> “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?”

The answer - AI

That sounds like a false fact.

If China started asteroid mining, USA will soon follow. In fact I think the only reason USA is going back to the moon is because China said they would set up a base there.

> a population of 2 billion would ensure the current arrangements of world trade etc and allow a livable planet going forward.

There are two issues with this. 2 billion people living like Americans would actually doom the world faster.

Secondly, like the problem with the Thanos solution, 2 billion now would mean 8 billion in 80 years if the population boomed like post-WW2.

While you can keep going with fewer, the diversity of your economy would be lower and your progress slower.

For example I suspect you would have a lot fewer exotic fruit in your diet with 2 billion people. In the same way you will have fewer people researching the various types of batteries, and slower improvement over time.

The service economy is the part of the economy which is all about people helping each other, so with fewer people would mean fewer needed but again expect less diversity in the services that are available to you.

Same with manufacturing - a smaller population would have a less diverse range of products.

Some projects which are affordable in a large economy would not be affordable in a small economy, for example a space elevator which costs 5% of the world economy may be affordable, but one which was 30% would not be.

So for this question:

> what's the minimum population required for preserving all our knowledge, technology, and even progressing further, doing research and implementing results.

Probably not that many, but don't expect life to be the same qualitatively, and don't expect research to progress half as fast.

Or more the opposite - once we achieve it, maybe we need to drop the Artificial bit - Just intelligent and conscious computers.

One or the other.

The lede is buried:

> But the big standout is energy density. The researchers estimate that, even in this immature state, the technology stored about 685 watt-hours per kilogram, which is more than double most current batteries. It also managed an energy-to-volume that was just shy of double that of typical lithium-ion batteries. So, in that sense, it lives up to the promise of its two electrodes.

That should allow small commuter electric aircraft comfortably.

If you think about it, you do the same when you try and see things from someone else's perspective. You take on their point of view and you model their reactions as realistically as possible.

And when you done, you just discard them.

I think you need to add some balance to your rant. Implying things are done for no reason just makes you unconvincing.

I heard the amish actually use a lot of technology as long as they don't own it, and of course they still interface with the modern world via commerce e.g. the often run saw mills.

So I imagine they would be confronted by an increasingly bizarre world e.g. imagine of everyone had brain interfaces and communicated telepathically, and they would not be able to talk to people anymore.

I imagine there would be less demand for the things they sell.

Also imagine if people became immortal and any disease can be cured - do they take advantage of the advances or not, and does this affect their retention rate?

For a lot of people asking stupid questions a chatgpt response is more than sufficient and usually more polite.

> Seeing them IS the visceral experience I'm talking about.

I thought you said adding vision won't make a difference? Now seeing is a visceral experience?

> All of this interaction, including the abstract thoughts of it (because thinking itself is cellular activity, neurons are signaling each other to trigger broader associations formed from the total chain of cellular activity those thoughts engaged), together form the "visceral experience."

You are stretching very far now. So thinking is a visceral experience? So AI can now also have visceral experiences?

> "Superhuman performance" is on specific BENCHMARKS only.

The point of a benchmark is to measure things. I am not sure what you are implying. Are you saying it is not super-human in the real world? Who do you think reads the scrawled addresses on your envelopes?

> And please try to give me an abstract concept you think doesn't have any experiences tied to your understanding of it.

Everything you think you know about cells are just things you have been taught. Every single thing. DNA, cell vision, the cytoskeleton, neuro-transmitters, rods and cones etc etc.

> But we CAN see cells. We made microscopes to see them.

That is far from the same. You have no visceral experience of cells. Your experience of cells is about the same as a LLM.

> This is the difficulty we face in science right now, the world of the very small and the very large is out of our reach and we have to make a lot of indirect assumptions that we back with other forms of evidence.

Yes, exactly, which is where your theory breaks down.

The truth is we are actually pretty good at conceptualizing things we can not see or hear or touch. A visceral experience is not a prerequisite for intelligence.

> I am trying to argue here is that “intelligence” is complex enough to be inseparable from the physical processes that give rise to it.

But I see you have also made another argument - that cells are very complex machines which are needed for real intelligence.

Can I ask what do you consider is intelligence? Because computers are super-human when it comes to describing a scene or reading handwriting or understanding the spoken word or being able to play strategy games or a wide variety of things which are considered intelligent. The only issue so far is bringing them all together, but this seems to be only a question of time.

I already made a long list.

Lets take cells. Cells are invisible to the naked eye, and humans only learnt about them in the 1700's.

Yet you have a very wide range of ideas about cells, none of which are connected to anything you can observe with your senses. Cells are a purely intellectual idea.

You may be able to draw up some metaphor, but it will be weak and non-explanatory.

You need to admit you can think of things without any connection to the physical world and physical experiences. Just like an AI.

> Those words decompose to actual physical phenomena

In some cases, but in many cases not at all. And certainly not ones you experienced. Your argument is on very shaky ground.

Imagine however if the main effect of the upgrade would be to stop wishing for those things.

> And that's what ChatGPT does: it shuffles words around, and it's pretty good at mimicking an understanding of grammar, but because it has no mind -- no understanding -- the shuffling is done without regard for the context that competent speakers depend on for conveying meaning. Every word that ChatGPT utters is "on holiday.

This is not true. AFAIK it has a 96 layer neural network with billions of parameters.

I think its very ironic when you talk about grounded visceral experiences when much of what you are talking about are just concepts. Things like cells. Things like photons. Things like neural networks. Things like molecules and neuro-transmitters.

You need to face the fact that much of the modern world and your understanding of it depended nothing on what you learnt as a baby when you learnt to walk, and a lot of things you know in an abstract space just like neural networks.

I asked Chatgpt to summarise your argument:

> The author argues that artificial intelligence is unlikely to be achieved as intelligence is complex and inseparable from the physical processes that give rise to it. They believe that the current paradigm of AI, including large language models and neural networks, is flawed as it is based on a misunderstanding of the symbol grounding problem and lacks a base case for meaning. They argue that our minds are grounded in experience and understanding reality and that our brains are real physical objects undergoing complex biochemistry and interactions with the environment. The author suggests that perception and cognition are inseparable and there is no need for models in the brain.

As mentioned above, you have never experienced wavelengths and fusion - these are just word clouds in your head you were taught by words and pictures and videos, a process which is well emulated by LLM, so your argument that intelligence needs grounded perception is obviously flawed.

Structured symbolic thinking is something AI still lack, much like many, many humans, but people are working on it.

Thank you. That was very informative.

The lesson you should take away is, like perception, operating in the real world will also fall to computers in the end.

So the OP's question was:

> Do you think that we'll relinquish control of our infrastructure including farming, energy, weapons etc?

To which I said yes. The reason is because AI will be more efficient than us at running it, which will lead market forces to make us relinquish control to AI, or be out-competed by those who already did.

If things went south at a power station, only very few people can respond, and in all likelihood they will no longer be there as they have not been needed for some time.

Practically speaking - you may want an AI to balance a national grid to optimise the use of variable renewable energy.

Such an AI will not be under human control, as it will have to act quickly.

So just like that we have lost control, and if the AI wants to bring down the grid there is nothing we can do about it.

I don't think upgraded humans would be humans anymore.

Imagine I gave you an electronic super-cortex which knew a lot more, gave you better control of your behaviour, emotions and impulse control. Would you still be human or just a flesh robot?

When you say "the future" do you mean 2023-2026, because these AI tools will continue to improve, so we cant really say what the quality of an AI-produced piece of work will be in 5 years time.

You are assuming it will be lower than a human-produced work, but it could be the opposite.