Re: An essay I just wrote on the Singularity.

From: Tommy McCabe (rocketjet314@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Jan 02 2004 - 19:22:01 MST


--- "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com> wrote:
>
> Tommy McCabe <rocketjet314@yahoo.com> writes:
> > --- Mitchell Porter <mitchtemporarily@hotmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> >Survival? If the first transhuman is Friendly,
> >> >survival is a given, unless you decide to commit
> >> >suicide.
> >>
> >> Or unless it thinks you're better off dead.
> >> http://www.metu.edu.tr/home/www41/eda.doc
> >
> > If it thinks you're better off dead, either 1), it
> is
> > for such a compelling reason that you agree and
> commit
> > suicide, or 2), the AI is unFriendly. Wouldn't you
> > call an AI that decided that someone should be
> dead
> > for no good reason unFriendly?
>
> But what if, according to some quite reasonable set
> of rules, it
> appears that you would be better off dead?

Then you should either get an intelligence upgrade,
find a flaw in the AI's logic, or kill yourself.

> And, even
> worse, what if it
> appears that the only reasonable way to defend group
> A is to kill some
> members of group B -- what we call a war?
>
> Certainly under some circumstances it might be
> necessary to
> kill. Alien invaders may wish to take over our
> resources, or one group
> of people might decide to conquer the others and it
> might not be easy
> to stop them without force.
>
> One can, of course, resort to a "moral system" to
> try to determine
> what the right thing to do is -- but humans have
> been unable to agree
> on such a thing after thousands of years of trying,
> and we appear to
> be making little progress on constructing one.
>
> It is issues like this, among others, that make me
> feel the notion of
> "Friendliness" is far too simplistic.

Since when is killing someone necessary to stop them
from killing you? I'm sure there are people in prison
who would consider it desirable to kill someone- but
we don't have to kill them. Under the SysOp scenario,
you can't kill someone in exactly the same way that
you can't jump to the moon (or walk through walls, or
teleport across the country, etc.)

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