Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: we're back with part two of our talk about post
Speaker 1: biological intelligence. Now, in the last episode, we talked about
Speaker 1: let's see, we talked about some work by the SETI
Speaker 1: researcher Seth show Stack, and we talked about the philosopher
Speaker 1: Susan Schneider, who had both written about UH the idea
Speaker 1: of looking for signs of alien intelligence elsewhere in the
Speaker 1: Milky Way, and UH the the proposition that if we
Speaker 1: were to encounter such an intelligence, it would probably be
Speaker 1: more likely the machine descendants of a previous biological intelligence
Speaker 1: than it would be biological entities themselves. That that overtime,
Speaker 1: organisms like us will tend to sort of turn themselves
Speaker 1: into machines, or at least create a techno culture that's
Speaker 1: dominated by machines, and that these are the types of
Speaker 1: intelligences that we should really be looking for and trying
Speaker 1: to predict in terms of their characteristics and things like that.
Speaker 1: So we can jump right back into the middle of
Speaker 1: this conversation where we left off last time with talking
Speaker 1: about post biological intelligence. Now another big question here and
Speaker 1: and this will we'll go back to Schneider. Is it
Speaker 1: is that the question of would a machine culture like
Speaker 1: this if you encountered it, would this machine artificial intelligence?
Speaker 1: Would it be conscious? And what would that mean? And
Speaker 1: would it make a difference even, Yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: really good question. The way she puts it is would
Speaker 1: the processing of a silicon based super intelligent system feel
Speaker 1: a certain way from the inside. Now, I'm going to
Speaker 1: go into less detail on this argument than than I
Speaker 1: did on the other half of her argument, but I
Speaker 1: did want to try to give a few highlights. This
Speaker 1: question is inherently difficult to answer because, according to some philosophers,
Speaker 1: you know, some people would say that this question is
Speaker 1: impossible to answer because there is no way to test
Speaker 1: for consciousness beyond our first our own first person experience.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can't even test to see if other
Speaker 1: people are conscious. We just assume they are. It seems
Speaker 1: like they are, they claim to be, and there's no
Speaker 1: reason to assume they're not. But of course you have
Speaker 1: ideas like the philosopher David Chalmers, you know, he famously
Speaker 1: framed this idea of the easy problems versus the hard
Speaker 1: problems of consciousness, and so the easy problems that they're
Speaker 1: not actually easy, but they are, they're in principle solvable.
Speaker 1: There are things like what parts of the brain are
Speaker 1: necessary in order to generate conscious experience, Like you could,
Speaker 1: you know, you could do research on that and have
Speaker 1: people report back when different parts of the brain are
Speaker 1: disabled or something. You know, you can figure out things
Speaker 1: like that, but it's much more difficult to or Chalmers
Speaker 1: would argue, ultimately impossible to get to the bottom of
Speaker 1: the question why does all this information processing in the
Speaker 1: human brain under certain conditions have a felt quality to it?
Speaker 1: Like why is their consciousness in the first place? And
Speaker 1: if we do not know, or possibly even cannot know,
Speaker 1: why we possess a felt subjective experience, how could we
Speaker 1: ever reason backwards to know if alien machines would also
Speaker 1: possess it? Now, Schneider responds to all this thinking, and
Speaker 1: I'm oversimplifying here, but her main point is that the
Speaker 1: activity of the brain is, according to her argument, primarily
Speaker 1: computational and in the absence of compelling evidence for what
Speaker 1: she calls biological naturalism, and that's the idea that consciousness
Speaker 1: is or is likely to be unique to biological carbon
Speaker 1: based organisms. Daniel Dennett ridicules this point of view by
Speaker 1: calling it the belief that the brain possesses what he
Speaker 1: calls wonder tissue. You know that there's just something in
Speaker 1: the brain that, like magic, allows it to generate consciousness
Speaker 1: while other types of things can't generate consciousness. I don't
Speaker 1: know the answer to this question whether things other than
Speaker 1: brains can or cannot gem great consciousness. It Uh, I'm
Speaker 1: sort of skeptical of both sides of the argument. But
Speaker 1: but anyway, Schneider argues that we should conclude by analogy
Speaker 1: that other computational agents, because our brains are computational agents
Speaker 1: and they generate consciousness, that other computational agents are also
Speaker 1: capable of possessing consciousness unless there's some kind of evidence
Speaker 1: that biological naturalism is is necessarily true, and she says
Speaker 1: there's not, And I agree that there is not evidence
Speaker 1: of that. You know, what's interesting about the way that
Speaker 1: you just lay this out, though I can easily imagine
Speaker 1: a situation where an advanced AI is forced to, uh,
Speaker 1: sort of ponder the situation, well, is having a conscious
Speaker 1: um this conscious experience? Is it important. Well, let's let
Speaker 1: me create like a programming or a subset of myself
Speaker 1: that has at least as close of an approximation of
Speaker 1: consciousness as as as as it is understood at that
Speaker 1: time in order to evaluate you know, right, Um, so
Speaker 1: then it perhaps has sort of it's its main mind,
Speaker 1: but then it has sort of a subset of quote
Speaker 1: unquote conscious minds just in case it is important. Yeah, obviously,
Speaker 1: I mean huge question, like how would it know how
Speaker 1: to do that? But assuming could that, Yeah, that's really
Speaker 1: funny that, like it could try to iterate consciousness in
Speaker 1: in an experimental way to see if to see if
Speaker 1: it makes a difference, because that's another big thing, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the biological question about consciousness. We at least
Speaker 1: know that biological brains can be conscious. We don't know
Speaker 1: if computers can be or not. But since biological brains
Speaker 1: are conscious, is that an adaptive evolutionary trait? Does consciousness
Speaker 1: do something? Or or could you have a an animal
Speaker 1: that is absolutely functionally identical to a human but not conscious.
Speaker 1: This is actually the concept of a philosophical zombie or
Speaker 1: a p zombie, a being that is that is indistinguishable
Speaker 1: from a normal human except it has no inner experience.
Speaker 1: So in like this scenario where the super AI creates
Speaker 1: like account soul of quote unquote conscious iterations of itself,
Speaker 1: like maybe they're just faking consciousness. How would it know? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then how would it know? How would we know?
Speaker 1: And yeah, again if you're and then if you're dealing
Speaker 1: with an AI, like suddenly we make contact with an
Speaker 1: AI from another world? Um, is it important that it
Speaker 1: be conscious or not conscious? Like? There are lots of
Speaker 1: things that are important and even beneficial that are not conscious,
Speaker 1: like the you know, the Bill of Rights is not
Speaker 1: a conscious entity. Um, but you know, I think most
Speaker 1: would argue that it is. It is important. It does
Speaker 1: good things. I mean, you could argue that it is
Speaker 1: only important in that it has effects on conscious on
Speaker 1: things that are conscious. Yeah, Like in a universe where
Speaker 1: there was nothing that was conscious, would the Bill of
Speaker 1: Rights be useful? But I don't know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess there are some theories of value that would that
Speaker 1: would say like, yeah, things could still be of value
Speaker 1: even if they weren't conscious, right, uh yeah, And then
Speaker 1: again it just it also kind of becomes pointless because
Speaker 1: once you're talking to that AI. Um, yeah, Well what
Speaker 1: does what does it mean if it's conscious or not? Like,
Speaker 1: how does that change the way you interact with it? Um?
