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Friday, 3 March 2023

Why actual intelligence will continue to rule artificial intelligence.

Will AI “Own the World”? Robert J. Marks Talks with Laura Ingraham


Robert J. Marks directs Discovery Institute’s Bradley Center for Natural & Artificial Intelligence. He recently appeared on a podcast episode with Fox News host Laura Ingraham to talk about artificial intelligence, tech, and Dr. Marks’s book Non-Computable You: What You Do That AI Never Will. 

Ingraham prefaced the conversation with some thoughts on the rapidly evolving technological world we find ourselves in, and the changes such developments are inflicting on society. In response to the futurism and unbounded optimism about AI systems like ChatGPT that many modern figures hold, Marks said that what computers do is strictly algorithmic:
                       This leads us to the idea of whether or not there are non-computable characteristics of human beings, and I think there is growing evidence that there are. I would give the simple examples of happiness, joy, empathy. I think less obvious are the operations of sentience, creativity, and understanding. I believe that probably these are not algorithmic either. Again, we’re starting to have scientific evidence that this is indeed the case. So, you’re not allowed to build your own religion and speculate. We see this a lot in artificial intelligence. 
           
To “Own the World”

Ingraham brought up an ominous remark from Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, in which he said that in the future, whoever owns artificial intelligence will “own the world.” Schwab thinks this revolution of the world order, brought about in large part by advances in AI, is just a decade away at most. Marks, however, responded by appealing to the history of exaggerated, utopian (or dystopian) visions for humanity: 
                   I think we only have to look at history and see a lot of these other incredibly hyperbolic claims that have come out. I was old enough to remember the Y2K scare, which was supposed to dissolve the world into all sorts of problems. Deepfakes are going to disrupt political discourse. Self-driving cars are going to cause all truck drivers to lose their jobs. No, that hasn’t happened. Maybe it will happen someday, but we’re on a much slower path to that. Here’s my prophecy: in ten to twenty years we are going to recognize the limits of artificial intelligence (which we are starting to do, especially these chat models like ChatGPT and LaMDA) and we’re going to find out the limitations of them. And we’re going to incorporate this into our society. Is it going to make a difference? Yes. But is it going to become sentient and take over the world? No. Artificial intelligence isn’t going to do that. 
                       Marks emphasized that AI is a tool and that it can be used for either good or evil. 

Ingraham and Marks went on to talk about the guardrails computer engineers have made for ChatGPT, the state of higher education, and the legacy of Walter Bradley, the namesake of the Walter Bradley Center. 

You can find the link to the full conversation here but will need to get 7-day free trial for full access

The Fossil record's equilibrium continues to rebut Darwin

Fossil Friday: Evolutionary Stasis in Fossil Damselflies Challenges Darwinism


This Fossil Friday features a beautiful fossil damselfly from the Upper Jurassic limestone of Painten in Bavaria, Germany, which is about 152 million years old. I acquired this remarkable fossil for the collection of the Natural History Museum in Stuttgart in 2012 (no. SMNS 70154) and scientifically described it as a new genus and species, Jurahemiphlebia haeckeli, a few years later (Bechly 2015, 2019). It represents the oldest fossil record of crown group Zygoptera and belongs to the damselfly family Hemiphlebiidae.

For a lay person it would hardly be distinguishable from its living relative Hemiphlebia mirabilis from Australia, even sharing the tiny size of just 11 mm wing length and the characteristic wing venation. Such cases of evolutionary stasis present a conundrum and challenge for neo-Darwinism, which can only be explained away with ad hoc hypotheses like stabilizing selection under unchanging ecological conditions. However, the profound changes in geography, climate, and vegetation since the Late Jurassic make the assumption of a stable habitat quite implausible. Also, it looks like natural selection is considered as a “magic wand” that can be highly creative and transformative or highly conservative and stabilizing.

How convenient. Sounds like the old saying: If the cockerel crows from his favorite spot, the weather may change or again it may not. In the hard sciences such universal explanations that can explain everything and rule out no possible observations are usually considered empirically empty and worthless. Not so in modern evolutionary biology, which tells a lot about its dubious status as a “hard science.” It is instead an unfalsifiable assemblage of fancy just-so stories and ad hoc explanations, a kind of meta-narrative for a naturalistic worldview but not a serious science on par with physics or chemistry.

