RE: The Future of Secrecy

From: Ramez Naam (mez@apexnano.com)
Date: Thu Jun 19 2003 - 23:27:35 MDT

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    From: Wei Dai [mailto:weidai@weidai.com]
    > It seems to me that whatever economic pressure exists towards
    > standardizing on verifiable mental architectures will apply
    > much more towards standardizing on motivations. A group of
    > agents with the same mental architecture and different
    > motivations faces huge disadvantages when competing with a
    > group of agents with a variety of mental architectures and
    > the same motivations. The latter group can optimize their
    > mental architectures for efficiency and specialization,
    > rather than verifiability.

    I think your mention of groups is quite interesting here.

    It does indeed seem likely that we'll see different groups with
    different mental architectures. That raises the possibility that
    transparency across groups will be much more difficult than
    transparency within those groups.[*]

    And transparency within those groups will depend upon the details of
    the mental architecture. While there are advantages afforded to
    groups that are able to achieve a high degree of transparency, there
    are also likely disadvantages resulting from the design overhead
    necessary to ensure that transparency.

    The disadvantages accrue to both solo individuals and to members of
    the group. The advantages accrue only when multiple individuals are
    cooperating. The advantages of transparency are likely greater for
    groups whose members cooperate more fully. This suggests an
    evolutionary feedback loop - as a group achieves a level of
    transparency it can achieve a level of greater cooperation which
    encourages an even greater level of transparency, etc...

    So one wonders if entities which are truly able to achieve mental
    transparency end up on a path towards merger into composite entities,
    whereas entities that are less able to achieve transparency remain
    more individual, and are perhaps pushed towards ecological niches
    where they can take advantage of the freedom their individuality
    affords them to rapidly experiment with new mental designs without the
    burden of transparency protocols and such which would otherwise limit
    them.

    mez

    * - The notion of groups who are able to achieve high degrees of
    internal transparency but are unable to achieve transparency with
    members of other groups is actually rather disturbing. It suggests
    the possibility of more deeply embedded tribalism among diverse future
    entities, with all the ills that tribalism brings.



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