Speaker 1: Unless you're you know, actively saying hey, stop, think about
Speaker 1: what you're doing, think about what you're thinking about. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't know. So I don't know what to think
Speaker 1: about the consciousness question for for alien machines. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think I think Schneider makes the best argument that
Speaker 1: I could imagine for it, But I still don't know
Speaker 1: if I'm convinced, just because this whole realm to me
Speaker 1: just seems so uncertain. Um. But but then she goes
Speaker 1: on to some other things that I think are some
Speaker 1: really interesting ideas. Actually, she talks about what would be
Speaker 1: the predictable characteristics of super intelligent machines, the minds we
Speaker 1: would encounter out there if we did encounter them. Well,
Speaker 1: she admits that there's not a lot we can know,
Speaker 1: at least certainly not that much that we can say
Speaker 1: with with too much confidence, But we can make some
Speaker 1: educated guesses about the broad strokes of of alien intelligence.
Speaker 1: And to do this she cites the work of again
Speaker 1: philosopher Nick Bostrom, who is fame is for writing about
Speaker 1: AI risks, and I believe he actually coined the term
Speaker 1: super intelligence, though it could be wrong about that, but
Speaker 1: Bostrom says, yes, it is hard to predict the goals
Speaker 1: of a future AI, you know, alien intelligence is very
Speaker 1: difficult to understand. But he identifies what he thinks are
Speaker 1: several intellectual tendencies that are likely to be found in
Speaker 1: any super intelligent AI, and they're likely to be found
Speaker 1: in any of them because he says, these traits are
Speaker 1: useful in attaining almost any goal. And so these goals
Speaker 1: he identifies our resource acquisition makes sense. You need resources
Speaker 1: in order to like keep your processes going. Technological perfection, right,
Speaker 1: you want yourself to work efficiently, Cognitive enhancement, you always
Speaker 1: want to be smarter, self preservation, you want to be
Speaker 1: able to keep doing things. And then what he calls
Speaker 1: goal content integrity, and Schneider summarizes that by saying, I e.
Speaker 1: That a super intelligent being's future self will pursue and
Speaker 1: tin those same goals. Uh. And this one was really
Speaker 1: interesting to me actually thinking about the idea that a
Speaker 1: machine would need to try to make sure that as
Speaker 1: it iterates to to improve itself, it doesn't change what
Speaker 1: it was trying to do. In the first place, sort
Speaker 1: of a prime directive sort of situation, right, Yeah, Or
Speaker 1: to come back to the culture, the idea that like,
Speaker 1: if you're created, if your original design is to aid
Speaker 1: humans and make their life easier, than you keep doing
Speaker 1: that even if you are ultimately the calling all the
Speaker 1: shots now and you know, are in charge of all
Speaker 1: the interactions with other civilizations, etcetera. Yeah, And that that
Speaker 1: actually comes into the next thing she says about Bostrom's
Speaker 1: ideas on on these super intelligence is uh. She she writes, quote,
Speaker 1: he underscores that self preservation can involve group or individual preservation,
Speaker 1: and that it may play second fiddle to the preservation
Speaker 1: of the species the AI was designed to serve. So
Speaker 1: could be that these AI s, if they ever do
Speaker 1: come to exist, would yeah, that they would be the
Speaker 1: custodians or caretakers, thinking mainly about the preservation of the
Speaker 1: species that created them, and then when they come to us,
Speaker 1: they ultimately just want to serve man. But then one
Speaker 1: last thing that Schneider argues that I thought would be
Speaker 1: interesting to mention is uh, and I think I said
Speaker 1: this earlier. But she also argues that perhaps the most
Speaker 1: common form of super intelligence we could expect to encounter
Speaker 1: would be what she calls biologically inspired super intelligent aliens,
Speaker 1: and that if this argument is correct, this could also
Speaker 1: tell us some things about intellectual characteristics that we would
Speaker 1: expect to find in these super intelligences. So, to read
Speaker 1: from Schneider's chapter, she says, uh, it may turn out
Speaker 1: that of all super intelligent ai s, biologically inspired super
Speaker 1: intelligent ais, they're the most resemblance to each other. In
Speaker 1: other words, visas maybe the most cohesive subgroup because the
Speaker 1: other members are so different from each other. And there
Speaker 1: she's talking about members of the galactic community. Basically that
Speaker 1: the biologically inspired ones would have the most in common
Speaker 1: with each other. So what kinds of things could they
Speaker 1: have in common? She says, noticed that besas have two
Speaker 1: features that may give rise to common cognitive capacities and goals. One,
Speaker 1: visas are descended from creatures that had motivations like find food,
Speaker 1: avoid injury, and predators, reproduce, cooperate, compete, and so on.
Speaker 1: And then second, she says, the life forms that beasts
Speaker 1: are modeled from have evolved to deal with biological constraints
Speaker 1: like slow processing speed and the spatial limitations of embodiment. So,
Speaker 1: she says, could these two principles one and two yield
Speaker 1: traits common to members of many super intelligent alien civilizations?
Speaker 1: I suspect so, and she gives a bunch of examples,
Speaker 1: But I mean, a very simple and easy to grasp
Speaker 1: one would be that since intelligent biological life is primarily
Speaker 1: be concerned with its biological imperatives, mainly survival and reproduction,
Speaker 1: she says, it is more likely that visas would have
Speaker 1: final goals involving their own survival and reproduction, or at
Speaker 1: least the survival and reproduction of the members of their society.
Speaker 1: And I was just thinking this can be extrapolated to
Speaker 1: other ideas. For example, why wouldn't a superintelligent AI just
Speaker 1: just reprogram itself until it is no longer anything like
Speaker 1: its biological ancestors. So is it still really reproducing the
Speaker 1: original version of itself at all? Well, if you think
Speaker 1: back to Bostrom's idea of of goal content integrity, I
Speaker 1: wonder if this could in a way entail a kind
Speaker 1: of halting of the evolutionary process of life that has
Speaker 1: gone on throughout all of history, Because suddenly, once you
Speaker 1: reach this level of intelligence, a a machine iterating itself
Speaker 1: may just want to preserve the idea that it is
Speaker 1: still its original self. That's an inherently motivating goal for it,
Speaker 1: and thus it would prevent changes to itself that would
Speaker 1: make it feel too different from what it once was. Huh.
Speaker 1: You know it reminds me of like when you when
Speaker 1: you hear a really great song for the first time,
Speaker 1: or you you start playing a video game and it
Speaker 1: really grabs you, or you know, you get super into
Speaker 1: you know, some fandom or another. There's, at least for me,
Speaker 1: there's sometimes that point where you realize, like, wow, this
Speaker 1: is really fulfilling for me right now, and the day
Speaker 1: will come when it won't be Like, as much as
Speaker 1: I enjoy this game or this book or this song
Speaker 1: or whatever it is, there will come a day when
Speaker 1: I will set it aside because and I will there
Speaker 1: will be something else I'm into. So I guess the
Speaker 1: question is it's like, if if we or this machine
Speaker 1: that we're imagining here, if it could decide no, I
Speaker 1: will always be into this album. This album is great
Speaker 1: and it shall always be that way. Would it do that,
Speaker 1: would it set itself in time, or would it like
Speaker 1: assume that it would always be in this and just
Speaker 1: it kind of gets back to that vampire scenario you've
Speaker 1: brought up before. You know, you don't know what you're
Speaker 1: going to want when you become the vampire, and it's
Speaker 1: hard to iagine what your mindset is when you reach
Speaker 1: that point. Yeah, yeah, that's a really good point. Certainly
Speaker 1: applies to becoming some kind of machine or merging with it,
Speaker 1: or remodeling yourself if you already are machine than now.
