From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Tue Jun 29 1999 - 17:25:14 MDT
Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> Individuality (Individual-Borg): is your ego and its
> persistence paramount, or are you unafraid of dissolving it
> into a borganic nirvana?
This divide confuses a personal preference for individuality with
persistence of mortal priorities. I'd like to be an individual -
telepathic, but individual - but that doesn't mean my persistence is "paramount".
> Enhancement level (Natural - Artificial): How far are you
> willing to go when modifying yourself?
Anyone who's a transhumanist wants to modify themselves. I'd augment
this with "Augment: Body-Mind - which do you want to augment?"
Questions like "Would you like to be able to do the stuff seen in _The
Matrix_?" and "Would you like to be able to download the Internet into
long-term memory?"
> Rationality (Bottom up - Top down): How willing are you to
> accept emotional, intuitive and other pre-rational influences
> on your thinking, or should it be controlled and logical?
Well, you have to be able to put in a * for "I don't care" or "I think
this distinction is falsified by cognitive science." I'd have no
problem whatsoever with leaving this off the list entirely. (There is
no distinction, not in my AI, not in humans. "Logic" is built from
intuitions, "intuitions" are built from logic. There are only
problem-solving methods.)
--
Here are other dimensions you might break it into, although I have the
feeling that all of this stuff is so intertwined...
Goals (complex dimension): Which of these is most important to you:
Truth, Intelligence, Joy, God, Freedom, Law.
Individuality (Singleton - Collective): How much does the idea
of telepathy appeal to you? How important is maintaining
continuity with your mortal self?
Morality (Arbitrary - Externalist): To what degree are you willing
to sacrifice your mortal quirks and priorities if it turns out to
be the logically correct thing to do?
Augmentation (Body - Mind): Which is more important to you:
Being able to explore the galaxy without a spaceship, or being
able to hold the whole Internet in your short-term memory?
> BATEF - The Borg Collective
> IATEF - Power
I object to this. (1) The Borg are much less impressive than Vingean
Powers, which seems a bit prejudiced towards B over I. (2) In _AFUTD_,
there are some hints that Powers are BATEF - a race becomes a single
Power; "Old One's minds are rapidly drifting towards changes that will..."
I would actually say:
BATEF: Vingean Power (i.e. Old One from AFUTD)
IATEF: Jupiter Brain (i.e. Solid State Entity from Neverness)
BATEC: Borg Collective
Why "C" over "F"? Because while the Borg may incorporate any other
technology they find, they don't seem to improve their own technology at
all - not compared to a Power or a Brain, anyway. Using the "Goals",
"Morality", and "Augment" dimensions, we have a better distinction:
*A*EFI*M: Vingean Power
IA*EFI*M: Jupiter Brain
BATEFLAB: Borg Collective
I would be:
IA*EFIEM
Maybe these are too many dimensions. Anyone want to take a shot at
cutting them down?
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
Running on BeOS Typing in Dvorak Programming with Patterns
Voting for Libertarians Heading for Singularity There Is A Better Way
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