[extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day

[Jef Allbright]

Spam falls into that category of interesting problems where the short-term
interests of a few *appear* to outweigh the long-term interests of the many.
Prisoners Dilemma, War (in general), failure to exercise one's vote (because
it won't make a difference), are examples of situations where one can make
what appear to be fully informed fully rational decisions that result in
long-term harm to all, including the individual opportunist.  In my opinion,
these problems will persist until our society has evolved beyond short-term,
tribal thinking.  I see signs that we may get there.  [Google:
Superrationality.]

- Jef

Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote:
> Getting rid of spam may well be as difficult as developing active
> shields against gray goo. Spam is a moving target: as soon as we
> devise a good filter for today's spam, they will devise a way around.
> As soon as we develop a super AI that recognizes spam, they will
> develop a better AI to produce subliminal advertising bases on those
> nuances of human psycology that have not be incorporated in the AI
> design. The bad guys are as smart as the good guys, this is not
> likely to change too soon. I think we will still have bad guys after
> the singularity. G.
>