Lengthy and somewhat low in density. Favorite quotes:
Plenty of that knowledge is, though, quite siloed in different areas. But sometimes there are “grand analogies” to make—say pulling an idea from relativity theory and applying it to biological evolution. In a sense such analogies reveal new abstractions—but to make them requires knowledge that spans many different areas. And that’s a place where bigger brains—or AIs—can potentially do something that’s in a fundamental way “beyond us”.
But, OK, will it always take an “expanding brain” to keep up with the “expanding knowledge” we have? Computational irreducibility guarantees that there’ll always in principle be “new knowledge” to be had—separated from what’s come before by irreducible amounts of computation.
andromaton•4h ago
Plenty of that knowledge is, though, quite siloed in different areas. But sometimes there are “grand analogies” to make—say pulling an idea from relativity theory and applying it to biological evolution. In a sense such analogies reveal new abstractions—but to make them requires knowledge that spans many different areas. And that’s a place where bigger brains—or AIs—can potentially do something that’s in a fundamental way “beyond us”.
But, OK, will it always take an “expanding brain” to keep up with the “expanding knowledge” we have? Computational irreducibility guarantees that there’ll always in principle be “new knowledge” to be had—separated from what’s come before by irreducible amounts of computation.