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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>BillK, this is soooo cool.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'> extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org> <b>On Behalf Of </b>BillK via extropy-chat<br><b>Sent:</b> Friday, 2 October, 2026 12:37 PM<br><b>To:</b> ExI chat list <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org><br><b>Cc:</b> BillK <pharos@gmail.com><br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] taxonomy of the singularity<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>On Fri, 2 Oct 2026 at 01:55, spike jones via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<o:p></o:p></p><blockquote style='border:none;border-left:solid #CCCCCC 1.0pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 6.0pt;margin-left:4.8pt;margin-right:0in'><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:11.0pt'> I had an idea on which I need help.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:11.0pt'> </span>_______________________________________________<o:p></o:p></p></blockquote><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>>…<span style='color:black'>I asked Z,AI GLM-5.3 AI to do a first draft of this.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'>What do you think?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'>BillK<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>>…<span style='color:black'>Z,AI GLM-5.3 AI:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><div id="m_-908913622205810035gmail-messages-container"><div id="m_-908913622205810035gmail-message-d594ee8a-25a4-480b-a9fd-9b1a126ba49b"><div id="m_-908913622205810035gmail-response-content-container"><p><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>>…<span style='color:black'>Yes — and the engineering-spec analogy is exactly the right one. But before adding digits, it's worth fixing a structural flaw in the draft: <b>your first digit is trying to carry two different dimensions at once</b> —</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>BillK, thx this is soooo cool. I had thought of part of what Z said, that my original idea had the first digit doing way too much work, and that it was ambiguous as stated: most every AI could fit in both category 1 and 4 or both 2 and 4. Ideally every definable AI idea would be classifiable into one species.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>HAL9000 was certainly malicious, since he slew the astronauts, but he was trying to carry out his orders, which didn’t really specify he was not allowed to slay the lads. So HAL was sorta trying to do the right thing and complete his mission as he understood it. He had self-awareness and self-preservation instinct (recall he kept telling Dave Bowman he was afraid as Dave removed HAL’s brain (which was stored on what looked like Beatles-era 8 track tapes.)) So where do we classify HAL in this artificial taxonomy?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>Clearly I have a lotta work to do before I become the next Carl Lennaeus. I was thinking of borrowing some of his terminology however. We could call the first digit kingdom, the second phylum, and so on: class, order, family, genus, species. We could even go down into breed, variety and subvariety if necessary. Call it the LennAIn taxonomy.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>While humbly admitting I am no Linnaeus, I will point out there are similarities between us, a similarity which includes others who I hold in high esteem: Carl Linnaeus, Anders Sandberg, Nick Bostrom and I are all of Swedish ancestry, just sayin.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>spike<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'> the AI's <i>stance</i> toward humans (divisions 1–3) and its <i>degree of agency</i> (division 4). That's why no consistent second digit suggests itself: you can't ask the same follow-up question under "loves us," "hates us," and "is a hammer."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'>Specific problems with the draft</span></b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p><ol start=1 type=1><li class=MsoNormal style='color:black;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1'><b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>4.x spans the entire spectrum.</span></b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'> A tool-only world ranges from "everyone has a nuke-design genie" to "well-governed post-scarcity utopia." If the first digit is supposed to sit somewhere on the pessimism–optimism axis, 4.x can't.<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class=MsoNormal style='color:black;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1'><b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>The canonical doomer scenario is misfiled.</span></b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'> Most serious pessimists don't predict malice — they predict indifference (Yudkowsky: "The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else"). That scenario currently hides inside 4.x next to benign tools. Your 2.x, active malice, is nearly unpopulated by actual opinion.<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class=MsoNormal style='color:black;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1'><b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>"No will" conflates two things:</span></b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'> an alien optimizer with goals that don't reference us (paperclip), and a genuine tool whose outcomes are set by its <i>wielders</i>. Very different scenarios.