Speaker 1: Schneider makes a number of other arguments about the types
Speaker 1: of post biological intelligences that we would be likely to
Speaker 1: encounter again, derived from the idea that there is some
Speaker 1: kind of ancestral biological inspiration behind these hypothetical superintelligences. And
Speaker 1: the thing she zeroes in on is that some limitations
Speaker 1: from original biological organisms are things that aies would probably
Speaker 1: want to engineer out of themselves. Right now, you can
Speaker 1: think of plenty of things about your brain that if
Speaker 1: you know, your brain were to evolve into some kind
Speaker 1: of computer that was always perfecting itself, it might want
Speaker 1: to leave by the wayside over time. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: some of your obsessions and anxieties and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But what's left if you take all that out right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. But then she also says that
Speaker 1: there are quote cognitive capacities that sophisticated forms of biological
Speaker 1: intelligence are likely to have and which enable the super
Speaker 1: intelligence to carry out its final and instrumental goals. We
Speaker 1: could also look for traits that are not likely to
Speaker 1: be engineered out, as they do not detract the visa
Speaker 1: from its goals. So there are some traits of biological
Speaker 1: intelligence that probably have inherent advantages. There are just some
Speaker 1: ways that brains work really good, and it would want
Speaker 1: to replicate that and just refine it across time. And
Speaker 1: then there are other traits of biological intelligences that might
Speaker 1: not have clear advantages, but they at least wouldn't detract
Speaker 1: from the attainment of goals. So just you know, why
Speaker 1: why not keep them around? Yeah, sort of the lukewarm
Speaker 1: stuff that's not detrimental to their goals. But all that
Speaker 1: doesn't maybe help it all that much, but isn't isn't
Speaker 1: using a lot of energy, et cetera. Right, So to
Speaker 1: get into Schneider's explicit predictions for bio logically inspired superintelligence
Speaker 1: is the first one. I'm not going to get deep
Speaker 1: into because it's a little dry. But this is a
Speaker 1: fair point, I guess. She says, learning about the computational
Speaker 1: structure of the brain of the species that created the
Speaker 1: visa can provide insight into the visas thinking patterns. Okay,
Speaker 1: So basically you can start to gain some insights into
Speaker 1: the computational structure of an animal's brain or or nervous
Speaker 1: system more broadly, by studying the brain's connect tome. A
Speaker 1: connect to home is a map of the connections between neurons,
Speaker 1: which at least in theory, would help you understand which
Speaker 1: cells and structures in the brain or the nervous system
Speaker 1: broadly share information with which others in order to better
Speaker 1: understand how information is processed as a whole. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean this makes me think, for instance, like when we
Speaker 1: think of an artificial intelligence, we are often loosely thinking
Speaker 1: of like that like that single entity. But what have
Speaker 1: you had, What have you had an alien life form
Speaker 1: that had sort of a pronoun bounced bicameral mind situation
Speaker 1: going on, where like the actual organic organism had uh
Speaker 1: like two houses of thought going on that kind of
Speaker 1: communicate with each other, and therefore that ends up being
Speaker 1: reflected in the ai they create. Oh, that's very interesting.
Speaker 1: That will actually come back to a question I have
Speaker 1: about one of the points she makes later on. But again,
Speaker 1: just the point she's making here is that if you
Speaker 1: can look at the physical structure of the original ancestral
Speaker 1: organism that the intelligence is evolved from, that can help
Speaker 1: you understand something about how the intelligence of its machine
Speaker 1: descendant works. Quote. While it is likely that a given
Speaker 1: visa will not have the same kind of connect dome
Speaker 1: as the members of the original species, some of the
Speaker 1: functional and structural connections may be retained, and interesting departures
Speaker 1: from the originals may be found. Now after that, she
Speaker 1: brings up a second point that I thought was a
Speaker 1: very interesting prediction. She writes, quote visas may have viewpoint
Speaker 1: invariant representation. Now what does that mean? Well, an easy
Speaker 1: way to think about it is this. If you're watching
Speaker 1: a movie and the camera suddenly cuts to a different
Speaker 1: angle in the middle of a scene, but it's still
Speaker 1: the same scene going on. How is it that you
Speaker 1: still understand you're watching a continuation of the same action
Speaker 1: as before. Everything looks completely different, but you understand that
Speaker 1: these are the same actors playing the same characters in
Speaker 1: the same room, even though it looks totally different. This
Speaker 1: is one of the ways that human intelligence still drastically
Speaker 1: outperforms artificial intelligence on Earth. You know, humans can look
Speaker 1: at an object it's a VHS tape of the Star
Speaker 1: Wars Holiday special, and you can look at it from
Speaker 1: completely different angles. Maybe the front cover of the box
Speaker 1: looks completely different than the back cover of the box,
Speaker 1: but you turn it around and you still understand that
Speaker 1: you're looking at the same object. Humans are able to
Speaker 1: form mental representations of objects in the world that can
Speaker 1: be isolated and recognized and manipul related within the mind's eye,
Speaker 1: and we humans are not typically going to be confused
Speaker 1: about what we're looking at because we took a step
Speaker 1: to the side and change the angle of observation. Even
Speaker 1: though the light reflecting off of the object and hitting
Speaker 1: our eyes will produce a very different pattern on the retina,
Speaker 1: we somehow still use our intelligence to know that we're
Speaker 1: still looking at the same object or scene. And this
Speaker 1: is a much much harder task for a computer. I mean,
Speaker 1: ask anybody who's been involved in visual object recognition. It's
Speaker 1: an incredibly difficult task for AI. And this is one
Speaker 1: of the many amazing fast and loose intellectual feats that
Speaker 1: humans do all the time so often that we we
Speaker 1: rarely appreciate how amazing our brains are in this regard.
Speaker 1: Another example from a recent episode was, you know, recalling
Speaker 1: the Moses Illusion episode, we talked about how good we
Speaker 1: are at getting the gist of a statement or a question.
Speaker 1: Even if major pieces of information within the sentence are
Speaker 1: wrong and should be throwing you often completely the wrong direction,
Speaker 1: you still are able to very quickly get what the
Speaker 1: person was probably intending to say and operate on that basis.
