dlthomas comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! - Less Wrong

48 Post author: MBlume 16 April 2009 09:06AM

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Comment author: dlthomas 21 December 2011 06:52:51PM 2 points [-]

The wish on top of that page is actually very problematic...

Yes, that was a part of the point of the article - people try to fully specify what they want, it gets this complex, and it's still missing things; meanwhile, people understand what someone means when they say "I wish I was immortal."

Comment author: TheOtherDave 21 December 2011 07:13:32PM 1 point [-]

Well, they understand it about as well as the speaker does. It's not clear to me that the speaker always knows what they mean.

Comment author: dlthomas 21 December 2011 07:27:43PM 2 points [-]

Right - there's no misunderstanding, because the complexity is hidden by expectations and all sorts of shared stuff that isn't likely to be there when talking to a genie of the "sufficiently sophisticated AI" variety, unless you are very careful about making sure that it is. Hence, the wish has hidden complexity - the point (and title) of the article.