From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Thu Jun 07 2001 - 23:33:53 MDT
Damien Broderick wrote:
>
> Yes, of course you used it ironically, or at any rate deflatingly--*to
> denote that those who say `gosh-wow' don't get just how WOW a real
> post-Singularity future would be*. We might have a Strange Slippery Loop
> here. In any event, I rather doubt that Tom Easton would find your actual
> views congenial.
Who? [GOOGLE] What's the problem with him?
Anyway, the problem is not "They don't get how 'wow' a real Singularity
would be." The problem is the 'wow' itself. It's basically the wrong
attitude to take. It's not big wow versus little wow, it's awe versus
wow. "Wow" should be reserved for things that are really cool but
fundamentally harmless. The emotion experienced on staring into the
Singularity is not a bigger and better version of the emotion experienced
on reading about the latest in wireless computing.
> >just
> >dump the blame for it all on Eliezer.
>
> I know I can get away with that, because you're so Friendly.
Friendliness is a supergoal. Game theory deals with subgoals. Whether I
would let someone get away with dumping unearned blame on me, in a
Singularity-affecting (nonlocal) issue, would depend on what I thought the
consequences of (a) calling them on it and (b) letting them get away with
it would be. And... oh, never mind.
(And yes, I know you're joking.)
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:08:01 MST