to me it looks like that AGI researchers are simply rubbing amber with fur while claiming that they are on the verge of building a full-scale electricity-producing fusion power plant.
It has been done in 2500 years. (Providing that the fusion is still outsourced to the Sun). What are guaranties that in this case we will CERTAINLY NOT be 100 times faster?
It is possible to create a Matrix style virtual reality. It is possible to create antimatter weapons. That doesn't mean that it is feasible. It also says nothing about timeframes.
It does not automatically mean that it is either unfeasible or far, far in the future.
The real question is if we should bother to worry about possibilities that could as well be 500, 5000 or 5 million years into the future or never even come about the way we think.
If it was sure that it's far, far away - but it isn't that sure at all - even then it would be a very important topic.
If it was sure that it's far, far away - but it isn't that sure at all - even then it would be a very important topic.
I am aware of that line of reasoning and reject it. Each person has about a 1 in 12000 chance of having an unruptured aneurysm in the brain that could be detected and then treated after having a virtually risk free magnetic resonance angiography. Given the utility you likely assign to your own life it would be rational to undergo such a screening. At least it would make much more sense than signing up for cryonics. Yet you don't do it, d...
...has finally been published.
Contents:
The issue consists of responses to Chalmers (2010). Future volumes will contain additional articles from Shulman & Bostrom, Igor Aleksander, Richard Brown, Ray Kurzweil, Pamela McCorduck, Chris Nunn, Arkady Plotnitsky, Jesse Prinz, Susan Schneider, Murray Shanahan, Burt Voorhees, and a response from Chalmers.
McDermott's chapter should be supplemented with this, which he says he didn't have space for in his JCS article.