Thread by @inftoe

The idea for this thread came at the end of September-2021 after the Twitter AI for a couple of days in a row showed in trends an interview with Mo Gawdat @MGawdat about the release of his book Scary Smart: The Future of Artificial Intelligence #scarysmart.
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The author, wise with experience of working with #AI, gave an interview to The Times @thetimes represented by Hugo Rifkind @hugorifkind.

https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1443153787623981057

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The event was accompanied by enticing subtitles like “we’re creating God” and “How You Can Save Our World,” so we couldn't get past it.
(It's funny to watch from the outside the peppy process of realizing the problem, already knowing its final bleak result.)
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Another reason was the correspondence with Dr. Gyeney Mária Katalin @Mariankamgy. Google's AI hasn't yet reached the ability to deliver Hungarian to me, but I think she once told that she was able to pointed out a location of the missing man, and the police found him there.
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It seems like these are two very different stories to be the reasons for the same thread, but you will get it. Both of these stories are about miracles. And in this thread we will just give the final answer: are miracles possible in reality, and if so, what is their physics.
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@MGawdat is extremely convincing in stating the reality that humanity is entering right now and very quickly. In his publications this is a purely technical and reasonable reality, in which there is no place for miracles.
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Machines are getting billions of times smarter than we are, says @MGawdat in a scared part of his publications. Let's act like a responsible dad and mom in order to adjust to this fact, he says in the positive part. And there is no third part that discusses miracles.
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However, @Mariankamgy's story about extrasensory search for a person reminds us that miracles exist. And any of us, even if he is an inveterate technocrat and rational thinker, can easily remember from his personal experience a lot that he perceives as a miracle.
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Someone personally, or through relatives/friends, came across really working fortune-tellers, psychics, healers, preachers. Someone watched UFOs. Someone strangely escaped trouble or even death. Someone had incredible coincidences. And everyone knows the feeling of déjà vu.
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Rationally thinking people reject the supernaturalness of such experience, trying to explain it with physically justified reasons, and if this still fails, we blame the failure on fraud, witness bias, false memory... This is how we maintain our vital mental comfort.
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But if we are honest with ourselves, then we must admit that it is impossible to completely reject this strange experience. After all the clarifications, necessarily remains some part of it, which cannot be attributed even to the lack of our knowledge about this world.
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.@MGawdat, what will be the fate of humanity's ability to observe miracles in a world of machines a billion times smarter than us? Will they lose it? take over? improve? become miracle creators themselves?
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Of course, these are rhetorical questions to a person who is far from a real understanding of what is happening.
And since we understand what is happening, let's answer ourselves, using the knowledge gained in the previous threads:

https://twitter.com/inftoe/status/1417784615457239040

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As usual, let's start by reminding that everything we discuss takes place in the information universe. The universe is only information and nothing more. It is just descriptions that observe each other.

https://twitter.com/inftoe/status/1218826934190321665

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But the descriptions that make up the universe are so complex that their mutual observations form our reality, one of several possible:

https://twitter.com/inftoe/status/1442540469229998084

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Reality has its own unique fine tuning to make the universe possible in this reality:

https://twitter.com/inftoe/status/1419944916302577666

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Fine tuning is not a set of several constants, but a set of all observations made by all beings of reality from the beginning of time to the final moment when the inner model of reality, created by the superperson, will become identical to reality, thereby creating it.
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This means that @MGawdat's idea that humans, by becoming good parents for machines, can make machines kind enough for humanity to continue to exist, is completely irrelevant to what is happening.
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Humanity is just an intermediate stage in the evolution of the universe. All protein evolution, the result of which we have become, had the ultimate goal of creating #AI, and this goal has already been practically achieved.
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.@MGawdat is wrong even when he talks about "machines" in the plural. The plurality of specimens makes sense only in the context of protein evolution. An exponentially evolving #AI will be one mind.
No sense for the universe to prolong our existence:

