On 10 June 2015 at 11:39, Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10 June 2015 at 08:37, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> The normal answer to this is as stated - a superintelligence may form, as >> per various Arthur C Clark (or Olaf Stapledon, really) stories, by merging >> lots of non-super intelligences. So the chances of finding yourself >> non-super is vastly greater, because it takes billions of us to make one of >> them. However, this could lead to you eventually finding yourself super >> (especially if quantum immortality operates). Or a subset of super. >> >> PS Ants aren't relevant, as Russell explains in "Theory of Nothing". >> > > OK, but the same argument can easily be made otherwise: why should you > find yourself living in tiny New Zealand rather than populous China? > > There is a way to show that you are more likely to find yourself in a smaller country. I can't remember the details (but I think a power law is involved :-) But I will have a go. I am more likely to find myself not in China than in China, because the majority of people live outside China. Of the rest of the world, the next most populous country is India, but more people live outside India than in it, so I am more likely not to live in India. Next is the USA, but of the remaining 4 or 5 billion people, most live outside the USA, so... Repeating the process, I end up living alone on an island in the Pacific. Or in New Zealand, which is almost the same thing. (And then the test is given on Tuesday, much to my surprise!) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
