From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Mon May 10 2004 - 18:07:18 MDT
At 11:02 PM 09/05/04 -0700, you wrote:
>"Keith Henson" wrote:
>
>[snip]
>And how many of these conditionally switched on dangerous psychological
>mechanisms do humans have left over from the Pleistocene? And what
>environmental conditions turn them on? Darned if I know.
>[snip]
>In any case, uploading looks far more dangerous than it did a week ago.
>
>---
>
>Far more dangerous? Perhaps not, because of insights like yours. The more
>we (humans) understand what 'makes us tick' the better prepared we will be
>to handle the dangers.
The problem is that nobody knows how many of these conditionally switched
on mechanisms humans have. It is probably a relatively small number, but
is it dozens or hundreds? What environmental questions switch them
on? How hard are they for the rest of our minds to control? And worse,
what would switch on an uploaded simulation?
>Only yesterday upon reading about the abuse of
>prisoners, my comment was: "Gee, I would expect some amount of captive abuse
>to be par-for-the-course in Iraq". Well, apparently my intuition (despite
>sounding somewhat cold when stated plainly) has some support - both from
>related experimental evidence at Stanford, and now with your evolutionary
>explanation.
>
>Thanks for your explanatory efforts. I sincerely hope your warnings don't
>go unheeded.
I appreciate your interest in the topic. If you can think of any place
this should be spread to, please do so or let me know.
Keith Henson
>Michael Roy Ames
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