= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
buybuydandavis comments on Glenn Beck discusses the Singularity, cites SI researchers - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (181)
Since at least Adam Smith, we've known that you don't need a big collaborating cabal conspiring toward a common end to have the net effect of their actions be quite like a big invisible fist with a malevolent purpose.
Are there evidence of major cabal-like-net-effects impeding the progress of technology that I'm not aware of?
The first thing that comes to mind is the decline of China's scientific and technological output starting around the 14th century. Up until that point, Chinese civilization had been well ahead of the West by most technological measures; for example, Chinese blast furnaces are known from the 1st century BC, while the technology didn't make it to the West until the mid-12th century AD. Sometime during the Ming Dynasty, however, social changes reversed this trend; I couldn't point to any one dominant cause, and as best I know scientific research was never officially discouraged during this period, but the effect is fairly well established.
One plausible theory that I've heard is that changes to the governmental structure around that time underweighted the incentives for studying math and natural philosophy among the educated classes, in favor of law, classics, administrative topics, and other subjects covered on the civil service exams of the time. Intuitively that seems a little too tidy to me, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a major contributing factor.
One of the books I read on the topic argued that a proto-Industrial Revolution was getting started with the iron and coal deposits in, IIRC, the Sung, but then the emperor/empire took them over as a state monopoly, which ended that.
There is the potential for governments to interfere with research leading to AGI. There are not that many researchers directly involved, and there are generally known widespread consequences which could result. Most likely, this could only delay the appearance of AGI and not prevent it.
What if all the history of the universe, life, and human history were just the unlikely precursor to the appearance of an AGI? What if we're just part one of the many mechanisms for the generation of a "Boltzmann Brain?"