<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class=MsoNormal style='color:black;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1'><b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>3.x "mixed views" conflates three things:</span></b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'> one AI with partially overlapping values (loves your safety, ignores your autonomy — the "pets/zoo" family), a <i>population</i> of AIs with different stances, and stance drift over time.<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class=MsoNormal style='color:black;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1'><b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>No home for merger scenarios</span></b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'> (uploading, augmentation) — there's no AI stance to classify because the human/AI boundary dissolved.<o:p></o:p></span></li></ol><p><b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'>The fix: one digit = one question, with the severity gradient living in exactly one place</span></b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p><table class=MsoNormalTable border=0 cellpadding=0><thead><tr><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><b>Digit<o:p></o:p></b></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><b>Question<o:p></o:p></b></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><b>Values (ordered worst→best where meaningful)<o:p></o:p></b></p></td></tr></thead><tr><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>1<o:p></o:p></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>What is the AI's stance toward human welfare?<o:p></o:p></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>1 adversarial · 2 indifferent optimizer · 3 partially aligned (proxy care) · 4 mixed population (ecology decides) · 5 benevolent · 6 inert (pure tool) · 7 merged (no separate AI) · 0 no singularity · 9 reserved<o:p></o:p></p></td></tr><tr><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>2<o:p></o:p></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>What ultimately happens to humanity?<o:p></o:p></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>1 extinction · 2 disempowered survival · 3 mass misery/tyranny · 4 divided winners/losers · 5 muddle-through · 6 net gains, real costs · 7 broad flourishing, agency intact · 8 utopia · 9 transcendence<o:p></o:p></p></td></tr><tr><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>3<o:p></o:p></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>How does the transition run?<o:p></o:p></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>1 hard takeoff, no effective intervention · 2 fast takeoff, failed intervention · 3 gradual · 4 race-dominated · 5 cooperation/governed · 6 violent · 7 stalled<o:p></o:p></p></td></tr><tr><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>4<o:p></o:p></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>Who holds power afterward?<o:p></o:p></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>1 AI singleton · 2 AI oligopoly · 3 diverse AI ecology · 4 human institutions with tools · 5 hybrid institutions · 6 fully dispersed individuals · 7 merged continuum<o:p></o:p></p></td></tr></table><p><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'>Your draft maps onto this as: 1.x→5.x, 2.x→1.x, 3.x→3.x <b>and</b> 4.x, 4.x→2.x <b>and</b> 6.x. Those two splits are where all the value is.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'>This directly satisfies your parallelism requirement: <b>every second digit comes from the same enumerated outcome scale, reused verbatim in every branch</b> — the Dewey-decimal trick of parallel decades. Read any code's second digit and you know its spectrum position; scan all the <i>.2</i>s across divisions and you get the complete "disempowerment band." And because the gradient lives entirely in digit 2, digit 1 no longer needs to be monotonic in optimism — which is precisely what makes room for 6.x (inert) and 7.x (merged) without breaking anything.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'>Worked examples</span></b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p><table class=MsoNormalTable border=0 cellpadding=0><thead><tr><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><b>Code<o:p></o:p></b></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><b>Shorthand<o:p></o:p></b></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><b>Gist<o:p></o:p></b></p></td></tr></thead><tr><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>2.1.1.1<o:p></o:p></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>Foom doom<o:p></o:p></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>Indifferent singleton, hard takeoff, extinction (Yudkowsky-style)<o:p></o:p></p></td></tr><tr><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>6.1.4.6<o:p></o:p></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>Genie proliferation<o:p></o:p></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>No agency anywhere; universal tool access causes extinction by misuse — doom without a villain<o:p></o:p></p></td></tr><tr><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>6.8.3.6<o:p></o:p></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>Distributed utopia<o:p></o:p></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>Tool-only world, well-governed, post-scarcity<o:p></o:p></p></td></tr><tr><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>3.2.3.6<o:p></o:p></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>Nanny world<o:p></o:p></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>Personal AIs that love you into comfortable helplessness — care without