Re: Coercive Transhuman Memes and Exponential Cults

From: Gordon Worley (redbird@rbisland.cx)
Date: Mon Jun 11 2001 - 21:46:40 MDT


At 7:26 PM -0400 6/11/01, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>The best defense is equal intelligence. Failing that, the point I want to
>make is that the question is not whether ideas are permitted by the
>*Sysop* but whether they are permitted by the union of Sysop and citizen.
>There may be some subsegment of the population that is simply eaten by
>memes, but it will probably be that small segment that was dumb enough not
>to accept a Sysop recommendation, or the even smaller segment that made
>the deliberate decision to be prey.

For some reason (I think the Powers comment above got me thinking
about it), Durant's idea kind of reminds me of the zones from /A Fire
Upon the Deep/, especially since there were a coupe of comments in
the book about Powers creating the zones to protect some kind of
space cloud intelligences. I see two possibilities: one is the
Sysop scenario and the other is the Zone scenario. In the Zone
scenario, we have the Unthinking Depths (i.e. the Luddites on Earth),
the Slow Zone (transhumans and static uploads), the Beyond (AIs and
dynamic uploads), and the Transcend (SIs). Maybe even a High
Transcend (SSIs?) The idea would be to keep intelligences from being
able to do anything to lower levels ones since they would loose their
powers in the lower levels. But, this would be complex to impliment
and I think would only work if they Sysop scenario turns out to be
harder (i.e. impossible here in the Slow Zone on Earth ;-)) to
impliment than we suspect now. Not to mention that the zones are
flawed, as the Vinge's Blight shows.

> > fnord
>
>all your base are belong to us

Guess I'm a bit dense, but what is fnord? I've probably just
forgotten, but I can't think of anything right now (other than it
looks like Ford, which is interesting since I read /A Brave New
World/ the other day).

-- 
Gordon Worley
http://www.rbisland.cx/
mailto:redbird@rbisland.cx
PGP Fingerprint:  C462 FA84 B811 3501 9010  20D2 6EF3 77F7 BBD3 B003


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