From: John K Clark (johnkclark@fastmail.fm)
Date: Mon Apr 28 2008 - 14:05:29 MDT
On Sun, 27 Apr 2008 "Stathis Papaioannou"
<stathisp@gmail.com> said:
> having complete access to your mind's source code,
> with the ability to rewrite first, second and
> higher order wants, would differ from drug addiction
For a drug addict using drugs IS a first level desire. The second level
desire is to want to want to give up drugs, but as that conflicts with
the first level nothing will come of it. Yes, you could rewrite your
source code if you wanted to and accomplish all sorts of wonderful
things, but as doing so would only make you more unhappy are you really
certain you’d want to? I’m not. What would be your reason for doing so?
So ET may exist and the only reason we haven’t met him is that’s he’s
too busy playing Grand Theft Auto and doesn’t have time to explore the
universe. It’s sort of interesting that 40 years ago many of the top
engineering graduates went to work for NASA to get men to the moon and
today many top engineering graduates make Star Trek video games about
exploring space. And maybe even Grand Theft Auto is too demanding for ET
so he just programmed himself to be endlessly fascinated with Tic Tack
Toe.
I know I sound pessimistic but I’m really not, I’m an optimistic person,
I’m just exploring a worst case scenario. I’m probably full of shit, I
certainly hope so, but sometimes late at night I wonder.
John K Clark
-- John K Clark johnkclark@fastmail.fm -- http://www.fastmail.fm - One of many happy users: http://www.fastmail.fm/docs/quotes.html
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