<div>
<blockquote>"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind
to suffer; The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms
against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them? To die: to sleep"<br>
(from <a href="http://www.artofeurope.com/shakespeare/sha8.htm" title="William Shakespeare - To be, or not to be" target="_blank">Hamlet 3/1</a>)</blockquote>
<p>Now I'm no <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Reich-Ranicki" title="Marcel Reich-Ranicki - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" target="_blank">literary critic</a>.
I could not help to be reminded however of this most famous snippet of
Shakespearean writing when working on putting together a set of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom" title="Axiom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" target="_blank">axiomatic beliefs</a> on which the core belief of my
<a href="http://www.jame5.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/benevolence-pernar-v11.pdf" title="Benevolence – a Materialist Philosophy of Goodness v1.1" target="_blank">friendly AI theory</a> is founded on: that is good what increases fitness.
</p>
<p>Inspired by a <a href="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=350509&cid=21247745" title="How I Learned Philosophy by severoon" target="_blank">comment</a> on famous geek site <a href="http://shlashdot.org/" title="/. news for nerds - stuff that matters" target="_blank">
Slashdot.org</a> I sat down to do the following:</p>
<ul><li>write down a strongly held belief => "That is good what increases fitness."</li><li>write down the set of "sub-beliefs" that I have which form the basis of my belief</li><li>iterate above steps, applying the same process to each belief listed
</li></ul>
<p>The result was very interesting. Soon I realized that the listed
beliefs started to contradict each other so I had to think deeper and
rewrite some of them. That lead to new insights and resulted in a set
of <a href="http://www.jame5.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/beliefiteration1.txt" title="Iterated friendliness beliefs" target="_blank">40 beliefs</a>. Some of them are trivial and some of them are interesting. Most axiomatic however is the following belief:
</p>
<blockquote><p> <a href="http://1.2.3.2" target="_blank">1.2.3.2</a> To exist is preferable over not to exist</p></blockquote>
<p>To be, or not to be, that is the question. Is that not the
metaphorical question implicitly posed by reality on every living
thing: 'Can you exist?'</p>
<p>Over the course of evolution this question was first asked and
answered passively on the chemical level and later actively 'pondered'
on the <a href="http://www.jame5.com/?p=23" title="RIP genetic evolution - long live cognition!" target="_blank">cognitive level</a>
to avoid reality taking its toll. With the realization that what is
good is what increases fitness one can start to actively as well as
consciously look into developing strategies for ensured continued
existence.</p>
<p>Averting the rise of a non-friendly AI then becomes but one of many <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=existential+risks" title="existential risks - Google Search" target="_blank">existential risks</a>.</p>
</div>from: <a href="http://jame5.com" target="_blank">http://jame5.com</a><br><br>-- <br>Stefan Pernar<br>3-E-101 Silver Maple Garden<br>#6 Cai Hong Road, Da Shan Zi<br>Chao Yang District<br>100015 Beijing<br>P.R
. CHINA<br>Mobil: +86 1391 009 1931
<br>Skype: Stefan.Pernar