*AI’S WILL BE MORE ETHICAL THAN HUMANS, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.* The way humans determine permissible and impermissible actions is a test of reciprocity, and we determine it by demonstrated investment of time effort and resources, and we categorize such investments as interests from self, to kin, to property, to shareholder interests, to interests in the physical commons, to interest in the institutional, normative, traditional, and informational commons. We do this every day. All day. In every human society. In all societies of record. Just as we converge on Aristotelian language (mathematical measurement of constant relations, scientific due diligence against ignorance, error, bias, and deceit, and legal testimony in operational language), we converge on sovereignty, reciprocity, and property as the unit of measure that is calculable. In all social orders of any complexity the test of property is ‘title’. The problem for any computational method we wish to limit an artificial intelligence to constraints within, is the homogeneity of property definitions within a polity, and the heterogeneity of property definitions across a polity. The problem of creating a convergence on the definition of property (and therefore commensurability) is that groups differ in competitive evolutionary strategies, just as do classes and genders (whose strategies are opposite but compatible.) The reason you cannot and did not state a unit of measure (method of commensurability) is very likely because (judging from the language you use) you would find that unit of measure uncomfortable, because all humans have a desire to preserve room for ‘cheating’ (theft, fraud, free riding, conspiracy) so that they can avoid the effort and cost of productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary exchanges. And the reason we do that – so many people do that – is marginal indifferences in value to one another. I have been working on this problem since the early 1980’s and it still surprises me that the rather obvious evidence of economics and law is entirely ignored by philosophy just as cost, economics, and physics are ignored by philosophy and theology. Machines cannot default as we do to intuition. They need a means of decidability, even if we call that ‘intuition’ (default choices). I am an anti-philosophy philosopher in the sense that I expose pseudo-rationalism and pseudoscience for failures of completeness, because these failures of completeness are simply excuses for sloppy thinking, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism and deceit. Mathematics has terms of decidability, logic has terms of decidability, and algorithms must have terms of decidability, Accounting has terms of decidability, contracts have terms of decidability, ordinary language has terms of decidability, even fictions have terms of decidability (archetypes and plots). Rule of law evolved to eliminate discretion and the dependence upon intuition, as did testimony as did science, as did mathematics, as did logic. Programming computers using hierarchical, relational, and textual databases tends to train human beings in the difference between computability, calculability (including deduction) and reason (reliance on intuition for decidability). The human brain does a fairly good job of constantly solving for both predator (opportunity), and prey (risk) and our emotions evolved to describe the difference. There is no reason that we cannot produce algorithms that do the same, using property(title) as a limit on action. May 17, 2018 3:29pm
Theme: AI
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The Constitution of A Moral Human, and A Moral Ai.
*AI’S WILL BE MORE ETHICAL THAN HUMANS, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.* The way humans determine permissible and impermissible actions is a test of reciprocity, and we determine it by demonstrated investment of time effort and resources, and we categorize such investments as interests from self, to kin, to property, to shareholder interests, to interests in the physical commons, to interest in the institutional, normative, traditional, and informational commons. We do this every day. All day. In every human society. In all societies of record. Just as we converge on Aristotelian language (mathematical measurement of constant relations, scientific due diligence against ignorance, error, bias, and deceit, and legal testimony in operational language), we converge on sovereignty, reciprocity, and property as the unit of measure that is calculable. In all social orders of any complexity the test of property is ‘title’. The problem for any computational method we wish to limit an artificial intelligence to constraints within, is the homogeneity of property definitions within a polity, and the heterogeneity of property definitions across a polity. The problem of creating a convergence on the definition of property (and therefore commensurability) is that groups differ in competitive evolutionary strategies, just as do classes and genders (whose strategies are opposite but compatible.) The reason you cannot and did not state a unit of measure (method of commensurability) is very likely because (judging from the language you use) you would find that unit of measure uncomfortable, because all humans have a desire to preserve room for ‘cheating’ (theft, fraud, free riding, conspiracy) so that they can avoid the effort and cost of productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary exchanges. And the reason we do that – so many people do that – is marginal indifferences in value to one another. I have been working on this problem since the early 1980’s and it still surprises me that the rather obvious evidence of economics and law is entirely ignored