All of Jotaf's Comments + Replies
I don't really wanna rock the boat here, but in the words of one of my professors, it "needs more math".
I predict it will go somewhat like this: you specify the problem in terms of A implies B, etc; you find out there's infinite recursion; you prove that the solution doesn't exist. Reductio ad absurdum anyone?
I'd only like to add a small contribution, concerning Mises's argument that "The human being cannot see the infinitely small step" and thus continuous functions cannot be used as models.
Discretely sampled (digital) signals are used all the time in engineering, and they are analogous to their continuous counterparts (analog). Particular care must be taken when "converting" between one and the other; but for most purposes they're pretty close.
All the appliances you have at home now take discrete samples of continuous quantities (physical ...
I guess the ship's "council" making the decisions helps the argument that Eliezer is making, and can be waived simply because you could have a lengthier story where they traveled back to Earth and then the Earth Government had exactly the same debate. But that's nitpicky, how would it help the story or the argument behind it? IMHO it's good the way it is.
Some of the council's members having these extreme reactions of empathy seems a bit alien to us even, but that is our own bias. We ignore suffering in so-called 3rd world countries every day. &qu...
"This talk about "'right' means right" still makes me damn uneasy. I don't have more to show for it than "still feels a little forced" - when I visualize a humane mind (say, a human) and a paperclipper (a sentient, moral one) looking at each other in horror and knowing there is no way they could agree about whether using atoms to feed babies or make paperclips, I feel wrong. I think about the paperclipper in exactly the same way it thinks about me! Sure, that's also what happens when I talk to a creationist, but we're trying to app...
Emile and Caledonian are right. Eliezer should've defined exceptions to boredom instead (and more simply) as "activities that work towards your goal". Those are exempt of boredom and can even be quite fun. No need to distinguish between high, low and mid-level.
The page at Lostgarden that Emile linked to is a bit long, so I'll try to summarize the proposed theory of fun, with some of my own conclusions:
You naturally find activities that provide you with valuable insights fun (the "aha!" moment, or "fun"). Tolerance to repetitio...
Is it just me or they completely ignored the following arguments in all reports?
1) Over-reliance on the effects of Hawking radiation, leaving a big hole in their reasoning if it turns out it doesn't exist. 2) Extremely high pressures near the center of the Earth might increase the accretion rate substantially. 3) Any products of cosmic ray interaction with existing stellar bodies are very likely to escape the body's gravitational influence before doing any damage because of their near-c speeds, which is not the case in the LHC.
I read all the reports. I fee...
Problem with these AI's is that, in order to do something useful for us, they will for sure have some goals to attain, and be somewhat based on today's planning algorithms. Typical planning algorithms will plan with an eye for the constraints given and, rightfully, ignore everything else.
A contrived example, but something to consider: imagine a robot with artificial vision capabilities and capable of basic manipulation. You tell it to do something, but a human would be harmed by doing that action (by pushing an object, for example). One of the constraints ...
The Dark Knight has an even better example - in the bank robbery scene, each subgroup excludes only one more member, until the only man left is... That's enough of a spoiler I guess.