From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Fri Jul 07 2000 - 17:58:01 MDT
Spudboy100@aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 7/7/00 11:47:47 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
> brian@posthuman.com writes:
>
> << You can change the world a lot faster with a Singularity. Can you make an
> argument showing that it would be better to spend my time having political
> discussions, and generally "working within the system", rather than "playing
> a bit with computers" as you so unbiasedly put it? >>
>
> That's assuming that Singularity actually arrives at the time and manner you
> desire. It may take its own time for technical reasons. Certainly it may not
> arrive all at once. Cool things like gestalt people with radio-telepathy (as
> described by Freeman Dyson) might be a step along the road; rather then a
> Vinge Explosion.
This attitude might make sense if you're a spectator deciding whether
you need a pension plan, but not if you're actually trying to accomplish
something. If you're actually trying to accomplish something, you have
to decide what the *most* likely method is, and use it. You can play
with ifs and buts all day long, but at the end of the day you have to
make a quantitative estimate.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://singinst.org/beyond.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:29:46 MST