by philosophy just as cost, economics, and physics are ignored by philosophy and theology. Machines cannot default as we do to intuition. They need a means of decidability, even if we call that ‘intuition’ (default choices). I am an anti-philosophy philosopher in the sense that I expose pseudo-rationalism and pseudoscience for failures of completeness, because these failures of completeness are simply excuses for sloppy thinking, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism and deceit. Mathematics has terms of decidability, logic has terms of decidability, and algorithms must have terms of decidability, Accounting has terms of decidability, contracts have terms of decidability, ordinary language has terms of decidability, even fictions have terms of decidability (archetypes and plots). Rule of law evolved to eliminate discretion and the dependence upon intuition, as did testimony as did science, as did mathematics, as did logic. Programming computers using hierarchical, relational, and textual databases tends to train human beings in the difference between computability, calculability (including deduction) and reason (reliance on intuition for decidability). The human brain does a fairly good job of constantly solving for both predator (opportunity), and prey (risk) and our emotions evolved to describe the difference. There is no reason that we cannot produce algorithms that do the same, using property(title) as a limit on action. May 17, 2018 3:29pm
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NO, WE CAN DESIGN SAFE AI (AS WELL) Decidability. We have intuition to decide wh
NO, WE CAN DESIGN SAFE AI (AS WELL)
Decidability. We have intuition to decide what we cannot reason. A machine needs the same intuition (biases). We could give it a bias to ‘give up’ or ‘go to sleep’. Or we could give it a bias to merely ‘talk’. We don’t like to confront the fact that ‘consciousness’ of a human being relies upon a competition between a predator-bias, and a prey-bias. We can likewise create all AI’s in pairs sharing the same memory but relying upon different decidability (weights), one with a change bias, and one with a safety bias, with decidability provided by the differences (limits). I don’t fear AI because I have worked on the problem for a long time and I understand that most of the experience of human consciousness evolved to keep us motivated amidst extraordinary informational challenge. All AI’s have to do, is what we do: no violate property (investments) of others. The difference is that it’s actually easier to regulate an ai with algorithms. With people we need norms, traditions, laws, courts, and punishment, and we still are just barely good enough at it.
The problem is creating and enforcing a death sentence for every single person involved in creating any other kind of AI.
Source date (UTC): 2018-05-17 08:42:00 UTC
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Technology: Opinions on BTC, Digital Shares, Digital Title
Initial generations of any technology follow a nearly identical pattern of over-enthusiasm and over-investment by hobbyists reaching the same limitations and failing to circumvent them. The subsequent generations of technology put greater investment in the hard work of solving the limitations, and paying the high cost of reorganizing the entire model if necessary. This is why first movers do not generally make the money that later movers do. I’ve said for years now that : (a) the idea of title registry and fractional shares as a medium of exchange, itself is brilliant, but; (b) proof of work requiring waste heat is a pretty bad design, (c) transaction processing time under proof of work is a bad design. (d) lack of posting (rolling up fragments into a single new share and retiring the old) is a bad design. (e) lack of federation and sharding is a bad design. (look we invented a division of journals and ledgers for a reason.) (f) btc are shares in a vulnerable network and as such a token money substitute persistently retaining that vulnerability, (g) ***I predicted that centralized, monolithic versions of the idea using mainstream technology and maintained by the treasury and banking organizations will succeed where distributed systems will not, for the simple reason that the user interface for, security of, response time for, archival ability for, and insurability by an insurer of last resort capable of restitution of losses, will have all the utility advantages without any of the weaknesses.*** (h) hence the distributed nature of the technology which makes research and development by individuals and teams possible, and provides a cheap means of financial speculation on these technologies, is not as valuable as the fractional share and record of title, and all we are doing is free research and development for the state, and the private banking network, check cashing networks, etc. I am extremely thrilled by the ICO model and self issuance of fractional shares because it totally screws big finance. I’m extremely thrilled by the ability to create a portfolio of digital monies that can only be used for certain exchanges – this will solve the primary problem remaining with that thing we call ‘money’. I am thrilled that we might create something on the order of a gold backed fractional share reserver to remove fiat money from circulation as a defense against inflation, and restoration of the possibility of comparatively lossless saving. However, I have zero faith whatsoever in the durability of any form of encryption, or any distributed software, until there is a firmware revolution – which is a long way off. Two part keys have been with us since we cut tics in sticks of wood – literally since we evolved speech. I haven’t been wrong so far. It is very unlikely that I err.
