From: Russell Wallace (russell.wallace@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Jun 06 2005 - 22:53:17 MDT
On 6/7/05, Joel Peter William Pitt <joel.pitt@gmail.com> wrote:
> In hindsight this list probably wasn't the best place to post to when
> I was so emotionally charged. I've slept on it and the person is the
> actual victim of the crime has convinced me to let it go.
*nods* I understand where you're coming from; we've had Extropy-chat
flooded with an acrimonious debate on abortion for the last few weeks,
and can probably do without having SL4 flooded with an acrimonious
debate on criminal justice for the next few weeks, so I'll refrain
from further comment on that topic other than to express my sympathy
to the person involved, and hope they recover okay.
> So this got me thinking once we are able to read minds and an FAI can
> upload us while also examining our memories, what should happen when
> crimes that have never been revealed or had justice done come to light
> (I'm talking about major offenses like murder, rape, assault)?
>
> Should individuals memories be off limits for examination by FAI or
> any information found just ignored?
My opinion on this is that the objective of Singularity strategy
should be to preserve the human race and the potential of sentient
life. We should _not_ expect FAI to be a magic genie for solving all
the world's problems - if it can stop evolution moving past the region
of state space in which sentience exists, that'll be more than enough.
Now, trying to use it to solve all unsolved crimes strikes me as
dangerous - sure, it would be nice to catch murderers that way as far
as it goes; then what happens if the RIAA chip in their desire to use
it to catch everyone who's ever copied music? This gets very messy and
very dangerous very quickly. I'm inclined to think we should
concentrate on using FAI to save the world and leave criminal justice
to the mechanisms that have been established to handle it, however
imperfect those mechanisms may at times be.
- Russell
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