From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Fri Mar 08 2002 - 08:49:36 MST
On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 06:47:00PM -0800, Adrian Tymes wrote:
> >>We can only pump so many memes into a single simple game. Perhaps
> >>another one can speak to the realities of tech deployment.
> >
> >A good idea. Maybe I could try out writing my own version, if you don't
> >mind? My version would likely deal less with the race towards
> >singularity and more with the politics and economics of technology.
>
> Please, be my guest. (Not that I have any standing to grant permission
> on this anyway, but if you want my permission here, you've got it.)
Well, if you have come up with a creative idea I would consider it rude to
use it without asking. I don't know what to think about intellectual
property, but I firmly believe in intellectual propriety.
Overall, your "purist" version of the game seems to be developing quite
nicely. It is starting to make some sense :-)
> I'm also thinking of perhaps more Event cards like High Tech Terrorist,
> embodying other ways that the world could destroy itself...unless
> society has deployed solutions to stop that way first. True, few people
> would want to play such a card deliberately...but the deck itself cares
> not for which cards come from it when it is the world's turn.
Also, the event cards may *have* to be played if no other valid card is in
the hand. Which means that once you have such a card you cannot just put the
hand back into the deck. Somebody got an anthrax bomb, and no matter what
you do sooner or later it will crop up somewhere...
> >Sure. But how is this different from the social risk described by Orwell
> >as "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a
> >human face--for ever"? With ubiquitious law enforcement, paranoid
> >culture and AI enforcement you could get it even if all AI is obedient,
> >all biotech under control and the nanotech under lock and key. It might
> >even be self-reinforcing and impossible to get rid of. It is the social
> >version of gray goo, a permanently entrenched society that does not
> >promote human growth.
> >
> What you describe is not so different from the robo Catastrophe: a
> mindless machine wiping out free humanity; the machine just happens to
> be composed of organic robots instead of metallic/plastic/ceramic ones.
> Given as AI would be required to effectively implement such a scheme
> worldwide, I'd say the robo Catastrophe more or less covers it...though
> perhaps I should note that explicitly.
Well, look at the original 1984. That is the low tech version, and in the
appendix Orwell quite clearly describes how the Party is circumscribing
further research in order to not get any surprises. Oceania is nowhere near
any advanced technology, but still is aiming for an ultra-stable,
humanity-crushing state.
> The base target is mere introduction to the concept of Singularity, and
> a mild blessing of it as a good target.
This is a good idea. However, the game as it is does not include the perhaps
most important aspect of the singularity: its autofeedback. As far as I can
see, the rate of tech development will not increase over time as the game is
played.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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