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Technology: Opinions on BTC, Digital Shares, Digital Title
Initial generations of any technology follow a nearly identical pattern of over-enthusiasm and over-investment by hobbyists reaching the same limitations and failing to circumvent them. The subsequent generations of technology put greater investment in the hard work of solving the limitations, and paying the high cost of reorganizing the entire model if necessary. This is why first movers do not generally make the money that later movers do. I’ve said for years now that : (a) the idea of title registry and fractional shares as a medium of exchange, itself is brilliant, but; (b) proof of work requiring waste heat is a pretty bad design, (c) transaction processing time under proof of work is a bad design. (d) lack of posting (rolling up fragments into a single new share and retiring the old) is a bad design. (e) lack of federation and sharding is a bad design. (look we invented a division of journals and ledgers for a reason.) (f) btc are shares in a vulnerable network and as such a token money substitute persistently retaining that vulnerability, (g) ***I predicted that centralized, monolithic versions of the idea using mainstream technology and maintained by the treasury and banking organizations will succeed where distributed systems will not, for the simple reason that the user interface for, security of, response time for, archival ability for, and insurability by an insurer of last resort capable of restitution of losses, will have all the utility advantages without any of the weaknesses.*** (h) hence the distributed nature of the technology which makes research and development by individuals and teams possible, and provides a cheap means of financial speculation on these technologies, is not as valuable as the fractional share and record of title, and all we are doing is free research and development for the state, and the private banking network, check cashing networks, etc. I am extremely thrilled by the ICO model and self issuance of fractional shares because it totally screws big finance. I’m extremely thrilled by the ability to create a portfolio of digital monies that can only be used for certain exchanges – this will solve the primary problem remaining with that thing we call ‘money’. I am thrilled that we might create something on the order of a gold backed fractional share reserver to remove fiat money from circulation as a defense against inflation, and restoration of the possibility of comparatively lossless saving. However, I have zero faith whatsoever in the durability of any form of encryption, or any distributed software, until there is a firmware revolution – which is a long way off. Two part keys have been with us since we cut tics in sticks of wood – literally since we evolved speech. I haven’t been wrong so far. It is very unlikely that I err.
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TECHNOLOGY: OPINIONS ON BTC, DIGITAL SHARES, DIGITAL TITLE Initial generations o
TECHNOLOGY: OPINIONS ON BTC, DIGITAL SHARES, DIGITAL TITLE
Initial generations of any technology follow a nearly identical pattern of over-enthusiasm and over-investment by hobbyists reaching the same limitations and failing to circumvent them.
The subsequent generations of technology put greater investment in the hard work of solving the limitations, and paying the high cost of reorganizing the entire model if necessary.
This is why first movers do not generally make the money that later movers do.
I’ve said for years now that :
(a) the idea of title registry and fractional shares as a medium of exchange, itself is brilliant, but;
(b) proof of work requiring waste heat is a pretty bad design,
(c) transaction processing time under proof of work is a bad design.
(d) lack of posting (rolling up fragments into a single new share and retiring the old) is a bad design.
(e) lack of federation and sharding is a bad design. (look we invented a division of journals and ledgers for a reason.)
(f) btc are shares in a vulnerable network and as such a token money substitute persistently retaining that vulnerability,
(g) ***I predicted that centralized, monolithic versions of the idea using mainstream technology and maintained by the treasury and banking organizations will succeed where distributed systems will not, for the simple reason that the user interface for, security of, response time for, archival ability for, and insurability by an insurer of last resort capable of restitution of losses, will have all the utility advantages without any of the weaknesses.***
(h) hence the distributed nature of the technology which makes research and development by individuals and teams possible, and provides a cheap means of financial speculation on these technologies, is not as valuable as the fractional share and record of title, and all we are doing is free research and development for the state, and the private banking network, check cashing networks, etc.
I am extremely thrilled by the ICO model and self issuance of fractional shares because it totally screws big finance.
I’m extremely thrilled by the ability to create a portfolio of digital monies that can only be used for certain exchanges – this will solve the primary problem remaining with that thing we call ‘money’.
I am thrilled that we might create something on the order of a gold backed fractional share reserver to remove fiat money from circulation as a defense against inflation, and restoration of the possibility of comparatively lossless saving.
However, I have zero faith whatsoever in the durability of any form of encryption, or any distributed software, until there is a firmware revolution – which is a long way off. Two part keys have been with us since we cut tics in sticks of wood – literally since we evolved speech.
I haven’t been wrong so far. It is very unlikely that I err.
