[ExI] Old stuff on this list

[BillK]

On Sat, Apr 14, 2012 at 3:01 AM, Keith Henson  wrote:
> http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/04/12/transhumanism-and-the-human-expansion-into-space-a-conflict-with-physics/
>
>

The difficulty with speculating about the future is that there are
lots of alternatives continuously branching off. Speculating is also
about persuading people which future path to choose as well as what
paths are physically possible.

I can't see AI communities choosing to live in the deep ocean, so that
may be a further limitation on size.
I doubt whether scaling up human equivalents is useful. These AIs
probably think in a very different fashion to humans. e.g. look at the
way Watson is developing. A million times speedup AI will probably not
consist of 100,000 speeded up human parts. But rather one AI which is
as powerful as 100,000 humans. Human individuality is probably going
to be lost as we upload and merge into computronium.

The social interactions will be complicated as this starts to become
possible. Will all the scientists enter computronium first leaving
behind the human couch potatoes?  Or will virtual realities entice the
couch potatoes first, leaving scientists behind?

We live in interesting times (to quote the Chinese proverb).

BillK