Re: Infinitely fast computer
Robin Hanson (hanson@hss.caltech.edu)
Fri, 11 Oct 96 22:28:46 PDT
William Kitchen writes:
>The reason I think that such a short time scale is possible is that the
>feat could perhaps be achieved by creating a program, or more likely an
>interacting group of competing programs, that evolves on it's own once
>set in operation. ... It would only have to meet these
>requirements:
>
> 1. it could not permanently stagnate at any particular level of
> development
> 2. it could not get into any kind of degenerative "devolution" mode
> (or at least, such occurrences would have to be outweighed by
> development in a positive direction)
I think Hal's point is that we don't really know what such a problem
would look like, or how to tell once we have one. So you run a
simulatio and somewhere in it are some real smart creatures. How can
you tell where they are, or figure out how to harness them once you
do? And how do you know what simulations would create such smart
creatures?
Robin D. Hanson hanson@hss.caltech.edu http://hss.caltech.edu/~hanson/