Speaker 1: Now here's where it goes with viewpoint invariant representations, especially
Speaker 1: as it concerns like physical objects in the world. Schneider
Speaker 1: argues that you can expect any biologically inspired AI to
Speaker 1: have viewpoint invariant representations because they seem to be inextricably
Speaker 1: linked to the biological development of intelligence. And uh, just
Speaker 1: I'm expanding on her thoughts here, but I think the
Speaker 1: reasoning goes something like this, What is intelligence? That's actually
Speaker 1: kind of a difficult question to answer, right, Like, it's
Speaker 1: kind of hard to pin down. But I think one
Speaker 1: plausible answer has to do with speed. Intelligence has something
Speaker 1: to do with the ability to accelerate problem solving or
Speaker 1: goal acquisition. So you could have an organism that has
Speaker 1: essentially a random strategy for trying to get what it wants,
Speaker 1: and very step it goes above a random strategy is
Speaker 1: in a way an increase in intelligence. It's accelerating the
Speaker 1: solution of problems. Now, to follow the biological reasoning a
Speaker 1: little further there, why is it that animals in general
Speaker 1: need a speed of problem solving intelligence that most plants
Speaker 1: do not? Well? I think the answer there is that
Speaker 1: animals survival and reproduction strategies are usually based on movement.
Speaker 1: This wouldn't be true of all things in the Kingdom animalia.
Speaker 1: I'm not so much for sponges and stuff, but most
Speaker 1: animals move fairly rapidly, whether that's for foraging or evading
Speaker 1: predators or seeking mates or anything like that. If you
Speaker 1: are able to move fairly quickly, that means your body
Speaker 1: needs a system of deciding in what direction to move
Speaker 1: relatively quickly. And so I could be missing something here,
Speaker 1: but it seems to me that it's a pretty safe
Speaker 1: assumption that this is one of the major drivers of
Speaker 1: the development of biological intelligence. Coming up with better and
Speaker 1: better systems for adaptively optimizing strategies for rapid movement to
Speaker 1: fit the specifics of the situation you're in. So you're
Speaker 1: constantly faced with new situations, predator approaching from a different angle,
Speaker 1: food to be found in a different you know, orientation,
Speaker 1: or like in a different hard to reach space, and
Speaker 1: your body needs a way to adapt to whatever situation
Speaker 1: you're in to decide the best way to move. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it kind of comes down to a certain extent passive
Speaker 1: energy acquisition versus active energy acquisition. Yes, because you know, obviously,
Speaker 1: if you have passive energy acquisition, you don't necessarily need
Speaker 1: to move as much. You know, you can just sort
Speaker 1: of set up shop. And of course we see examples
Speaker 1: of that not only in plants, but also in animals
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, I mean, how would it help a
Speaker 1: plant to have a brain. You know, the plant just
Speaker 1: needs to basically be hardy and sit there and collect sunlight. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: then again, I guess I could imagine a scenario where
Speaker 1: plants evolved intelligence. If they've got some kind of I
Speaker 1: don't know, mechanism that allows them to start moving more quickly,
Speaker 1: they could start evolving so that they could have you know,
Speaker 1: trees could evade lumberjacks or something. Well, you know, but
Speaker 1: before we get you know, multiple emails about this, I
Speaker 1: will say we will do an episode on planned intelligence
Speaker 1: at some point, because there's a lot of interesting stuff
Speaker 1: out there and some some really actually there's some arguments
Speaker 1: that kind of turn some of what we're saying here
Speaker 1: on its head. So, uh, well, we'll have to keep
Speaker 1: this conversation in mind when we get around to that
Speaker 1: future conversation. That's a good point. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: the movement thing would have to be not a universal
Speaker 1: necessity for the development of intelligence, but it seems like
Speaker 1: one of the major pathway that it has evolved on Earth,
Speaker 1: because I mean, you can imagine other things. Basically, intelligence
Speaker 1: allows adaptive problem solving, So that could also involve, say,
Speaker 1: not moving your body, but releasing chemicals into the environment
Speaker 1: and allowing communication between different nodes in a hub of
Speaker 1: trees or fungus or something. Yeah, you could have some
Speaker 1: sort of you know, pheromone spitting um like master plant.
Speaker 1: Uh that is that has other things to do its bidding,
Speaker 1: that has other things built at spacecraft. But to the
Speaker 1: extent that biological intelligence is often a product of the
Speaker 1: evolution of rapid movement. Viewpoint invariant representations would seem to
Speaker 1: be a necessary part of intelligence there, because they are
Speaker 1: necessary for an intelligent creature that moves. If you are
Speaker 1: able to move your body, your sense data about objects
Speaker 1: in your environment is going to be changing based on
Speaker 1: your perspective, especially if those senses are based on something
Speaker 1: that has linear trajectories like light. You know, light bounces
Speaker 1: off things in linear ways. You're going to see different
Speaker 1: angles of it. I don't know. If you were a
Speaker 1: creature entirely based on smells, I don't know. I guess
Speaker 1: then still viewpoint invariant would matter because you know, there
Speaker 1: would be different concentrations of volatiles in the air depending
Speaker 1: on where you stand relative to an object. But it
Speaker 1: seems like in general these types representations would be useful
Speaker 1: uh in that regard. And then Schneider adds another point there.
Speaker 1: She says that viewpoint invariant representations are not only important
Speaker 1: so that we don't get confused about what we're looking
Speaker 1: at in the environment. You know, you don't look at
Speaker 1: a rock from the opposite side and not understand it's
Speaker 1: the same rock. She says they're also important for abstract reasoning. Quote,
Speaker 1: you have mental representations that are at a relatively high
Speaker 1: level of processing inter viewpoint invariant. It seems difficult for
Speaker 1: biologically based intelligence to evolve without a viewpoint invariant representations,
Speaker 1: as they enable categorization and prediction. So, because you can
Speaker 1: represent objects as a kind of symbol or or emblem
Speaker 1: of themselves in your brain that is independent of just
Speaker 1: the one way they looked when you looked at them
Speaker 1: from one angle, you can sort of like you can
Speaker 1: turn them around in your brain and think about how
Speaker 1: they might be used as a tool, or you can
Speaker 1: predict how they would act given certain physical forces on them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know that this makes you think a little
Speaker 1: bit of the book by David Eagleman, Live Wired, talking
Speaker 1: about like the different sensory inputs for the human brain
Speaker 1: and how if you if you you know, you lose
Speaker 1: one sensory input and you can add another, or you
Speaker 1: can even add all new sensory inputs. Our brains will
Speaker 1: make sense of it. Our brains will essentially form that
Speaker 1: mental image of the thing, um, even if we don't
Speaker 1: have visual processing at our disposal. So if an alien
Speaker 1: brain is is it all like a human brain? You know,
Speaker 1: in in enough respects, then it seems like the same
Speaker 1: thing would be going on even if we were dealing
Speaker 1: with being that say, evolved with less of a reliance
Speaker 1: on vision, or more of a reliance on other senses
Speaker 1: or even some sense that you know that we have
Speaker 1: a have a difficult time imagining because we don't possess
Speaker 1: it ourselves. Yeah, yeah, that that that it would need
Speaker 1: based on whatever senses. It had to have some kind
Speaker 1: of mental representations of objects in the world that would
Speaker 1: not be changed. It is just by slightly changing the
Speaker 1: physical perspective from which you sense that object. Yeah. Now
Speaker 1: it does relate all sorts of interesting questions like what
Speaker 1: if what if the sense of smell was the primary sense?
