Rain comments on Existential Risk and Public Relations - Less Wrong

36 Post author: multifoliaterose 15 August 2010 07:16AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (613)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: cousin_it 21 September 2010 11:28:34PM *  4 points [-]

There's a problem with it, though. Some decades ago you'd have just as eagerly subscribed to this statement: "Controlling Earth's destiny is only modestly harder than playing a good game of chess", which we now know to be almost certainly false.

Comment author: Rain 22 September 2010 06:49:14PM *  2 points [-]

It's the word "understanding" in the quote which makes it presume general intelligence and/or consciousness without directly stating it. The word "playing" does not have such a connotation, at least to me. I don't know if I would think differently back when chess required intelligence.