Re: Hello, is there anybody home?

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Mar 26 2001 - 10:28:31 MST


James Higgins wrote:
>
> Has anyone considered that maybe, just maybe, some of those 3 billion
> INDIVIDUAL minds might actually want to do something? Maybe they want to
> go look around the universe. Maybe they want to do VR sims of Tom & Jerry
> 24 hours a day. Whatever, but what THEY (we) want should be the #1
> priority here.

That's what a Sysop *does* - fulfill requests. You ask ver for a VR sim
of Tom & Jerry, ve delivers. Ve might inform you about the many Things
That Are More Fun Than That, but only if you want to hear the Sysop's
opinion.

> The Sysop is the ultimate artificial "guardian" of a particular view of
> human morals.

Insofar as the "particular view" under discussion is that you can do VR
sims of Tom & Jerry to your heart's content - "Volition uber alles" - I
don't see why you're calling your own morality arbitrary.

-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://intelligence.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence



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