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What about James Watt's steam engine? At least some economists believe Watt was a crook more than anything - making a minor improvement on the steam engine, then monopolizing the engine market via strategic use of patents and successfully blocking any further improvement on the design until his pat...

GHETTO EDIT: Does anyone here know Arabic? This isn't some kind of elaborate hoax, is it? It might be genuine, but the 0:40 to 0:55 bit is a tad weird. He's holding a book that has big letters on the cover saying (in English!) 'SCIENCE'? It might be part of their "knock-down skeptic" appr...

(So as to not hijack the thread, I'll only post this one reply on this topic.) If anybody is wondering why the list of goals provided by Nova Andromeda would be a bad idea by itself, or why this question is so hard, see Failed Utopia #4-2 for a particularly poignant illustration. I have to say the w...

The Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University released a Whole Brain Emulation Roadmap last year, people interested in the timeline for human brain simulation may want to take a look. tl;dr version: the roadmap claims that all we need are incremental improvements in currently existing techno...

I would also need an idea of what you consider 'friendly'. Does friendly mean do whatever humans want? Does it mean maximize human pleasure? Does it mean do humans no 'harm'. Does it mean maximize human species survival? I would argue that all of the former by themselves are terrible ideas. A 'good...

Axiomatic wrote:Now I'm wondering what the Tragedy of the...what would be the inverse of the commons? I guess I'm wondering what a Tragedy of the Aristos would look like.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_anticommons

Starglider: What's your opinion on the technical prospects of OpenCog Prime ? (Somebody already asked this in the "robots learn to lie" thread, but I think you misread the question as you replied with a comment on OpenCyc instead. OCP is Goertzel's Novamente-based project.) Incidentally, i...

(Was unsure if this belonged to SLAM or News & Politics: move if necessary) From KurweilAI news : The National Academy of Sciences has released its long-awaited report on molecular manufacturing , in A Matter of Size: Triennial Review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative . The National Rese...

Whoops, read too quickly and missed the last couple of sentences in your post. :oops: We're an agreement, then. Anyway, I'd like to especially emphasize the point that it seems unlikely that enhancement would create all that much of a social problem - if the enhancement is so darn expensive that the...

And unless you've got a post-scarcity economy to work with, augmenting everyone will be an extreme burden on the state. Not necessarily a burden, but maybe an investment that'll pay itself back. Anything increasing the average health would increase productivity and make national healthcare programs...

There are seven main aging problems (at least according to SENS, and I've seen no serious refutation of them). There was Technology Review's challenge which dismissed the critiques submitted against SENS, but some of the people whose submissions were dismissed expressed pretty heavy criticism again...

What? How does "make all humans smile" turn into "make pics of smiling humans" in the eyes of the worlds most logical entity? "I'll accomplish my mission by maximizing the number of smiling human faces --> billions of miniaturized human faces are the most effective way of g...

For the UMPTEENTH FUCKING TIME , you cannot disprove that religion is a cause of problems by simply showing that there are other causes of problems as well. And if you pretend to concede this point again, only to use it again in a future point, I will ban your worthless ass. I was just pointing out...

The addition of cruelty comes largely from people being encouraged to eradicate anyone that exists outside the bounds of their group. You know where the vast majority of that encouragement comes from? Religion, with the Abrahamic religions being the most notorious contributors. So to review: 1. Sto...

Secondly, assuming the two are equally valid for a moment, you would have just violated Occam's Razor by adding an unnecessary term. Look at it this way: Us: The cruelty can easily be explained by the pervasive nature of the Abrahamic religions in the culture committing the atrocities, since they h...

Even given a fast take-off an AI can't take over the world unless given the resources to do so. Just give it a fast Internet connection. Then you'll have (if you'll excuse me some anthromorphization) the... 1) "Oh, of course you'll believe everything I say, puny human - I'm only accessing thou...

had those justifications not existed, people would've made up other ones. You will, of course, provide evidence for this claim. While I have no hard evidence - obviously, since I would've presented it by now if I had - it would at least seem likely - in many cases if not all. After all, purging any...

Right... so first you say that there's a good reason to blame the Inquisition on religion because the religion says you should act like that, then you admit yourself that it doesn't say anything definitive and it depends on the person and the Church leadership of the time (who'd have had an interes...

Nobody's assuming that the AI's will be evil. It's just that: A) Once you the basis for a superintelligent AI, what are you going to program it to do? You have to be very, very careful in giving it instructions, exactly because it doesn't think like a human. Program it to "make all humans smile...

The interpretations of the Singularity do indeed insinuate infinite advancement, from the Wiki quote provided. Some of these imply that a mathematical singularity will occour in the develpoment of technology which reason suggests is not possible in reality, since that implies infinitely fast accell...

In other words, it all depends on how you want to interprete it, the sacred texts themselves don't say anything conclusive. Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee: But ye shall destroy their al...

But yes, ultimate limitations to processor power from fundamental physics is also an issue limiting the idea still further. Even with processing power heading to infinite there are algorithms which can not be achieved in polynomical time. So not only are you limited by physics on how fast/much you ...

And I've pointed out that the religions in question directly advocate things that are directly the opposite as well. Did the Inquisition take place because the Bible says "treat others as you'd like to be treated" and "hate the sin, not the sinner", or did the Church leaders jus...

My point exactly. Wrong. The religions in question directly advocate the things we're accusing it of. Atheism advocates nothing. I pointed this out several times already and you've ignored it, asshole. And I've pointed out that the religions in question directly advocate things that are directly th...