phil osborn wrote:
>
> (In fact, according to Conrad Schneiker - co-inventor of the
> scanning/tunneling array chip - Drexler also originally thought that
> nanotech itself could be kept under wraps and carefully developed under the
> wise and beneficent supervision of MIT technocrat types. It was only,
> according to Conrad, when he threatened to publish on nanotech himself, that
> he managed to force Drexler's hand on this, which resulted in Engines,..
> Foresight, etc.)
Where are you getting this from? I'd be extremely interested in any biographical information about Drexler - he's the closest thing I have to a role model.
> While there are inherent economic efficiencies in cooperation, and the
> universe does set upper limits on the size of a practical single-focus
> intelligence, there are even more challenging issues for a really smart AI.
No, there are not inherent economic efficiencies in cooperation. Any time you have two independent minds that are remotely similar, there's going to be duplication of function and thus duplication of processing. Only silly human programmers with badly designed CPUs have to stoop to that sort of thing.
Even if the lightspeed limit requires local duplication of processing, the resultant spectrum of local/global consciousness would almost certainly NOT spew up a recognizable individual. Personalities do not happen by coincidence. Personalities are too complex to be forced by optimized architectures. Any deliberately designed system will not give rise to individuals unless that is the deliberate intention of the designer.
> You yourself have undoubtably run head on into the problem of achieving
> "visibility." The more out on the end of the bell you are, the less likely
> you are to find a soul mate.
Or someone to take over if you get hit by a truck. But I suppose I echo the general sentiment.
> It is only when you have a perceptual/emotional relationship with another
> consciousness in real-time that you can get a real mirror of your "soul."
> This is why people place such a high value on relationships.
I really think you're overestimating both the damage caused by lack of relationships - nobody understands me, probably nobody ever will, big deal - and the degree to which this damage is a necessary feature of intelligence rather than a quirk of an evolved mind. Besides, any mind-plus-environment system can easily be converted to a standalone computer simulation. But the main thing is, I just don't see where the cognitive problem is going to come from. Minds don't require external environments - human minds, yes; generic minds, no. You can get arbitrarily complex "sensory" inputs just through reflectivity.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
Running on BeOS Typing in Dvorak Programming with Patterns
Voting for Libertarians Heading for Singularity There Is A Better Way