From: Michael Wiik (mwiik@messagenet.com)
Date: Tue Jun 25 2002 - 14:27:42 MDT
"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience@pobox.com> wrote:
> Your world doesn't seem to allow for any fun whatsoever post-Singularity.
> Every computing cycle in existence is devoted to plotting how to get a lock
> on every available resource that opens up, murder any entity that leaves an
> opening, and prevent oneself from being murdered. Anyone who devotes less
> than every available computing cycle quickly falls off the wagon and is
> murdered. There's no possibility of having enough thought to spare even to
> cherish a few uploads inside you. Frankly I'm not sure I see much pragmatic
> difference between a post-Singularity world like this and a world of
> unintelligent grey goo.
Bingo. Hence my previous suggestion (years ago) that all hyperadvanced
entities flee from each other at light speeds, leaving mines behind and
firing weapons ahead. However, some good things result from the above
thesis: a) we probably won't be tortured thru eternity to satisfy some
dark extropian-like mind experiment, since a quick death uses less
resources, and b) we should probably think on what a singularity will
signal to already existing transcendent entities; it'd be a shame to
transcend only to be immediately snuffed out.
Since earth hasn't already been destroyed, we can think such entities
are altruistic, or (in conflict with the idea of leaving mines behind),
need to arrange a convincing 'accident' for earth's destruction lest
their trail be discovered via their use of weapons. (Maybe this has
already happened, an extremely slight course correction for a more
primitive entity's weapon launched millenia ago; it may already be on
the way).
It would indeed be ironic if luddites or Bill Joy saved us: not from
ourselves (I personally think humans can handle it) but from entities
who may not be hostile just coldly logical.
I once played SimEarth with the goal of delaying the singularity as long
as possible. I got a millenia of an extremely peaceful and prosperous
earth, 20-hour work weeks (the game's minimum), plenty of 'fun' in terms
of (the game's) media entertainment for the sim-populace. I could
imagine worse fates... such as the same game played to rush to
singularity: inside 100 years from computer age, with 80-hour work
weeks, constant war and ecological destruction, (even the oceans boiled
off at one point), and (of course) massive die-offs...
Thanks,
-Mike
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