[extropy-chat] What Human Minds Will Eventually Do

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Sun Jul 2 16:00:36 UTC 2006


On 7/2/06, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> The motivation of life never changes: spread out. People have no consensus,
> and self-replicating postbiology in deep space as native habitat are not
> people as we know them, and many dumb critters in the literal sense.

That's the point!
When posthuman intelligence lives in solid state computronium we are
not talking about 'people'. Our present wishes and desires will no
longer apply.


>
> Information and matter streams are not just common code, they're
> individuals. At the boundary there are no neighbours on one
> side by definition. Individuals wander off and colonize sterile
> patches. There are already a number of people on this list and
> elsewhere which would run far and wide, if given the slightest
> opportunity. Assuming, you know who these people are, would you
> want to keep them here against their will? Would you be able to?
> I notice we didn't choose to remain in Africa, as a species.
> Population and culture pressure drove Old World colonists
> across the Atlantic, and the Pacific.
>

I doubt if there will be 'people' or 'individuals' (in our present
meaning of such terms) in the computronium state. Pioneers, colonists
or explorers tend to be misfits of some kind in their society. As soon
as humans can control / design their intelligence such misfits won't
exist any more. Probably before uploading to solid state arrives.


>
> You're postulating stellar-system sized, homogenous individuals.

Yes! That's the future.
Big, yes. Stellar sized? Probably not. Depends on how good computronium gets.


> This strikes
> me as astronomically unlikely. Again: nonexpansive cultures are not observable.
> Probability of all individual of a culture population to be nonexpansive is
> arbitrarily close to zero.
>

Seems very likely to me.  And we don't observe any expanding cultures.
No stars going dark, no unusual engineering. Just your average very
strange universe.
And we don't have individuals any more in this future culture, remember?

>
> I don't understand you. Individuals follow their own motivations. No one
> knows nor cares what a particular critter riding an iceblock a couple lightmonths
> outwards does.
>
> Time-sharing doesn't make sense. Co-evolution optimizes for Ops/s,
> so if you'll get swapped out to lattice-defect encoded dumb storage
> you'll never get swapped in. Particularly, if somebody eats that dumb
> block of storage. Such static structures are only useful for
> seeds, and even then they need to be reprocessed constantly due
> to radiation background shooting holes into your crystal.


Intelligence living in computronium doesn't mean no physical
manipulators. There could be little AIs buzzing about all over the
place picking up the litter, repairing defensive shields, getting in
the harvest, whatever needs doing. As long as a large sphere of
computronium has to exist in this physical universe, then it must
maintain and defend its environment, even if it is in deep space.


>
> If you've fallen into your own navel, and can't get out, then you're
> dead to the universe. You will never meet anybody on your own but
> expansive culture's pioneers.


Correct. There aren't any expansive culture pioneers with the
intelligence and resources to cross light years in an expanding
universe. The growth of intelligence stops them. By definition, if
they are expanding across light years then they are not intelligent.
More like a virus or at least a psychotic intelligence. An M brain
would either ignore them or use them for some nefarious purpose.
Might even fix their intelligence so they don't want to be pioneers
any more.  ;)

>
> Given that we're an evolutionary system, and so far nobody has shown
> a plausible mechanism by which we will leave the evolutionary regime
> the burden of proof is on the side of those who postulate that a
> culture can become nonexpansive.
>
> Atoms are atoms everywhere. Either food or fuel, or both.


AI evolves so fast that human evolution is effectively stopped.


BillK



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