RadixJournal - Richard Spencer - The AI Illusion
Aired: 2022-12-09
Duration: 06:30


=== Language's Short History (04:07) ===

[00:00:00]  We have actually used language for a shorter amount of time than we would imagine.
[00:00:08]  And, you know, dogs can understand words.
[00:00:13]  I'm not sure a dog quite has a grammar, but they understand a sound wave as indicating something.
[00:00:24]  A dog knows its name.
[00:00:25]  If he hears the word walk or...
[00:00:28]  Dinner.
[00:00:29]  And he perks up and is going to look at you and be like, oh, walk.
[00:00:34]  Yeah, that sounds great.
[00:00:35]  Yeah, let's do it.
[00:00:36]  So he understands language to some extent, but there's no actual grammar or logic exactly.
[00:00:43]  Now, you know, we're homo sapiens.
[00:00:45]  So, you know, wise man, the rational animal or something like that.
[00:00:49]  That is actually extremely incorrect.
[00:00:53]  I actually just saw something about this today.
[00:00:55]  There was an experiment in Germany in which fish have a sense of numbers.
[00:01:00]  They have a sense of a larger and a smaller number.
[00:01:03]  And they can actually engage in a sort of addition to some extent.
[00:01:08]  And they don't have a frontal brain anywhere close to the extent that we have one.
[00:01:15]  We might even overestimate the head as the seat of reason or something.
[00:01:20]  We have reason in our spinal cord.
[00:01:23]  And I've used this metaphor quite a bit, and so I apologize if people are getting bored of it, but there is literally no time to think if you are standing at a baseball plate and someone is throwing 70, 80, 90, 100 miles per hour.
[00:01:43]  You cannot think in that split second when you determine what pitch.
[00:01:49]  Is it a curve?
[00:01:49]  Is it a fastball?
[00:01:50]  Is it a changeup?
[00:01:52]  Is it inside?
[00:01:53]  Is it outside?
[00:01:54]  Is this the pitch I want to hit?
[00:01:56]  You have absolutely no time to think that.
[00:02:01]  And yet you do.
[00:02:04]  The idea that some of these baseball players could explain to you how a curveball curves, they can't.
[00:02:11]  But they just do it and they know it in their bones.
[00:02:15]  Maybe kind of literally in their bones.
[00:02:18]  A outfielder, he hears a crack off the bat.
[00:02:22]  The audible level of the crack gives him information.
[00:02:26]  He sees the ball, maybe even kind of peripherally to some degree, and he sees it travel like 50 feet, and he estimates exactly where he should run to.
[00:02:38]  And he hops to the exact spot, opens up his glove, and in a lackadaisical manner catches it.
[00:02:45]  There is reason, mathematics, rationality in our spinal cord.
[00:02:52]  And we kind of don't grasp this.
[00:02:56]  And your thinking consciousness, when you're using language, it is kind of almost like a late stage of this.
[00:03:04]  And there also have been experiments, I think I've mentioned these to other people, and I'll mention two.
[00:03:10]  One of which is that...
[00:03:12]  Your muscles will engage before you think to pick up your coffee.
[00:03:18]  Now, does that mean that we're all predetermined?
[00:03:22]  No, it does not mean that at all.
[00:03:23]  What it means is that you are telling yourself in your mind using language, I want coffee, as a kind of post-facto rationalization of what you are instinctively doing.
[00:03:40]  Another thing.
[00:03:41]  So there's an experiment that's done where they're blinded and they tell people to pick up objects and they say, we want you to judge the texture of these objects.

=== Language As Rationalization (02:37) ===

[00:03:53]  And so you'll pick one up that will be like furry and you'll pick up another one that will be slick.
[00:03:59]  And then they'll say which object was heavier and people will get it.
[00:04:04]  What that indicates, that might sound like dumb or obvious.
[00:04:08]  No, it's not dumb or obvious.
[00:04:09]  What that means, Is that not only are they engaged in reason, they're engaging in judgment unconsciously.
[00:04:18]  You are thinking, your language comes kind of, it's like an after effect in a way.
[00:04:25]  And we developed language, and it's obviously immensely powerful, but we kind of shouldn't overestimate it.
[00:04:33]  We act in certain ways that are...
[00:04:36]  Amazing and miraculous long before our language mind even gets its pants on in the morning.
[00:04:45]  And why I say all of this is that AI is nothing if not language.
[00:04:51]  I mean, it is computer code.
[00:04:54]  And ultimately, if you want to just reduce it to like the most basic thing, it is still language.
[00:05:00]  It is a binary, a one or a zero.
[00:05:03]  Machine code.
[00:05:04]  The most basic kind of thing.
[00:05:06]  It is pure language.
[00:05:09]  What I am saying is that there's a kind of overestimation of language in these people who worry about like AI transcending itself or taking over the world or something like that.
[00:05:22]  It kind of can't think on some level.
[00:05:25]  Now, language matters.
[00:05:26]  Language affects us.
[00:05:28]  Language, our internal monologue is our way of rationalizing behavior.
[00:05:32]  It's also our way of kind of like It's a kind of superego.
[00:05:36]  You could say it kind of like directs us and so on.
[00:05:40]  But it also shouldn't be overestimated.
[00:05:44]  We're biology.
[00:05:46]  We have instincts.
[00:05:47]  There were men around before language.
[00:05:49]  We got on.
[00:05:52]  We built campfires and hunted shit and had sex and reproduced and raised children and did a lot of stuff.
[00:06:01]  You know?
[00:06:02]  None of that is possibly available in the computer.
[00:06:06]  The computer is pure code.
[00:06:08]  So this notion that it's anything other than some logical thing and that it's going to be able to think for itself or overcome itself, I just find ridiculous.
[00:06:27]  And it's just based on a fundamental...