From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sun Sep 05 1999 - 12:35:55 MDT
Carol Tilley wrote:
>
> But isn't Eliezer's point: too many of us are on the beach partying.
> We're all drinking faux beer out of brown carmelized faux glass gazing
> half-focused at the declining water level..."now isn't that odd?" Unable
> to see the tsunami, because if you can see the tsunami then it's already too
> late.
Not really. My point is more along the critiques of how the nanoSantas
plan to surf; they focus on the fact that a tsunami has enough energy to
carry them anywhere - New York, California, the Cayman Islands,
Andromeda, whatever - and ignore the fact that the tsunami has intrinsic
directions and internally operating forces as well.
They believe in a Universe that can be effortlessly - and I mean that
literally, since they don't seem to think any efforts are necessary -
shaped into whatever they want it to be, without danger or any
significant chance of total failure. I believe in a Universe where we
can only choose the best available alternative, not dictate the choices.
Perhaps on the Other Side of Dawn we'll be able to control all reality
with an casual omnipotence the most euphoric nanoSanta might envy... but
that's a probability, not a certainty, and to get there we have to
accept the risk of extermination and beat the deadline of nanowar. The
nanoSantas refuse to accept the realities of navigation.
It doesn't matter how powerful an ultratechnology is, or if it's
powerful enough to dictate reality selectively, because other people
have access to the technology and it becomes a war of the gods, not one
god reshaping the world. Great power is only omnipotence when it's unopposed.
And truly great power - AI and neurohacking and uploading and
neurocomputing interfaces - has its own conscience. Transhuman
intelligence cannot be "used", only invoked.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
Running on BeOS Typing in Dvorak Programming with Patterns
Voting for Libertarians Heading for Singularity There Is A Better Way
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