big mistake.
corporate name is Alphabet
Second differential is important when looking at the change in the rate of change.
What happens when rate of change in the rate of change at which new knowledge is created tips infinite?
Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultra-intelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an "intelligence explosion," and the intelligence of man would be left far behind.
—I.J. Good, "Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine"
>An “intelligence explosion” is theoretical scenario in which an intelligent agent analyzes the processes that produce its intelligence, improves upon them, and creates a successor which does the same. This process repeats in a positive feedback loop– each successive agent more intelligent than the last and thus more able to increase the intelligence of its successor – until some limit is reached. This limit is conjectured to be much, much higher than human intelligence.
>A strong version of this idea suggests that once the positive feedback starts to play a role, it will lead to a very dramatic leap in capability very quickly. This is known as a “hard takeoff.” In this scenario, technological progress drops into the characteristic timescale of transistors rather than human neurons, and the ascent rapidly surges upward and creates superintelligence (a mind orders of magnitude more powerful than a human's) before it hits physical limits. A hard takeoff is distinguished from a "soft takeoff" only by the speed with which said limits are reached.
https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Intelligence_explosion
The magic of recursion
Recursion is probably the most difficult part of this topic. We have historical records aplenty of cascades, even if untangling the causality is difficult. Cycles of reinvestment are the heartbeat of the modern economy. An insight that makes a hard problem easy, is something that I hope you've experienced at least once in your life…
But we don't have a whole lot of experience redesigning our own neural circuitry.
We have these wonderful things called "optimizing compilers". A compiler translates programs in a high-level language, into machine code (though these days it's often a virtual machine). An "optimizing compiler", obviously, is one that improves the program as it goes.
So why not write an optimizing compiler in its own language, and then run it on itself? And then use the resulting optimized optimizing compiler, to recompile itself yet again, thus producing an even more optimized optimizing compiler -
Halt! Stop! Hold on just a minute! An optimizing compiler is not supposed to change the logic of a program - the input/output relations. An optimizing compiler is only supposed to produce code that does the same thing, only faster. A compiler isn't remotely near understanding what the program is doing and why, so it can't presume to construct a better input/output function. We just presume that the programmer wants a fixed input/output function computed as fast as possible, using as little memory as possible.
So if you run an optimizing compiler on its own source code, and then use the product to do the same again, it should produce the same output on both occasions - at most, the first-order product will run faster than the original compiler.
If we want a computer program that experiences cascades of self-improvement, the path of the optimizing compiler does not lead there - the "improvements" that the optimizing compiler makes upon itself, do not improve its ability to improve itself.
Now if you are one of those annoying nitpicky types, like me, you will notice a flaw in this logic: suppose you built an optimizing compiler that searched over a sufficiently wide range of possible optimizations, that it did not ordinarily have time to do a full search of its own space - so that, when the optimizing compiler ran out of time, it would just implement whatever speedups it had already discovered. Then the optimized optimizing compiler, although it would only implement the same logic faster, would do more optimizations in the same time - and so the second output would not equal the first output.
Well… that probably doesn't buy you much. Let's say the optimized program is 20% faster, that is, it gets 20% more done in the same time. Then, unrealistically assuming "optimization" is linear, the 2-optimized program will be 24% faster, the 3-optimized program will be 24.8% faster, and so on until we top out at a 25% improvement. k < 1.
So let us turn aside from optimizing compilers, and consider a more interesting artifact, EURISKO.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rJLviHqJMTy8WQkow/recursion-magic
crazier than a stomped possum.
Pop culture is not the organic phenomena it appears, but a cultivated artificial medium engineered to permit rapid introduction and transmission of contagious, conditioned behaviors like purchasing and to spread psychogenic illnesses, self-destructive sexual fetishes etc.
Cultures where commerce controls media content and where art is used to sell consumer goods also have the capacity to engineer psychological operations which induce delusions and powerful contagious mental illnesses or collective insanities. Historical incidents and known forms of contagious psychogenic illnesses are described in "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" by Mackay.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24518
In recent years, we have seen mysterious maladies proliferate. Recently, American and European psychologists have been tracking the blue whale game, the Momo challenge, which use guided visual imagery, occult symbols sigils and glyphs to persuade teenagers in pain to huff wasp spray. The evil clowns create both the pathology and the psyops which exploit it, constantly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Whale_Challenge
Sanity can be induced and is also contagious. Be kind. Be Calm. Be Best. Be Q Research.
DIG MEME PRAY