RE: Seed AI (was: How hard a Singularity?)

From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Wed Jun 26 2002 - 13:27:35 MDT


> > 1) Your statement that "it is impossible to write a story
> about a character
> > smarter than you are" is clearly false, and rather odd.
> > Many authors have written good stories about characters smarter
> than they
> > are, and evoked this superior intelligence well. As a single example,
> > consider the sci-fi classic "Flowers for Algernon."
>
> As it happens, that *specific example* is used in "Staring into the
> Singularity" to bring out the point.

I guess my memory was primed by my previous reading of "Staring into the
Singularity" ;)

Nevertheless, the point remains that it IS possible to write a good story
about a character smarter than you are.

It is not possible to write a PERFECT story in this vein, but then, it is
not possible to write a perfect story about anything...

Similarly, men have written good stories about women, and women have written
good stories about men, in spite of lacking the experience of being the
opposite gender

Anyway this is a nitpicky digression from the real SL4 business...

ben g



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