The purpose of human life is probably to create "Artificial General Intelligence"

[Fireball]

Hey op, Great post, are you into programming by any chance?

ETA; I'm always the last to these things, I hate you all.

One must get with the program, grasshopper!

[uncool]

Hey op, Great post, are you into programming by any chance?

ETA; I'm always the last to these things, I hate you all.

Not much of a coder these days, but I do follow up on machine learning, and it is not too difficult to manipulate tensorflow and use saved neural network models (like say of Imagenet) to do everyday data science.

I also know where machine learning reasonably aims to go. (i.e. the creation of Artificial General Intelligence)

[Thumpalumpacus]

Is this a Jordan sock?

[Nay_Sayer]

Is this a Jordan sock?

The tone of his post is nearly identical but we'll only know once the mods say something.

[Brian37]

I used bullet points a lot in school, and I use them everywhere else, even when talking to people in person, so excuse my use of them bellow explaining why the purpose of human live is reasonably to create AGI:

• Our purpose may be to create something called Artificial General Intelligence.
  

• This is because for eg, laws of thermodynamics reasonably says nature is looking for ways to maximize entropy:
  

Equation (2) from "Causal Entropic Forces".

• According to Alex Wissner Gross, intelligent things are reasonably ways to better contribute to entropy maximization, compared to non-intelligent things.
  

• Furthermore, humans are very intelligent, and reasonably very optimal ways of maximizing entropy:
  

Equation (4) from "Causal Entropic Forces". (Equation (4) is an extension of equation (2), which adds a causal force "F")

• When we do cognitive tasks (like anything to do with science and tech), that is "work" done in nature, and entropy is produced. (Humans are predicted to maximize entropy better than lesser intelligences or non-intelligence, due to some "causal force" F)
  

• But the trend arguably says nature doesn't just stop at one species, it finds other things to access more and more optimal entropy maximization techniques.
  

• Artificial General Intelligence in weaker forms called narrow AI today, are getting more general, and already exceed or equal humans in some cognitive tasks today, and some say Ai will reach human level by 2029 in generality of task performance!
  

• So humans are rationally only one optimal way, and Artificial General Intelligence or Superintelligence is a theoretical way to get to better entropy maximization techniques. (Artificial General Intelligence or Superintelligence won't be limited by the number of neurons in the human skull, so they do more cognitive tasks, that may reasonably access more entropy maximization techniques than humans!)
  

So science likes objectivity, and this is why our scientific objective may be to build smarter things than us. Sounds like a better plot than to worship some God thing for eternity, or otherwise be tortured by Satan just because I actually have sex before marriage (don't plan to marry anyway), or constantly lust at my neighbor's wife (who's hot af).


~uncool

ALL life ultimately has no purpose in a 13.8 billion year old universe. Our curiosity is evolutionary sure, but that does not mean we always chase the goal of coming up with scientific answers.  The data shows we make more shitty guesses as a species than we do objective scientific method.

Can we build smart computers? Sure, but that is an outcome of our evolutionary curiosity, it isn't a goal however. Looking at how humans fight over politics and religion and how greed can override our kinder side, it is not a given that we will create things that will extend our finite ride. 

Science is a tool only, it is not a moral judgment. Science is as only as moral as those using it. It has been used to create extreme cruelty in things like chemical weapons, tanks and jets and firearms and nukes, which both friend and foe alike use. It is still up to humans as to our own ethics and how we use technology to move into the future.

I'd only agree that the human like God/gods/deities/anthropomorphism of the past are lousy answers and scientific method is a better tool. But, like any tool, just like a hammer, you can pick it up and build a house, or you can pick that hammer up and bash someone's head in with it.

But no, in the scope of the universe, we are ultimately still not important. Our goals are only now, while we live, and while our species survives. But we still will not last forever regardless.

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I think Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot speech is a better view of reality. 

[polymath257]

I'm not sure why maximizing entropy means our *purpose* is to create AI.

On the other hand, if Gross is correct, it might well lead to a method for producing such AI.

Another aspect of this is why entropy is maximized. Is there a reasonable quantum mechanical description for such?

And, of course, there is the (begged) question of whether the 'future path entropy' really is maximized in reality.

In any case, the Gross paper is interesting.

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One obvious difficult with the Gross formulation is that they assume a time horizon that is fixed as opposed to having it be open ended. It might be interesting to explore the different possibilities here.

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And I really hope this isn't attempting to resurrect entropic gravity. That idea is dead: experiments on neutron scattering show that.