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Main Doomer Fallacy

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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Unread postby Xenophobe » Sat 14 Aug 2010, 15:41:03

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TonyPrep', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', 'N')ow we have 250,000,000 man-years of collective intelligence.
It's a fallacy to think that simply multiplying the number of brains thinking about a problem can solve that problem. No matter how many brains are combined, they can't change the laws of physics. It is purely wishful thinking.


The statistics of what I believe Carlhole is trying to say is not a fallacy.

A idea of a singularity is not a linear concept. Imagine if you will that ideas in terms of their value to the human race are lognormally distributed. If you sample into this distribution 100 times, probability theory says that it is unlikely you will sample a value anywhere near the maximum available, the maximum being the most valuable idea or concept for the human race. The odds are higher that you will hit something less valuable to the human race. But if you sample into that same distribution 1,000,000 miles, the odds of hitting the high end, "super-value" if you will are increased to a near certainty.

I was demonstrating through my example of man-years of thought nothing more than the increased sampling into this "valuable thought" distribution.

You appear to be angling towards the idea that creativity cannot be forced, an idea that I would agree with. Thats not the point I was trying to make. And it isn't wishful thinking, its basic probability theory.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Unread postby Ludi » Sat 14 Aug 2010, 15:47:57

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', 't')he odds of hitting the high end, "super-value" if you will are increased to a near certainty.


So the "super-value" concept is the one of the most value to humans as a whole? Or the most valuable to a small number of humans? How is this value determined and by whom?
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Unread postby Xenophobe » Sat 14 Aug 2010, 15:57:00

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', '
')I like the chart. I like the singularity argument as well. A tough one to make because its at a different level than the main peak oil debate, but its a solid one.


Thank you for your response. Can you discuss what about the singularity argument you find particularly compelling and solid?

Thanks again.


It utilizes a resource which, unlike oil, can be argued is near infinite in nature.

Imagine if you will two functions, just as Malthus did in 1800 or thereabouts. One of those functions grows in a linear fashion, the other in an exponential fashion. No matter the starting point of the exponentially increasing function, given enough time, it will run down and surpass the other. Basic nonlinear equation behavior.

Carlholes graph shows non-linear behavior. It indicates that 100 years ago, any problem may have had X man-years of thought to attack it. At the present, a problem may have 1000X man-years of thought to attack it.

This idea should not be confused with actually SOLVING any particular problem, just that a powerful resource, cumulative human learning, has the potential to do so, and that potential can grow faster than problems can.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Unread postby Xenophobe » Sat 14 Aug 2010, 16:01:11

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dsula', '
')Using their collective brain power ants should have reached the singlurarity by now for sure.
Why don't they?


Perhaps they already have. Singularities (no reason any species would be limited to one) can be as simple as the evolution of ants to carry far more per unit mass than, say, humans can. Ants BECAME their own heavy lifting machinery, and because of this heavy lifting capability, became much more efficient per ant at bringing food supplies back to a central location. Many species demonstrate a unique behavior, developed through evolution, to be very good at existing in their environment. The development of that unique behavior could very well have been their "singularity".
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Unread postby Ludi » Sat 14 Aug 2010, 16:06:01

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', '
')This idea should not be confused with actually SOLVING any particular problem, just that a powerful resource, cumulative human learning, has the potential to do so, and that potential can grow faster than problems can.


So the concept of the Singularity is of no actual value, only of potential value? And cumulative human learning due to an enormous population can grow faster than problems caused by an enormous population?

I think I am still confused about the Singularity, which I understood to mean Artificial Intelligence or joint human/machine intelligence, not merely human intelligence. And that such an event (humans becoming trans-humans or post-humans) is inevitable, not merely potential, thereby solving all our problems somehow.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Unread postby Xenophobe » Sat 14 Aug 2010, 16:06:58

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', ' ')Oil is just but one of many commodities, concepts, and philosophies utilized to advance from a chimp ramming a stick into a bee hive for some honey to contemplating the origins of the universe


You seem to be saying that the evolution of humans from chimp-like ancestors to Homo sapiens sapiens is due to "commodities, concepts, and philosophies."


Science is a concept. A very powerful one. So is economics. Both have contributed to the advancement of mankind. The utilization, heck, the CREATION of commodities is important in that they start out as basically useless, iron ore, pitchblende, something buried in the ground, perhaps they can waterproof the joints on a wooden boat, or a wooden bucket? But the application of science (refining or mining) turns that same commodity into a world changing powerful one (refined gasoline, tempered steel, nuclear fuel).
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Unread postby Ludi » Sat 14 Aug 2010, 16:10:09

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', '
')Science is a concept. A very powerful one. So is economics. Both have contributed to the advancement of mankind.


You seem to be saying the concept of science caused humans to evolve from our chimp-like ancestors.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Unread postby Xenophobe » Sat 14 Aug 2010, 16:18:59

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'O')il is not a concept or philosophy. It is the stored energy of millions of years of collected sunlight, a one-time bonanza that will not be offered up again in homo-sapien's short lifetime. And we are burning through it at an alarming rate--80 million barrels every day.


