Matt, You are right that AGI may seriously weaken human civilization just by giving humans what they want. Lots of individuals can succumb to some form of pleasure machine.
On the other hand -- why would you worry about human civilization or any civilization at all if you personally get what you want? However I don't think that civilization would be totally destroyed. Natural selection would keep working. Whoever succumb to pleasure machines (or any other dangers) will simply lose the competition, but other would survive and adapt to new technologies. Thursday, November 1, 2007, 8:33:16 AM, you wrote: > Your goals are selected by evolution. There is a good reason why you fear > death and then die. You want what is good for the species. We could > circumvent our goals through technology, for example, uploading our brains > into computers and reprogramming them. When a rat can stimulate its nucleus > accumbens by pressing a lever, it will forgo food, water, and sleep until it > dies. We worry about AGI destroying the world by launching 10,000 nuclear > bombs. We should be more worried that it will give us what we want. ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=66242228-cb472a
