Re: PHYSICS/SPACE: Legitimate time traval proposal etc.

From: Gordon Worley (redbird@rbisland.cx)
Date: Sun May 20 2001 - 19:58:09 MDT


At 6:37 PM -0700 5/20/01, Samantha Atkins wrote:
>"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:
> > Taking your idea to the NSA isn't unethical tech suppression. Asking the
>> NSA to assassinate everyone else who has the idea is unethical tech
>> suppression.
>>
>
>Giving an advanced and powerful technology over to an
>organization that is fundamentally uncontrollable and is part of
>the government's cloak and dagger side, is utterly unethical in
>my book and much more dangerous a cure than the disease.

The NSA won't surpress the tech, but it will probably make it take a
long time to develop unless it has some clear military type of use.
I agree that the NSA is bad, but hopefully they could incubate the
tech for long enough that we could be post Singularity before taking
it out of the back rooms and doing it in the open. I tend to agree
that time travel is a very dangerous things\ if we let the wrong
people get it and, since there is no good reason to have it before
the Singularity (i.e. it is not useful in reaching the Singularity,
or at least it doesn't appear to be just now), we would be best off
if we waited on it until there are SIs to use it responsibly.

But, at this point, the cats out of the bag and there's nothing to be
done about it. Of course, this technique may turn out not to work
and be some other neat new bit of physics.

I think that so long as Quantum Leap doesn't become a reality show,
we should be okay. ;^)

-- 
Gordon Worley
http://www.rbisland.cx/
mailto:redbird@rbisland.cx
PGP Fingerprint:  C462 FA84 B811 3501 9010  20D2 6EF3 77F7 BBD3 B003


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