Crude oil is a waste product of this planet, it is the scum on a pond, it is the residue of caked on an old stove or oven, it was an impediment to drilling wells for salt which nearly predates recorded history. 150 years ago that changed when the cumulative effect of human learning, in this case chemistry, realized it had an actual value.

Crude has been around forever, sealing seams in canoe's and wooden boats, sealing wooden buckets, but it required something else to become the global transportation fuel it has become. That "something else" was the critical ingredient, not the raw material itself.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '
')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', 'T')he most powerful force ever seen for the advancement of mankind is the cumulative effect of the human learning process.
Plato, Aristotle et. al. pretty much had the human learning process all figured out a while ago. But human population on earth languished below one billion for several million years.


It did not languish. It spread from African, it adapted to new and colder environments, it got better and better at using tools, it changed shape from neanderthal to cromagnon, it walked the land bridge of the Bering Strait and populated other continents. None of this is languishing, and it is completely within the realm of how non linear growth happens.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Unread postby Xenophobe » Sat 14 Aug 2010, 16:23:25

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', 't')he odds of hitting the high end, "super-value" if you will are increased to a near certainty.


So the "super-value" concept is the one of the most value to humans as a whole? Or the most valuable to a small number of humans? How is this value determined and by whom?


Not a clue. A sociologist might be able to offer an opinion as to why and how humans determine value, individually, and how this expresses itself collectively. Look at North Korea. Starvation, disease, repression, all so that a very few can drink beer and wine, live it up, watch western Hollywood movies and build a nuke. I imagine the value question would be completely different if you asked the upper leadership or the prole farming the land.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Unread postby Xenophobe » Sat 14 Aug 2010, 16:33:08

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '
')So the concept of the Singularity is of no actual value, only of potential value? And cumulative human learning due to an enormous population can grow faster than problems caused by an enormous population?


A singularity in the future has no value today. None. You can't even estimate its value because you don't know what it might be. Cumulative human learning doesn't require a huge population, what if we had a small population but everyone was a scientist and worked day and night solving random problems? The effect could achieve the same magnitude with much fewer people. And the word "huge" implies you are comparing current population to the past, if you compare it to amount of population the planet, or even solar system, could ultimately hold, the current number certainly may not be "huge".


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '
')I think I am still confused about the Singularity, which I understood to mean Artificial Intelligence or joint human/machine intelligence, not merely human intelligence. And that such an event (humans becoming trans-humans or post-humans) is inevitable, not merely potential, thereby solving all our problems somehow.


I view singularity is anything which can be extracted from that "high value idea" distribution. For example, on its face telecommunications doesn't look like much. Big deal, I can post on a forum with someone in Australia in near real time. Of what value is that? Well, its efficiency. A scientist in Australia comes up with a new idea, emails a colleague at Stanford, they can discuss it, knock out some problems in an afternoon of telecommuting and presto, something which would have taken a back and forth exchange in peer reviewed journals over 5 years is done in a weekend and another idea is added to the cumulative human knowledge base. Maybe its a bad idea. Maybe not. But its done, and fast, compared to how it once worked.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Unread postby frood » Sat 14 Aug 2010, 17:12:21

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', 't')he odds of hitting the high end, "super-value" if you will are increased to a near certainty.


So the "super-value" concept is the one of the most value to humans as a whole? Or the most valuable to a small number of humans? How is this value determined and by whom?


Not a clue. A sociologist might be able to offer an opinion as to why and how humans determine value, individually, and how this expresses itself collectively. Look at North Korea. Starvation, disease, repression, all so that a very few can drink beer and wine, live it up, watch western Hollywood movies and build a nuke. I imagine the value question would be completely different if you asked the upper leadership or the prole farming the land.



North Korea is only a good example here of when all that imported energy that propped them up dissapeared when the Soviet Union collapsed and over two million people starved to death in the 90s and that number is still rising. The elite were quite happily treading on the masses since the revolution when life was still passable for the general populace backed up by the USSR but without those energy requirements now, 1 in 10 people have died of malnutrition and future generations are physically stunted making their workforce less and less capable of labour.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Unread postby frood » Sat 14 Aug 2010, 17:38:21

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') view singularity is anything which can be extracted from that "high value idea" distribution. For example, on its face telecommunications doesn't look like much. Big deal, I can post on a forum with someone in Australia in near real time. Of what value is that? Well, its efficiency. A scientist in Australia comes up with a new idea, emails a colleague at Stanford, they can discuss it, knock out some problems in an afternoon of telecommuting and presto, something which would have taken a back and forth exchange in peer reviewed journals over 5 years is done in a weekend and another idea is added to the cumulative human knowledge base. Maybe its a bad idea. Maybe not. But its done, and fast, compared to how it once worked.


