Re: freedom vs even distribution

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
12 Jun 1999 21:36:08 +0200

Paul Hughes <paul@i2.to> writes:

> Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> > To make things even worse, a defecting posthuman might
> > make scratch monkey posthumans that would do the defection "of their
> > own free will" with no trace to the originator.
>
> I'm sorry Anders, I'm not understanding what you're saying here. Could you
> elaborate?

Sorry. Here is an example: TransAnders wants to help the benighted humans to become posthumans just like it, but then TransOtter and the others will attack him for being a threat to the Posthuman way of life. So TransAnders creates an offspring posthuman which he tweaks the basic values and cognitive patterns of slightly. After a long minute of upbringing, discussions and gradual divergence occurs, during which TransAnders subtly manipulates the offspring into becoming a fierce but clever altruist willing to risk everything to help the humans. In the end it does this, incurring the wrath of everybody else, but never revealing any link to TransAnders since it doesn't know it, and will never allow anybody to read its source code while it is alive.

OK, awfully unethical, but shows the overall problem. Posthumans can defect in very clever ways.

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