Tim_Tyler comments on Beyond the Reach of God - Less Wrong

66 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 October 2008 03:42PM

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Comment author: Tim_Tyler 07 October 2008 09:04:00PM 0 points [-]

What I described involves some similar ideas, but I find the notion of a singleton unlikely, or at least suboptimal. It is a machine analogy for life and intelligence. A machine is a collection of parts, all working together under one common control to one common end. Living systems, by contrast, and particularly large evolving systems such as ecosystems or economies, work best, in our experience, if they do not have centralized control, but have a variety of competing agents, and some randomness.

The idea of one big organism is not really that it will be, in some sense "optimal". It's more that it might happen - e.g. as the result of an imbalance of the powers at the top.

We have very limited experience with political systems. The most we can say is that so far, we haven't managed to get communism to be as competitive as capitalism. However, that may not matter. If all living system fuse, they won't have any competition, so how well they operate together would not be a big issue.

In theory, competition looks very bad. Fighting with each other can't possibly be efficient. Almost always, battles should be done under simulation - so the winner can be determined early - without the damage and waste of a real fight. There's a huge drive towards cooperation - as explained by Robert Wright.