Conversely I can use the internet to get a more informed snapshot of global economic trends and history and its quite efficient in telling me that any futurist philosophy based on a century of upward trends doesnt deal with the real life connotations of when that factor suddenly goes downward. Fire making and going from hunter gather to crop developer took up 100% of the populations time back then but we have a serious excess of 6 billion people who will be standing around with their thumb up their derrier when their lifestyle suddenly stops.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Unread postby Xenophobe » Sat 14 Aug 2010, 17:41:30

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', '
')Science is a concept. A very powerful one. So is economics. Both have contributed to the advancement of mankind.


You seem to be saying the concept of science caused humans to evolve from our chimp-like ancestors.


Nope. Science was certainly one of those "high value" concepts along the way though. It would be reasonable to argue that the scientific method in its modern form is a human singularity event, considering the secondary effects of just that one alone.

How did a chimp figure out that if it takes a stick, pokes into a bee's nest with it, twirls it around a little, it can come out with honey? Was that a chimp singularity event? How does something like that happen by accident so that a chimp might learn to do it, show its kids, and by extension its little chimp group?

A fascinating question, where and how do the basics of learning take place.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Unread postby Xenophobe » Sat 14 Aug 2010, 17:58:02

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 't') was not scum on a pond, rather zoo- and phytoplankton detritus on the bottom of anaerobic seas. And yes burning the oil took some brains, as does driving to the shopping mall.


Go put some fine California crude in the gas tank of your car.

Image

Drive it for awhile, assuming it will even start. Report back and let us know what happens.

We'll all vote on what requires more brains, pushing your car to the shopping mall, or turning geologic waste into a useful fuel.


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '
')The nobility of man etc. So you to are also a Singulartarian like Carlhole I suppose?


Not at all. This conversation started because I noted the significance of his chart, and I have been explaining that position after being prompted as to why.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Unread postby Xenophobe » Sat 14 Aug 2010, 18:13:04

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('frood', '
')Conversely I can use the internet to get a more informed snapshot of global economic trends and history and its quite efficient in telling me that any futurist philosophy based on a century of upward trends doesnt deal with the real life connotations of when that factor suddenly goes downward. Fire making and going from hunter gather to crop developer took up 100% of the populations time back then but we have a serious excess of 6 billion people who will be standing around with their thumb up their derrier when their lifestyle suddenly stops.


For starters, the chart being referenced extends across 10^9 years, not 10^2. And you are supposing that this trend will change because why exactly? In all the conversion in this thread that I have seen so far, no one has refuted the information provided.

And you appear to be suggesting that when the "lifestyle" of using 5000#'s of steel, glass, rubber and aluminum to take Johnny to violin practice must be changed to, oh, using a 2700# Honda Insight to do the same thing, that this will cause...them to refuse to go to work? Johnny will stop playing the violin?

If I can't have gasoline tomorrow because it must be used to keep tractors running, or Walmart trucks, it would not stop me from working. It would certainly stop somebody from working, but gas rationing has happened before, and a majority of the population didn't stand around with their thumb up their derrière then either.
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Unread postby Xenophobe » Sat 14 Aug 2010, 18:33:15

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'X')eno, you probably think you are being all philosophical and heavy but you are not making a lot of sense. What is your point?


You asked for a single paragraph. I provided it. It consisted of (approximately);

3 sentences, 47 single syllable words, 16 with 2 syllables, 7 with 3 syllables, 7 with 4 syllables, and maybe 1 with 5?

I used no equations, a majority of the words are small, and the statement was reasonably declarative in nature.

May I ask if English is your first language?
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Re: Main Doomer Fallacy

Unread postby frood » Sat 14 Aug 2010, 18:48:15

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('frood', '
')Conversely I can use the internet to get a more informed snapshot of global economic trends and history and its quite efficient in telling me that any futurist philosophy based on a century of upward trends doesnt deal with the real life connotations of when that factor suddenly goes downward. Fire making and going from hunter gather to crop developer took up 100% of the populations time back then but we have a serious excess of 6 billion people who will be standing around with their thumb up their derrier when their lifestyle suddenly stops.


For starters, the chart being referenced extends across 10^9 years, not 10^2. And you are supposing that this trend will change because why exactly? In all the conversion in this thread that I have seen so far, no one has refuted the information provided.

And you appear to be suggesting that when the "lifestyle" of using 5000#'s of steel, glass, rubber and aluminum to take Johnny to violin practice must be changed to, oh, using a 2700# Honda Insight to do the same thing, that this will cause...them to refuse to go to work? Johnny will stop playing the violin?

If I can't have gasoline tomorrow because it must be used to keep tractors running, or Walmart trucks, it would not stop me from working. It would certainly stop somebody from working, but gas rationing has happened before, and a majority of the population didn't stand around with their thumb up their derrière then either.


10^9 years is 1 billion years where 10^2 is 100 years. Are you seriously suggesting hominids were around during the creation of life? You are completely mad to even accept that graph of dribble.

None of your posts make sense and by this equally nonsense post you think its nonconsequential that when oil runs down you will be A OK. Good luck with that and to Johnny too. Let me know when gas rationing turns to no gas at all.
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