Nick B. writes:
>> Say you knew that all intelligence was either bio or
>> postbio, with bio intel living for days to decades, and postbio intel living
>> from thousands to billions of years. Then you expect that conditional on
>> being a bio intel, you are typical, so bio intel shouldn't last much more than
>> a few decades more (assuming continued exponential growth). And conditional
>> on being a postbio intel, you know you must be one of the very first
>
>Why? If being a postbio intel is all you conditionalize on, this
>doesn't follow. If I knew nothing except that I was a postbio intel,
>I wouldn't expect to be one of the very first; I would expect to be
>one of the middle 95%.
I meant that since I am a bio now, the only way I could be a postbio as well is if I am one of the transitionary people who is both at different times in their lives. And transitionary postbios are the first postbios.
>> And without introducing more info, you couldn't say much about
I reread Leslies book on this issue last night, and object to
putting bios and postbios into the same ref class in exactly the way
that Leslie envisions one might object:
It might perhaps be complained that making the reference class into
humans-after-splitting-away-from-Neanderthals would be coming too
near to imitating the man who makes his reference class into
people-born-as-late-as-himself-or-later [p. 261, The End of the World]
>> your chances of being postbio vs. bio intel.
>
>If postbio and bio intelligences all belong to the same reference
>class (just as tall people and short people, black and white etc.)
>then the fact that you find yourself being a bio intel. would
>indicate that the postbios don't vastly outnumber the bios.
>
>Whether postbios and bios should be in the same reference class is
>not clear. That's a deep problem, and I suspect but am not yet
>certain that there might be some kind of loophole for the
>transhumanist here, if the postbios are fundamentally different from
>bios.
>... Of course, the exact conclusion depends on how you estimate
>future population figures etc., but in general I see the DA as, so
>to speak, *superimposed* on whatever other evidence you might have.
I'm now reading your paper on the DA, and hope to write a summary of my opinions on DA soon.
Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar, Sch. of Public Health 510-643-1884
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 FAX: 510-643-2627