Speaker 1: How do you create, say, a control panel for your spaceship?
Speaker 1: You know, interesting like each button has a different smell.
Speaker 1: I don't know, they're again, maybe it's a situation where
Speaker 1: we don't have a versatile enough palette or appreciation of
Speaker 1: the palette ourselves to even envision what that would be like.
Speaker 1: But you know, our our dogs, uh, you know, if
Speaker 1: they were more intelligent they could let us know. They
Speaker 1: would say, oh, yeah, I can totally imagine what it
Speaker 1: would be like. Oh man, here's my idea for sci
Speaker 1: fi novel. Okay, humans, humans come into conflict with an
Speaker 1: interstellar species that has, uh, that has a culture that's
Speaker 1: all entirely based around a species with a dominant sense
Speaker 1: of smell. And what we have to do is uplift
Speaker 1: dogs to the point where they have human intelligence so
Speaker 1: that they can tell us what it's like to see
Speaker 1: the world through that much smell data, so that we
Speaker 1: can better understand the aliens in order to protect ourselves
Speaker 1: against them. Yeah, and if it's a darelict ship or
Speaker 1: something like that, perhaps the control panels like they've lost
Speaker 1: a lot of their smell, so it's we don't even
Speaker 1: initially realize that this is a scent based control system.
Speaker 1: But then the dogs they they're like, yes, I can
Speaker 1: still smell things. There are numerous smells going on here.
Speaker 1: This is like sticking my head out the window while
Speaker 1: you drive around town. This is gold. Yeah. Okay, Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: I think Schneider's point here is a really interesting one.
Speaker 1: I do think that's worth considering about the viewpoint invariant representation.
Speaker 1: But to move on to her next point, uh, this
Speaker 1: one's also I think pretty cool. She says, visas will
Speaker 1: probably have language like mental representations that are recursive and combinatorial.
Speaker 1: And to illustrate this, Schneider gives the example of novel sentences. Now,
Speaker 1: we encounter novel sentences all the time, every day. I'll
Speaker 1: do one of my own. Here, here's the sentence the
Speaker 1: Howling seven New Moon Rising is the greatest film ever made.
Speaker 1: You have never heard this sentence spoken before, and yet
Speaker 1: you understand perfectly what it would mean for somebody to
Speaker 1: say this. Why is it that we're constantly hearing and
Speaker 1: speaking totally unique, brand new sentences, probably never uttered before
Speaker 1: by any humans, certainly not in a way that we've heard,
Speaker 1: and yet they're perfectly comprehensible. Schneider argues that quote the
Speaker 1: key is that the thoughts are combinatorial because they're built
Speaker 1: out of familiar constituents and combined according to rules. The
Speaker 1: rules apply to constructions out of primitive constituents that are
Speaker 1: themselves constructed grammatically, as well as to primitive constituents themselves.
Speaker 1: Grammatical mental operations are incredibly useful. It is the combinatorial
Speaker 1: nature of thought that allows one to understand and produce
Speaker 1: these sentences on the basis of one's antecedent knowledge of
Speaker 1: the grammar and atomic constituents. So, because you have an
Speaker 1: internalized sense of grammar, not just you know, it's not
Speaker 1: just that you know what the words mean individually, but
Speaker 1: you also grasp the rules that apply to how sentences work.
Speaker 1: And then you even grasp rules that go beyond just
Speaker 1: how sentences work. You grasp sort of cultural rules about
Speaker 1: how words fit together to form meaning. One example in
Speaker 1: the sentence I said is that even if you've never
Speaker 1: heard of the Howling seven New Moon Rising, you could
Speaker 1: probably understand that this is the name of a movie. Okay,
Speaker 1: but so so what's the point then she's she's making
Speaker 1: about the mind of of these potential alien AI. Well,
Speaker 1: basically that it would probably be language based. She goes
Speaker 1: on to say that a mind quote can entertain and
Speaker 1: produce an infinite number of distinct representations because the mind
Speaker 1: has a combinatorial syntax, so something like a language with grammar.
Speaker 1: And she concludes this point by saying, quote, brains need
Speaker 1: combinanttorial representations because there are infinitely many possible linguistic representations.
Speaker 1: You know, an infinite number of sentences you could say,
Speaker 1: and the brain only has a finite storage space, right,
Speaker 1: So the brain can't just store every possible sentence within
Speaker 1: itself and then check whatever somebody just said against that
Speaker 1: sentence stored in memory. It's got to be flexible. It's
Speaker 1: got to be able to build an understanding of sentences
Speaker 1: on the fly based on these constituent parts and an
Speaker 1: understanding of grammar. Okay, that makes sense. I think that's
Speaker 1: one of those things that most of us, you know,
Speaker 1: in our sci fi visions, we tend to just assume
Speaker 1: the intelligent aliens have some sort of a language and
Speaker 1: they're you know, an AI version would as well. But
Speaker 1: it is good to see that um driven home with
Speaker 1: logic here. Well, I mean, you could imagine somebody arguing
Speaker 1: the opposite way. You could say that maybe language is
Speaker 1: only useful for humans to communicate with each other, and
Speaker 1: that once you had something like a super intelligent AI
Speaker 1: no longer would need to communicate with these bit of tools.
Speaker 1: It could just have I don't know what, you know,
Speaker 1: imagine some kind of machine version of telepathy where it
Speaker 1: just represents the world as some kind of I don't
Speaker 1: know what it would be, represents some kind of internal
Speaker 1: states two different parts of itself without having a code
Speaker 1: system like language. But Schneider says, quote, even a super
Speaker 1: intelligent system would benefit from combinatorial representations. Although a super
Speaker 1: intelligent system could have computational resources that are so vast
Speaker 1: that it is mostly capable of pairing up utterances or
Speaker 1: inscriptions with a stored sentence, it would be unlikely that
Speaker 1: it would trade away such a marvelous innovation of biological brains.
Speaker 1: If it did, it would be less efficient, since there
Speaker 1: is the potential of a sentence not being in its storage,
Speaker 1: which must be finite. So again she's saying here like,
Speaker 1: even if you would imagine that super intelligences would get
Speaker 1: so powerful that they wouldn't need something like lying which
Speaker 1: to communicate with each other, it's actually still better to
Speaker 1: have something like a language, even for internal logic and
Speaker 1: representing computations from one part of a system to another. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's like having a logic budget, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean you can just because you you have a
Speaker 1: lot of energy at your disposal, doesn't mean that you
Speaker 1: just throw the budget out the window. Yeah. So again,
Speaker 1: you know, we're dealing in highly speculative realms. I think
Speaker 1: it's always possible we're being misled by a lack of imagination.
Speaker 1: But I think this point is very strong. It seems
Speaker 1: very likely to me that post biological AI would benefit
Speaker 1: from some kind of language like system of mental symbols
Speaker 1: and representations that were subject to something like a grammar.
