From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sat Oct 28 2000 - 15:27:32 MDT
Eugene Leitl wrote:
>
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky writes:
>
> > absolute safety for we citizens is as simple as a protected memory partition.
>
> Not only logically (memory doesn't have to be globally addressable,
> nor is it strictly memory), physically, too. The habitat hardware
> occupies physical space, it can be attacked, and taken out. Virtual
> navel gazing is not sustainable.
That is opinion, not fact and a biased strawman at that. It might be
that some form of what you might call "navel gazing" yields the most
profound ability to manipulate physical reality all the way down to
vacuum flux. If reality turns out to be more informational than
material/physical then some beings or even entire species may find the
only meaningful game to be pretty internal rather than what we would
call external. There is no need to make provincial judgements about
such at this point of relatively little knowledge and understanding.
>
> > And - this is the controversial part - we're far too smart to spend our days
> > trying to embarass each other socially and we have nothing to lose; we could
>
> Assuming there are others, you have to interact with them in a mature
> society, hence requiring extensive representation machinery. I don't
> see the little intrigues vanish, quite the opposite. What do you do,
> if there's nothing more to build (you've used up all the atoms),
> nowhere to go (we've colonized everything's there to colonize) and
> nothing more to discover (physics has ended)? Why, you socialize. Deal
> in scarce things. Bits are cheap, unless specifically structured.
>
I think we have more freedom to rewrite who we are and what "we" means
than that or very soon will have. Used up all the atoms? Create more!
Socializing is actually pretty boring eventually as it becomes too
boringly predictable if the agents involved stop changing.
- samantha
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