Month: April 2023

by

“Imminent domain” (Artificial intelligence takeover)

From Shakespeare to Frankenstein to Jurassic Park, the overriding theme when it comes to tampering in nature’s domain is to not do it. In the real world, however, adapting, improving, refining, and harnessing nature have led to many of humanity’s greatest achievements. Examples include the first loincloths, agriculture, civilization, electricity, transportation, education, mass communication, GMOs, and vaccines.

When it comes to Artificial Intelligence, some think there is an existential risk that if safeguards are not put in place, AI could lead to human destruction or large-scale catastrophe. Even centuries before HAL, there were ominous premonitions about the harrowing fate that awaits those who chose an unchartered course.

But does this jibe with reality? Veteran skeptic Michael Shermer has written that most AI subject matter experts have a somewhat middle of the road approach, feeling manmade intelligence will usher in neither dystopia nor utopia. Instead, he noted, they “spend most of their time thinking of ways to make our machines incrementally smarter and our lives gradually better,” with Shermer citing the gradual development and continual improvement of automobiles over the last century plus.

The most optimistic forecast has AI producing flawless service robots, ending poverty, eradicating disease, and allowing immortal beings to explore deep into outer space. At the other end of the spectrum is the notion that AI will reach a point in which its capabilities so outpace ours that it will annihilate humanity, perhaps intentionally, perhaps by accident, but in either case, everyone being just as dead. Or perhaps we survive but are the ones who AI makes into servants instead of the other way around.

These more negative viewpoint posits that in the same way a more powerful and efficient brain allows humans to reign over other animals, AI could likewise surpass Mankind’s intelligence and grow beyond our control.

Many researchers believe that a superintelligence would resist attempts to shut it off or alter its path, and that we will be unable to align AI with our wishes. In contrast, skeptics such as computer scientist Yann LeCun feel such machines will have no emotion or instinct, and thus no desire to persevere.

Those with the more dour outlook site three potential problems. The first is that setting up the system may introduce unnoticed but potentially deadly bugs. This has, in, fact been the case with some space probes.

The second issue is that a system’s specifications sometimes produce unintended behavior when encountering an unprecedented scenario. Third, even allowing proper requirements, no bugs, and desirable behavior, an AI’s learning capabilities may cause it to evolve into a system with unintended behavior. For instance, an AI may flub at attempted copying of itself and instead create a successor that is more powerful than itself and without the controls in place. Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom warns that a system which exceeds the human abilities in all domains could outmaneuver us whenever its goals conflict with ours.

Stephen Hawking argued that no physical law constrains particles from being organized so that they perform more advanced computations than the arrangements of particles in human brains, and this means superintelligence could occur. Further, this digital brain could exponentially more powerful, faster, and efficient than its human counterpart, which is limited in size because of it having to pass through a birth canal.

However, evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker argues that the dystopian view assumes AI would prefer domination and sociopathology when it might instead choose altruism and problem-solving. Moreover, skeptic Michael Chorost said that, “Today’s computers can’t even want to keep existing, let alone” plot world domination. And such fearmongering could lead to governments or vigilantes trying to shut down valuable AI research.

Slate’s Adam Elkus has argued that the most advanced AI has only achieved the intelligence of a toddler, and even then only at specific tasks. Likewise, AI researcher Rodney Brooks opined that, “It is a mistake to be worrying about us developing malevolent AI anytime in the next few hundred years. The worry stems from a fundamental error in not distinguishing the difference between the very real recent advances in a particular aspect of AI and the enormity and complexity of building sentient volitional intelligence.”

Indeed, intelligence is only one component of a much broader ability to achieve goals. Magnus Vinding posits that “advanced goal-achieving abilities, including abilities to build new tools, require many tools, and our cognitive abilities are just a subset of these tools. Advanced hardware, materials, and energy must all be acquired if any advanced goal is to be achieved.”

So by the time Artificial Intelligence ever gets to a point where it could destroy us, we likely will have offed ourselves or been done in by the nature that we are said to be violating by building that AI.

by

“Smiles to go before I sleep” (Lucid dreaming)

Detractors sometimes label us skeptics as joy thieves. A commenter on a Susan Gerbic post chastised the medium buster for taking away the comfort that those who claim to talk with the dead can offer families. The commenter provided no proof of the mediums’ claims, nor did she even necessarily believe it herself, but she thought no harm, no foul. As addressed previously in this forum, there is harm. Further, the commenter committed the appeal to consequences fallacy, where the result of something being true is considered more important than what that truth is. Meanwhile, other groups insist that their favored topic is genuine, be it ghosts, aliens, or cryptozoological critters, and they lambaste any skeptics for their close-minded cynicism.

But the truth is, many skeptics, myself included, would love for some of these to be true. Ghosts means there’s an afterlife, proof of intelligent life on another planet would be the biggest news story of all time, and who wouldn’t cotton to the notion of an real-life Yeti or Nessie?

We only ask that all these pass scientific scrutiny and that has yet to happen. If proof can be shown, we will accept it, even if we had previously been dubious. Consider lucid dreaming. Books on this topic are normally found in the New Age or spiritual sections, alongside tomes on contacting fairies, visiting one’s past lives, and homeopathic remedies.

Yet research and attempts to find scientific legitimacy in lucid dreaming have met with success. To dismiss lucid dreaming because it is normally associated with far-out beliefs would be to commit the composition fallacy.

During lucid dreaming, the sleeper remains aware they are asleep and they maintain an ability to direct the script. Skeptoid’s Brian Dunning cited Keith Hearne, a University of Liverpool doctoral candidate, who sought a way to determine if the phenomenon were genuine. So he hooked subject Alan Worsley to a polygraph that used an electrooculograph to detect eye movements and vital signs. The experimenter instructed Worsley to move his eyes left and right eight time if he became aware he was dreaming.

