Comment by calebm

2 years ago

This is yesterday's entry on a journal-style novel I am writing. This post is a footnote in the book, so I thought it'd be kind of cool to post the entry on this thread...

Entry 77 - 2024-06-19 - Superintelligence ===========================================

A company just launched called "Safe Superintelligence Inc." I saw their announcement on Hacker News [foodnote 1], a hacker forum I participate in from time to time (too often actually - it's and old school form of social media, so it has its addictive qualities too). I was reading some of the negative comments (saying its impossible). I'm not sure what the outcome will be... but a thought occured to me while thinking about what might be possible - what people might be capable of. The thought was that it is interesting how people look roughly the same. Most adults are between 4 and 6 feet tall. Between 1 and 300 pounds. Etc. I mean, there's a lot of variety to human bodies, but they largely look similar when comparing to gorillas or lizards, etc. But the thing is - that's just their physical bodies. In reality, people are wildly different if you could see them in their full form. For example, the power which a billionaire can wield in the world is ridiculously larger than most people. You can see some of these guys with their super yachts - if fish, or birds saw these super yachts, they would think those are creatures have much larger bodies than most humans they see swimming or paddleboarding in the water.

    But people are wildly different in many dimensions. Buying power is just one. Another dimension is intelligence. Another is creativity (or are intelligence and creativity the same?).


    It's easy to see people doing what for you would be impossible, and to assume it must be impossible for everyone. The idea that scientists can derive an understanding of subatomic particles seems completely impossible to most people (myself included). "How can they know that?" is a question Whitney has asked me many times when I've shared various scientific discoveries. Fair question. Yet there are people over in Switzerland ripping the fabric of matter apart at the LHC.


    The other big factor, is that people together are capable of what is absolutely unthinkably impossible for an individual. When Whitney and I were in Savannah a couple weeks ago, we were hanging out in a cathedral, and I said something that came to mind: that this place could not possibly be built by a single individual. The existence of the cathedral implies that there is a power higher than that of a single individual human. When I saw some of the huge container ships leaving and arriving at the Savannah river harbor, the thought kept occurring to me that their existence is an amazing testament to the power of humanity. And we only have such power in collectives. The power of humanity comes due to our ability to work together. We can specialize, and thus go so much farther than it is possible for a person on their own to go. And we can discover and build what is unthinkable for a person working alone.


    It's strange how the collective is smarter and stronger than the individuals. This is part of God. There is a higher power.