From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Mon Dec 16 2002 - 09:33:16 MST
On Mon, 16 Dec 2002, Anders Sandberg wrote:
[snip]
> still think it is better to look at the here-and-now, since we will have
> to do without Sasha for many many years to come even if supertech comes
> around.
Agreed to some extent (I can look forward to something we might have
in 20-50 years time since I might still be alive [without cryonics]
during that time period).
> If we just have to base our emotional handling of loss by the
> invocation of hoped for technology, we are no better off than someone
> invoking divinities to do it.
Here I disagree. "Invoking divinities" involves "magic physics" (and
I'm sure you know how much I dislike that concept). On the other hand
recreating a derivation of Sasha I can find emotionally satisfying
(or creatively productive) seems not unreasonable given my current
knowledge base. (Mind you the whole concept of manipulating emotions
is an open discussion given my recent experiences with SSRIs, but that
is a very different topic). To my mind Sasha II is definitely worth
recreating and the question becomes how close we can get him
to Sasha I. Furthermore, the essential question is what one
might do *now* to make it easier to recreate Max II, Natasha II,
Greg II, etc. (I'm simply listing ExI board members here not
to exclude anyone on the list).
I think in essence I'm asking the question of how much information
does one need to retain to recreate a reasonable facsimile?
As computing capacity increases, the amount of information required
decreases -- provided one still has people alive who can verify
that that is/is-not a reasonable recreation of Sasha, Ted Williams, etc.
(Because the most information of whether it is a reasonable recreation
is held in human brains.)
But at some point it may be reasonable to consider the recreation
of an individual like George Washington based on historic documentation
alone. But for an assistant to G.W. for whom there is very little
information available a recreation would be much less accurate.
[big snip]
> That means it belongs to the
> 10^-9 fraction of state space (2^10^16 states or so) closest to me right
> now. That is nearly 2^10^16 states (the division hardly changes
> anything), and the 6e11 bits of information I might leave behind is
> enough to constrain the model to be within this cluster.
Everyone should tip their hat to Anders -- this gives us (and me particularly)
something to think about. I'm not sure I'm best at the "creation" of the
numbers -- but I'm well able to think about the numbers from a critical
perspective. I'm not sure if I agree with the numbers as presented --
it will require some serious critical analysis.
But this is the extropian list at its best -- speculation, data and evaluation.
It is unfortunate that some of the discussion topics cannot more easily be herded
into this realm.
Robert
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:58:46 MST