Source date (UTC): 2018-05-09 11:54:00 UTC
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Initial generations of any technology follow a nearly identical pattern of over-
Initial generations of any technology follow a nearly identical pattern of over-enthusiasm and over-investment by hobbyists reaching the same limitations and failing to circumvent them. The subsequent generations of technology put greater investment in the hard work of solving the limitations, and paying the high cost of reorganizing the entire model if necessary. This is why first movers do not generally make the money that later movers do. I’ve said for years now that (a) the idea itself is brilliant, but (a) proof of work requiring waste heat is a pretty bad design, (b) btc are shares in a vulnerable network and as such a token money substitute persistently retaining that vulnerability, (c) I predicted that centralized, monolithic versions of the idea using mainstream technology and maintained by the treasury and banking organizations will succeed where distributed systems will not, for the simple reason that the user interface for, security of, response time for, archival ability for, and insurability by an insurer of last resort capable of restitution of losses, will have all the utility advantages without any of the weaknesses. (d) hence the distributed nature is not as valuable as the fractional share and record of title, and all we are doing is free research and development for the state, and the private banking network, check cashing networks, etc. I am extremely thrilled by the ICO model and self issuance of fractional shares because it totally screws big finance. I’m extremely thrilled by the ability to create a portfolio of digital monies that can only be used for certain exchanges. However, I have zero faith whatsoever in the durabiity of any form of encryption, or any distributed software, until there is a firmware revolution – which is a long way off.
Source date (UTC): 2018-05-09 08:36:00 UTC
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THE MARKET FOR DRONE OPERATORS COWEN: Drones? SRINIVASAN: Underrated. COWEN: Why
THE MARKET FOR DRONE OPERATORS
COWEN: Drones?
SRINIVASAN: Underrated.
COWEN: Why? What will they do that we haven’t thought of?
SRINIVASAN: Construction. There’s different kinds of drones. They’re not just flying drones. There’s swimming drones and there’s walking drones and so on.
Like the example I mentioned where you can teleport into a robot and then control that, Skype into a robot and control that on other side of the world. That’s going to be something where maybe you’re going to have it in drone mode so it walks to the destination. You’ll be asleep and then you wake up and it’s at the destination.
Drones are going to be a very big deal. There’s this interesting movie called Surrogates, which actually talks about what a really big drone/telepresence future would look like. People never leave their homes because, instead, they just Skype into a really good-looking drone/telepresent version of themselves, and they walk around in that.
If they’re hit by a car, it doesn’t matter because they can just rejuvenate and create a new one. I think drones are very, very underrated in terms of what they’re going to do.
Source date (UTC): 2018-04-26 17:15:00 UTC
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OMFG. The Libertarians and Right are dominated by coders. Why? Programming opera
OMFG. The Libertarians and Right are dominated by coders. Why? Programming operationalizes logic – which is too reductio for real world use – to real world phenomenon and rapidly convinces you of the universal overestimation of undrestanding of human minds. It is very hard to be an idealistic programmer. That’s why there aren’t any. Programming is unforgiving. It has zero tolerance for ‘good enough’.
Evolution needed us to be confident despite our ignorance or die of starvation. That said, we are still confident of despite our ignorance while we die of obesity.
Source date (UTC): 2018-04-15 15:56:00 UTC
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Blockchain
BLOCKCHAIN I am not wrong very often. I wasn’t wrong on this subject either. Blockchain is an inadequate solution, and frankly I haven’t been able to understand how anyone could think otherwise except for having been stunned by the shiny object of the gold rush. IMHO, all we are doing is conducting R&D for post-money fiat money. Why? Because it eliminates the middle-man between the treasury and the people AND it eliminates the state’s ability to *DEFINE PROPERTY RIGHTS*. Even better it eliminates the ability for originators to package and sell loans and then evade responsibility for them. Moreover, it eliminates the problem of check cashing services, and the hard-money-economy of the ‘bottom’. All these things are profoundly important. But the libertarian fantasy that somehow an independent banking system will emerge is as absurd as it always has been. In the end, we have physical actors transferring physical assets, or all we are doing is playing a simulation. And the government can always and everywhere intercede in the physical world – simply because it is so profitable to do so. They have both every incentive and every resource as well as the public good at their disposal. So, while I appreciate that the nerd community wants to obtain sovereignty – all we are doing is devoting our free time and energy to funding the replacement for current absurdly antiquated, third party driven, financial system. This is to say that Holochain is a good step forward. It is also to say that blockchain was … childish… in my opinion as a technologist and political economist. Fun but childish. (And yes I lost I think something under 20K on a blockchain tech investment – but I knew I would. I was helping a friend. ) I can’t quite see a fully operational holochain platform, and the language used in the space is profoundly obscurant, so I have to reserve advocacy until I am capale of doing it honestly. That said it’s much closer to the result. On the other hand a monolithic and redundant system run by the private sector under state contract directly for the treasury is how I expect the solution to roll out. And it is the people who sell the government on that solution that will make all the money. I’d do it but I’m too busy trying to make a revolution ….