RE: [Fwd: Practical CosmologyPapers]

From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Sat Jun 08 2002 - 23:00:16 MDT


Personally, I can easily believe that post-Singularity minds/societies don't
give a hoot about us.

Maybe they know we can't hurt them, and they have a "live and let live"
philosophy, being no more interested in us than we are in the average ant.

-- Ben G

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-sl4@sysopmind.com [mailto:owner-sl4@sysopmind.com]On Behalf
> Of Brian Atkins
> Sent: Saturday, June 08, 2002 10:23 PM
> To: sl4@sysopmind.com; johnsmart@singularitywatch.com
> Subject: Re: [Fwd: Practical CosmologyPapers]
>
>
> Brian Atkins wrote:
> >
> > 3. "Answering the Fermi Paradox: Exploring the Mechanisms of Universal
> > Transcension" (http://www.transhumanist.com/Smart-Fermi.htm
> > by John Smart
> >
>
> Hi John, here's a few quick points/questions. Even if we take as
> given that
> some slightly-post-Singularity societies make the decision (and adhere to
> it down to each and every single individual) not to immediately seed the
> Universe with probes to find and uplift any and all semi-intelligent
> life that wants it, that still leaves some "holes":
>
> 1. Shouldn't such societies (who are theoretically doing this in order to
> preserve all the "experiments" running out there) still seed the Universe
> with hidden probes to seek out life near transcension, and intervene in
> the end if a blight or other life-destroying phenomenon is about to occur?
> The only reason not to do this is if you take the true Darwinian approach
> and prefer to let failed experiments fail all the way to the end even once
> you can see how it is going to play out. That sounds too harsh to be
> believable...
>
> 2. Shouldn't such societies also seed the Universe with probes to prevent
> any other societies from attempting colonization? If you want to preserve
> the most amount of Universe real estate in its natural state to
> allow stuff
> to evolve there then you may have to expend efforts to protect it
> from other
> post-Singularity societies that don't hold your views. Or would this kind
> of intervention be messing with the evolution of the Universe also?
>
> 3. Which brings me to point out that doesn't your theory itself predict
> post-Singularity societies, since they have been left to themselves, will
> end up potentially filling differing "end states"? Unless all of these end
> states wind up leading the societies that value the Communication-Censored
> approach, then we are missing something... and if they all DO converge on
> the C-C approach, what's the real point of letting them suffer through
> their adolescence alone when we only end up with cookie cutter end states?
>
> P.S. I don't buy the idea that any society deciding to seed the Universe
> with probes is limited to only sending some kind of fixed primer. The
> probes could contain vastly more than that, perhaps copies of chunks of
> whole post-Singularity societies kept in stasis (or not) that have made
> a decision to not transcend past the point of missing out on watching a
> part of real space.
> --
> Brian Atkins
> Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
> http://www.intelligence.org/
>



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