Re: META: Shock levels (Re: SL3/4)

From: Tennessee Leeuwenburg (tennessee@tennessee.id.au)
Date: Thu May 25 2006 - 22:34:56 MDT


Joel Pitt wrote:
> On 5/26/06, Tennessee Leeuwenburg <tennessee@tennessee.id.au> wrote:
>> SL4 for the easily shocked, SL3 for the hardened futurists. For someone
>> like me, corroborating evidence is a big deal, and I thought this story
>> was very interesting. It covers robotic control through an MRI machine.
>> Details are sketchy -- does anyone have any information on where this
>> story came from?
>
> Just in case people forgot, shock levels are not relative to someone's
> experience with future tech. To quote
> http://www.sl4.org/shocklevels.html :
>
> "A Shock Level measures the high-tech concepts you can contemplate
> without being impressed, frightened, blindly enthusiastic - without
> exhibiting future shock."
>
> I think this story is cool, but I don't think it is more than SL2.
>
I guess. I would have said that a practical technological development
would assist sl4 concepts just as well as sl2 ones. The first step
towards SL4 will not be the last. I would say this story corroborates
rather SL4 ideas about technological developments more than disendorsing
them.

On the other hand, I can see how it's more directly an SL2 technology
than an SL4 one.

However, it speaks strongly for the possibility of functionally mapping
the brain and being able to interpret brain states as mental states. I
would regard any evidence which shows that the processes of the mind may
be captured by rules is an advance towards the ideas of nonhuman
high-functioning creatures, which in turn is suggestive of achieving
superintelligence through various means.

Cheers,
-T



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