[extropy-chat] Cold Fusion

[Keith Henson]

At 09:39 AM 1/30/2007 -0500, Ben wrote:

snip (stuff I completely agree with)

>As for the pleasant-ness of thinking about cold fusion and
>related topics, I have a mixture of pleasure and displeasure
>in reaction to the cold fusion phenomenon, but that is not the
>point.  [The displeasure comes from the fact that it makes the
>terrible incompleteness of our current understanding of physics
>all to clear.  Which makes it seem extremely likely that shortly after
>a superhuman AI is created, it will understand new physics that
>we do not.  Which makes the notion of guaranteeing the
>benevolence of superhuman AI's even more farfetched than it
>would be otherwise.  If the universe were a well-understood
>machine, then the Friendly AI problem would be tough enough;
>given that it's apparently a quite poorly understood machine,
>that means it's even tougher...]

That's a really interesting take in the incompleteness of physics.  It 
certainly never occured to me.

Keith