Re: An essay I just wrote on the Singularity.

From: Perry E. Metzger (perry@piermont.com)
Date: Sat Jan 03 2004 - 00:36:41 MST


Samantha Atkins <samantha@objectent.com> writes:
> I don't see how reproduction is terribly relevant to a
> post-Singularity intelligence.

It wasn't terribly relevant to primitive living organisms, either. One
can easily imagine constructing a bacterium that does not reproduce,
and indeed there are many people who have no urge to reproduce. They
rapidly become irrelevant in the face of those with different
urges. Darwin doesn't claim that reproduction is morally superior --
he claims it leads to ubiquity more readily than non-reproduction.

If just one superintelligence out there in our light cone picks
reproduction as a goal, its descendants will rapidly own just about
everything in sight. I find it supremely unlikely that, in a large
universe, no superintelligence with that goal will be launched. The
views, desires and actions of other entities may cease to matter in
the face of that.

-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry@piermont.com


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