From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Fri Jan 28 2005 - 04:28:34 MST
Heh...
> Not what I meant at all! I am speculating that the
> goal of driving the universe towards the Omega Point
> with optimum efficiently would actually, as a
> consequence, lead to everything we would desire in a
> Friendly A.I (like altruism towards humans etc).
Well, one can construct an argument that if the Omega Point as Tipler
conceives it really exists, then the ethically optimal thing to do is to
MAXIMIZE THE ODDS of (everyone) getting to the Omega Point.
I.e.: If heaven-for-all is plausibly achievable, then the most important
thing is to maximize the odds of achieving it, and milking the most out of
the pre-heaven interval isn't too important.
However, there are a couple problems here:
1) Though Friendly AI seems a difficult goal, I'm not quite ready to assume
it's as difficult as the Omega Point. I.e., I consider it reasonably
plausible that the Omega Point of heaven-via-physics doesn't exist and yet
Friendly AI is achievable by some simpler means...
2) It seems very unlikely that being nice to anyone is critical for getting
to the Omega Point, at least according to Tipler's conception of it. A la
Tipler, getting there should involve reshaping matter across the universe in
such a way as to cause the right sort of (geometric) singularity at the Big
Crunch. This has little to do with nice-ness except in the sense that the
end goal is supposed to be very nice.
So, it seems that you're extending Tipler's conception of the Omega Point in
a big way, by hypothesizing some kind of subtle connection between *the laws
of physics* and your posited *laws of universal morality*. Is that right?
IMO the only "laws of morality" we find embedded in the laws of physics are
simple and generic things like "increase growth and diversity" or
something....
But evidently you think that "don't cause pain to highly conscious beings"
is going to be tied up with "move maximally fast toward the Omega point"
inside the as-yet-unknown future laws of physics.
But why do you think that? Is it just an intuition from out of nowhere, or
is there some detailed philosophical justification?
-- Ben
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