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Comment by extheat

4 years ago

I’m curious why you think that. Do you think it’s a fundamental problem with the discrete nature of traditional computers? Or a problem with scale and computational limits? If it’s the latter, if a hypothetical computer has unlimited time and memory capacity, why do you think AGI would remain impossible?

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extheat

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freediver  4 years ago

Machines are good at computation, which is not equal to reasoning, but rather a subset of reasoning.

And not only they are good at computation, but they are exceptionally good at it - I have no illusion of trying to compete with a machine doing square roots or playing chess. And increasingly harder problems are being expressed as computation problems, with more or less success - most famously probably self-driving.

But at the end of the day it feels like using an increasingly longer ladder to reach the surface of the Moon.

While imaginable, and every time we extend the ladder the Moon does get closer, it is fundamentaly impossible.

  • jameshart  4 years ago

    Ever since Gödel we’ve had a pretty convincing proof that there is nothing that you can do in terms of reasoning that can’t be expressed using computation. And since Turing we’ve got a framework that shows there’s nothing computable that you can’t compute using a universal computer.

    So unless there’s something mystical beyond the realm of mathematics to ‘reasoning’ it can’t be a superset of computing.

    If a finite amount of matter in a brain with a finite amount of energy can do it, then a universal computing machine with a finite amount of storage and a finite amount of time can do it.

    • whatshisface  4 years ago

      There are actually a lot of well-defined things beyond the power of a Turing machine (for example a Turing machine plus a halting oracle that only works on Turing machines without a halting oracle) but in terms of finite amounts of electrons doing normal low-energy electronic stuff you are quite likely correct. Humanity may go beyond computability if as some papers have suggested quantum gravity requires solving uncomputable problems.

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