[extropy-chat] damien's psi book

[Samantha Atkins]

Interesting post, Spike.  Here are a few questions and thoughts.

First congratulations on the biggest grand construction in support of a 
hypothesis that I have encountered in some time.   This was a truly 
surprising way to pull this result out of the sim notion.

The idea that a post Singularity civilization would act this way is a 
weak link.  That we greatly esteem that quantity (and quality) of 
sentience that is our own does not say that they would do so.   Being 
awash in much greater intelligence and likely able to easily create 
autonomous intelligences of any desired capacity for any desired 
purpose, it is not clear to me why biological alien evolved 
intelligences would be much more than a mere momentary curiosity easily 
satisfied without seamlessly uploading the entire lot.

If intelligence becomes plentiful as it should post Singularity it is 
not clear that any particular new bit of intelligence would be  valued 
more than to the extent they add unique value unless they posses some 
perceived intrinsic value.

Assuming your analysis of non-randomness is substantially correct I 
would still have reason to question whether understanding this and the 
direction of the slew actually was substantial enough to give much real 
competitive advantage.

To get to useful psi I would also need to believe that the human 
nervous system was somehow wired to detect these aberrations, at least 
in some subset of the population.  	If there is no competitive 
advantage to speak of then there is no reason that psi would be 
selected for.   	

- samantha