From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Tue May 21 2002 - 19:48:52 MDT
Eliezer wrote in response to Wei Dai's questions:
>As I said, this "Aleph" fellow is clearly none of my work.
What a very odd remark. No, actually, the Aleph is clearly all of *my*
work. You can tell this because my name is on the cover. (Actually the book
in toto is a weird blend of inputs by me, Rory Barnes, and Barbara Lamar,
and my name alone on the cover tends to hide this fact, which is
regrettable but a fact of marketing life. But the Aleph is all my own
work--despite several epigraphs throughout the book from Eliezer, Eugene,
Bill Joy and the Unabomber. I haven't yet seen a comment from Mr Joy or the
Unabomber explaining that `this "Aleph" fellow is clearly none of my work',
although they would have better reason to do so. (The basic Aleph
background, FWIW, can be found in a story, `Resurrection', published in
1981, a little before Eliezer turned his mind to Friendly AI.)
>In fact,
>according to the novel, Aleph started out way, way, way back when as an
>uploaded human.
Just so.
>Aleph is behaving not just very oddly but in a humanishly cruel sort of way
Maybe not; maybe that's just how ser actions are interpreted by the limited
minds of humans.
>It seems pretty clear that Aleph is not following volitional-Friendliness
>rules.
Well, that's true; it also seems pretty clear that Aleph is not following
Voodun rules, or Marquis of Queenberry rules, or Hindu dinner table
etiquette, or indeed any other rules except the opaque-to-humans rules
presumably motivating this >H-ly complex mentality.
Damien Broderick
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:14:15 MST