Slowing Moore's Law: Why You Might Want To and How You Would Do It

gwern

In this essay I argue the following:

Brain emulation requires enormous computing power; enormous computing power requires further progression of Moore’s law; further Moore’s law relies on large-scale production of cheap processors in ever more-advanced chip fabs; cutting-edge chip fabs are both expensive and vulnerable to state actors (but not non-state actors such as terrorists). Therefore: the advent of brain emulation can be delayed by global regulation of chip fabs.

Full essay: http://www.gwern.net/Slowing%20Moore%27s%20Law

In this essay I argue the following:

Brain emulation requires enormous computing power; enormous computing power requires further progression of Moore’s law; further Moore’s law relies on large-scale production of cheap processors in ever more-advanced chip fabs; cutting-edge chip fabs are both expensive and vulnerable to state actors (but not non-state actors such as terrorists). Therefore: the advent of brain emulation can be delayed by global regulation of chip fabs.

Full essay: http://www.gwern.net/Slowing%20Moore%27s%20Law

I think you should consider the hypothesis that you are over-reacting

Except that I didn't over-react. I wasn't upset. I just went "Is this a piece endorsing terrorism?" looked into it further, realized this interpretation is false, and wandered away for a while.

Then I saw mention after mention around the site saying that people were creeped out by this piece.

I came back and saw that someone had left because of it - like, for real, as in they haven't posted since they said they were leaving due to the piece. And then I went "Wow a lot of people are creeped out by this. This is making LessWrong look bad. Even if it IS a misinterpretation, thinking that this post supports terrorism could be a serious PR problem."

My position is still that beta testers should ideally catch any potential PR disasters, and I don't think that's an over-reaction. At all.

(Which in turn is more likely than the hypothesis that the beta readers have a neurological condition that causes them to under-react.)

For the record, even though it did occur to me for a moment as a possible explanation, I didn't say that because I really believed it was likely that everyone here has Asperger's. That would be stupid. I said it as an expression of surprise. I figured it would be obvious that it was an expression of surprise and not a rational assessment.

I think my surprise was due to hindsight bias.

My position is still that beta testers should ideally catch any potential PR disasters, and I don't think that's an over-reaction. At all.

To be specific, the hypothesis I am suggesting is that you are now, currently, over-reacting by calling this a "potential PR disaster".

34

Slowing Moore's Law: Why You Might Want To and How You Would Do It

34

34

34

Slowing Moore's Law: Why You Might Want To and How You Would Do It

34

34