On 06/11/2014 05:07, Bill Hibbard via AGI wrote:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1411.1373
I read some more. The book is pretty good, though probably with too much maths for the taste of 99% of the potential readers. I didn't much like the taking of John Rawls' Theory of Justice seriously. That's not how society's rules are agreed on - it's a philosopher's fantasy. I think utilitarianism and Rawls' Theory of Justice are beloved to ethical philosophers because these folk have to signal superhuman niceness to people as part of their job description. IMO, reality looks more like this: "Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other." - Oscar Ameringer No doubt superhuman niceness will be on the ballot sheets of some of the hopefuls in the race to machine intelligence. However, technological development needs funding and investment, as well as eager bums on seats. So, we'll probably see compromises being made - along the lines that Ameringer mentioned. If so, the dreams of the most idealistic may well be shattered. I think that's what happens to the "rainbows and unicorns" political parties. People see that they don't have much chance - and so don't even bother to vote for them. I also didn't like this bit: > in fact, it is impossible to predict the consequences of above-human-level AI. > As Vernor Vinge (1993) wrote, the technological singularity (i.e., the advent > of far-above-human-level AI) is an "opaque wall across the future." I think that this is nonsense. The *details* of the future may well be masked off (by sensitivity to initial conditions). However, we can still make reasonable statistical predictions about many types of future events. We can be fairly confident, for example, that ecosystems will increase their abilities to dissipate energy gradients. To me, Vinge's maxim seems inconsistent with natural history as we understand it - and it is a defeatest curiousity-stopper. -- __________ |im |yler http://timtyler.org/ [email protected] Remove lock to reply. ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
