[extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day

[Samantha Atkins]

On Tuesday 04 November 2003 23:11, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> Ones and zeroes.  We can see them completely and clearly; the entire realm
> is absolutely under our control; it is a world that we built and that runs
> entirely on our rules. 

Uh, the world includes *us* and many of us are not good little digital 
citizens at all.   *We* use these digital tools and thus *we* are what needs 
some control, not the simple world of 1's and 0's  (not that it is very so 
simple either).  

And no, the world of programs itself does not run entirely on our rules or at 
least we have very imperfect understanding of the implications and 
interactions of the rules we thought to impose with one another and the world 
they are embedded within.

> Destroying the intruder is as easy as making the
> decision.
>

Hardly.  First you must determine what is and is not an intruder.  This is 
non-trivial.   Then you must determine what is the appropriate amount of 
destruction or other action to acheive the desired result with a minimum of 
side-effects.  OOPS, I left out that you must formulate with some clarity 
what the goal state is.  

> And yet we still can't get rid of spam.
>
> Active shields against grey goo?  Yeah, right.

Actually, handling spam is not an implausible warm-up exercise. 

- samantha