Re: singleton and memetics

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
19 Nov 1998 17:56:01 +0100

christophe delriviere <darkmichet@bigfoot.com> writes:

> So, in a post human era, where we can imagine the total available
> (matter+energy) in the solar system is used and where the global
> intelligence can't move too much from his place to go to find a lot more
> of (matter+energy), probably the singleton as a whole identity will be a
> little insane.
>
> would you want to become insane ?

First, I would like to point out that the singleton hypothesis is in itself rather debatable; I can't see why it is more likely than a "multitude hypothesis" where we are bound to get an exponentially increasing number of diverging entities.

As for insanity, I would say it is relative to a context. Behavior that is rational in one environment is utterly irrational in another, so insanity could be described as acting in a way unsuitable for one's world - Alice is sane at home, but in Wonderland she is insane. However, there is an additional factor of flexibility. Most people with mental problems today have less mental flexibility than normal people - their repertoire of thinking and acting has been limited due to their illness, and they often get stuck in nasty attractor states (like in depression or paranoia).

Would the singleton superintelligence be insane? Most likely it would be quite good at behaving in a manner suitable for its world (i.e using resources on a stellar scale); in that respect I wouldn't call it insane. Would it have mental flexibility, so that it could get out of bad attractors? Hard to tell, but it seems likely if it is composed of a diverse set of subintelligences that are not too tightly bound. Would it enjoy its existence? Depends on its value system and analogue to enjoyment, extremely hard to say anything about.

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