Dunning wrote, “Worsley’s electroencephalogram showed that he was definitely asleep” while Worsley made the requested eye movements. Continued research has yielded similar results.

While lucid dreaming is real, there are those who ascribe greater abilities to it than what the evidence indicates. The Skeptics Dictionary notes that Stephen LaBerge claims the process can help practitioners “overcome limitations, fears, and…explore our minds, to enjoy incredible adventure, and to discover transcendent consciousness.”

Similarly, Dunning writes that some proponents attribute to lucid dreaming an ill-defined “spirituality, philosophy of consciousness, and a holistic mind-body connection.”

Some go further still. “Other researchers have written books advocating Buddhism, yoga, and other spiritualist practices for lucidity,” Dunning said. “When you write on science, it goes into journals; when those same authors stray too far outside the science…they turn to mass media publication, free of scrutiny or peer review.”

by

“Chasing the tale” (Old Wives Tales)

In a pair of delightful pieces for Skeptical Inquirer, science writer Ada McVean has examined Old Wives Tales to ascertain if there is truth, and if so, how much truth, there is in them.

One of the more ubiquitous is that a person should wait a couple of hours after eating before going for a swim. But McVean cites a six-decade old study in which 100 subjects swam at various intervals after chowing down and there were no cramps reported in any of them. Another study from the same time period showed no changes to heart rates during digestion. This is crucial became the supposed cause of the putative cramps were that blood was being diverted from the muscles to the stomach. So we have known (or should have known) for many years that there is no truth to this tale.

So eating before swimming if fine, but what about walking after sleeping? Should this be allowed to continue, or should sleepwalkers be awakened? McVean found the former to be the case, for the safety of the person doing the waking. She cited several cases of the person being woken inadvertently lashing out physically, sometimes fatally.

While the origin of most Old Wives Tales are lost to history, McVean feels we can pinpoint the one centering on not sitting too close to TV, lest the viewer harm their vision. She thinks it stems from a recall of color televisions in 1967. She explained, “The increased voltage found in new color televisions caused a radiation output that exceeded what the federal U.S. government deemed to be safe.”

These potential dangers only applied if a viewer spent excess sitting directly below the TV as opposed to the more eyes-and-screen horizontal norm. And even if favoring the viewing up from the floor method, the radiation danger has long since passed with changes to the televisions’ construction. If the viewer were watching show featuring maritime adventures, he or she may have heard the adage, “Red Sky at Night, Sailors’ Delight. Red Sky at Morning, Sailors Take Warning.” McVean rates this one as accurate.

That the sky has any color is the result of the sun’s light hitting the atmosphere, causing it to scatter. McVean explains, “We get a blue sky because these short wavelengths correspond to blue hues. At sunset and sunrise, the angle at which sunlight enters the atmosphere is significantly changed, and light must travel through many more atmospheric particles to reach us. As a result, most of the shorter blue and green wavelengths are scattered before reaching the lower atmosphere, meaning we see more of the orange and red colors in the sky.”

As this applies to the adage, a bright red sunset or sunrise means more charged particles are at play in the atmosphere. This is more likely to happen during systems of high pressure, which brings clear skies. And since weather in the western world usually travels west to east, a red sunset in the west means that a high-pressure system and associated clear weather is on the way. Conversely, red skies to the east indicate that a high-pressure system has passed, so a low-pressure system is incoming.

Now we move onto the notion that swallowed gum will rest in one’s digestive track for seven years. A high school classmate of mine ate gum in the same way other people would eat Smarties, gulping one bite-size piece after another. So was he walking around with a basketball-sized wad in his stomach? No. Our bodies have little trouble excising indigestible items, be it, seeds, glue, paper, or Bazooka Joe. All these will soon come out during a trip to the bathroom. There is one possible danger to swallowing the stuff, though it requires exercising zero gum control. A person could eat such a massive quantity that it could form an indigestible lump that would cause intestinal blockage.

I have swallowed gum before but we now move onto on Old Wives Tale that I have more experience with, the quaffing of alchol. It goes, “Beer Before Liquor, Never Been Sicker; Liquor Before Beer, You’re in the Clear.” I originally heard it with the words reversed, “Beer before Liquor, You’re in the Clear; Beer Before Liquor, You’re Never Been Sicker.”

As it happens, the worst post-drinking experience of my life involved me doing both of the above, so it would have applied either way. It took place over several hours in New Orleans and involved a relatively moderate four drinks. It started with a complimentary glass of wine at dinner, which was followed by a Budweiser in my pre-craft beer days while seated at the bar watching a college basketball game. One bar later, I downed a hurricane, and I then finished with a second beer. This modest amount of imbibing would lead to 20 of my most tortured bathroom visits ever. All night, I would wake up with the room violently spinning and my stomach seemingly ready to explode. Yet no vomiting relief was forthcoming. Instead, I had uncontrollable and massive dry heaves. On and on it went, all through the nightmarish evening. I had always attributed it to my mixing of the drinks. After all, I’ve been known to have four times that many in my alcoholic days without having near the displeasure.

The largest issue is the amount of alcohol consumed. Assuming no beer pong is used, a brew will take longer to drink than a glass of wine and still longer than a cocktail and even longer than a straight shot of scotch. A bottle of beer has eight times as much drink as a shot of liquor, not only taking longer to drink but also filling one up more. The key components are how quickly the drinks are consumed and how many there are. Those are far more consequential than the order, my anecdotal Big Easy queasy notwithstanding.