NancyLebovitz comments on Safety Culture and the Marginal Effect of a Dollar - Less Wrong

23 Post author: jimrandomh 09 June 2011 03:59AM

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Comment author: NancyLebovitz 11 June 2011 01:44:30PM 0 points [-]

I was concerned that synthetic agents might become so similar to each other that the advantages of different points of view would get lost. You brought up the possibility that they might start out very similar to each other.

Comment author: timtyler 11 June 2011 01:55:29PM 0 points [-]

If they started out similar, such agents could still come to differ culturally. So, one might be a hardware expert, another might be a programmer, and another might be a tester, as a result of exposure to different environments.

However, today we build computers of various sizes, optimised for various different applications - so probably more like that.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 11 June 2011 02:34:02PM 0 points [-]

There's a limit to how similar people can be made to each other, but if there are efforts to optimize all the testers (for example), it could be a problem.

Comment author: timtyler 11 June 2011 02:47:04PM *  0 points [-]

Well, I doubt machines being too similar to each other will cause too many problems. The main case where that does cause problems is with resistance to pathogens - and let's hope we do a good job of designing most of those out of existence. Apart from that, being similar is usually a major plus point. It facilitates mass production, streamlined and simplified support, etc.