From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sun Mar 19 2000 - 08:09:15 MST
On Sat, 18 Mar 2000, Robert Owen wrote:
> Since both of your questions, Robert, are among my top ten, would
> it be asking too much for you to list your other eight?
1) Are the sources of the gravitational microlensing observations
universally distributed around our galaxy and are they engineered
objects? [a subset of What is the Missing Mass?].
2) What are the speed-limits to self-replication?
3) What are the speed-limits to evolution?
4) How many really useful "biochemistries" (i.e. chemical systems
that can support self-replicating self-assembling machines)
are there and which of those can arise without conscious
intervention? [A variant of "How big is the phase-space for life?"]
5) Are there feasible ways of creating alterverses, particularly
those where you have rigged the fundamental physical laws and
constants? [Interesting because I'm pretty sure we are doomed
if all the baryonic matter decays and universe-tunneling is
disallowed.]
6) What is the probability that an amoral, self-evolving, self-replicating
AI/Alife can develop and "breakout" by accident? { After all, the
computers and the net *are* an environmental niche... }
8) What is the molecular size to which a human body must be reduced
that molecular nanotechnology cannot reassemble you? [At some
point you end up with too many 3D pieces that look identical, with
too little positional information, to reassemble Humpty Dumpty.]
7) What do SIs think about over trillions of years?
9) What are the optimal computing architecures for what SIs think about?
And number 10, on RBs Top-Ten-List is:
10) Am I going to make it?
[Because if Robin is right about the spoils going to the first, *or*
Eliezer is successful in creating a fundamentally different AI, *or*
the luddites rise up and drive us back a century or more,
*or* *or* *or*... my feeling is that the odds aren't good. But(!),
arriving is not so important as having an enjoyable journey.]
But thats just this morning. Ask on another day and you may get
a different set. Sorry, no questions about philosophy, morality,
etc. While I have those too, I probably need a different environment
(not staring at a wall of technical books) to raise them to the
level of consciousness.
: Caesar Who is it in the press that calls on me?
: I hear a tongue shriller than all the music
: Cry "Caesar!" Speak. Caesar is turned to hear.
:
: Soothsayer Beware the ides of March.
:
: Caesar What man is that?
:
: Brutus A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.
:
: Caesar Set him before me; let me see his face.
:
: Cassius Fellow, come from the throng; look upon Caesar.
:
: Caesar What say'st thou to me now? Speak once again.
:
: Soothsayer Beware the ides of March.
:
: Caesar He is a dreamer. Let us leave him. Pass.
:
: (Julius Caesar 1.2.15-24)
Robert
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