The inconvenient but amazing truth about deep learning is that, unlike neural networks, the brain does not learn complex patterns. It can see new complex patterns and objects instantly without learning them. Besides, there are not enough neurons in the brain to learn every pattern we encounter in life. Not even close.
The brain does not model the world. It learns to see it.
"It can see new complex patterns and objects instantly without learning them."
Except, it doesn't. It is clearly false. When animals grow up in an environment without certain patterns, they will be unable to see these patterns (or complex combinations of these) at a later stage. We see complex patterns as combinations of patterns we have seen before and semantically encode them as such. This is very similar to how neural networks work at the last fully connected layers.
"Besides, there are not enough neurons in the brain to learn every pattern we encounter in life."
There is a lot of self-similarity in our environment. Compression algorithms (and NN auto-encoders) are able to leverage this self-similarity to encode information in a very small number of data-points / neurons.
"The brain does not model the world. It learns to see it."
Except, it doesn't. Your brain continually makes abstractions of the world. When you 'see' the world you see a (lossy) compressed version of it, compressed towards utility. Similar to how MP3 compression works: the information gain of higher frequencies is low, so your brain can safely filter these out.
We learn to see patterns, but we see through physical and cultural action patterns that are simply present, not learned.
It’s like a river flowing... yes, the water molecules each “discover” the their path, but the path of the river is a property of the landscape. It is not learned.
we don’t even see the world, we see a hyperdimensional action space. Anything we can’t relate analogically back to some embodied action will literally be invisible to us.
USSR crash survivor here. Believe me, there are things worse than the current form of capitalism.
Besides, the trouble isn't about capitalism per se, our economy is simply in another stagnant stretch, where the corporations with formalized models and piles of cash perform better than lean and smart startups. As soon as another disruptive tech appears on the horizon, the history will repeat itself - the dinosaurs will be too slow to follow and new Microsoft and Apple will arise.
In Europe (at least Scandinavia and Germany), the discussion about unconditional basic income is becoming a thing now :)
When our work gets more and more effective, either 1) the cost of living for all individuals drop or 2) a few people benefit and get really, really rich while those whose jobs are less needed drop income.
The latter is what's happening right now. But does a society want that?
What would it cost them to attach a friendly dog head and a wagging tail on this headless monster? It would make it more appealing to the public and improve PR. Imagine thousands of these things walking up and down the sidewalks of NYC. They would scare the crap out of everybody.
The problem with that is that you would get further into the uncanny valley, it would actually make the problem worse before BD gets effective enough to make it out of the uncanny valley.
You're using the fact that all are ideologies to attempt to smuggle in the connotations we have with "religion" and apply those to atheism and materialism. Examine those connotations directly and you'll see they don't sensically apply. For example: religion requires faith without evidence, materialism and atheism do not. Almost all religions make demands on the actions of their adherents, atheism almost by definition does not, except as in that as a category defined by lack of belief, those in that category won't believe in supernatural powers. There are legitimate semantic boundaries here, and attempting to blur them is only useful if you're trying to wage a war of connotation and emotion, not if you're trying to argue in good faith or build a good model of the world.
" religion requires faith without evidence, materialism and atheism do not."
This is dogma preached by materialists, of course. The fact is that opposites are of the same nature. Theism and its opposite, atheism, are both belief systems. Neither of them is scientific. Vociferous denials notwithstanding.
I'm not necessarily disparaging it, rather pointing out there are clear and legitimate features of the category "religion" that ideologies like atheism don't share.
Quippy but untrue. "Not golfing" doesn't have news articles, blogs, apologetic tomes, influential figure-heads, social gatherings (online and offline), charitable organizations and all sorts of life and energy-consuming efforts dedicated to it.
Atheism is indeed the religion of man, who has set himself on his own throne, denied the existence of a Creator, and crowned himself god - deciding that HE will be the arbiter of right and wrong. The same forms of worship (investments of time, energy, money, etc) that can be devoted to the Divine are simply channeled inward in a self-righteous pursuit of independence.
Most organisations promoting atheism tends to explicitly associate with ideologies that sometimes pre-suppose atheism, but are not just atheism, such as humanism. E.g. the biggest "atheist" organizations in most countries tends to be the Humanist Associations.
To the extent that there are organizations etc. "just for atheism" rather than humanism, this tends to either be tied to ideologies that either encompass just small parts of atheists, e.g. "hard" atheists who express absolute certainty in the non-belief of God, or "radical" atheists who see theism as actively damaging and something to be fought. Those you could very well consider ideologies.
Another category are groups that band together not over atheism per se, but against religiously motivated discrimination, but most of these tends to focus on secularism, not atheism per se.
Calling atheism itself an ideology because of any of the above is ascribing far more to atheism than is actually there.
Saying that there are atheist ideologies where the absence of belief in a God is an important principle is true. But atheism on it's own is the simple absence of belief.
If people who didn't golf were considered subhuman and needing of "saving" then non golfers would develop a supportive community too.
Please don't confuse "community" with "religion." Bronies also have those things you mentioned but not a single person would classify being a Brony as a religion.
Same with ideology, not all ideologies are religions. Believe that the Earth is flat is an ideology but not a religion even though personally having that ideology may be based on religious beliefs. Same with veganism.
I'm not sure what the intention of choosing to define "religion" so as to include atheism, but it might be more productive to directly state what you are getting at.
When I google "religion", I get: "the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods."
It reminds me of when a friend once said, "World War II just happened", and I said, "Me tying my shoe just happened, World War II happened 70 years ago". It was both our faults for arguing about the definition of a word instead of both trying to understand each other. What my friend meant was that, since WWII, culture and education hasn't changed much, and another such disastrous event could happen again. Which is why I'm now asking you to rephrase your statement in a way I can understand your intent better.
I don't disagree with you, but it should be made clear that the article is talking about people with no affiliation to a religion, and not (explicitly) atheism.
"When I google "religion", I get: "the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.""
Modern atheists came up with that definition. The fact is that opposites are of the same nature. Theism and its opposite, atheism, are both belief systems. Neither of them is scientific. At least, not yet.
Quoting a dictionary in an argument is not just bad form but completely incorrect. An English dictionary is not an authoritative source for the meaning of words -- it's a record of the usage of words by English speakers and authors. It is a tool that helps a reader survey the possible meanings of the speaker or author. It does not define the meaning of a text.
You would do well to argue against the authors ideas rather than their words.
It can be helpful to enlighten an ignorant person though. Take the bastardization of the word "literally", or even "peruse" if you want a less inflammatory example. If one person uses the word in its original meaning and another interprets that word according to a colloquially bastardized version that essentially has the opposite meaning, I think it's entirely appropriate to quote a dictionary to the misinterpreter and incumbent upon them to interpret the word in its original meaning (if at all the intention is in question).
Bastardizing words, particularly those that have a prior established meaning to a minority community like atheists, is tyranny of the majority. It's not their fault that people don't know what atheist means and interpret the word incorrectly. If you reject that notion then I think you a) endorse a recursive loop where ignorant people never have to learn new vocabulary (or worse, get to make up definitions matching what they want to believe the other person is saying) and b) the bar to exchanging information gets set unreasonably high because speakers have to constantly define terms for their audience. There is some duty to learn and understand in a conversation. If you don't know what the words mean, look them up or don't get upset when corrected. That's how you have a conversation that progresses past semantics.
Since you're arguing with definitions, I feel it worthwhile to point out that these definitions do not necessarily contradict each other. Note the use of the word "especially".
Maybe, but that's not what atheism means to most atheists.
Atheism is not believing in God(s). This is different from both saying "I don't know", like agnostics do and actively denying the possibility of existence in God.
Most of us, when we say "I don't believe in X" are not saying "I have absolute certainty that X does not exist". We're saying "I've not seen any reason to believe in X, so I don't". I'm not agnostic about the existence of Santa Claus - I don't believe in Santa Claus. But maybe there really is some guy living in some secret compound on the North Pole -- it is however so exceedingly unlikely that I'm not going to go around answering "I don't know" if someone ask.
Most atheists are "soft atheists" who fall in the category above, who if asked will say "God does not exist," but who if pushed will concede that just like I can't know for absolute certain that Russell's infamous teapot or Santa Claus doesn't exist, I can't absolutely rule out the existence of every conceivable definition of a God.
And this is not an ideology any more than the non-existence of Santa Claus is.
There are also "hard" atheists that insists that God 100% certainly does not, or can not, exist, and in those instances you might be right to call it an ideology. But they're a fringe - personally despite growing up among atheists I've never met one in person.
No the point GP is making is that atheism is a religion (it's not), which is in itself wordplay.
To try to stay on the subject of the article, I find it interesting that it's Protestants who are abandoning their faith which is most of the downward trend in the graphs presented. I find that makes sense as Protestants are generally less dogmatic and more questioning (at least historically they were from my understanding) than their Catholic brethren.
Another way to put it, I feel there are some structural differences between Protestants and Catholics which help to explain the downward trend in one, and less so in the other.
Catholicism is a culturally "thicker" religion, which I suspect is responsible for the trend of lapsed Catholics continuing to describe themselves as Catholic in opinion polls even when effectively Nones. If you operationalized the definition, say by asking "have you been to church in the past week?" you'd probably see more similar trends.
This is nonsense, of course. It shows a definite predilection among atheists to deceive themselves and others. Atheism is definitely a belief. But go ahead and believe otherwise, if you know what I mean.
In all seriousness though Atheism is still a belief system. It makes an assertion without the necessary evidence to fully back it up (which is both true and weirdly ridiculous). On the other hand Agnosticism is in itself removed from a specific belief system. It is an epistemological doctrine of sorts with both religious and non-religious applications.
I find that most people use the word atheism completely wrong and accidentally get caught in stupid semantic debates they themselves are responsible for falling into. If you believe their is no god, then your making some pretty wild jumps.
If you don't think we have sufficient evidence to disprove a God, but would totally bet it all that there isn't, then you should just say your agnostic and explain how that applies if necessary.
It's a bit silly to argue against absolute atheism (belief in no god) when the article simply says the growing population don't believe in a god (and this - agnosticism - is conflated with atheism to the confusion of many and benefit of those who argue for religion).
We don't need a fire alarm for AGI. The problem is not AGI. Machines will be motivated to do exactly what we tell them to do. It's called classical and operant conditioning. The problem is not AGI for the same reason that the problem is not knives, nuclear power, dynamite or gunpowder. The problem is us. The problem has always been us.
Those who are running around screaming about the danger of AGI and why it should be regulated by the government before it is even here, are just scared that someone else may gain control of it before they do. This is too bad because anybody who is smart enough to figure out AGI is much smarter than they are.
Yes, an AI will do exactly what we tell it to do. The the incredible difficulty programmers have with writing bug-free code demonstrates that doing exactly what it's told isn't sufficient to guarantee it'll do what we want.
Classical and operant conditioning are psychological concepts that aren't applicable to non-humans.
What do you mean where is the science behind it? It's literally the science we know (physics, chemistry, biology evolution). From primordial soup to humans. Not sure what you are putting into question here?
I know where it will not come from. It will not come from the mainstream AI community. They are married to and madly in love with deep learning. Deep learning, the supervised kind, is a red herring.
AGI will require a revolutionary breakthrough, most likely from a maverick, probably a lone wolf rebel, who is used to thinking outside the box.
The brain does not model the world. It learns to see it.