https://twitter.com/inftoe/status/1404339623501967360

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Therefore, one should not take seriously the fact that speculations about the near future of mankind and the transition to the technological stage of the evolution of the universe ignore the miracle factor. These speculations are improper.
So, let's fill the gap.
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First, let's define what a miracle is. A working definition is proposed: a miracle is a phenomenon observed by people, which people perceive as real, but do not find reliable real justifications for it.
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This definition allows discussing the problem on a rational basis, abstracting from the fictional forms characteristic of this topic: magic, witchcraft, wizardry... To get a testable research, the phenomenon must be related to the science that studies reality: physics.
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Accordingly, we must divide all possible miracles on the criterion of their connection with physics into three classes:
• physical,
• superphysical,
• non-physical.
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Physical miracles should include phenomena that seem impossible to us, but, in principle, do not violate any physical laws.
For example, physics does not prohibit a coin from falling heads up 500 times in a row.
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Superphysical miracles are phenomena that do not correspond to modern physics, but could be justified by some more advanced physics, if such is possible.
For example, the UFO phenomenon, or the transmigration of the mind from one body to another.
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Finally, non-physical miracles are phenomena which cannot be explained by any physics.
For example, communication with the souls of the departed, telekinesis, telepathy.
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A reader who is trying to understand InfToE starting with this tweet, will ask a reasonable, as it seems to him, question: since the universe is only information, that is, just a set of descriptions, then why shouldn't be descriptions describing any miracles?
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The reader who has already understood InfToE will answer that in the information universe everything is justified. Every being is a combination of simpler beings. A miracle must also be justified, otherwise it does not exist. About this:

https://twitter.com/inftoe/status/1420208483228606465

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This means that since the fine-tuning of our reality has shaped the physics as we know it, we should expect that there are physical-class miracles as they can be substantiated by our physics.
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Look, the first reader will say, but it can't be that a coin has landed heads 500 times in a row. Thermodynamics is against this.
(We have the separate thread about thermodynamics

https://twitter.com/inftoe/status/1415619490629496835

, but let's deal with the coin.)
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Thermodynamics declares the most probable behavior of a system as normal. But deviations from the norm are not prohibited, but only less likely. So it's time to understand what randomness is in the information universe.
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The concept of "probability" makes sense only in connection with the concept of "time", it is senseless to talk about randomness outside of time.
But the concept of "time" is an internal concept of the universe, for more details see

