Re: Maximize the renormalized human utility function!

From: Michael Anissimov (michaelanissimov@gmail.com)
Date: Thu Aug 10 2006 - 22:06:09 MDT


Jef,

> On 8/10/06, Michael Anissimov <michaelanissimov@gmail.com> wrote:
> > This list is called "SL4", so you should expect people here to hold
> > SL4 views. It's okay if you're SL3
>
> LOL.

Are you not..? I'm not in the know. Are you laughing at the very
idea that I would classify people based on future shock level, or
what? I'm not descriminating or anything, if that's what you're
inferring. It just seems that you don't think the world will change
significantly in the next few decades, whereas SL4s certainly do, and
plan their lives accordingly...

You have to give me a bit more content, as this is an online
communication environment, and I cannot infer the aim of your laughter
from your body language or tone of voice.

> > With regards to your remarks on morality being the product of billions
> > of years of synergetic evolution, there's an interesting experiment
> > for me to bring up. If I had an atomic-level scanner and
> > sophisticated nanotechnology, I could simply pick the most benevolent
> > person (probably a girl) that I know, and press a button to copy them
> > repeatedly. I would be making the world a better place, without
> > understanding an iota about the billions of years of synergetic
> > evolution underlying morality. Small wonder!
>
> Huh??

You wrote, "There seems to be a general lack of appreciation
for the element of time needed to extract regularities from the
environment, and a lack of appreciation for just how much of perceived
local intelligence is actually a product of eons of synergetic
development."

If I copy a nice person again and again, I can miraculously produce
increases in local intelligence and compassion without any
appreciation for the eons of synergetic development. That was my
point. With sufficiently high levels of technology, we can have our
cake and eat it too. This is a point that many, many people do not
get.

With advanced nanotechnology, I can pour megatons of toxic waste into
the environment, then instruct utility fog to pick it up and restore
prior conditions. This scenario would make many environmentalists
cringe, but one day it could be possible. This ties in with what I am
talking about.

-- 
Michael Anissimov
Lifeboat Foundation      http://lifeboat.com
http://acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:00:57 MDT