From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Feb 21 2000 - 23:45:28 MST
hal@finney.org wrote:
>
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky, <sentience@pobox.com>, writes:
> > I see myself taking the hand of my friendly grown-up
> > seed-AI-become-Power and walking directly into the land of
> > superintelligence, discarding or epiphenomenalizing any parts of myself
> > that turn out to be unnecessary.
>
> If we assume that the resulting being is incomprehensibly different
> from what you are today, then what is the point? Why not just kill
> yourself? What is it that you hope to preserve or gain by going through
> a transformation more thorough than death?
I dunno. Ask me on the other side. That's sort of the point, isn't it?
I don't know "what there is to gain" because I'm *here*. Insofar as
Neanderthals and apes didn't know what there was to gain either, the
fact doesn't particularly disturb me. You never know what the next step
is, but going on past history, it seems like a reasonable bet that
there's something there, even if from our perspective it looks like
taking a blind step into an abyss.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/beyond.html
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