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Comment by cbrun | Hacker News Reader

Respectfully disagree. Again, I'm not suggesting SD will solve all problems. Big data is critical and will remain so. However, using a combination of SD and real data will make AI algorithms more robust than using big data alone. I do agree that the world is messy and it's hard to recreate the chaos and weirdness of the world. However, to think that at some point we won't be able to completely mimic the real world and all the variations out there is strange. Re: your example, its actually pretty easy to span millions of humans based on ethnicity, age, body mass, etc. It's just a matter of time until this problem gets solved.

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> However, to think that at some point we won't be able to completely mimic the real world and all the variations out there is strange.

Why? I think it's strange to believe the opposite: that something as simple as a computer program designed by something as simple as the human mind definitely should be able to adequately simulate the complexity of the real world.

Really? I think if we were to bring back our close ancestors (4-5 generations away) they'd look at our world like we see Harry Potter's: pure magic. I mean flying metal birds, fire that instantly turns on and off, machine that move around like ghosts, small boxes that can talk back, musicians on demand in a box? I think you get my point, you're selling humanity short. There's no limit to human ingenuity and there's a reason Elon Musk still doubts we're living in a simulation.

There's a massive difference between 'develop technologies which are indistinguishable from magic to people who don't know how they work' and 'completely simulate the informational complexity of the world using the human minds and computers with comparatively limited information processing capabilities.'

I'm not sure the second is even a logical possibility, never mind a practical one.

Dude, if you're referencing information theory you clearly don't understand how to create tech. Obviously they're not trying to simulate the universe accurately lol. Simulating the real world for specific use-cases to solve computer vision for practical applications is super interesting. If they have customers, makes sense.

That's assuming human minds and computers won't exponentially increase their processing capabilities. Moore's law disproves the later and I hope Neuralink or some other crazy tech company will disprove the former. That's pretty much the hope of all transhumanists.

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