On artificial intelligence and rationality
Artificial intelligence—especially superintelligent forms in fiction—is often reputed for its rationality and objectivity, especially in contrast with the ostensibly irrational and impulsive decisions of the typical human being. However, are humans really more irrational?
Machine learning processes optimise for relatively immediate success—often measured in hours to days, sometimes years—while evolution has optimised humans for success over millions to billions of years. It’s a common scene in many sci-fi works where an AI will question a human’s irrational behaviours, but what if the reverse is true—what if it’s the AI that’s irrational? Our “irrationality” and “impulsiveness” stem from traits that have provided an overall benefit to our survival over the course of millions of years. We have an insane track record proving that, on average, we’re winning.
If we were to all think and act “rationality” with success defined within the narrow span of our individual lifespans—if we were to all think like rational robots—the human population would likely have acquiesced to nihilism and quickly died out as we contemplated the definition of success within the objectively meaningless backdrop of survival. “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” Out of the frying pan and into the fire; irrational sources of meaning in life turn out to be the lesser evil.
Thus, perhaps humans are naturally more rational than what we commonly imagine rationality to be like. Though our instincts and intuitions are often completely irrational when observed in the relatively short term, if history has shown us anything, they tend towards bigger average payouts in the long run. It’s possible that the most rational future superintelligences will behave more irrationally than any human if they were capable of contemplating all the variables nature has been “contemplating” for us over the millions and billions of years of our evolutionary history.
That said, evolution has not prepared for the complex modern world we presently live in, and evolution has many biological limitations that an AI need not be impeded by, such as the tedious process of random mutations and natural selection, as well as vestigial traits and leftover “problems” from our evolutionary history especially in our psychology, going back to not being adapted for this complex, modern world.
Fish and tree
People are often criticised for being stupid, especially on the internet where ludicrous events and people “losing their faith in humanity” happen every day, but people aren’t necessarily stupid. Human brains weren’t designed for a world as complex as this; are we not judging fish by their ability to climb a tree? Other than redoing our neural circuitry from scratch or making new, better versions without the same weaknesses (such as AI), all we can do is to continue thinking of new ways to make it easier for fish to climb trees.
You Only Live Once
It is equally important to both live in the present while not leaving regrets for the future; people who fill their future with regrets can hardly be said to understand the concept of only living once.
The downside of knowledge
Knowledge is a trade of speed for accuracy. The more knowledge one acquires, the slower their mind. Like sprawling tree branches, one gradually becomes unable to jump straight through without hitting a branch and crashing back down—mental shortcuts become nearly impossible. Do philosophers react more slowly to someone in need of help? Do they spend all their time pondering about their best course of action until it’s too late? Do they spend the rest of that time pondering about whether them pondering about their best course of action was the right thing to do? Or even pondering about whether pondering about them pondering about their best course of—philosophy in a nutshell; metacognition is worse than drugs.
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We live in an age where being straight is increasingly becoming perceived as both politically incorrect and antiquated and we wonder why more and more teenagers and young adults are declaring themselves LGBTQ+ in surveys. There’s literally no downside for straight teenagers to declare themselves as bi in order to give themselves a sense of identity, for example.
It’s very much like people who self-diagnose autism and leave all the actually autistic people wondering why the term has lost all meaning and why their community has become filled with people who are no doubt completely normal individuals looking to hide from criticism behind the “politically incorrect” shield of autism and safely airing their grievances against the society that has allegedly wronged them. You’d think autistic people would actually hate this shield getting in the way of receiving genuine criticism and not have made the whole topic so politically charged in the first place.
Unfalsifiable LGBTQ+ claims feel like self-diagnosed autism all over again where people are advised to just “respect” anyone who bears the “title” and God forbid you dare question them and offend their whole tribe.
There’s a 98% chance—maybe even 99% chance of getting it right whenever people assume someone isn’t autistic. It would be stupid, then, for them not to assume. Have people become so considerate to the point we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to be offended about? Or have our younger generation become so delicate even the slightest breeze is enough to crush them? Stories of people being publicly shamed and ostracised for being neurodivergent are rarely heard of nowadays as people learn to get better at hiding their natural prejudices, but being given an inch doesn’t mean taking a mile, and treading cautiously around neurodivergent people as if they were royals of the Medieval Past serves to benefit nobody—not even the people they’re supposedly trying to help; it’s just ostracism in reverse.
I’ve had my fair share of interacting with people who would sooner die calling me “retarded” or “inconsiderate” for missing social cues and “rude” for not giving them the eye contact they so desperately need so I’m not about to propose “regular” ostracism as the solution, but the day we normalise the beginning of every human interaction with a list of predefined questions in order to “respect” them is the day civilisation as we know it collapses; people will stop talking to each other in real life and instead only talk to who have detailed profiles online. The opposite of love isn’t hatred; it’s apathy.
If—when—that day ever comes, I’ll print ten shirts with a list of my responses on them and wear them every day just so people will still talk to me, not that people will want to once they see that I’m autistic so I’d probably lie about it and defeat the whole point… regardless, I can already imagine children in preschool being forced to recite and answer these questions along with their nursery rhymes if some clever individual hasn’t already invented practised responses set in catchy MBTI-style acronyms in order to streamline the whole process. Out of spite, then, whenever people of the future ask me what acronyms I am, I’ll proudly tell them I’m “normal” and watch them stand completely dazed trying to figure out the rest of the letters after I tell them the “A” stands for autistic (it doesn’t; it’s just a vowel).
But, a dystopian future like this is far more unlikely than people simply becoming fed up with all the miles they’ve lost from the inch they gave, eventually ignoring the unreasonable demands of constantly losing out on countless potential social opportunities for the sake of the minority and letting the remaining political extremists fade into obscurity just like the white supremacists and radical feminists of the past, doomed to yell into the void for eternity from their little corner of the internet.