Re: >H Re: transhuman-digest V1 #562

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Jan 10 2000 - 09:42:02 MST


"Bryan Moss" <bryan.moss@dial.pipex.com> writes:

> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>
> > So, given that there's also a 50% chance that the Powers
> > are nice guys,
>
> If we're going to be simplistic (and I don't think we have
> much choice) there's a 33% chance that the Powers are nice
> guys, 33% chance that they're indifferent, and a 33% chance
> that they're bad guys. The space of indifference (towards
> us, a tiny spec in this cosmos) is far greater than the
> space of good or bad, thus more appropriate (although still
> conservative) figures might be 10% good, 80% indifferent,
> and 10% bad. With indifference we're very likely to be used
> for spare atoms, I'm going to say 90% likely. Thus we have
> an ~82%+ chance of Bad Stuff happening.

I think the first half of your post makes a lot of sense, but the
second does not follow since you are now making assumptions about the
*way* they are indifferent - you have to show that the space of
indifferent behaviors leading to them eating us is much larger than
the space of indifferent behaviors that have no negative effect.

What is the probability that a randomly selected human is a nice guy?
As evaluated from the perspective of a cat? From the perspective of an
ant? From the perspective of a bacterium?

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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