11/16/2023 0 Comments Being meta definition![]() If an AI uses a factory to manufacture better parts for some machines in the factory, then it is a recursively factory-improving AI. The word "self" is there to distinguish it from AIs that recursively improve something else. I think it would be fair to say that these functions are also self-referential, but they don't merely reference themselves, they in some sense actively use themselves, and they also rarely use the same instance of themselves otherwise the recursion would not terminate, and there would be an infinite loop or cycle of some kind.Ī recursively self-improving AI is an AI that uses itself to make another, improved instance of itself. It is structures like these that give rise to proof by induction, which shares the mind-bendy nature of the other concepts in this post. Math also has recursive functions, where the value of a function for some inputs is defined in terms of the same function at other inputs. Note the token factorial appearing twice. For example, here's the classic recursive factorial function defined in python. The most frequent context in which I've heard this is recursive functions, which call themselves somewhere inside their function definition. X is recursive if it somehow "uses" an instance of itself. Specifying intelligent systems which can conceptualize themselves is an active area of research. AIXI has no concept of itself, and thus cannot entertain hypotheses or plans involving itself. Applying the concept has led to the discovery of many paradoxes which themselves have led to whole branches of mathematics.Įmbedded agency is closely related to self-reference. (An obligatory example is that this sentence references itself, and so does this post.) However that simplicity belies its usefulness. X is self-referential if X refers to itself. This one is really easy to remember because it's just two separate words whose meanings are clearer. It is the trendiness of this word that gave me the idea for this post I have heard people use "meta" to mean every other word listed here! I personally care a lot about sorting concepts correctly, so years ago I installed a TAP where the trigger is "I hear or use the word meta" and the action is "ask myself if this is an X about X". Unknown unknowns are meta-epistemological. Metaprogramming is code that modifies other code (and is therefore programming about programming) and metamathematics proves theorems about whole axiomatic systems (and is thus math about math). Metadata, like a timestamp or file size, is data about data. If you take the conversation meta, then you start talking about conversations. In its modern usage, a meta-X is an X about X. The fact that it now has other meanings in narrow contexts, paired with the fact that its most common meaning is somewhat esoteric, means that it's often used incorrectly. This initially meant "the book after the book about physics", but people apparently mistakenly inferred the meaning of meta from the contents of the book instead. ![]() It originally was (and still is) a greek prefix meaning something like "after", and there happened to be a chapter of a book of Aristotle named "Metaphysics". It started out as a technical term, but has become somewhat common in everyday use. The word "meta" has a somewhat strange and meandering history. I hope this guide is helpful in clarifying any latent confusions that people may have had! Summary X is _ But I am something of a conceptual prescriptivist, in the sense that I think reality has joints to be carved I think all of the below words refer to concepts that are clearly distinct and useful, and deserve their own words. I'm not a linguistic prescriptivist, so I'm not intending to declare that these words should mean exactly these things for the rest of time. Sometimes it's for play and puzzles, and sometimes it's the crux of an astounding theorem. But they're also just really fun! Another thing that unites them is that uses of them feel somehow tricky or clever. These ideas are fairly important if you're going to try to understand similarly "up there" domains like mathematics, computer science, or AI. This also makes them unusually easy to confuse. What makes them related is that they're all pretty abstracted they all feel sort of "up there". This post is intended to be a guide on the meaning of and distinction between several related concepts.
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