>From: "Lee Corbin" <lcorbin@tsoft.com>
>Eliezer writes
>
> > I think the material world is inherently neutral, which in some ways is
> > almost as bad as active hostility. I think that a lot of the problem
>can
> > be ameliorated by putting at least one layer of abstraction between
> > yourself and physical reality.
>I had been supposing that there already were levels of implementation
>(or abstraction) between me and the physical world. I see my body
>as just a device that allows my actual living to take place; that's
>why I look forward to an upgrade to distributed hardware.
There is definitely a "level of abstraction" between you and the real world.
Our senses, as well as they enable are ambling through physical space,
only relate to our minds a poor semblance of what is really going on "out
there." There are sound and light wave frequencies well above (and below)
what we detect. There are things so large and so small that we cannot hope
to ever see them. Not to mention the fact that, compared with say a
bloodhound's, our sense of smell is almost useless.
This is one of the main reasons we continually find that the world does not
operate as our "common sense" would expect. The level of abstraction is so
great that we can only figure out how the world really works by
interpolating through the code of mathematics.
-Zero
"I'm a seeker too. But my dreams aren't like yours. I can't help thinking
that somewhere in the universe there has to be something better than man.
Has to be." -- George Taylor _Planet of the Apes_ (1968)
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:12 MDT