Re: Bound unhappiness below (was Re: What if there's an expiration date?)

From: Mike Dougherty (msd001@gmail.com)
Date: Tue May 27 2008 - 21:07:24 MDT


On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 5:26 PM, Michael Anissimov
<michaelanissimov@gmail.com> wrote:
> If uploading and absolute freedom are both possible, then I could torture a
> billion sentients in a nanocomputer the size of a sugar cube. What are you
> going to do about it?

If you own the hardware, I probably don't even know about it. If you
are telling me that you are already doing so, then I can assign my own
utility value to that information. Perhaps it weighs negatively on my
consideration of your moral status. Perhaps I am already torturing
ten billion sentients and feel you're trying to make me feel guilty
about my wanton disregard for ethical best practice? In zero-sum
thinking, I might feel it is necessary (to try) to take your resources
to improve my own computing power. I thought the idea of the
post-singularity world is that there is an effective surplus such that
I don't have to care what you are doing to the billions of sentients
you host on your hardware and you don't have to care about mine.
Apparently the entire universe isn't a large enough playground for
everyone to get along... You've converted 38% of the known universe
to computronium, with an estimated probability of converting 45% of
the newly discovered universe each moment it becomes available? That
means within the next few observable moments of the universe, you will
have acquired a share that is 2% larger than my own... and I cannot
let that happen; prepare to fight.

Not much different than prehistoric men fighting over a choice rock.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:01:02 MDT