Jack comments on Why Our Kind Can't Cooperate - Less Wrong

132 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 March 2009 08:37AM

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Comment author: Jack 12 September 2009 06:47:46PM -1 points [-]

Maybe some Homo Sapiens would survive, humanity wouldn't. Are the human animals in 1984 "people"? After Winston Smith dies is there any humanity left?

I can envision a time when less freedom and more authority is necessary for our survival. But a god-like totalitarian pretty much comes out where extinction does in my utility function.

Comment author: pdf23ds 23 September 2009 10:02:24AM 0 points [-]

IIRC, Winston Smith doesn't die; by the end, his spirit is completely broken and he's practically a living ghost, but alive.

Comment author: RickJS 19 September 2009 11:41:34PM *  1 point [-]

Oh. My mistake. When you wrote, "Plus wishing for all people to be under the rule of a god-like totalitarian sounds to me like the best way to destroy humanity.", I read:

  • [Totalitarian rule... ] ... [is] ... the best way to destroy humanity, (as in cause and effect.)
  • OR maybe you meant: wishing ... [is] ... the best way to destroy humanity

It just never occurred to me you meant, "a god-like totalitarian pretty much comes out where extinction does in my utility function".

Are you willing to consider that totalitarian rule by a machine might be a whole new thing, and quite unlike totalitarian rule by people?