From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Wed Sep 11 2002 - 12:47:57 MDT
Anders Sandberg wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 11, 2002 at 11:41:15AM -0400, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>
>>I object to this proposed amendment as I'm not sure that difference,
>>for the sake of difference, is always rational. There are rare
>>occassions when does happen to be rational. But usually "difference
>>for the sake of difference", without attention to whether it's a
>>good difference or a bad difference, is the aimless product of
>>aimless rebellion.
>
> In many situations, problem solving produces better solutions
> when you have a group of diverse problem solvers than when you
> have a group of similar problem solvers.
That's one of those rare occasions. Another example is what seems to me
like a likely moral principle of "increasing the nonduplicated complexity
of the universe", i.e., running exactly the same happy sentient process on
two separate occasions is less desirable than running two different happy
sentient processes.
However neither of these principles apply to diversity in such things as
race, body type, and dress code. In such cases it doesn't make sense to
pay attention one way or the other. What's needed is not a diverse
mixture of Plain-Belly Sneetches and Star-Belly Sneetches but rather
something more interesting to pay attention to, such as CompSci-PhD
Sneetches and CogSci-PhD Sneetches.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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