>> Then again, a completely rational AI may believe in Pascal's wager...
Pascal's wager starts with the false assumption that belief in a deity has no
cost.
----- Original Message -----
From: J Marlow
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2007 12:04 AM
Subject: Re: [agi] AGI and Deity
On Dec 8, 2007 10:34 PM, John G. Rose <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
It'd be interesting, I kind of wonder about this sometimes, if an AGI,
especially one that is heavily complex systems based would independently
come up with the existence some form of a deity. Different human cultures
come up with deity(s), for many reasons; I'm just wondering if it is like
some sort of mathematical entity that is natural to incompleteness and
complexity (simulation?) or is it just exclusively a biological thing based
on related limitations.
Here's the way I like to think of it; we have different methods of thinking
about systems in our environments, different sort of models. One type of model
that we humans have (with the possible exception of autistics) is the ability
to try to model another system as a person like ourselves; its easier to
predict what it will do if we attribute it motives and goals. I think a lot of
our ideas about God/gods/goddesses come from a tendency to try to predict the
behavior of nature using agent models; so farmers attribute human emotions,
like spite or anger, to nature when the weather doesn't help the crops.
So, assuming that is a big factor in how/why we developed religions, then it
is possible that an AI could have a similar problem, if it tried to describe
too many events using its 'agency' models. But I think an AI near or better
than human level could probably see that there are simpler (or more accurate)
explanations, and so reject predictions made based on those models.
Then again, a completely rational AI may believe in Pascal's wager...
Josh
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