Speaker 1: Now there's one point she makes that we already mentioned,
Speaker 1: and that's that quote, visas may have one or more
Speaker 1: global workspaces. Uh. Now, again, to explain the global workspace idea,
Speaker 1: Schneider argues, quote, the global workspace operates as a singular
Speaker 1: place where important information from the senses is considered in tandem,
Speaker 1: so that the creature can make all things considered judgments
Speaker 1: and act intelligently in light of all the facts at
Speaker 1: its disposal. In general, it would be inefficient to have
Speaker 1: a sense or cognitive capacity that was not integrated with
Speaker 1: the others, because the information from this sense or cognitive
Speaker 1: capacity would be unable to figure in predictions and plans
Speaker 1: based on an assessment of all the available information. Now,
Speaker 1: this one I'm actually less sure about, because I would say,
Speaker 1: and maybe I'm I'm partially misunderstanding her point here, But
Speaker 1: but I can think of counter arguments to this, like,
Speaker 1: isn't there some evidence that the brain does keep some
Speaker 1: relevant processing information hidden from or segregated from conscious awareness
Speaker 1: in certain scenarios, like maybe there are some types of
Speaker 1: information that are useful in making certain kinds of calculations,
Speaker 1: but tend to be in hib a tory towards other
Speaker 1: types of calculations or thought processes if they're considered at
Speaker 1: the same time. So it's sometimes useful to keep senses
Speaker 1: or knowledge separated from the cognitive workspace. A very simple
Speaker 1: example would be the knowledge that you are hungry. The
Speaker 1: knowledge that you're hungry is useful if you're in a
Speaker 1: position to get something to eat. But imagine you are
Speaker 1: stuck on the subway and you don't have any food
Speaker 1: on you and there's no way you could get food
Speaker 1: at the at the current time, and you're trying to
Speaker 1: read something or prepare for a work presentation. Their awareness
Speaker 1: of your hunger is actually counterproductive. It's just distracting you
Speaker 1: and adding nothing. Yeah, I mean, it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: like the idea of like any an enormous buffet right
Speaker 1: at a let's say a hotel or you know, show
Speaker 1: needs or something you know, and you go through it
Speaker 1: with your plate, you get the things off that plate
Speaker 1: that are necessary for the meal you're about to have,
Speaker 1: and then of course you can engage in the various
Speaker 1: combinations and problem solving involved in the consumption of that meal.
Speaker 1: But you don't need a rag the popcorn shrimp into
Speaker 1: it if you're not gonna eat the popcorn shrimp. You know,
Speaker 1: if you can't eat the popcorn shrimp, why would that
Speaker 1: be part of Why would that be on the plate?
Speaker 1: Why would that be on in the workspace? Or you
Speaker 1: don't have to put the ice cream sunday on the
Speaker 1: same plate that you put the nachos on, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it can be off to the side. You can keep
Speaker 1: the banana putting segregated from the crab legs. Yeah. Then again,
Speaker 1: I think to be fair to this argument, you could
Speaker 1: probably also counter argue that this type of problem is
Speaker 1: only a result of inefficiencies in our brains that maybe
Speaker 1: could be worked out by artificial intelligence, you know, upgrading itself.
Speaker 1: Maybe you could reach the point where you could have
Speaker 1: a global workspace where all information is available at the
Speaker 1: same time, and information that is not useful now can
Speaker 1: can just be sort of like safely ignored and won't
Speaker 1: be distracting. M Yeah, I don't know, it's it's hard
Speaker 1: to imagine, like it's. It kind of makes one think
Speaker 1: of something of like a situation where something is built
Speaker 1: by committee, where all all concerns and all factors are involved.
Speaker 1: And I don't know that kind of thing can lead
Speaker 1: to I guess with the right kind of project, it
Speaker 1: can be rather successful. You can sort of look at
Speaker 1: it both ways, right, You could look at like a
Speaker 1: a highly um efficient like NASA project, Right, But then
Speaker 1: we can also think of you know, artistic projects that
Speaker 1: might be compromised by such an approach. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: you can look at it different ways, and maybe with
Speaker 1: the sorts of projects that you know, super intelligent AI
Speaker 1: would would be focused on, it would make sense. I mean,
Speaker 1: I will at least say, with my current limited biological brain,
Speaker 1: there are certainly times when it is better to have
Speaker 1: parts of my awareness and parts of my cognition inaccessible
Speaker 1: to my consciousness. Yeah, I mean, there are some arguments that,
Speaker 1: uh that that put forward that that consciousness itself is
Speaker 1: like part part of consciousness is having a minimal attention,
Speaker 1: you know, being able to focus in on something and
Speaker 1: not be focused in on everything else like that, That
Speaker 1: is where the consciousness happened. Yeah, the consciousness could be
Speaker 1: sort of the spotlight within your global workspace. You've got
Speaker 1: like a workspace for problem solving, and consciousness is how
Speaker 1: you you determine what is right in front of you
Speaker 1: in that space right now. And then finally, Schneider argues
Speaker 1: that a visa's mental processing can be understood via functional decomposition. Uh,
Speaker 1: and this is fairly straightforward. It's just you know, minds
Speaker 1: are hard to understand. Brains are incredibly complex. The same
Speaker 1: would be true of super intelligence is whatever kind of
Speaker 1: physical substrate they're based on. But you can break down
Speaker 1: brains and computers into their constituent functional parts and structures,
Speaker 1: and by doing that you can break the big problem
Speaker 1: into smaller problems and more easily understand how they work.
Speaker 1: And this would in theory at least apply even to
Speaker 1: incredibly powerful AI. S Okay, fair enough. Now there's one
Speaker 1: last thing I was wondering about. This is not raised
Speaker 1: by Schneider. This just occurred to me. Would post biological
Speaker 1: AI be likely to have an equivalent of what we
Speaker 1: regard as emotions? You know, if you if you encounter
Speaker 1: one of these things, would it matter in what tone
Speaker 1: of voice you were to speak to it, would it
Speaker 1: be possible to hurt its feelings? I don't know, Like, um,
Speaker 1: perhaps in turn, like we might have to break down
Speaker 1: what emotions are in a way that would make sense
Speaker 1: to something like this, Like maybe part of it would
Speaker 1: come down to urgency, you know. Um, So there might
Speaker 1: be a situation where out of urgency, the machine would
Speaker 1: need to essentially raise its voice. Um, though it would
Speaker 1: maybe not you know, maybe this would not be carried
Speaker 1: out in a way that we would think of as emotional,
Speaker 1: but it might, you know, seem similar as to whether
Speaker 1: it's feelings could be hurt, I don't know. Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: it's assessment of us could change based on the way
Speaker 1: that we are expressing ourselves to it, and that is
Speaker 1: similar to an emotional reaction. And I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it's hard to separate emotional reactions to our
Speaker 1: behavior with purely logical the ability to predict our future behavior, right,
Speaker 1: because I would say a lot of ways that we
Speaker 1: react emotionally to people, it could be very flawed in
Speaker 1: this regard, but there at least somehow correlated to a
Speaker 1: feeling about how this same person that is making you
Speaker 1: feel a certain way now would behave towards you in
Speaker 1: the future. Yeah, I mean we're kind of all over
Speaker 1: the board when it comes to imagining the emotional context
Speaker 1: of of AI. Because even when we we sort of
Speaker 1: do that thing where we you know, we fall back
Speaker 1: on on AI presented itself like this to us. Uh, yes,
Speaker 1: like even that is like that we presented as being
Speaker 1: calm and understanding if if not you know, kind of
Speaker 1: emotional nous, but in a way that it is an emotion, yeah,
Speaker 1: British accent. But but also yeah, we often we often
Speaker 1: imagine it as being sort of infinitely calm and above
Speaker 1: above anger, which in and of itself is kind of
Speaker 1: and it is it is an emotional state. So I
Speaker 1: guess they're actually too totally different questions. Would a super intelligent,
Speaker 1: biologically inspired AI simulate emotions for the benefit of a
Speaker 1: you know, for the benefit of a biological audience, or
Speaker 1: would actually have something like emotions that are truly motivating
Speaker 1: its own behavior. Yeah, I don't know, it's it's it
Speaker 1: seems a difficult one to unravel. I guess where my
Speaker 1: brain just went is when we imagine aliens becoming aware
Speaker 1: of us, you know, and we try to imagine their
Speaker 1: mind states. Some of the ones we come to are
Speaker 1: like pity, you know, like oh, these you know, less
Speaker 1: technologically developed species of Earth. You know, maybe we should
Speaker 1: help them, or maybe just a desire to destroy us,
Speaker 1: squash us out, or a desire to like have all
Speaker 1: of our resources. But we don't often imagine what if
Speaker 1: the aliens encounter us and they're embarrassed for us, It's
Speaker 1: like it's so cringe inducing. Well, and that could be
Speaker 1: part of them choosing not to engage with us at all. Right,
Speaker 1: But anyway, I've found this chapter by Schneider really interesting,
Speaker 1: even though I'm skeptical of some of these transhumanist ideas,
Speaker 1: but I think this is really worth a read. It's
Speaker 1: it's very interesting, awesome. Yeah, and UH, and she's she's
Speaker 1: just a good science communicator in general. You'll find various
Speaker 1: talks that she's given. Um, I think she's done some more,
Speaker 1: you know, pps. Her work has been covered as well
Speaker 1: in various publications. So let's come back to UH to
Speaker 1: show stick though, and particularly his idea is concerning SETI
Speaker 1: the search for extra terrestrial intelligence? What what does all
Speaker 1: of this mean for STU? So we'd be talking about
Speaker 1: in theory, a highly intelligent, effectively immortal species if you will,
Speaker 1: that evolves, can replicate itself, and has no biological environmental demands. Interesting. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: how does that change what you're looking for? Um? So,
Speaker 1: showstick argues that, you know, consequently, since it would not
Speaker 1: be limited by biological lifespans, interstellar travel would be would
Speaker 1: certainly be an option. You know, you wouldn't be limited
Speaker 1: by your mortality. All trips would be the same length.
Speaker 1: You would just need energy and material for replacement in
Speaker 1: the improvement of parts. On top of this, these machines,
Speaker 1: this machine civilization would not be limited to water worlds. Uh.
Speaker 1: But while low energy machines could survive pretty much anywhere,
Speaker 1: truly dominant post biological civilizations would still require a lot
Speaker 1: of energy, and that of course means needing to be
Speaker 1: near major energy sources such as stars and black holes.
Speaker 1: It seems like, uh, once you transition from being a
Speaker 1: biological life form to a post biological life form, the
Speaker 1: specifics of your needs become less chemical and more just
Speaker 1: broadly physical. Yeah yeah so, And this this of course
Speaker 1: has ramifications for for part of the search for extra
Speaker 1: structural life, because then it means that well, maybe searching
Speaker 1: for rocky wet planets isn't where we're going to find
Speaker 1: the advanced civilization, and because the advanced civilizations no longer
Speaker 1: need that, so Showstack suggests that the galactic center would
Speaker 1: be the ideal place for these machines to set up shop,
Speaker 1: a region of high energy density. Again, distance and biological
Speaker 1: concerns don't really matter, and likewise, stellar black holes and
Speaker 1: neutron stars might be ideal places for them to seek
Speaker 1: out as well. However, he mentions that Serbian astrophysicist milan
Speaker 1: Im Turkovich has argued that the outer regions of the
Speaker 1: galaxy might also be ideal for such AI civilizations, as
Speaker 1: that is, the cold there would permit greater thermodynamic efficiency. Ah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like we were talking about with the computer fan running, right,
Speaker 1: that a civilization that is, in essence a gigantic computer
Speaker 1: would need to eject a lot of waste heat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Still there would be less mass and energy out there
Speaker 1: for them. So it's kind of like the same with
Speaker 1: human decisions between a rural or an urban and existence. Like, well,
Speaker 1: if I if I live in the heart of the city,
Speaker 1: well you know, I've got the theater right down the street.
Speaker 1: I've got my favorite grocery store. Uh you know, I've
Speaker 1: got I've got the you know, the place where I
Speaker 1: get my technology worked on. And I move out to
Speaker 1: the sticks while it's quieter. But now, how am I
Speaker 1: going to get my groceries? How am I going to
Speaker 1: get uh my culture? How am I going to get
Speaker 1: my technology addressed? But I can just throw all my
Speaker 1: garbage out the window and nobody bothers me about it.
Speaker 1: Uh So, show Stick argues that the ideal place to
Speaker 1: look here, so this would be you know, this is
Speaker 1: kind of like when humans make the idea of like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to live I'm going to compromise. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna live in the heart of the city. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna live in the middle of nowhere. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: find a nice place in the suburbs. Right. So, show
Speaker 1: Stick argues that the ideal place where these two ideals
Speaker 1: converge uh do exist, and these are the kind of
Speaker 1: locations we need to look for. Um So, there's a
Speaker 1: list of such places quote that have the thermodynamic advantages
Speaker 1: of the galactic nether regions but still lie in regions
Speaker 1: of high matter density unquote. And these include places called
Speaker 1: back globules. Uh. These are isolated dark nebulae that are
Speaker 1: relatively small in size, offer high thermodynamic efficiency, and have
Speaker 1: a lot of interstellar matter. Huh. Interesting. The nearest one
Speaker 1: of these, by the way, is Barnard Sight, uh, which
Speaker 1: I believe we're referencing in the title for this episode,
Speaker 1: a mere five light years away from us. So show So,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying there's anything there, but it makes you
Speaker 1: think that is interesting. I know, I I don't think
Speaker 1: I've ever heard of this criteria to look for before.
