Re: [sl4] Uploads, slavery, concerts and fair trade.

From: Stuart Armstrong (dragondreaming@googlemail.com)
Date: Wed Feb 04 2009 - 03:03:49 MST


> It doesn't matter one bit what your or my opinion is on this matter, and
> that is one reason why the singularity will not be a cozy time. If we
> are very very lucky we will be given a choice, upload or die. If we're
> unlucky we will simply die.

Does it ever occure to you to try for anything other than the default option?

>> You seem rather confident on what a Jupiter
>> brain will or won't want to do.
>
> Yes, I am rather confident that a Jupiter brain won't be stupid and that
> we won't be able to outsmart something smarter than we are.

What does smarts have to do with motivation?

As a kid, I could never outsmart my parents; fortunately, my parents
were devoted to bringing me up pretty well. They had the brains to do
all sorts of hideous things to me, but not the motivation.

>> Jupiter brains dedicated singlemindedly to
>> the production of paper-clips are concievable;
>
> But interestingly such a thought would not be conceivable to your
> Jupiter paper clip making machine, in fact such a specialized piece of
> equipment would be incapable of conceiving of anything. Hard to see why
> you'd want to want to call it a brain actually.

Why would it not be able to conceive such a thought - if such thoughts
helped it create paper-clips more effectively? (which they probably
would) We've had generals singlemindedly devoted to transforming the
living soldiers of the enemy side into pieces of dead meat; the
inability to conceive thoughts would have made them far weaker as
generals.

If a jupiter-brain-paperclip-maker started out with no tools or
instuments of its own, we can at least be sure that it would swiftly
understand enough human psychology to fool us.

> Probably for the same reason we don't find human beings taking orders
> from sea slugs. Sea slugs are dumb.

What-does-intelligence-have-to-do-with-motivations?

Stuart



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