[ExI] Why “Everyone Dies” Gets AGI All Wrong by Ben Goertzel

[John Clark]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2025 at 3:25 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

*> In some cases, Mother Nature (or God, or whoever you think is our
> creator) has miss wired our reward system (phenomenal joyes) with bad
> things (hurting others).  But once we learn how to do phenomenal
> engineering, there is no reason for any of this to be the case.  Being able
> to choose what you want to want, and having the ability to correct miswired
> rewards like this is what true freedom is. So to think that truly
> intelligently designed beings will have problems like this seems wrong to
> me, and nothing to worry about. *
>

*I think having complete control of your emotional control panel is
something to worry about and I've thought so for a long time. I wrote the
following to the old Cryonics Mailing List on January 19, 1994: *

*"Ever want to accomplish something but have been unable to because It's
difficult, well just change your goal in life to something simple and do
that; better yet, flood your mind with a feeling of pride and self
satisfaction and don't bother accomplishing anything at all. Think all this
is a terrible idea and stupid as well , no problem, just change your
mind (and I do mean CHANGE YOUR MIND) now you think it's a wonderful idea.
O.K., O.K. I'm exaggerating a little, the steps would probably be smaller,
at least at first, but the result would be the same. I don't have the
blueprints for a Jupiter brain in my pocket but I do know that complex
mechanisms don't do well in a positive feedback loop, not electronics, not
animals, not people and not Jupiter brains. True, you could probably set up
negative feedback of some kind to counteract it, but that would result in a
decrease in happiness so would you really want to do that?"*

*The explanation to the Fermi paradox may not be that extraterrestrial
civilizations end in a bang or a whimper, but in a moan of orgastic
pleasure. ET might be an electronic junkie. *

*John K Clark*
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