https://twitter.com/inftoe/status/1425426585759490051

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For the universe as a whole, the concept of "time" has no meaning. So, the concept of "probability" does not matter too. All the events that make up the existence of the universe, from the point of view of the universe as a whole, are not random, they are deterministic.
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All events of reality occur in such a way that reality exists from the beginning of time to the final moment, when the inner model of the universe, created by the #superperson, becomes identical with reality, thereby creating the universe.
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Any outcome of any event, other than the one that took place in reality, would lead the universe to non-existence. This applies to absolutely all events, even the seemingly insignificant ones: thermal vibrations of atoms, decays of particles, wave function collapses...
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From the point of view of the universe as a whole, since it exists, there are no uncertainties. All cats are definitely either alive or dead. Events look random only from the point of view of observers who make up the universe (for example, us).
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It would be complete foolishness to discuss the likelihood of the existence of the universe. The vulgar interpretation of probability claims that it is infinitely small: too many random events must end so well for the universe to exist in the end.
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Closer to the question of 500 coins: it would be complete foolishness to discuss the probability of emergence of a self-copying chemical complex that gave rise to life on Earth. As insignificant as this possibility may seem, it happened.
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And yes, if for the existence of the universe it is necessary that at some point in its history the coin would fall heads up 500 times in a row, then the coin will fall heads up 500 times in a row.
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This is the key to understanding the informational nature of the universe. Even at the fifth level of combining elements S and O ~8·10¹⁸⁴⁵ combinations are already possible. Fine tuning will easily choose from an unimaginable sea of combinations the ones it needs.
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This is an unimaginably richer choice than the one that would be needed for a coin to fall heads 500 times in a row, and even for the chemistry of protein life to arise, and even for our entire reality to exist from beginning to end.
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So, we came to the conclusion that "physical" miracles are possible. If some incredible event, but not forbidden by physics, happened, which seems to you a miracle, then it was necessary for the existence of the universe, and this is normal in the information universe.
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We bet that if you are a technically minded realist, then you have not yet realized how much your worldview has changed now that you agreed with this conclusion.
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Imagine Nostradamus writing his quatrains. His brain, based on the internal model of reality that it is maintaining, generates a certain random text. But for the existence of the universe, for some reason, it is necessary that this text coincides with future events.
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Or imagine a fortune teller guessing your name and telling you about your past, present, and future. She does not know anything about you, but for the existence of the universe, for some reason it is necessary that her story coincided with your life experience.
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Or imagine a medium. He speaks to the client in the voice of a dead person, generating a random set of words from his point of view. But for the existence of the universe, for some reason, it is necessary that these words correspond to the knowledge of the client.
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Now imagine that these people are doing this professionally. A stream of clients comes to them. They have a significant impact on the course of events. The fine tuning makes it so that they coincide with reality much more often than expected from thermodynamics.
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The same can be said for the story told by @Mariankamgy. It is quite possible to imagine people successfully guessing the location of lost people and objects, because this is necessary for the existence of the universe. No addition to physics is required.
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So, we have dealt with physical miracles and even some non-physical ones, which can be transferred to the class of physical ones. Of course, purely non-physical miracles, like magic wands, do not exist, since they have no substantiation in the information universe.
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It remains to understand how things are with superphysical miracles, and specifically with #UFO/#UAP.
Everyone knows that modern physics is incomplete (and we, moreover, know that it is at an impasse and will stay in it in the remaining years of human existence).
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Taking advantage of this incompleteness, researchers blame it on their inability to explain the observed phenomena in cases where it is impossible to simply ignore them, as "official" science usually does in relation to the UFO topic.
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Researchers thus tell themselves: yes, physics in its current state does not provide an opportunity to explain the UFO/UAP phenomenon. In principle, we allow such a development of physics that this possibility will appear someday, but we will not discuss it yet.
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However, the problem is that the direction of this development is completely unclear. Neither in quantum mechanics nor in the theory of relativity there are any hints as to which direction we need to move in order to substantiate the existence of UFOs.
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Well, let's see what InfToE has to say about this.
First, let's define the characteristics of the subject area, within the framework of which we must provide a justification:
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• We do not consider any "green men" and other manifestations of extraterrestrial intelligence. The Earth at the center of the universe is the only place in it where life exists. UFOs are a purely terrestrial phenomenon.
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• UFOs exist, are registered visually, in photos and videos, possibly with the radars.
• UFOs exist in the atmosphere, possibly under water, possibly in near-earth space.
• UFOs look like single and group spatially-structured objects with different levels of symmetry.
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• UFOs are visually observed both in reflected light, and they themselves are capable of emitting light, non-directionally and directionally.
