From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Oct 08 2001 - 18:23:09 MDT
I think Nick Bostrom's term "singleton" may already cover this, although I
admit it's not quite as obvious what the term means on initial exposure.
On the other hand, I think the term "apexmind" may provoke a negative
reaction. Humans have a certain instinctive interpretation of hierarchies
and the things that appear to be living at the top of them, and that is
precisely *not* what a Sysop (for example) really is. A Sysop is
substrate, not commander.
"Apex", to me, connotes "on top". A singleton isn't the one on top of the
social hierarchy, but is rather the only one on the bottommost layer of
reality.
Incidentally, should we maybe be using the term "artificial reality"
instead of "simulation"? When I think of a "simulated person", I think of
ultra-advanced nonsentient chatbot wallpaper, not a real person who
happens to run on programmable superneurons instead of the biological
kind. In other words, "simulated" to me connotes a different
implementation, not just the same real thing in a different substrate.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://intelligence.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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