Re: screwing the inscrutable

From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Fri Jul 13 2001 - 23:35:05 MDT


"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:
>
> Eugene Leitl wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, 13 Jul 2001, Damien Broderick wrote:
> >
> > > her mother confirmed recently. No earthquake, no hands Ma. I dunno. If that
> > > *is* the world we live in, things are not so simple. The Matrix or
> > > something like it could still be Ockham's cut.
> >
> > Hmm, perhaps there's value in most of civilized world going Big Brother.
> > If your theory is true, blanket surveillance is sooner or later certain to
> > pick up something strange.

I am not sure I see why this is so given the briefly outlined
hypothesis above. Assuming for the sake of argument that
psychic abilities are existent, not many of the ones commonly
claimed would show up on camera. Certainly not any form of
telepathy or clairvoyance or such. Psychokinesis is about the
best you could hope for unless you think to catch some advanced
magus teleporting in or out. <g> Psychokinesis would be
difficult to rule on because of other possible explanations for
visual records of all but the wildest of claimed episodes.

Even if we live in a sim or the equivalent then I would expect
such things to be exception rather than rule.

It would take much better scene resolution and comprehension by
computer and huge processing power to even begin to comb current
much less ubiquitous survellance records for such chimeras -
assuming anyone really wanted to.

- samantha



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