[extropy-chat] In the Long Run, How Much Does Intelligence Dominate Space?

[Lee Corbin]

Robin writes

> [Lee wrote]
> > > > Russell and I take the "good housekeeping" view, if I might
> > > > phrase it that way, that a powerful intelligence keeps her
> > > > area as clean as a Dutch housewife does hers.
> > Example two: In modern hi-tech clean near but not absolute success
> > is achieved. Did you have this example in mind also when you made
> > your statement?  An AI may be able to keep its mind as "clean" as
> > this.
> 
> In these examples, the question is how valuable is it to coordinate
> on this scale to keep this area clean of this type of "dirt."  Even
> if a household is run by several people, they may coordinate to keep
> out "dust", but not neutrinos or inaccurate political ideology.

There are two reasons I can think of that an AI may wish to keep 
its area clean: one is selfish, one is moral.

The selfish reason is that it probably will see no reason to allow
compute resources to be squandered on vastly inferior processes.
It has its own reasons to calculate, its own curiosity, its own
redesign of itself. Why permit resources to be wasted on anything
else?

The second reason is moral: we today *should* not permit natural
processes---had we only the power to stop it---such as big fish
eating small fish ad infinitum), especially when the cruelty
inflicted on sentient prey, such as is inflicted on gazelles by
lions, is avoidable. Only our romanticized fancies prevent us
from properly perceiving and appreciating the horrors. Evidently
people would need to live a few days as a rabbit or field mouse
to properly understand.

Lee