Comment on Best shot at immortality?

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:58:37 GMT

Fermilike considerations... epically unlikely that life emerges all the way to superintelligence takeoff

I don't follow. Do you think intelligences would loudly announce their existence over a long enough time period such that we would know about it? It always struck me as more likely that AGIs were quiet than that they didn't exist. Remember, all those stars you see at night don't necessarily exist; could just as easily be an illusion. All it'd take is for one superintelligence to show up somewhere and decide that we weren't worth killing but that we shouldn't get to see what's actually going on as it gobbles all the unoccupied planets. There are various reasons it would want to do this. [ETA: The alternative, that abiogenesis is really difficult, strikes me as unlikely, and I have a very strong skepticism of anthropic "explanations".]

There are heaps of other superintelligences, with high probability all the other ones are in parts of the (broadly used) Universe that are causally inaccessible

Hm, this might be a difference of perspective; I'm not very confident in the simulation argument as it's usually put forth. (I tried to explain some of my reasons elsewhere in this thread.)

So you think there are other FAIs out there that our civilization would encounter if we got that far? How much does this depend on probability that we are in a simulation or under the benevolent (or otherwise) control of a powerful agent and how likely would you consider it to be conditional on us not being simulated/overseen?

(They don't have to be Friendly, they just have to be willing to trade.) I don't have a strong opinion either way. If we're being overseen then it seems true by definition that we'll run into other AGIs if we build an FAI, so I was focusing on the scenario where we're not being overseen/simulated/fucked-with. In such a scenario I don't know what probability to put on it... I'll think about it more.

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