LESSWRONG
LW

All of Malcolm_Edwards's Comments + Replies

So You Want to Save the World
Malcolm_Edwards00

It seems to me that any agent unable to solve this problem would be considerably less intelligent than a human.

Reply
1Benya
It does seem unlikely that an "expected utility maximizer" reasoning like this would manage to build interstellar spaceships, but that insight doesn't automatically help with building an agent that is immune to this and similar problems.
2011 Less Wrong Census / Survey
Malcolm_Edwards50

Took the survey, even though I've mostly only lurked.

I don't know what an "ontologically basic mental entity" is. Also, I only left the Singularity question blank because I think it's overall probability of happening is less that 50%.

Reply
7simplicio
Ontologically basic = at the lowest level of reality. For example, a table is not ontologically basic because there are no tables built into the laws of physics; but arguably, an electron is ontologically basic, since we can't explain electrons in terms of anything smaller or more basic. A standard claim of "robust" supernaturalism is that there are minds (mental entities) which cannot be understood in terms of any more basic constituents of reality. E.g., your soul is not made of almitons, and god is not made of pixie dust. God is supposed to be ontologically basic - he is built right into the lowest level of reality, no moving parts. The importance of making that caveat is that it might be defensible to say that perhaps some alien created us, but that is not really what most people mean by a god, since presumably the alien has a nice (evolutionary?) causal history.
The RPG Thread
Malcolm_Edwards30

I have run a game of Eclipse Phase at an RPG convention in Sydney. I found it to be a very cool game, the setting in particular is very interesting and varied however the rules are a little complex for people who want to just try it.

There are a lot of bits which don't quite fit into hard sci-fi - aliens, psychics, nanotech that works like magic. However, it's pretty easy to leave these out, except it's difficult to know how realistic nanotech would work. I doubt we'll ever use it to create mundane things due to energy constraints, but I guess in the contex... (read more)

Reply