7.6 KiB
[TH] The Goddess of Everything Else
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Author: u/Escapement Ankh-Morpork City Watch*
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URL: http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/17/the-goddess-of-everything-else-2/
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Score: 48
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Created: 2015-08-17T23:05:36
Post:
Comments:
u/None [+14] (2 hours later)
And when the omnibenevolent Angels ruled the Universe, the Goddess of Cancer stepped out of the heart of a dying star, and she spread her crab-claws wide, and she said:
KILL CONSUME MULTIPLY CONQUER
And they did
u/None [+10] (3 hours later)
And they had.
u/BadGoyWithAGun [+7] (18 hours later)
Nick Land's denouncement of this piece pretty much sums up my thoughts on it.
u/Running_Ostrich [+2] (20 hours later)
I'm having trouble understanding his criticism. Is it important to understand this article, which he references to describe the forward vision problem?
Is his main point that continuing replicator selection means that you continue the Goddess of Cancer's cycle?
u/BadGoyWithAGun [+4] (20 hours later)
His fundamental message is, "ignore Gnon at your own peril". Myopic thinking is just one of the weaknesses of such a system - good luck optimizing the universe to reject evolution in favour of omnihedonism, without a single Darwinian creature surviving to abuse it - your optimizer is probably just as likely to become one in the process. That takes the idea of ignoring Gnon to a whole new level. And remember, it only takes one Darwinian to reduce omnihedonism back down to a murder-eat-fuck rat race. It's just not a stable position in any way.
u/Valkurich [+6] (21 hours later)
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
This, by the same author as above, shows the author's opinions on GNON. From what little I've seen of Nick Land, he doesn't seem to believe the orthogonality thesis, am I wrong about that?
u/None [+4] (a day later)
From what little I've seen of Nick Land, he doesn't seem to believe the orthogonality thesis
wat. How.
u/BadGoyWithAGun [+1] (22 hours later)
I'm not sure. What does bother me about its proponents, though, is the binary assumption that you either believe the thesis or its stated opposite. The thesis doesn't make sense to me on its face, but only because there is a class of (intelligence level, goal) pairs that seems utterly incompatible with any meaningful definition of intelligence - ie, the "superintelligent" paperclip maximizer. This is not a claim that all superintelligences' goals should naturally converge.
u/Valkurich [+7] (22 hours later)
The meaning of intelligence used in the orthogonality thesis is instrumental rationality, or the ability to choose and implement the actions that best accomplish your goals.
EDIT: Your intuitions of what goals and intelligence levels are compatible probably comes from the fact that you, like all humans, have certain instinctual ways of modeling other intelligent agents, but those methods are optimized for humans and contain certain assumptions of humanlike psychology. Of course certain (intelligence level, goal) pairs are incompatible in people, but that doesn't mean anything about all intelligent entities, just about people. Your system 1 processes on this matter are not trustworthy, because they were optimized for predicting humans and animals, a certain subcategory of intelligences, not intelligences in general. Humans mostly have certain similarities, certain shared values.
u/None [+3] (a day later)
there is a class of (intelligence level, goal) pairs that seems utterly incompatible with any meaningful definition of intelligence - ie, the "superintelligent" paperclip maximizer
Why couldn't there be a superintelligent paperclip maximizer?
u/None [+3] (a day later)
His fundamental message is, "ignore Gnon at your own peril".
Except that "Gnon" is just causality. You can believe causality is Lawful Neutral, and as far as we know, that's scientifically true. You can believe causality is True Good, and as far as we know, that's total bullshit.
Nick Land believes causality is Chaotic Evil, which is so nonsensical I can't even comprehend how he arrived to that view.
u/None [+8] (48 minutes later)
This is a very interesting take. I like how Scott manages to start with humans being created by the evil deity (a traditional no-go trope in myth) and still ends with an optimistic story.
The funniest thing about this is by far the first few comments, which ... really seem like they're sucking up.
So you wrote the Transhumanist Myth of Creation this time :-) It is so beautiful…
I thought my sense of awe had died sometime back. Simply beautiful.
Aaaaalright, guys.
u/Sagebrysh [+25] Rank 7 Pragmatist (an hour later)
I like my personal, very very vague creation story:
In the beginning, there was nothing. And, it would have been rather boring, except that there was no concept of rather boring. So it would have been just kind of nice, if there was a just kind of nice. And this was the state of not-things for an infinite amount of not-time. And then something happened, because, after an eternity of nothing, something was bound to happen eventually. And the only thing that could happen at that point was everything, and so everything did.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+13] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (an hour later)
Hail Eris.
u/Escapement [+7] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (3 hours later)
All Hail Discordia.
u/None [+2] (3 hours later)
Full of mischief.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
[deleted]
u/VorpalAuroch [+1] Life before Death (4 days later)
Reading it, the first thing it brings to mind is Tegmark Level IV. Which is, in fact, everything happening.
u/None [+2] (an hour later)
I feel like the Goddesses could really use a sit down to try and talk this whole thing out, actually communicate instead of dragging their toys into a proxy war on their behalf. Why is EE playing with Cancer's toys? Can they share ownership? What do they do when the toys get tired or break or refuse to be played with anymore? Aren't they too old for these toys? Are they too young? Who are you? Where am I? Do you know where the restroom is?
u/None [+16] (5 hours later)
I don't think that poetic anthropomorphizations of abstract concepts are really all about communication.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
If only they'd split EE into 'Everything Else but Diplomacy" and "Diplomacy".
u/gabbalis [+16] (2 hours later)
I really don't think diplomacy is all that conducive to KILL CONSUME MULTIPLY CONQUER. Sir.
u/tailcalled [+2] (9 hours later)
Sure it is. With diplomacy, you can cooperate with someone to KILL CONSUME MULTIPLY CONQUER everything, and once you've done that, you can stab them in their back and KILL CONSUME MULTIPLY CONQUER them.
u/None [+1] (2 hours later)
Maybe if somebody stopped playing with her shit, she wouldn't have to absorb the entire universe, huh?
u/Sagebrysh [+7] Rank 7 Pragmatist (2 hours later)
KILL CONSUME MULTIPLY CONQUER
u/None [+2] (3 hours later)
Where am I? Do you know where the restroom is?
It's over to the left.