Sources

Bechly G 2015. [Chapter] Insekten (Hexapoda). pp. 239-270 in: Arratia G, Schultze HP, Tischlinger H & Viohl G (eds). Solnhofen – Ein Fenster in die Jurazeit. 2 vols. Pfeil Verlag, Munich (DE), 620 pp.
Bechly G 2019. New fossil Odonata from the Upper Jurassic of Bavaria with a new fossil calibration point for Zygoptera. Palaeoentomology 2(6), 618-632. DOI: https://doi.org/10.11646

Comparing our patch of real estate to the fixer uppers(?) around the galaxy.

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On the empire of the atom?

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Let there be light?


An answer looking for a question?

 The philosophy naturalism.


Last time we saw that by wholeheartedly embracing and promoting Theodosius Dobzhansky’s famous phrase, “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution,” evolutionists have backed themselves into a corner from which they cannot escape. As we saw, there is much to say about this evolutionary rallying cry, but at the top of the list is that it is false. Unequivocally false. This is not an opinion or a pushback. I’m not trying to pick a debate—because there is no debate. We may as well debate whether bachelors are male. Dobzhansky’s phrase, with all due respect, is “not even wrong,” as physicists like to say. It is silly, and yet there it is—all over the literature. The phrase is approvingly recited even in peer-reviewed technical journal papers. It is the mantra that evolutionists will not stop repeating, all the while revealing that this isn’t about science. Evolutionists will never repeal and recant, because there simply is too much at stake here. As we discussed, this isn’t like admitting that a particular prediction went wrong. Dobzhansky’s phrase was not merely a prediction, it was meta-prediction—the aphorism of an entire world view—and walking it back would be to reveal the man behind the curtain. Suddenly all those epistemological claims, such as that evolution is as much a fact as is gravity, heliocentrism and the round shape of the earth, would be left hanging, open to scrutiny and with a long, long way to fall. But Dobzhansky’s famous phrase is not the only way evolutionists have self-destructed. They have made other nonnegotiable and important claims that are equally corrosive. One is that evolution is both confirmed and required.

The National Association of Biology Teachers’ official position statement on the teaching of evolution states that evolution is (i) confirmed by the scientific evidence and (ii) a necessary going in position in order for science to function properly. Here is what the NABT says about the confirmation of evolution:
                               Scientists who have carefully evaluated the evidence overwhelmingly support the conclusion that both the principle of evolution itself and its mechanisms best explain what has caused the variety of organisms alive now and in the past. … The patterns of similarity and diversity in extant and fossil organisms, combined with evidence and explanations provided by molecular biology, developmental biology, systematics, and geology provide extensive examples of and powerful support for evolution.
                 And here is what the NABT says about the necessity of evolution:
                    Evolutionary biology rests on the same scientific methodologies the rest of science uses, appealing only to natural events and processes to describe and explain phenomena in the natural world. Science teachers must reject calls to account for the diversity of life or describe the mechanisms of evolution by invoking non-naturalistic or supernatural notions … Ideas such as these are outside the scope of science and should not be presented as part of the science curriculum. These notions do not adhere to the shared scientific standards of evidence gathering and interpretation.
                      There you have it, evolutionary theory is both confirmed and required. And the National Association of Biology Teachers is by no means alone here. The dual epistemological and philosophical claims, respectively, are broadly held by evolutionists and go back centuries.

Do you see the problem?
This philosophical position that evolutionists have staked themselves to is circular. To understand this, imagine for a moment that you witness a miracle, involving “non-naturalistic or supernatural” causes. According to evolutionists, such an event is “outside the scope of science.”

Does that imply the event was necessarily not real?

No, the fact that something falls outside of one’s definition of science does not rule it out of existence. The event does not automatically become necessarily impossible. Something can be not amenable to scientific investigation yet real.

The standard claim of evolutionists that evolution is necessary for proper science reflects a particular philosophy of science called naturalism. They present it as though it were a fact, but that is false. There are many philosophies of science, and none are facts. They are rules of the road for those who declare them to follow.

That’s it.So evolutionists have committed themselves to yet another false statement. But that’s not the main problem. The main problem is that if one insists and is committed to naturalism, then naturalistic, evolutionary, explanations is what they will find.

So of course evolution is confirmed by the science. It has to be. For evolutionists, the question is not whether evolution is confirmed by the science, the only question is what are the particulars.

