[extropy-chat] silent night

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

duggerj1 at charter.net wrote:
> 
> Perhaps, but then the bet no longer depends on Earth's rotation. I might
> bet any creature powerful enough to dismantle a star without
> exterminating local life will have restraint enough to avoid taking the
> action.

But the Sun is wasting entropy!

Okay, I can see an FAI (especially a CV) waiting another thousand years to 
take apart the Sun, while the humans get over their sentimentality. 
(What's a thousand years out of a billion already wasted?  A sunk cost, 
that's what.)  Maybe humans shall always be sentimental, and we'll leave 
the Sun of Earth to burn out and get icky on its own, even though we 
disassemble the other stars as soon as a lightspeed probe can reach them.

But I can also see a powerful argument for turning off the Sun.  It's 
wasting electricity, and the utility bills are just unimaginable.

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