From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sun Feb 17 2002 - 17:45:02 MST
Phil Osborn wrote:
>
> Sound almost like Christianity. Isn't this mortal realm (substitute
> "virtual universe") supposed to be God's test, with the successful
> candidates going on to serve Him forever after? Perhaps this is
> actually the most efficient way to produce unique intelligences.
Mmmmnope. Give me a few minutes (okay, years) with the documented human
source code and I'll produce a thousand beings collectively staking out a
volume of configuration space much larger than that currently occupied by the
human species. If this were a simulation optimized for producing unique
intelligences I'd expect a lot more differences in cognitive architecture
between its inhabitants. The amount of variance I see is about what I'd
expect to see from natural evolution.
Even the informal version of Fun Theory clearly shows we're not much fun
relative to computing power consumed. We're probably not the toys of the
gods; gods can afford more interesting toys.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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