From: Spike (spike66@attbi.com)
Date: Sat May 24 2003 - 23:54:17 MDT
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-extropians@extropy.org [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]
On Behalf Of Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
Sent: Saturday, May 24, 2003 4:06 PM
To: extropians@extropy.org
Subject: Re: Suns considered harmful (was: Pluto)
Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
> On Sat, 24 May 2003, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>
>>Let it be noted for the record that, when at Spike's house for the
>>post-Gathering Gathering, I criticized Bradbury's MBrain plans on the
>>grounds that they "allowed the sun to stay on".
>
> Eliezer, since I don't recall this conversation, I must assume that it
> took place after I had left Spike's for Seattle -- which is fine
> though it is unfortunate since we didn't get a chance to interact head
to
> head on this.
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>Either I've got false memories or you've got a gap. I recall
discussing
>this with you, albeit briefly. Humans being what they are, we'll never
>know. Probably the blue people changed it. You remember the blue
people,
>right?
Robert, Eli, I recall the conversation, down to where I was sitting
and who else was in the room. I can assure you Robert, we did
cover this while you were there. Melanie Swan was there,
and several others. Just after that, I pointed out that
you are mentioned in the afterword of Damien's book Transcension
along with Eliezer and some other extropians. We may have
covered the topic in more detail later when you were not there,
when I argued that we might have a long period (millions of years
perhaps) of sun-burning after we build a first-generation MBrain
and before we manage to actually stop the nuclear fusion in the sun.
The more I think about it however, the more doubts I have
about my own argument on that. Eliezer's notion has
considerable power: any logical growing AI will naturally
calculate its theoretical upper bounds, then scramble like hell
to achieve that level. This would mean stopping the
absurd waste of energy pouring out into cold dead space
from the stars.
spike
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