Eric Schwitzgebel

Professor of Philosophy, UC Riverside
belief, consciousness, AI, science fiction, moral psychology, classical Chinese philosophy, metaphysics....

[Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz]

Why Do I Want Myself in Particular to Exist in Ten Years?
I dearly hope to be alive in a decade -- but what if anything justifies this intensity of feeling?
(Reflections inspired by my recent cancer diagnosis.)
https://t.co/ieXqOwzM9I

[Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz]

Another interview of me on the possibility AI consciousness, with Cameron Berg (22 minutes).

(It's a couple of weeks old, but I missed the announcement in the flurry of activity around my cancer diagnosis.)

https://t.co/ChHkpbhJXv

[Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz]

@DavidLSmith_Iam Yes!

[Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz]

My first immunotherapy visit, in the company of Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. Science-fictional reading during a treatment that would have been science fiction ten years ago.

[Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz]

@pgodfreysmith (Oh, and not “wrong”, just incomplete. Very small scale structure could in principle explain the microstructure we see.)

[Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz]

An Argument for Vastly Many Observers Smaller than a Proton [abbreviated argument here; link to full-length blog post at end of thread]

Assumption 1: The universe is infinite.

Assumption 2: If the universe is infinite, complexity recurs at large scales.

1/3

[Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz]

@pgodfreysmith The only argument for smaller structure is the Copernican consideration, if we accept many larger structures permitting complexity and evolution. It’s not just “physics might be wrong”, but it’s definitely not strongly supported, requiring several intermediate theses to be true.

[Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz]

encouraged about the human spirit.
(If you missed the news earlier: newly discovered metastatic kidney cancer with multiple spine metastases and risk of fracture or cord collapse.) 2/2

[Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz]

Today has been my first day rolling solo around campus in a manual wheelchair. An unanticipated benefit: students kindly offering to hold doors, push me up slopes, and reach things down from shelves. A much-increased density of... let's call them micro-kindnesses. I feel 1/2

[Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz]

encouraged about the human spirit.
(If you missed the news earlier: newly discovered metastatic kidney cancer with multiple spine metastases and risk of fracture or cord collapse.) 2/2

[Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz]

@joshtasoff That seems plausible. That’s part of why I like to think of it as Copernican reasoning rather than generally anthropic. You can only be Copernican about very few things, each approximately as special as being at the center of the universe. This limits multiple comparisons.

[Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz]

@pgodfreysmith evidence and into pure speculation. On the large size, what reasons are there pro or con to expect simplicity at every scale larger than, say, 10^100000000000000 meters? Here we either shrug or think about what in general speaks in favor or against complexity scaling up.

[Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz]

@pgodfreysmith I wonder if you’re thinking of the same scales I’m thinking of. On the large side, far vaster than the observable universe, on the small side, far smaller than a Planck length. If we’re willing to zoom out infinitely, we get beyond the range of scope of direct empirical 1/2

[Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz]

@NaraEntreLineas I’ll have to ask Jacob about this one. Thanks for the heads up!

[Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz]

@NaraEntreLineas Perhaps that a limit on the information that we on the outside can extract? Compare the limited information that can be extracted from a black hole, despite possibly great complexity within.

[Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz]

@KipWerking It does. All of these self-locational principles are tricky, so we need to be careful with them.

[Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz]

Full-length blog post: https://t.co/H08akuw2Ot

[Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz]

Assumption 3: If the universe is infinite and complexity recurs at large scales, so do life and intelligence.

Assumption 4: Given Assumptions 1-3, it would be an un-Copernican coincidence if we happened to occupy the smallest scale hosting intelligent observers.

2/3

[Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz]

@kumarchanchal @anilkseth It’s also on ArXiv — no big differences

[Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz]

My recent book AI and Consciousness: A Skeptical Overview is free online today and tomorrow (through Oct 19, presumably UK time). I don't think the hard copy is available yet. Get it while it's free!

https://t.co/7z97c75Edr

[Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz]

@tylestelzig There’s an almost identical manuscript version on ArXiv. No substantive differences.