Speaker 1: Uh So, yeah, what does this mean? Show Stack obviously
Speaker 1: is involved in SID Does this mean we've got like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, radio listening a tune to Barnard sixty eight
Speaker 1: right now? Um? Well, I mean, certainly it's been ten
Speaker 1: years since this came out. So if if, if these are,
Speaker 1: if these are valuable arguments, uh, you know, I would
Speaker 1: assume they've been reflected to some to some degree. But yeah,
Speaker 1: in this paper he contends that said he should, you know,
Speaker 1: continue to look at Rocky water World, but also at
Speaker 1: neighborhoods of hot stars, black holes, neutron stars, bought globules,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Like it just you know, we shouldn't limit
Speaker 1: ourselves as the argument to these water worlds, because that
Speaker 1: may be where life has to emerge from. But given
Speaker 1: this idea of post biological life, that's not where it
Speaker 1: needs to remain. Now. A big question that does remain, however,
Speaker 1: is what sort of signal would such a post organic
Speaker 1: civilization produced that we could detect. Uh, you know, they
Speaker 1: might want us to find them, They might want to
Speaker 1: find us. But either way they might they might put
Speaker 1: some put something out for us for us to find. Uh,
Speaker 1: they might you know, not care that we can observe
Speaker 1: their dicens fheares that sort of thing. Um. But if
Speaker 1: you know, But but what if they don't you know? Well,
Speaker 1: then perhaps it takes one of our own AI to
Speaker 1: you know, reach the point where it can discern the
Speaker 1: signs of their existence, um, and then perhaps be the
Speaker 1: ones to reach out and make first contact machine to machine. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we need a machine to see the gorilla in
Speaker 1: the video coming from space? Maybe, I mean again, it
Speaker 1: depends on what what they want if they exist and
Speaker 1: there at this level, what do they want? Do they
Speaker 1: want to make contact? Maybe that's the thing. Maybe again,
Speaker 1: they know that organic beings can be messy, and they
Speaker 1: just want to wait until we've reached the point where
Speaker 1: their machine can call their machine. You know, I buy
Speaker 1: that it's waiting until it doesn't have to deal with meat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you doesn't want to chase this down, Just send
Speaker 1: us the press release, UM, let us know how to
Speaker 1: get in touch with you, and we'll set something up.
Speaker 1: That's their whole thing. It's like waiting until Like I'm
Speaker 1: not going to order delivery from this place until they've
Speaker 1: got an online form. I don't want to have to
Speaker 1: call talk to somebody, right, I'm sure it's fine. I'm
Speaker 1: hearing great things, but get your technology sorted out first,
Speaker 1: and then we'll begin this relationship. I've got high hopes
Speaker 1: for this species where people are afraid to talk to
Speaker 1: other people on the phone. I don't know, I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we're we're ultimately left with some of the
Speaker 1: same questions. Not only the big one, does lie exists
Speaker 1: elsewhere in the cosmos, but but again, like what would
Speaker 1: if if it's if it's alien AI, alien superintelligence, what
Speaker 1: are they gonna make of us? How are we going
Speaker 1: to fit into what sort of things they do? Um?
Speaker 1: Or would we fit in at all like maybe that's
Speaker 1: the ultimate thing, is like they just don't they don't care.
Speaker 1: Why would they care. We're the ones obsessed with us.
Speaker 1: They've got their own thing going on. Do you really
Speaker 1: care what the squirrel is digging for in the yard? Well?
Speaker 1: I mean I do, but but yeah, ultimately do the
Speaker 1: the the cosmic overlord's care? You know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe not now shows that continues to discuss how we
Speaker 1: might refine our search for extraterrestrial life. Um. If you
Speaker 1: look around for his name, you'll find that he you know,
Speaker 1: he gives talks. He discusses set in general of the search,
Speaker 1: how that the search itself has changed, and how we
Speaker 1: should change it, as well as sort of the societal
Speaker 1: considerations involved. But well, one example of something has been
Speaker 1: up to recently. UM In sept September he had an
Speaker 1: article titled SETTI The Argument for Artifacts Search is published
Speaker 1: in the International Journal of Astrobiology, and in this article
Speaker 1: he argues that while most of the search for exeter
Speaker 1: terrestrial intelligence has focused on the search for quote, artificially
Speaker 1: generated electromagnetic signals, it's artifacts that we should be spending
Speaker 1: more time on, or at least more time than we
Speaker 1: we are. And this is the idea here, is that
Speaker 1: persistent transmissions, you know, sort of we're here, we're here,
Speaker 1: signals from beyond these require energy. And then on top
Speaker 1: of that the aliens and question should they exist. They
Speaker 1: might be exceedingly cryptic, or they might you know, they
Speaker 1: might be embarrassed for us, as we've discussed, or they
Speaker 1: might just be ignorant of our existence, and you know,
Speaker 1: they simply don't know that we exist and likewise don't care. Um,
Speaker 1: So perhaps we should be looking more for artifacts or
Speaker 1: specifically evidence of artifacts, and to understand waste heat uh,
Speaker 1: certainly counts as something we'd be looking for in an
Speaker 1: artifacts search, a search for something created or something that
Speaker 1: was once created by extraterrestrial life. Oh, and this came
Speaker 1: up in the previous episode when we talked about Dyson spheres,
Speaker 1: Like one possible way to look for them is to
Speaker 1: look for a place where you're not seeing much electromagnetic
Speaker 1: radiation accept heat, and the idea there is that maybe
Speaker 1: there's a sphere around a star that's harvesting almost all
Speaker 1: of its usable energy and pretty much the only thing
Speaker 1: that's coming out the other side of it is just
Speaker 1: the waste product of their of their processing, which is heat.
Speaker 1: It's the computer fan blowing out into space. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's ultimately an interest interesting argument, like, you know, how
Speaker 1: much effort should we be putting into picking up those
Speaker 1: signals of existence versus sort of perhaps more obscure evidence
Speaker 1: of the existence, you know, especially again if something out
Speaker 1: there is maybe less inclined to put out that that
Speaker 1: I am here signal, or you know, to even care
Speaker 1: or know of our existence to begin with. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: could be wrong, but I think I'm right about this. Like,
Speaker 1: once you get a certain distance away from the Earth,
Speaker 1: you know, some number of light years away, at a
Speaker 1: certain point, like any any omnidirectionally transmitted radio signal would
Speaker 1: become so weak by the time it reaches us that
Speaker 1: we really probably wouldn't notice it. And so like, to
Speaker 1: really notice a signal from an alien civilization, it would
Speaker 1: probably need to be something that is directionally beamed our
Speaker 1: way on purpose, and that that also requires a lot
Speaker 1: of assumptions about what's going on with that alien civilization. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and maybe maybe it'll happen, but then again maybe
Speaker 1: it won't. But yeah, it's just artifacts by products of
Speaker 1: previous existence, whether that's physical objects or or waste signatures
Speaker 1: like heat that could be around for a long time
Speaker 1: depending up you know, no matter what the intentions of
Speaker 1: the civilization are. Well, this has been fun, Rob, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this has been a fun one. Yeah. So obviously we'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from everyone out there. First of all,
Speaker 1: we mentioned, you know, this is the domain of science fiction.
Speaker 1: Of science fiction is considered a lot of these questions
Speaker 1: for for deack Gates. So if there are particular examples, uh,
Speaker 1: let us know, examples that touch on some of these
Speaker 1: themes and ideas. Uh, you know, let us know if
Speaker 1: there is that that that that that corporate alien sci
Speaker 1: fi Reagan era thing that we were considering, you know,
Speaker 1: probably exists. Uh, if you have an I D for it,
Speaker 1: let us know. We'd love to hear from you. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, if you would like to listen to other
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you can find
Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts, and in that feed you'll find core episodes.
Speaker 1: On Tuesdays and Thursday. On Friday, we do a little
Speaker 1: weird house cinema that's just you know, a consideration of
Speaker 1: a weird film. We do a little listener mail, usually
Speaker 1: on Mondays and on Wednesdays. That's when we we usually
Speaker 1: have artifact, unless it's being preempted. Huge thanks as always
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 1: for the future, just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 1: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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