Ok, I’m done you’ve continued to describe a system so simplistic as to be unrealistic. Imagine a place as population dense as a city functioning the way you describe. Its nonsense! Humans cannot exist in our current numbers anywhere near your idealistic ramblings. I sincerely hope you put in the time to learn more about how the world actually functions

Ok, good. Seems like we agree on a lot of things. However, there are some misconceptions I want to clear up about my position and my reasoning behind it.

First, we seem to be running on different definitions for both corporations/businesses and governments. I’ll just include the definitions I’m using under the spoiler tag.

First of all, both corporations and governments are just “made-up human ideas” so that’s a meaningless phrase. They are simply 2 examples of how humans choose to organize themselves to accomplish goals that a single person cannot, something you’ve already admitted is necessary “I and some of my goodly companions”. They are, I would argue (but I’m not a social scientist so my knowledge is limited), the 2 most powerful entities/systems humans have. The power they wield comes from collective societal agreement which has been enshrined in some legal code (including money in this as it’s only worth what society agrees it’s worth).

• If a government in your society doesn’t exist what is the agreed upon legal code? (side note, I don’t even want to imagine what a code of law would look like if it were devised by a for profit company)
• can you guarantee everyone in your society, which you’ve argued can be over 250 people, will agree on a singular legal code without some kind of government with a legislative branch?
• How do they even go about figuring out the legal code without some organization?
• If they do agree on a legal code, who are the people spending time on maintaining and updating the code and how are they paid?

For the sake of argument lets say your society does have a legal code and has found some way to fund, without taxes, people to maintain that code. Let’s also say that you have caught a business trying to adulterate their product using unsafe materials but the spokesperson for the corporation says you have no proof and uses their marketing department to spin the story in their favor.

• How do you adjudicate this issue in your society? There’s no judicial branch of government.

My point being that any large group of people would need some kind of system to handle each of these aspects of society; law, taxes (funding), public services. It doesn’t have to look like our current governments but you need a set of systems to organize and pay for things. That’s not even getting into the whole issue of providing services to impoverished areas of the society, something a for profit company would not do except for positive PR and that would be woefully insufficient.

So, establishing that we do need some kind of entity/system to organize large groups of people that leaves us with 2 options; corporations or governments. I am of the belief that individual potential corruption is shaped like a normal distribution (bell curve) where the majority of people can be corrupted by greed and power but there are a small portion who are incorruptible.

If that is true and human corruption follows a bell curve we have to assume that whatever systems we have organizing society will eventually have people in the top positions who can be corrupted. That means that they will do everything they can to gain as much power and money as possible. The only way I know how to defend against this is through checks and balances on power.

In a corporate governed system this is supposed to be the “free market” where people only support companies they agree with. There are several problems with this view. Namely, there’s no way to stop monopolies or cartels from forming as there’s no further checks than consumer spending and people must spend money on necessities in order to live.

In a more traditional government system, let’s say a democracy, this is supposed to be the separation of powers into different branches. This still has weaknesses, namely demagogues, but I’d argue it’s far more robust than a purely free market system.

I am only going to respond to you once and I will only address the food issue because there’s other stuff I want to do with my evening than debate with someone so clearly firm in a position.

Are you familiar with the founding if the FDA in America? Its a very interesting story and if you’re open minded enough I’d highly suggest you read The Poison Squad. Before the FDA was created businesses were adulterating their food products with dangerous substances (something that has happened throughout history) in order to make more money. One example is they were adding formaldehyde to milk so it could sit on the shelf longer without smelling spoiled.

Businesses don’t care about producing a good product, they care about making more money and they will do that in every way they possibly can regardless of how many people it hurts or kills. You may say that “then those businesses will go out of business” but what if every possible option is doing it? What if you can’t tell just from using it? (Good example is asbestos in talc powder). Regulations save lives.

I’m not trying to say governments are perfect but at least we, as citizens, get more of a say in what it does than we do with any company. That goes 10x for mega corporations who own entire supply lines or industries. I understand you have a problem with government corruption, as everyone should, but to pretend that corporate corruption isn’t just as bad if not worse is fooling yourself.

Of course it isn’t complicated when you simplify everything down so much as to not even resemble real life. This type of civilization may work for groups of around 250 people but much bigger than that you need infrastructure and other large projects that require a lot of organization and funding. How do you propose those things are done without some form of government?

Just remembered another great book kind of bridging both topics that’s a great introduction to the field. Its called Models of the Mind by Grace Lindsay. It follows the history of computational/theoretical neuroscience and how we got to our modern understanding. Its written for a more general audience than Neuronal Dynamics and gives a great overview of the field.

Good question! Unfortunately, I haven’t found a good source myself. I’ve been trying to piece it together based on my theoretical/mathematical neuroscience background and self-study about transformer architectures. The problem is the point neurons in transformers don’t map to neurons in cortex. You have to instead look at the bigger functions that are being computed by each system.

The best single source to learn more about theoretical neuroscience is Neuronal Dynamics: From Single Neurons to Networks and Models of cognition. But its super math heavy. If you want to easier to digest videos I recommend Artem Kirsanov on youtube. For transformer architecture 3 Blue 1 Brown has a great series of videos about it on YouTube as well.

There are positives and negatives to using cells for computing. There are very complex systems that are responsible for making sure cells grow in the correct architecture and are supported property via blood vessels and glial cells. There is also definitely something to be said about glial cells themselves having a role in computation (whole other topic I won’t get into) not just neurons.

If were just looking at the input output relationship with neurons we can model it pretty well using neuromorphic hardware which is designed to respond like a neuron. There are still gaps but and there are scientists who believe it isn’t close enough.

Our current hardware can model neurons closely as well but its less efficient at it. The current AI models use point neurons which takes a lot less computing power but I don’t think they’re the way to AGI. Personally I’m a fan of the adaptive exponential leaky integrate and fire model or the spike response model

I’m just going to throw in my 2 cents on the AGI issue since I have a better understanding than average. I’m currently a computational neuroscience PhD student. I don’t work in theoretical neuroscience currently but that’s my hope after I finish my doctorate.

I don’t believe current transformer architectures are capable of AGI and all big AI companies just seem to be adding more parameters to established transformer architectures.

Seems like this is just an American thing. I have a German and an American account and couldn’t find the “About You” page on the German one. Man, I love GDPR