Re: The Great Filter
Robin Hanson (hanson@hss.caltech.edu)
Sat, 21 Sep 96 14:22:28 PDT
Hara Ra writes:
>Perhaps the great filter lies ahead. Per the Singularity, I think of
>how AIs must be benevolent and able to contain or eliminate ruthless
>systems (think of humans and viruses such as ebola) or the whole thing
>comes down. A truly vicious kind of grey goo may be hard to resist
>indeed...
If the filter lies ahead, that implies that we have only a 1 in 10 to
the 20 chance of begating an expanding colonization wave. For an
extropian, a truly terrifying prospect. If true, we should become
obsessively focused on finding and avoiding disaster scenarios.
For a list of such scenarios, see Leslie's "The End of the World".
Robin D. Hanson hanson@hss.caltech.edu http://hss.caltech.edu/~hanson/