I fail to understand the sentence about overthinking. Mind to explain?
As for the condition of removing all energy and mass in a part of space not being sufficient to destroy all agents therein, I cannot see the error. Do you have an example of an agent which would continue to exist in those circumstances?
That the condition is not necessary is true: I can shoot you, you die. No need to remove much mass or energy from the part of space you occupy. However we don’t need a necessary condition, only a sufficient one.
Well yes we don’t need a necessary condition for your idea but presumably if we want to make even a passing attempt at friendliness we’re going to want the AI to know not to burn live humans for fuel. If we can’t do better an AI is too dangerous, with this back-up in place or not.
As for the condition of removing all energy and mass in a part of space not being sufficient to destroy all agents therein, I cannot see the error.
Well you could remove the agents and the mass surrounding them to some other location, intact.
The wavefunction argument is incorrect. At the level of quantum mechanics, particles’ wave-functions can easily be zero, trivially at points, with a little more effort over ranges. At the level of QFTs, yes vacuum fluctuations kick in, and do prevent space from being “empty”.
I fail to understand the sentence about overthinking. Mind to explain?
As for the condition of removing all energy and mass in a part of space not being sufficient to destroy all agents therein, I cannot see the error. Do you have an example of an agent which would continue to exist in those circumstances?
That the condition is not necessary is true: I can shoot you, you die. No need to remove much mass or energy from the part of space you occupy. However we don’t need a necessary condition, only a sufficient one.
Well yes we don’t need a necessary condition for your idea but presumably if we want to make even a passing attempt at friendliness we’re going to want the AI to know not to burn live humans for fuel. If we can’t do better an AI is too dangerous, with this back-up in place or not.
Well you could remove the agents and the mass surrounding them to some other location, intact.
This is what I was planning to say, yes. A third argument: removing all mass and energy from a volume is—strictly speaking—impossible.
Because a particle’s wave function never hits zero or some other reason?
I was thinking of vacuum energy, actually—the wavefunction argument just makes it worse.
The wavefunction argument is incorrect. At the level of quantum mechanics, particles’ wave-functions can easily be zero, trivially at points, with a little more effort over ranges. At the level of QFTs, yes vacuum fluctuations kick in, and do prevent space from being “empty”.