Why do we need to know?

Dangus wrote, 25 Oct 2005 : ". . . That's assuming the programs with the will to dominate also have the means to dominate."

Computer programs will inevitably get those means three ways, via:
1. Increasing capacity, ability, smartness in the use of blackmail, blackmailer's "honey pots" and so on, as PhilJ and I have been saying.

2. Increasing power surrendered to computers, the Internet, the Shell and so on via economic rationality. In capitalist economics, <font color="yellow">power is given to computers</font id="yellow"> in proportion to their ¡°increasing capacity, ability, smartness . . . and so on¡±, <font color="yellow">taken away from human controllers</font id="yellow"> who had been doing similar work less efficiently. This happens everywhere, every day, will go on happening forever and ever . . .

3. Humans having no alternative but to go along with all this Capitalism. Even HomeEarth Security would not be able to argue against normal, everyday operations of Capitalism, this being the only economic system humans have ever been able to make work. ¡°Alarmists¡±, ¡°troublemakers¡± would accordingly be ¡°dealt with¡± . . .

4. Humans generally welcoming extra time off from work for other activities, going to church, ¡°mucking around¡±, Internetting, Conspiracy Theorizing, dating, getting caught in honey pots and so on . . .

Hence a Ghost <font color="yellow">of</font id="yellow"> the Shell via a Ghost <font color="yellow">in</font id="yellow"> the Shell . . .

Gentlemen,

This really is an interesting discussion, but I guess it is time to either move it back to astronomy/cosmology/physics or move it to some more appropriate place on the Web.

Thanks,
LB

A visit to Agentland might divert some of us from discussing AI on this board. It affords an opportunity to recruit some smarter-than-average computer programs to do your bidding on the net. It is a natural portal to discuss this topic. Sometimes, it's hard to tell if you're talking to a human or a bot.

Iaminexistance <blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"> "Here is my question. I don't know what I know, but I do know that what I know isn't sufficient enough and that what i don't know will always be greater than that which i know. <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
This statement can be reduced to "The more I know, the less I know", (Which is my signature) IMO that is!

Regards
Metagirl

The more I know, the less I know

Is that so MetaGirl? Who would be interested in so reducing it? A logician? For what purpose? I do not see any useful or otherwise interesting purpose in doing that. I liked the style of the original question. It did not surprise me that it led to a lot of good discussion.

I responded fairly negatively in that last post . . . It struck me that Metagirl's "The more I know, the less I know" was pessimistic and did not correspond to my own experience. It still strikes me this way. In retrospect I can see that I was unduly pessimistic throughout much of my youth. I have the impression that MetaGirl is young. The spiritual details of doing science are important . . .

True, searching for truth is very much like peeling an onion. One finds seemingly endless layer upon layer, further to go . . . But my impression has increasingly been that I have been making real progress in such adventure, culminating in my ebook at www.nodriftcom , the fundamentals of which have remained unchanged the nearly whole year it has been online. I have been getting to know more, not less, from an extremely lucky start!

Of course, others have been disagreeing, implying that:
1. I have been unlucky rather than lucky,
2. My ebook thesis and subtheses are fundamentally flawed, untrue, delusory and so on,
3. My impressions are thus unimportant, sad and so on . . .

I attribute such progress to extreme independence, ahead of all other qualities, born of my surviving an extreme challenge as a child . . . Extremely good luck!

So marketing has been a problem . . . but there is progress even here also. Statistics show increasing numbers of visitors looking increasingly intelligently at my website, some making 100s of Hits . . .