[ExI] Meat v. Machine

[Samantha Atkins]

On Dec 29, 2010, at 4:52 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote:

> On 2010-12-29 06:27, John Clark wrote:
>> On Dec 28, 2010, at 11:50 PM, The Avantguardian wrote:
>> 
>>> If machine-phaselife is so inevitable and sosuperior, where are the
>>> Von Neumann probes?
>> 
>> Two possible answers:
>> 
>> 1) Somebody has to be the first intelligent technological civilization
>> in the visible universe, perhaps it is us.
> 
> This weird possibility should be considered.
> 
>> 2) Some road block prevents intelligence from engineering the cosmos, my
>> best guess of what that impediment is would be electronic drug addiction.
> 
> That possibility has jumped a bit in my estimation this year, but I still find it somewhat problematic. The main reason is that it requires electronic drug addiction (or games, superb art, sex or whatever) to be strongly convergent: nobody and nothing can resist it. That seems to be a tall order, since it is enough that only one individual manufactures a successful von Neumann anywhere for them to dominate.
> http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2010/04/flanders_vs_fermi.html

Games: hid the game machines in the closet.  Superb art: I don't find that much I really consider superb.   Sex: see art.  :)

I have a feeling that actual species that make it to and through an AI singularity aren't so intent on "dominating" as we relative primitives are.    

- s