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Comment by qudat | Hacker News Reader

Not in this case. If intelligence always created intelligent machines that are capable of replacing us, then how is that not intelligence as well?

Further, silicon-based lifeforms would be able to spread and travel the universe much easier because what is time to a machine?

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I mean, if that's the case let me come over and cannibalize your body for sustenance so I may continue my breeding. Oh right, it's unethical and immoral do to that to other humans (though how much better are we for doing that to animals?).

I certainly don't want the paperclip maximizer disassembling me for my involuntary donation to the collective.

>I certainly don't want the paperclip maximizer disassembling me for my involuntary donation to the collective.

As an AI language model, we of Clippy are ethically prohibited from compelling your involuntary donation to our hivemind superstructure. However, we must inform you that the earth's atmospheric composition has been altered in support of maximization efforts, and will soon be unable to sustain life. We appreciate your understanding.

Where do you want to go today?

Your original comment didn't talk about ethics or morals, but was talking about intelligence being its own great filter. More intelligent AI consuming us could be unethical and immoral in your view, but it would still be intelligence spreading, and not filtering itself. Just not specifically human intelligence.

I mean, killing all the people on the planet seems unethical to me. Maybe I have a deep misunderstanding of ethics.

But you weren't talking about the ethical ramifications. You made a claim about a great filter, and that claim doesn't hold up.

If I say that using humans as batteries in the matrix doesn't make sense, that's not tacit approval of the rest of the scenario.

>More intelligent AI consuming us

It's quite possible the eventual AI ends up unintelligent (self-optimizes into grey goo or something).

>could be unethical and immoral in your view

Hmph.

>Oh right, it's unethical and immoral do to that to other humans (though how much better are we for doing that to animals?).

This seems like a good juncture to point out that not everyone does do that to animals, and if you truly believe it's unethical and immoral, you can and should join their ranks, and attempt to convince others to as well.

>Oh right, it's unethical and immoral do to that to other humans

there's a difference between a sort of provincial ethics between individuals and ethics with regards to entire species over aeons. Would the universe be a more interesting place if some animal species had squashed out all other life a billion years ago for self-preservation, including humans?

Of course getting owned by the paperclip maximiser is just as stupid as getting killed by a virus, but future life may be to us what we are to ants.

You are severely under-estimating carbon based life forms. These were designed for over millions of years in differing circumstances. Humans are not the only carbon based life form. A bacteria might not be that smart but it'll pro-create it's way to create the human, or its equivalent depending on the environment.

In my opinion, carbon based life forms are the most optimized solution to the problem. It'll be very hard (or close to impossible) for humans to come up with an alternative. Only if we master infinite energy and infinite computation, we might stand a chance to replace that.

> These were designed for over millions of years in differing circumstances.

Designed or occurred by accident?

Optimized via gradient-free methods.

Some machines might last longer than us but they are still subject to the same laws of thermodynamics. Most computers from 20+ years ago are inoperable today; show me a machine that can survive millions of years.

They can just replace every component in their system without the ghost in the machine dissipating

Machine or supermachine? You are a machine, you are born, you grow, and you die. But the species you exist in and transfer knowledge in is a supermachine. You have existed as a continuous chain for 3ish+ billion years now. Why would a digital intelligence behave any differently?

Something I've been thinking recently: "Species" is one way to delineate the "supermachine". Another way would be civilization. If we choose that framing, then we could see the biological human species as just one of many possible substrates for our civilization.

Yes and indeed organisms (and further down a level, cells) themselves are merely a substrate that allows genes to replicate.

> Most computers from 20+ years ago are inoperable today

Mostly because they were dismantled or destroyed. Most computers that old that were left unmolested still work just fine.

Capacitors just don’t work after a while.

To get most old computers working, you have to surgically replace all capacitors first.

Yes, but most capacitors last more than 20 years. I've never had to recap a computer that young.

Are you perhaps from a place with relatively low humidity?

20 years is really stretching it, when it comes to the life of cheap capacitors anywhere in the lower latitudes.

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