Phil_Goetz 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: Phil_Goetz 07 October 2008 09:38:00PM 0 points [-]

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.

We're talking about competition between optimization processes. What would it mean to be a simulation of a computation? I don't think there is any such distinction. Subjectivity belongs to these processes; and they are the things which must compete. If the winner could be determined by a simpler computation, you would be running that computation instead; and the hypothetical consciousness that we were talking about would be that computation instead.