“Mechanisms too simple for humans to design” by Malmesbury

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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