[extropy-chat] RE: Singularitarian verses singularity

Wed Dec 28 01:27:14 UTC 2005

--- Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com>
wrote:

> > Politicans and voters don't have to understand the
> > entire world in order to avoid destroying it. They
> > just have to understand it resembles a game of
> > Prisoner's Dilemma where maximizing one's own
> payoff
> > by defecting not only lowers the utility of the
> other
> > player but lowers the sum of the utility of both
> > players taken as collective. Thus all else being
> > equal, any tribe with one or more defectors is
> weaker
> > than any tribe without.
> 
> ### Do you think any significant number of humans
> are aware of this
> fact in the context of political activity? (not in
> everyday
> face-to-face exchanges where most have a good
> intuitive grasp of the
> correct strategy)

Well it depends on what you mean by significant
numbers of humans. If you refer to politicians, I
would hope that a majority of them have some grasp of
game theory as it is one of few parts of "political
science" that is at all scientific. As far as the vast
number of people that have varying degrees of
political involvement ranging from lobbying, activism,
to voting or abstaining from such, intelligence makes
little difference. The way issues and candidates are
framed by the politicos are almost entirely data-free.
Million dollar ads are played on TV that reduce the
political discourse to meaningless sound bites,
essentially "instructing" viewers to vote this way or
that based entirely on manufactured reasons or, in
many cases, no reason at all. At no point are the true
motivations of the political players remotely touched
upon. Most of the common person's involvement in
politics in supposedly "free" democracies seems to
primarily revolve around being distracted, deceived,
and misled by the mass media whilst the truly
important issues upon which our survival hinges are
assidiously obfuscated by those who profess to have
our best interests at heart.  

> 
> Do you think you have a good definition of
> "defection" in the game of
> life?

Yes. Defection comes in a million forms and
manifestations from marital infidelity to genocide.
But I see no reason to overthink this. Evolution has
gifted us with a rather accurate intuitive sense of
what defection is. Some pretty good rules of thumb:

1. If you would not like the other player do this to
you, it most likely qualifies as defection.
2. If you would rather keep it secret from the other
player that you did this action to them, it is
probably a form of defection.
3. If you have to invoke one's moral, cultural, or
genetic superiority, oxymoronic doublespeak (e.g.
calling it preemptive retaliation), or engage in
convoluted rationalizations for doing an action to
them, it is probably defection.

> Are humans on average smart enough to think
> their way through
> decades of implications of their actions (e.g.
> voting for Social
> Security or extending the Patriot Act) to predict
> the outcomes?

Probably not, but I don't think they need to be. Nor
do I think that some supersmart machine would be any
better at this. Chaos theory is a good descriptor of
such phenomena as long range consequences of actions
and the meat of chaos theory is not, "you are not
smart enough to determine effects that are far removed
from initial causes" so much as "it is mathematically
intractable to accurately determine effects that are
far removed from initial causes". No SAI is going to
be able to brute force the butterfly effect anymore
than it will be able to determine which of two
radioactive nuclei will be the first to decay. 

As far as the decade spanning consequences of laws
such as Social Security and the USA PATRIOT Act are
concerned, it is unnecessary to try to predict their
outcomes. All that is necessary is to make laws
malleable and easily rescindable. In this we can
borrow from the wisdom of nature, which is not to
"intelligently design" organisms capable of foreseeing
all potential environmental circumstances but instead
seeks merely to allow for mutable organisms that can
empirically adapt to changing environments.

> Do they need to be able to understand the
consequences
> of their actions
> to make correct decisions in the game of life?

Yes. But it is also important for them to examine
their motives since long-term consequences are often
hard to fathom. Somewhere between "the ends not
justifying the means" and the "road to hell being
paved with good intentions" is a happy medium where
acceptable intentions lead to acceptable consequences.

 Do
> humans understand
> the consequences of even a small fraction of state
> policies they are
> involved in?

How involved do you think the system allows an average
human to become? The whole existense of the
attorney/lawyer/barrister/politican as a professional
class is a testament to the lengths that society goes
to in order to make affairs of state inaccessable to
the common man.

> > The level of understanding of politicians and
> voters
> > has nothing to do with the percieved need for SAI.
> > Unless of course you are suggesting doing away
> with
> > democracy entirely and instituting SAD (superhuman
> > artifical dictators). If this is the case than I
> am
> > absolutely against any such use of SAI. Power
> tends to
> > corrupt. Software tends to be corruptable.
> Software
> > with absolute power is begging for corruption.
> 
> ### Eliezer noticed this many years ago and this is
> why he set out to
> design foolproof superhuman software. This is why I
> am a strong
> supporter of SIAI (doubts regarding the
> computability of CEV and the
> usefulness of athymhormic AI notwithstanding).

Well as my previous posts suggests apathetic SAI
(athymhormic?) is a serious possibility. As is
outright hostility, flakiness, or insanity. What good
is huge intellect when you ask a simple question yet
refuse accept the simple answer? What  does 2+3 equal
when 5 is a politically unacceptable answer?

> -------------------------------------------------
> 
>  I will forgive you the implication that I am
> > some blood thirsty revolutionary because of the
> > actions of the Bolshevics of your homeland are
> still
> > on your mind. You think because I criticize the
> > government and the super-wealthy for the choices
> they
> > make that I hate them?
> 
> ### Yep. But you could try to convince me otherwise.

Hmm. Well, for what it is worth, after a hard rain I
step over the worms on the sidewalk instead of on them
(if I happen to see them that is). On the other hand,
I enthusiastically swat mosquitos that dare feed upon
me. Psychoanalyze that as you will. 

> ### Cool. Tell me just what is your effective way of
> "redistributing"
> wealth to the morally correct uses without violence
> and I will hail
> you as our savior.

I appreciate your cynicism. I will meditate on this
and if I come up with anything I deem worthy of your
feedback, I will make it available to you.

The Avantguardian 
is 
Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. . ."

- Albert Einstein, "What I Believe" (1930)

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