Paul Conti

But the difference, I think, at least as I understand, I think of machines as not being inscrutable, right?

That if there's enough study, there's enough acumen applied that we can understand whatever it is we're trying to figure out.

Whereas part of understanding ourselves is understanding that there are things we can't understand.

And I think that's...

indispensably important to health and happiness and also to having enough humility to see how people can be different from us, how we can be different from ourselves at times.

So knowing that we don't know a lot and having some idea of what that might be, I think is an indispensable part of the process, which I think is different from machines, I think.

Is there a meta-phenomenon?

What sometimes gets described as sort of levels of emergence, where at increasing levels of complexity, you have novelty evolve that you can't predict from lower levels of complexity.

Like, for example...

atoms to molecules, you know, it's just one example.

I think neurons to consciousness, consciousness to culture, right?

That there are meta-phenomena that separate from the phenomena underneath of them, and thereby add an entire aspect of novelty.

So I think we are

I mean, I really think this is true, that we are all infinitely fascinating because of these levels of emergence, of novelty that are inscrutable because you can't predict from one level to the next or understand fully are what make us, and not just us, but I think sentient creatures, right?

Human beings, right?

But sentient creatures, inestimably more...

interesting than creatures that aren't sentient.

And I don't know, I think when we think about machine learning and artificial intelligence, I think it's that that we're trying to create, levels of emergence that now we don't fully understand anymore, which I guess is both exciting and maybe scary too.

Every layer.

Because every time you merge from one thing to another, I see it as an analog, like the concept of the dialectic, right?