Re: An essay I just wrote on the Singularity.

From: Randall Randall (randall@randallsquared.com)
Date: Wed Dec 31 2003 - 16:38:01 MST


On Wednesday, December 31, 2003, at 02:32 PM, Robin Lee Powell wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 31, 2003 at 12:48:52PM -0500, Ben Goertzel wrote:
>> It's just not true that humans developing strong nanotech will
>> *necessarily* lead to destruction.
>
> Agreed. However I, personally, see it as far more likely than for
> any previous technology (all one of them: nukes). Mostly because
> you can accidentally create grey goo, but you can't accidentally
> bomb the world to the stone age.

Actually, it would seem easier to "bomb the world to the stone
age". The organizations that humans have built to do social
engineering are machines which are prone to error and sloppiness.
They don't even accomplish most of the stated goals, so why
would you think that they are proof against errors involving
nukes?

One of the major problems with such machines is that they
often produce outcomes that no individual humans in them
claim to want, which sounds just like the kind of machine
that might accidentally produce such a horrible outcome.

--
Randall Randall


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