skeptical_lurker comments on Precisely Bound Demons and their Behavior - Less Wrong

11 [deleted] 06 March 2015 08:01PM

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Comment author: skeptical_lurker 07 March 2015 08:02:35AM 8 points [-]

I quite liked the story idea until I realised that its a pretty transparent metaphor for Friendly AI... no, wait, it actually is a story about FAI. Starting off with worldbuilding a fantasy magicpunk setting and then suddenly switching to FAI seems... kinda like bait and switch?

Having said that, I really like this setting. The main problem is that there seem to be two entirely different themes - FAI and sorcerers taking over the world. If you start discussing hard maths you are going to lose many readers, but then if the goal is to inspire FAI work, does this matter?

The secondary problem is if you can just reset the timeline as many times as you want, there is no sense of urgency or tension. Maybe they discover that each time they reset, cracks start to appear in the walls between realms , deamon summoning becomes easier, and the daemons are one step closer to being able to break through on their own?

Meta: is there any point in discussing this here when the reddit conversation is so much bigger? I'm probably just going to copy my comment over.