Re: Genius dogs

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Mon, 06 Oct 1997 11:17:16 -0500

Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> > -- I anticipate that Anders will suggest that superintelligences will
> > make entertainment out of shaping human organizations into
> > entities that perform intelligent tasks, just as we have fun by
> > watching circus animals behave. :-)
>
> It seems like you have a quite good simulation of my thought processes.
>
> About Eliezer's view that this would be immoral: I think it can be
> ethical to do, as long as the humans voluntarily agree to form the
> organisation. "Wow! Look at this: that PostAnders entity has a really
> great idea about a selforganized democracy. Let's try it!"

Well, of course it's moral with informed consent. *Anything* is moral
with informed consent. That's not the same as the "circus" theory.

I still maintain that it would be pointless to form human organizations into
Turing machines. Besides, this doesn't take a posthuman entity at all. I bet
Bill Gates could make Microsoft simulate a small Turing machine with a few
simple mandatory self-propagating memos. Maybe he's doing it already.

-- 
         sentience@pobox.com      Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
          http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/singularity.html
           http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/algernon.html
Disclaimer:  Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.