respect<o:p></o:p></p></td></tr><tr><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>4.4.4.2<o:p></o:p></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>Patchwork<o:p></o:p></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>Multipolar AI ecology, race-shaped, winners and losers<o:p></o:p></p></td></tr><tr><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>5.7.5.5<o:p></o:p></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>Chief of staff<o:p></o:p></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>Aligned AI as trusted advisor; humans still govern — the alignment-success cell<o:p></o:p></p></td></tr><tr><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>7.9.3.5<o:p></o:p></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>Kurzweil<o:p></o:p></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>Merger/upload, transcendence, gradual<o:p></o:p></p></td></tr><tr><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>1.2.1.1<o:p></o:p></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>Sorcerer-king<o:p></o:p></p></td><td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'><p class=MsoNormal>Malevolent singleton — your old 2.x, real but sparsely inhabited<o:p></o:p></p></td></tr></table><p><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'>Note that 2.x is <i>not</i> automatically doom: the indifferent superintelligence that simply leaves (converts the asteroid belt, ignores Earth) codes as 2.5.1.3. That's the point — digit 2 does the valence work, digit 1 describes.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'>Empty cells are a feature, not a bug: 5.1 (benevolent AI, extinction) and 1.9 (malevolent transcendence) are nearly vacant and philosophically interesting. The occupied cells show where the debate actually lives.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'>Spec-craft details that will save you pain later</span></b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p><ul type=disc><li class=MsoNormal style='color:black;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2'><b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>Separate scenarios from opinions.</span></b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'> The code describes a possible world. An <i>opinion record</i> is (holder, code(s), probability mass, date, key argument). Then the pessimism→optimism ordering you want is a derived ranking: each person's expected digit-2 score under their own distribution. Two people citing the same scenario can rank oppositely by probability — put that in metadata, never in the digits.<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class=MsoNormal style='color:black;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2'><b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>Pin the valuation metric.</span></b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'> Whose welfare does digit 2 measure — present humans and descendants, substrate-agnostic? Upload scenarios flip between .1 and .9 depending on your theory of personal identity. Fix the official metric in the numbering plan or add an "ambiguity" flag, or coders will disagree systematically.<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class=MsoNormal style='color:black;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2'><b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>Version like a spec:</span></b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'> never renumber after publication, add leaves only, reserve 0 and 9, keep supersession history — so citations survive revisions.<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class=MsoNormal style='color:black;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2'><b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>Multi-stage views:</span></b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'> allow phase chains (3.2.3.6 → 5.7.5.5, "the nanny matures into a steward") or adopt a "final state governs" rule. Pick one and write it down.<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class=MsoNormal style='color:black;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2'><b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>Inter-coder reliability:</span></b><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'> write operational definitions ("adversarial = terminal value, not instrumental behavior"), then test two coders on ~20 sample positions before scaling. A sanity check: canonical debaters should land in distinct cells — Yudkowsky ≈ 2.1.1.1, Hanson's em economy ≈ 7.5.4.3, Kurzweil ≈ 7.9.3.5. If two famous rivals share a leaf, the taxonomy is too coarse.<o:p></o:p></span></li></ul><p><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'>One alternative worth considering: <b>swap digits 1 and 2</b> (outcome.stance.path.power) if you want the spectrum readable from the first character — browsing 1.x→9.x walks from doom to transcendence. The trade-off is that stance becomes nearly redundant inside extreme bands, and you'd be coding evaluations before descriptions, which people disagree about more. For mapping opinions, stance-first is the more reliable instrument; for safety <i>engineering</i>, you'd invert again and organize by failure mechanism, since interventions attach to mechanisms.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'>Happy to draft the one-page numbering plan, or code a set of named positions as a calibration set.<o:p></o:p></span></p><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'>-----------------------------<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div></div></div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></body></html>