From: Eliezer Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Wed Jan 22 1997 - 11:33:42 MST
[Lyle:]
> In other words, *speed* of thought has very little to do with it.
> If you speed up somebody's thought processes but leave his ontology
> the same, he will just miss the point a hundred times faster.
Two points: First, my own specialty, Algernon's Law, does not speed up
thinking, but indeed alters the ontology. Second, computer uploading
would simply give you several million objective years in which to alter
yourself and upgrade your ontology. Third, I am not aware of any human
philosopher who has spent a million years thinking about *anything*;
maybe we would miss the point the first time around, or even the first
ten times around, but given enough time we *would* eventually get the
point. Even a normal human who lived for a few trillion years could
probably figure out most of the Secrets of The Universe.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/singularity.html
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/algernon.html
Disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.
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