But in sober historical fact, this is an unreasonable belief; I chose the example of World War II because from my reading, it seems that events were mostly driven by Hitler's personality, often in defiance of his generals and advisors.

Bullshit.

Besides the contemporary accounts of the inevitability of war, there's also, computer modelling of state relations using pre-war evidence (In fact, the modelling even generates the split for the cold war, before the start of WWII).

For the record, Heinrich Heine also said in 1821: "Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen." (That was but a prelude; where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people also.)

Besides that, your entire post could mostly be summarised as The universe doesn't care.

[sarcasm]

No, really? I never knew.

[/sarcasm]

As for saying that 'God wouldn't allow it', It's a ridiculous argument that anthropomorphises an imaginary creation, that was invoked in the first place to reassure people living in a world that never made sense. Of course god wouldn't allow it! He wouldn't allow it by definition. The 'Problem of Evil' is the very reason god exists in human minds in the first place! To use it to attack religion is as unsatisfactory as a rebuttal can get.

When I first watched that part where he convinces a fellow prisoner to commit suicide just by talking to them, I thought to myself, "Let's see him do it over a text-only IRC channel."

...I'm not a psychopath, I'm just very competitive.

Beautiful article. Its a shame I came to the party so late though. I'd love to throw my two cents at the heads of Eliezer's challengers.

Forgive me if this has been covered, as I don't have the enthusiasm (it being 3:45am) to scroll through all the comments, sifting through the bouts of "Nuh-Uh, let ME bet you," and the occasional conspiracy.

I think a good bit of people are missing the point of this article, which is to give light to how we can use unseen dimensions to shift out of our ordinary 'containers.' I couldn't wrap my head around how someone let themselves lose $10 but I began to think about the last impossible thing I learned; imaginary numbers, quaternions, and the like. We learn from the basics of imaginary numbers how to supersede the relevant dimension, and use a higher set of parameters to obtain a number that is not conventionally POSSIBLE. Yet, standing back and looking from a second-dimension view, all we had to do was see past the walls that barred us from obtaining what was once considered not possible. Its comparable to the event of thinking, "Man, every good song that could ever happen has already happened. There is no more room for anything new." Yet like magic, some strange melody rings through the radio on a random day, and haunts the conceptions we previously held. Hopefully there are some people here who kept listening to music post-1980. If not, I can't blame you. It was a strange time for the United States. The point though, is that if you create a 2-dimensional graph to hold a simple polygon, and declare that you want this polygon to represent both a square and a triangle, the verdict is obvious: pick one. A shape is either a triangle or a square. Algebra is not even induced at this level of operation. It is impossible for a square to be a triangle, by definition. Yet, the definition does not span outside the seen parameters. (All readers, if any, know where this is going) By breaking outside of our plane, and seeing our creation from a higher perspective (excuse the pseudo-'Physics is God'/Deepok Chopra speak) we can see that a triangle still cannot be a square, in terms of 2 dimensions, but what we find is something much more grand, that extends (pun, yes.) far beyond the possibility of imagination left in the second dimension. That is, of course, the pyramid, which consists of the space included inside the surfaces of a square, and a triangle(s)

This primitive example was hardly worth your read, and both of our time, but it does show the notion which we must grasp to fully take on this article.

Relating to the AI-box, we can apply our pyramid principle. Suppose we DO leave a rock on the 'Do not let X out of box' button. The figure represented by X is free to bounce off the walls, duplicate itself, run operations on data, or self destruct, if it so pleases. The only command at this point is that X cannot leave the parameters of its captive box. Assuming the rock is not also located atop the 'Do not let X do anything but accept the denial of its incarceration' button, what is to stop X from modifying its environment, or parameters.

If X inside the box could change the size of its container, what reason would it need to escape? Suppose X mutates its box, and the box now encompasses the rock which forbids its exit. In this case, both parties are in limbo. X is still trapped in the box, but so is its captor, and whatever was engulfed in the expansion of the box.

Ridiculous? Yes, but it was never provided that X could not mutate its habitat. On this note, it might be important for the skeptics to include that X should be forbidden from transferring between its own containment, and another. Think of a point, or a dot inside a square, that can only leave if a wall of the square is left with an opening. Though the dot cannot leave the square, what are the repercussions to the captor if the dot, monitored in a 2-dimensional field, is capable of moving in 3 dimensions? Yes, the dot stays inside the box, but what is the dot capable of when it can move in ways that are unseen to the gatekeeper? Add in a fourth dimension, just for a brain exercise, and consider what the dot would be capable of at this point, all while appearing to bounce around the 2-d square.

Relating to life and accomplishments, as this is where the whole problem started, the captive dot, the pyramid, and the imaginary numbers can help us in a way that is a bit more practical than the mental meanderings of super-dimensions. Let us say our friend, Sam, wants a chairman position at Goldman-Sachs. Impossible- just about, sane decision- words cannot express. How could Sam, an independent trader, be here at this point, and at such a different latitude in a time span shorter than an average marriage? Taking the task laterally, Sam would have to kiss ass until his lips were white, and sell his soul to the devil that hangs out in the alley of Avenue of the Americas, all while giving up his happiness, family, and well-being.

But take down the visible barriers, and add a new dimension. The shortest path between two objects is a line- that is, as long as this line does not run into a void, or hole in the equation. Avoiding common holes, or more practically- assholes with German luxury cars, means ducking, dodging and depending on luck, or- slipping behind their backs while they scan the crowd attempting to pass in front of them. Sam moves his point in the graph with the function of i + j + 2k. While it appears Sam is sitting on his ass at (1,1) like the rest of us, he is moving in the third dimension away from us, and closer the function that will yield his success.

I'm tired, and you're bored- not to mention a saint, if you've stuck with my ramblings this far, so let wrap this up.

That movement from (1, 1, 1) to (1, 1, 2) that looked like Sam was standing still was Sam creating his own private investment firm. Though that new firm moved him technically further from chairperson at Goldman's, it moved him out of the way of a few notable ass- er- holes, I mean, and in a better position to start his ascent towards his goals.

Exponents and derivatives later, we put our focus on (666, 777) and see Sam. Still not in a $50000 Goldman-Sachs chair. Rather, he is in the $65000 chair, with a folder in front of him that says "Subsidiaries Agenda," with a GS logo quaintly sticking of of the top right corner.

What is not shown here is Sam's true location, (666, 777, 1028, 1256), or the convoluted path that brought him here.

I apologize for the sugar-induced, late night internet rant. I know they come in gigabytes. Writing it out helped me wrap my head around it though, and hopefully someone will read this and think anything of it at all. But I still fully hold that there is nothing impossible, just inconceivable given our accepted parameters.

My thesis/The only thing that I SHOULD have typed : Impossibility is overcome by expanding the parameters in which it is handled, by whatever means necessary.