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klfwip comments on Superintelligence fiction - "Understand", by Ted Chiang - Less Wrong Discussion

11 Post author: D_Alex 07 October 2013 03:03AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 09 October 2013 05:34:39AM *  -1 points [-]

Never seen this before, I enjoyed it.

Tangent: I've always had a strong appreciation for stories which have smart protagonists - even if the actual actions being taken by the protagonists are, on second thought, not quite the genius strategic moves that the author intended them to be. I think that at a fundamental level this is because reading stories like this requires more or less putting yourself into the shoes of a superintelligence to even determine if what they are doing is optimal or not, and after the story finishes when you go back to coding, reading, or playing music you still have the lingering thought patterns of a being which is, in some stories, many times more intelligent than you. It's a very useful state to be in, but for some reason when I stop reading books like that for a bit it becomes harder and harder to sustain over time. Does anyone else experience something like this?

Comment author: cousin_it 09 October 2013 11:08:36AM 0 points [-]

Yeah. That's one nice thing about Eliezer's fiction, when he writes a smart character, he actually tries to come up with smart decisions for them to make. Though I guess it's easier to have the character pull the solution out of a hat if you designed the puzzle yourself.