media and fields you know not much about, to brush away the accomplishments of respectable scientists. Don't base your skepticism on your own lack of knowledge: that makes it selective -- You can not cut through the bullshit, if you don't know how to wield a sword.
The criterion is not about assessing a particular individual's contributions, it's about choosing what and whom to investigate in the first place. Of course this is subjective, and rightly so.
(With apologies to Mr Dheere. I haven't heard his rendition.)
Ray Sizemore reads it in a detached manner (reminiscent of the Emergency Medical Hologram in Star Trek Voyager) which is highly suited to the material.
Consider: A monologue. No relationships. No sex. No strikingly new ideas. Mostly expositional. Yet so darned good.