This explains why evolutionists interpret the evidence the way they do. It explains how contradictory evidence can be sustained over and over and over. It also explains why, so long as you stick to naturalism, anything and everything is allowed. Natural selection, gradualism, mutations, common descent, drift, saltationism, and all the rest are up for grabs. They all may be forfeited. Any kind of theory, not matter how at odds with the empirical data, can be contemplated.

What cannot be contemplated in evolutionary science is creationism. There must be no miracles.

This means that evidence will be interpreted, filtered, analyzed, and processed according to the rules. Non cooperative evidence will be set aside and viewed as “grounds for further research.” Or it will be ground up and recast until it can be made to work right.

Cooperative evidence, on the other hand, will be viewed a normative, and ready for incorporation into proper scientific theories.

When evolutionists insist that science must be strictly naturalistic they show their hand. The flip side of their claim, that evolution is confirmed, is not a theory-neutral, objective finding. It is driven by the philosophy. It is circular—the conclusion was assumed in the first place. If your going-in position is that naturalism is required, then your results will adhere to naturalism.
Evolution is not a scientific finding, it is a philosophical mandate.

A clash of titans (again)

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Commonsense resurgent? II

 Medical Malpractice Lawsuits to the Rescue


I believe that one day the transgender moral panic will come crashing down. But not before thousands of minors are harmed by having their natural puberties blocked, breasts removed, and even worse. Indeed, “de-transitioners” — people who realize they really are the sex they were born — are already appearing and complaining about how they were abandoned or pressured by medical professionals to engage in medical or surgical “affirming care” as it is incorrectly called. Some, like Chloe Cole, are planning to sue.

The problem is that many medical-malpractice statutes of limitations are relatively short — two or three years. By the time the adult so treated as a child realizes the harm done, the allowable time to sue may have elapsed.

An Example from Arkansas

Several state legislatures are considering bills to remedy that problem by lengthening their statute of limitations for such lawsuits when the procedures were done on minors. Here’s the one from Arkansas that lengthens the statute of limitations to “15 years after the date on which the minor turned 18.” I have read it, and it seems well considered. First, the definitions:
          “Gender transition procedure” means any medical or surgical service, including without limitation physician’s services, inpatient and outpatient hospital services, or prescribed drugs related to gender transition that seeks to: (i) Alter or remove physical or anatomical characteristics or features that are typical for the individual’s biological sex; or ii) Instill or create physiological or anatomical characteristics that resemble a sex different from the individual’s biological sex, including without limitation medical services that provide puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, or other mechanisms to promote the development of feminizing or masculinizing features in the opposite biological sex, or genital or nongenital gender reassignment surgery performed for the purpose of assisting an individual with a gender transition.
                       That’s good specificity and it doesn’t include non-body altering interventions like pronoun use.

The bill also properly excludes interventions such as treating someone born with “ambiguous” external sex characteristics and treatment of side effects caused by gender-transition surgeries.

And it offers safe harbor if the child was followed for two years before medical interventions and
              At least two (2) healthcare professionals, including at least one (1) mental health professional, certified in writing that the minor suffered from no other mental health concerns, including without limitation depression, eating disorders, autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, intellectual disability, or psychotic disorders.
                    This is most wise because we have seen autistic children and others with mental-health issues hustled onto the trans train.
           
Supplying Information

The bill also specifies the information that must be supplied to the child and parents to qualify as informed consent. For example:
                     The use of cross-sex hormones in males is associated with numerous health risks, such as thromboembolic disease, including without limitation blood clots; cholelithiasis, including gallstones; coronary artery disease, including without limitation heart attacks; macroprolactinoma, which:
1 is a tumor of the pituitary gland; cerebrovascular disease, including without
2 limitation strokes; hypertriglyceridemia, which is an elevated level of
3 triglycerides in the blood; breast cancer; and irreversible infertility.
             The bill also protects medical conscience:
                State law shall not require, or be construed to require, a healthcare professional to perform a gender transition procedure.
                    Clearly, the point of this bill is designed to chill the eagerness and speed at which some youth with gender dysphoria are medically transitioned and better ensure that legal remedies will be available for those harmed thereby. Chloe Cole, for example, says she was put onto the tran assembly line at 12, given puberty blockers after her parents where threatened by doctors that she would commit suicide, and had a double mastectomy at age 15.

The gender ideologues will howl. Some will create transgender sanctuary states — as California has Already done. But if many states pass responsible legislation like this, countless children will be protected from irreversible harm.