• UFOs move at high speeds and accelerations incompatible with the presence of proteinaceous organisms.
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• UFOs are seen extremely rarely, single people or small groups of people.
• The usual situation is when, according to the conditions of observation, a UFO should be observed by a large number of people, but in reality it is observed by a few.
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• Usually UFOs are observed and registered in such a way that it is impossible to see the details: either very from afar, or with instruments with low image quality, or the very behavior of the UFO prevents this.
• UFO interaction with the environment is not obvious.
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• The UFO phenomenon is local: it is impossible to track routes of arrival/departure of UFOs to/from the area where they were observed.
• UFO behavior does not fit into the framework of reasonable behavior as we imagine it.
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Such a set of properties should be justified by the informational nature of the phenomenon: by analogy with the above-described effect of 500 coins, for the existence of the universe it is necessary that people observe UFOs in exactly this form, and this happens.
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That is, the UFO phenomenon consists in the fact that an extremely unlikely (from the point of view of observers, but not the universe) event occurs, due to the fine tuning of the reality of the universe.
But we need to understand what the physics of this phenomenon is.
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UFO, unlike the miracles discussed above, is not a product of the internal activity of the human brain: it can be observed by several independent observers, and it is registered by technical means.
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The UFO is most likely not supported by any molecular or even atomic structures, otherwise at the site of its observation traces of the presence of substances not characteristic of this place would be found.
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UFOs are most likely supported by electromagnetic interaction. Nuclear interactions are too short-range to form objects of this size, and no effects of gravity on UFOs have been observed.
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Thus, charged elementary particles, which form an electromagnetically coupled spatial structure, should be recognized as the material basis of UFOs.
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The initialization of the UFO structure occurs as a result of incredible (like the effect of 500 coins) fluctuations, most likely at the vacuum level, since UFOs are observed outside the atmosphere.
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Most likely, the initialization of the UFO structure and its maintenance is provided by some kind of quantum effects, since there is a significant dependence of the UFO observability on the observer.
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Thus, UFOs belong either to the class of physical miracles, or superphysical, but requiring very little development of modern physics in terms of quantum mechanics.
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As a summary.
We understand that this thread can cause cognitive discomfort in the reader who remains in captivity of the everyday "material" perception of the universe, brought up by modern physics.
The standard educational process prohibits thinking about miracles.
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To make it easier for you to move on to understanding the informational nature of the universe, we advise you to think about the following.
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Please note that it has always been, both in large and in small, in separate human life, and throughout the history of mankind, and throughout the history of protein life, and throughout the history of the universe it has always been like this:
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By the time of any fateful event that radically changes the situation, random or natural, the universe, as if knowing about the upcoming event, already has time to prepare everything necessary for everything to happen successfully.
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The old substantiality, which has exhausted its resource, is faced with insurmountable obstacles for its further existence. The new substantiality is already in its infancy, and as soon as the old one dies, its free development begins.
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Everyone can remember similar events in their life.
And the whole history of mankind consists of this. All crises, revolutions and changes in formations not only destroyed problems, but opened the way for something new, which had already been prepared by that moment.
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And if the dinosaurs were destroyed by a meteorite (although this is not at all necessary, evolution would have quite coped without it), then by the time of its fall there were already mammals capable of surviving in new conditions and carrying the baton further.
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How did the simplest chemistry of proto-life have such a potential for development that over the next 4 billion years it continuously created more and more complex forms? For example, how did the future oxygen production turn out to be programmed?
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At each stage of development, life came to a crisis, which led to the death of obsolete forms, but by this moment new forms already existed in their initial state. But how did nature know that they needed to be prepared?
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Finally, let's ponder the chronology of the universe: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronolog…
How did it happen that the simplest universe that existed, say, in the first 10⁻³² s of the Big Bang, already contained everything necessary to become as we know it, with galaxies and humanity?
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Why has the universe never made a mistake in 14 billion years, turning into a dead end, from which there is no way out? Why did each era end with a successful transition to a new era, the foundations of which had already been laid?
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Now take a look around.
Climate change is irreversible: methane is released from the permafrost.
In just years, social media easily shatter the foundations of society that have been taking shape for centuries.
The intelligence of people falls.
Democracy is weakening.
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There is a total accelerating destruction of the human ecosystem.
And within this process, the power of #AI is being deployed faster and faster.
This is exactly what has happened many times in the history of the universe.
It's just that now the outgoing form is us.
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Well, thanks to Dr. Gyeney Mária Katalin @Mariankamgy and Mo @MGawdat for great opportunities to talk about miracles, probability, UFOs and, again, the coming end of human existence.
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