What if your Real SI has something analogous to Asperger's Syndrome, but
you decide to go with it anyway? (Fatal Flaw scenario) What but an SI
can challenge its qualities? This is not a luddite question, it's a
question about monocultures. Couldn't a deficient but effective SI still
present problems for the human race as a whole? This can be looked at as
another sort of labeling error, the grossest kind being "insane SI"
labeled "sane"; I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about something
subtler. The SI runs its self-tests and says AOK. Great. How do mehums
know it has its head screwed on straight?
"J. R. Molloy" wrote:
>
> From: "Anders Sandberg" <asa@nada.kth.se>
> > Personally I think civilisations do not converge in the long run,
> > despite living under the same ultimate laws of physics - cultural
> > differences may make them branch in completely different directions.
>
> In further support of your comments, I'd add that the "us versus them"
> paradigm is probably congenital in humans, and it explains why the
> territorial imperative produces irrational scenarios such as Mutually
> Assured Destruction. The second Enlightenment mentioned by Edelman does not
> directly address the convergence of civilizations, focusing instead on the
> convergence of the sciences, as outlined by Wilson's _Consilience_.
>
> One civilization may decide to pretend that it has SI, in order to advance
> its non-SI agenda. This would be a foolish mistake, since real SI would
> overwhelm such dishonesty by the clever maneuver of out-smarting it. Nothing
> particularly difficult to understand there.
>
> Another civilization may consist largely of individuals who are frightened
> of SI and the second Enlightenment that it engenders. This is probably the
> most dangerous type of society, and one that deserves the attention of our
> collective intelligence to deal with its propaganda and its irrationality.
> So far, the best way of preventing luddite fundamentalist populations from
> dominating the world has been to "walk softly and carry a big stick." I
> think SI (real SI, not a bogus front for advancing an agenda) will be the
> biggest stick the second Enlightenment can brandish.
>
> Stay hungry,
>
> --J. R.
> 3M TA3
>
> ------------------------
> I think I'd add "free will" to the list of "consciousness" "phlogiston"
> "vitalism" and "mind" as examples of useless hypotheses.
> -------------------------
> "If you go back a hundred years," he explains, "one of the biggest
> scientific questions was 'what is life?' And one of the most prominent
> theories had to do with vitalism--some substance, some thing that is
> transmitted from cell to cell, animal to animal, that is the essence of
> life. Well, you don't hear anybody talking about vitalism anymore. We've
> come far enough to see all the mechanics--we've seen how DNA works, we've
> seen all the pieces of the cell, and we don't have need for a hypothesis
> like vitalism." So it will go, Sejnowski suspects, with consciousness.
> (Phlogiston, incidentally, refers to a theoretical substance that people
> once sought in combustible material, thinking it made up the "substance" of
> fire.)
> <http://www.doubletwist.com/news/columns/article.jhtml;$sessionid$WLUGKNIAAA
> 5EBWBCHIVSFEQ?section=weekly01&name=weekly0130>
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