wedrifid comments on What Curiosity Looks Like - Less Wrong

31 Post author: lukeprog 06 January 2012 09:28PM

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Comment author: Wei_Dai 10 January 2012 02:16:17AM *  6 points [-]

On a grand scale, my hunger for truths is probably as limited and easy to satisfy as my hunger for cheeseburgers.

I have very good reasons to think that my hunger for cheeseburgers is limited and easy to satisfy (e.g., ample evidence from past consumption/satiation of various foods including specifically cheeseburgers). On the other hand, there seems good reason to suspect that if my appetite for truths is limited, the satiation level comes well after what can be achieved at human intelligence level and within a human lifetime (e.g., there are plenty of questions I want answers to that seem very hard, and every question that gets answered seems to generate more interesting and even harder questions).

(It's an interesting question whether all my questions could be answered within 1 second after the Singularity occurs, or if it would require the more than the resources in our entire light cone, or something in between, but the answer to that doesn't affect my point that a curious person would seek to become superintelligent.)

I do feel that in a post-Singularity world I'd want to enhance my intelligence, but the underlying motivation seems to be status-seeking, a desire to be significant.

If Omega offered to enhance your intelligence and/or answer all your questions, but for your private benefit only (i.e., you couldn't tell anyone else or otherwise use your improved intelligence/knowledge to affect the world), would you not be much interested?

Comment author: wedrifid 10 January 2012 04:31:14AM 2 points [-]

If Omega offered to enhance your intelligence and/or answer all your questions, but for your private benefit only (i.e., you couldn't tell anyone else or otherwise use your improved intelligence/knowledge to affect the world), would you not be much interested?

Nice. The opposite of the premise of a lot of fantasy worlds!