“Mechanisms too simple for humans to design” by Malmesbury
Jan 24, 2025•29 min
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Episode description
Cross-posted from Telescopic Turnip
As we all know, humans are terrible at building butterflies. We can make a lot of objectively cool things like nuclear reactors and microchips, but we still can't create a proper artificial insect that flies, feeds, and lays eggs that turn into more butterflies. That seems like evidence that butterflies are incredibly complex machines – certainly more complex than a nuclear power facility.
Likewise, when you google "most complex object in the universe", the first result is usually not something invented by humans – rather, what people find the most impressive seems to be "the human brain".
As we are getting closer to building super-human AIs, people wonder what kind of unspeakable super-human inventions these machines will come up with. And, most of the time, the most terrifying technology people can think of is along the lines of "self-replicating autonomous nano-robots" – in other words [...]
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Outline:
(02:04) You are simpler than Microsoft Word™
(07:23) Blood for the Information Theory God
(12:54) The Barrier
(15:26) Implications for Pokémon (SPECULATIVE)
(17:44) Seeing like a 1.25 MB genome
(21:55) Mechanisms too simple for humans to design
(26:42) The future of non-human design
The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
The original text contained 5 images which were described by AI.
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First published:
January 22nd, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6hDvwJyrwLtxBLHWG/mechanisms-too-simple-for-humans-to-design
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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Images from the article:
As we all know, humans are terrible at building butterflies. We can make a lot of objectively cool things like nuclear reactors and microchips, but we still can't create a proper artificial insect that flies, feeds, and lays eggs that turn into more butterflies. That seems like evidence that butterflies are incredibly complex machines – certainly more complex than a nuclear power facility.
Likewise, when you google "most complex object in the universe", the first result is usually not something invented by humans – rather, what people find the most impressive seems to be "the human brain".
As we are getting closer to building super-human AIs, people wonder what kind of unspeakable super-human inventions these machines will come up with. And, most of the time, the most terrifying technology people can think of is along the lines of "self-replicating autonomous nano-robots" – in other words [...]
---
Outline:
(02:04) You are simpler than Microsoft Word™
(07:23) Blood for the Information Theory God
(12:54) The Barrier
(15:26) Implications for Pokémon (SPECULATIVE)
(17:44) Seeing like a 1.25 MB genome
(21:55) Mechanisms too simple for humans to design
(26:42) The future of non-human design
The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
The original text contained 5 images which were described by AI.
---
First published:
January 22nd, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6hDvwJyrwLtxBLHWG/mechanisms-too-simple-for-humans-to-design
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
---
Images from the article:
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