[extropy-chat] will the sun rise?

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

Harvey Newstrom wrote:
> 
> I do not believe AI can advance that far in 20 years.  I don't believe 
> we will have the technology to disassemble the sun in 20 years.  I don't
> believe reproducing nanites or nanites that can survive the sun's heat 
> will be developed in 20 years.  I don't believe a space ship capable of 
> carrying such a project to the sun will be available in 20 years.  I 
> don't believe humans will be rearranging planets and stars within 20 
> years.  I think such predictions are beyond the realm of even fantasy 
> within 20 years.  I wouldn't even read a science fiction story that had 
> such plot elements within 20 years.  It is too unbelievable.
> 
> And I will bet any amount of money against it, and retire rich in 20
> years.

So you believe that it would be physically impossible to develop stellar
disassembly technology within 10^51 Planck increments?  I suppose you feel
that, say, 10^52 Planck increments or 10^53 Planck increments would be more
realistic?

Only your first sentence was relevant.  For the rest, I spoke of a 
superintelligence disassembling the Sun - not of humans undertaking the job.

Never forget that you run on a 200Hz processor.  Your timescale is not the 
timescale of physics.  Unless you have set forth the physics of stellar 
disassembly and *calculated* the impossibility, I would not be so eager to 
make vast bets on the basis of intuition alone.

I recently read a book on writing fiction which patiently explained to the 
would-be writer that "But it happened in real life!" is not a good excuse 
for an unbelievable plot element.  Fiction, you see, must be believable, 
even if reality is not.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence