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Comment by emtel | Hacker News Reader

The "Einstein can't get a cat into a carrier even though he is smarter" is just a hilariously bad argument. All cat owners can get their cats into a carrier! And most cats don't want to get in, because they hate the vet! And it's almost entirely because the humans are smarter!

You can even get a literal tiger into a carrier, even though it can kill you easily. You just drug its food and wait till it passes out. This is because you are smarter than it, and know that tranquilizers exist and how to obtain them, which is a strategy that cats of any size are not even able to conceive of, and probably can't understand what happened after it's been done to them.

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Yeah the whole thing is strange. He does such a good job in the first bit outlining all the reasons for caution that I was intrigued to see what he had to say against it, but it's just one bad argument after another. Even Hawking's cat is bad. Make some money and pay someone to get the cat in the box.

I bet Schrödinger could get a cat into a box.

Yea, but getting out alive is the hard part.

Paying someone to physically force the cat in the carrier is missing the point. Compared to the cat, Hawking is a super intelligence. But all that intelligence isn't able to get him to speak cat and give the cat a reason to get inside the carrier of its own volition.

Who said anything about physically forcing the cat in the box? The point of Hawkings cat is is the lack of physical embodiment for AI. So get someone else to do it. Millions of people put cats in boxes without any force just fine. Or do you classify it as 'force' because it went beyond speaking? You can't actually speak to cats (unlike humans) so acting like anything more than words is brute force is strange.

Who was Hitler to most people ? Just a persuasive powerful voice on the radio, or words on a paper. So not even two way communication and yet he inspired armies that killed millions. Hawkings wouldn't even need to pay anyone. There would be plenty of people willing to get the cat in the box for Stephen Hawkings.

> You just drug its food and wait till it passes out.

Human zoo keepers are actually smarter than that. For months, they train the tiger to go into the carrier to get food. Then on transport day, they shut the door behind it. Unclear if this works for future transport situations.

There is a meme going around of a screenshot of a vet textbook: "Do not fight the cat. It has sharper claws, faster, and no code of ethics. Use your brain. Use drugs"

I... Think you completely missed the point, which is that each and every method you enumerated is a brute-force tactic.

How is drugging an animal's food a "brute force tactic"? What would qualify as a non-brute-force tactic in your mind?

Learning to speak cat and then reasoning with the cat, in cat-ese, to get into the carrier of its own volition.

There is no cat-ese. Cats do not have language.

Well now we're just ignoring the point for the sake of a semantics debate.

It's just a poor point. Cats are a bad analogy anyhow because there is no cat language. You can't actually speak to them or have a drawn out discussion. But you can with humans and many have inspired thousands or even millions to action doing just that, no super-intelligence required.

Still missing the forest for the trees.

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