Re: Darwinian dynamics unlikely to apply to superintelligence

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sun Jan 04 2004 - 21:48:29 MST


Robin Lee Powell wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 04, 2004 at 07:24:21PM -0500, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
>>
>>Before we continue, might I ask you why you have such an
>>astounding vitriolic reaction to the idea that evolution might
>>continue?
>
> Well, for one thing, you're using completely different meanings of
> the word 'evolution'. Eliezer means evolution as a blind,
> non-directed series of changes over many generations, you apparently
> mean *any* iterative change process.

I wouldn't say that the changes are non-directed. Calling evolution
"non-directed" might be taken as implying that genetic makeup changes
randomly, rather than alleles being driven to universality as the
statistical outcome of their covariance with reproductive success.
Mutation is non-directed, and recombination is blind (or from a gene's
perspective, fair), but natural selection is a statistical trend.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://intelligence.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


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