[ExI] Fermi Paradox and Transcension

[Tomasz Rola]

On Tue, 11 Sep 2012, Jeff Davis wrote:

> Not being able to know the meaning of "superintelligent" is the first
> problem.  We can project in that direction though our experience with
> exceptionally intelligent humans, but beyond that darkness begins to
> fall. And beyond that, where an advanced level of complexity predicts
> the emergence of the unpredictable, we're friggin' totally in the
> dark.  I would very much like to hear someone attempt to penetrate the
> first level -- the penetrable level -- of darkness.

I think this had been penetrated quite a lot by Stanislaw Lem in "Golem 
XIV" and few fragments of "Summa Technologiae". As well as some of his 
"action books". I remember a scene (but I can't recall a book) where a 
pilot has a conversation with calculator, and thanks to his mental 
training is able to talk a calculator into performing some computation 
after it decided by itself that this would have been waste of time - kind 
of, like Feynman meets abacus master, only few levels up.

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **