[ExI] Consequentialist world improvement

[Keith Henson]

On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 5:00 AM, "spike" <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
> [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty
> ...
>>>... If one often gets the feeling one should spend less time downloading
>> one's brain into ExI-chat, a cheerful thought is that it might not be
>> such a terrible waste.  You might be creating your future posthumous
>> self with each paragraph you write.  spike
>
>>...Not just Exl-chat; the Internet in general...
>
> Ja.  ExI-chat gets most of my best ideas and real thoughts, along with some
> of my best cut-ups.
>
>>...btw, are you serious about building an archive-powered impersonator bot?
> _______________________________________________
>
> I would be serious about it if I were a better programmer, and I am willing
> to work towards being a better programmer to get this done.

I hope not.  This might be a case where a joke got out of hand.  Bots
cluttering discussions with old quotes we do not need.  If the bots
were able to form new ideas though, that would be AI.

On the other hand, it is related to a discussion between Hans Moravec
and me in the pre-archive days.  I eventually located it on a floppy
disk.   Hans was arguing that he didn't need to be frozen since he
could be resurrected from his works.  That led to me saying it would
be a huge waste of computer resources and would involve discarding
large numbers of versions of Hans that didn't get _Mind Children_
exactly right and hoping the discard process would not be painful.

Charlie, who started this thread, was on the list in those days and
mined it extensively for the ideas that went into his absolutely great
novel _Accelerando_.  I was totally boggled to be reading along and
find the idea in the exchanges between Hans and me had been worked
into the plot.  The "vile offspring" implemented in computronium down
around the sun were doing this and sending the results out to the
ruminant of humanity on Saturn.  Highly appreciated to see such ideas
turned into particularly fine science fiction.  (Shame on you if you
are on this list and have not read _Accelerando_.)

BTW Charlie, I think Economics 2.0 is already upon us.

^^^^^^^^^^^^

This might sound like total nonsense, except we can already see the
beginnings of serious economic concerns with the speed of light. The
avatars that run programmed trading must be close physically to the
computers that run the stock exchanges.

“In the U.S., high-frequency firms represent only 2 percent of the
20,000 or so trading firms operating today. But they now account for
nearly three-quarters of all trades.

“And the average time a stock investment is held these days is 22
seconds. If time is money, microseconds are now millions. In a recent
so-called TED talk on cutting-edge technology, tech whiz Kevin Slavin
wowed the audience by describing buildings now being hollowed out in
Lower Manhattan. Why? So that high-frequency trading firms can move in
and get as close as possible to New York’s point of entry for the
Internet at a so-called carrier hotel in Tribeca.

“. . . . this is really where the wires come right up into the city.
And the further away you are from that, you’re a few microseconds
behind every time. These guys down on Wall Street, they’re eight
microseconds behind all these guys going into the empty buildings
being hollowed out up around the carrier hotel.
“Just to give you a sense of what microseconds are, it takes you
500,000 microseconds just to click a mouse. But if you’re a Wall
Street algorithm and you’re five microseconds behind, you’re a loser.”

– from Kevin Slavin on algorithms

^^^^^^^^^^^

I am reminded of Arthur C. Clarke who wrote about AI in "Against the
Fall of Night."  The story has AI taking billion of years to develop.
It's looks like it will only take decades beyond Clarke own life for
that to happen.  Sorry to lump you in with AC Clarke Charlie.  :-)

Keith