Re: Rationality and altered states of consciousness

From: Gordon Worley (redbird@rbisland.cx)
Date: Mon Sep 23 2002 - 10:04:08 MDT


On Friday, September 20, 2002, at 12:45 PM, Samantha Atkins wrote:

> Gordon Worley wrote:
>
>> This is going to have to be a huge amount of help. See the WTA
>> Deathwatch for the numbers. For example, if that person's helping
>> made the Singularity occur one week earlier, if he didn't work on the
>> Singularity then I think that it would be fair to expect him to see to
>> it that the number of people who would have died in any given week
>> make it to see the Singularity.
>
> Do you really believe it is simply a numbers game?

Given my outlook on the Singularity, it is mostly a numbers game.
Because someone has to create the Singularity, some people end up being
worth more than your average human because if you killed some or all of
them the Singularity wouldn't happen.

> There is also the small matter of shaping both the Singularity and the
> people to insure, to the extent we can, the best outcome. This is not
> simply quantifiable. Nor again, do I believe creating a Singularity
> intelligence is sufficient to solve everything.

I still don't think that this will be an issue. If we have a Friendly
Singularity, some Friendly means of transition will be employed. This,
for example, might be the angels in Mike Deering's story. I don't know
what would work best nor what would be most Friendly. This is something
that the first FAI or the Transition Guide that it creates will handle.
I'm not shirking responsibility for seeing to it that humans are
transitioned to the Singularity, only that I am not going to be able to
make the decision of how to transition humans because by that point an
SI will be in town.

Anyway, if we have a safe Singularity where humans get a happy ending
then I think that humans will be transitioned in a friendly manner
regardless of their current state. But, you clearly disagree with me
squarely on this issue, since you seem to think that a super intelligent
Transition Guide will still not be capable of transitioning the average
human into the Singularity. Why do you consider this to be the case?
In what ways will the Transition Guide fail when dealing with normative
humans?

--
Gordon Worley                          "Man will become better when
http://www.rbisland.cx/                 you show him what he is like."
redbird@rbisland.cx                                --Anton Chekhov
PGP:  0xBBD3B003


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