From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Oct 23 2000 - 23:41:53 MDT
Zero Powers wrote:
>
> "Your dollars accomplish around a hundred times as much"??? Really?
[snip]
> Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking Exi or agreeing with Ian. But I think
> your comments might be just as much an overstatement as his post was.
Hey, get with the Singularity. Billions of lives are at stake here. If the
ExI has a total pre-Singularity lifetime budget of, say, $1M (sadly, probably
a huge overestimate) and it contributes a hundredth of one percent to the
"win" - assuming we win - then that's the equivalent of, say, six lives for
ten dollars. Alternatively, if the existence of ExI means the Singularity
happens four days sooner, then that's also the equivalent of six lives for ten
dollars. Can the Red Cross match that? I really don't think so. I think
they'd be hard put to save another six lives with another thousand dollars.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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