[extropy-chat] Sustainability philosopy as a justification for existence

[Eliezer S. Yudkowsky]

Russell Wallace wrote:
> 
> And yet I don't seem to find myself increasing my "run time" by going 
> around to my neighbor's house and sticking a spear into him so I can 
> take his stuff the way my ancestors used to. Evolution does sometimes 
> produce progress, after all.

That ain't evolution, son.  It's intelligence what did the trick.  Yes, 
I know that natural selection produced intelligence to begin with; but I 
think, in this case, that it is particularly important to distinguish 
between natural selection and intelligence...

Sigh.  I know that reclaiming the word "evolution" is a lost cause, 
after all the abuse that's been rendered on it - but it leaves people 
with only a single mental bucket to represent two hellaciously different 
optimization processes.

PS:  Robert Bradbury, would you *please* stop advocating murdering 
everyone you don't like?  It ain't movin' humanity forward.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence