[extropy-chat] In the Long Run, How Much Does Intelligence Dominate Space?

Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu
Thu Jul 6 12:20:29 UTC 2006


At 03:24 PM 7/4/2006, Lee Corbin wrote:
> > > Russell and I take the "good housekeeping" view, if I might
> > > phrase it that way, that a powerful intelligence keeps her
> > > area as clean as a Dutch housewife does hers.
> >
> > I would ask the question as:  what kinds of choices are coordinated
> > over what scales?  An "intelligence" over some region is not aware
> > of everything going on in that region, but for some choices made in
> > that region coordination is important enough and feasible enough
> > that the intelligence is conscious of those choices and attempts to
> > coordinate them with each other and with other closely relevant
> > choices.
>
>I'll try to understand exactly what you mean through some examples.
>
>Example one: A Dutch housewife only controls the macro human-visible
>elements of her house, giving spiders and rodents no chance whatsoever
>for sharing the residence. But she cannot (until the 20th century)
>attempt to eliminate all microbes, and even then she does not succeed.
>
>Example two: In modern hi-tech clean near but not absolute success
>is achieved. Did you have this example in mind also when you made
>your statement?  An AI may be able to keep its mind as "clean" as
>this.

In these examples, the question is how valuable is it to coordinate on this
scale to keep this area clean of this type of "dirt."    Even if a 
household is
run by several people, they may coordinate to keep out "dust", but not
neutrinos or inaccurate political ideology.



Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323 




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