Re: another objection

From: Damien Broderick (thespike@satx.rr.com)
Date: Thu Jun 03 2004 - 13:47:47 MDT


At 01:50 PM 6/3/2004 -0400, Eliezer wrote:

>It's like a sentient calculator that wonders "What is the Multiplication?"
>where the Multiplication turns out to consist of multiplying 6 x 7. The
>Calculator is pretty sure that the answer is somewhere in the vicinity of
>41 or 43,

Whatever gives it that absurd idea? This is the daffiest thought experiment
I've ever read, and I can only assume it's proof of Eliezer in his new
public ludic mood.

>although different Calculators have been known to disagree on the subject.

Really. Why? How?

>Funny how natural selection hasn't picked a different optimization
criterion than reproductive fitness.

Funny how mindlessly stupid `natural selection' is, how lacking in
foresight, how peculiarly misleading as an analogy to any sort of mind
(*pace* Calvin and Edelman, who are speaking at a different level of
abstraction). Oh, that's right, we have no use for that hypothesis.

Damien Brodrick



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