From: Brian Atkins (brian@posthuman.com)
Date: Sat Mar 24 2001 - 19:20:52 MST
Ben Goertzel wrote:
>
> > Violence is not a anthropomorphic term. If a sentient practices
> > physical destructiveness against another sentient that is violence
> > regardless of what kind of being the sentient is.
>
> But Samantha, the notion of "physical destructiveness" is itself
> anthropomorphic.
Naw
>
> In what sense is deleting a program from RAM or disk "physically
> destructive"?
>
> No physical object is being destroyed.
If I use some nanotech to eat your computing substrate that is destructive.
Even swiping a magnet over a hard drive could be considered physical
destruction, or an EMP through a chip.
>
> It seems to me that, potentially, for software minds there is less of a
> distinction between mind and body than for physically-embodied minds. (And,
> as an aside there is also less of a distinction between self and other,
> potentially (merging of minds becomes much easier).) Many aspects of the
> concept of physical destructiveness as we conceive it, will not apply in
> this context.
I disagree since obviously even post-Singulary you have to run your mind
on some kind of substrate. Whether it is distributed, backed-up, or even
"pure energy" ala Star Trek it still can be attacked using physical means.
-- Brian Atkins Director, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence http://www.intelligence.org/
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