Understood, but there’s only so much the conquistadors can do even with gunpowder. Guns can do a lot of damage against bronze swords and armor, but if they have more soldiers than you have bullets, then you’ll still lose.
Of course, if the conquistadors could build a modern tank, they’d be virtually invincible. But in order to do that, they’d need to smelt steel, vulcanize rubber, refine petroleum, manufacture electronics, etc. Even if they had perfect knowledge of these technologies, they couldn’t duplicate them in ye olde Aztec times, because such technologies require a large portion of the world’s population to be up to speed. There’s a limit to how much you can do armed with nothing but a pocket knife and a volcano.
I think this was XiXiDu’s point: knowledge alone is not enough, you also need to put in a lot of work (which is often measured in centuries) in order to apply it.
knowledge alone is not enough, you also need to put in a lot of work (which is often measured in centuries) in order to apply it.
Understood that, too! But one can optimize and outsource a lot. Conquistadors employed Indians, enslaved Aztecs and Incas. Besides, the subjective time of an upload can be vast. A good idea can trim a lot of work need to be done. And at least my upload would be full of ideas.
Agreed; just as a single conquistador—or better yet, a modern engineer—transported into the Roman Empire would be full of ideas. He would know how to forge steel, refine petroleum, design electronic circuits, genetically engineer plants and animals, write software, plus many other things. But he wouldn’t be able to actually use most of that knowledge.
In order to write software, you need a computer. In order to build a computer, you need… well, you need a lot of stuff that outsourced Aztec (or Roman) slaves just wouldn’t be able to provide. You could enslave everyone on the continent, and you still wouldn’t be able to make a single CPU. Sure, if you were patient, very lucky, and long-lived, you could probably get something going within the next century or so. But that’s hardly a “FOOM”, and the Romans would have a hundred years to stop you, if they decided that your plans for the future aren’t to their liking.
But that’s hardly a “FOOM”, and the Romans would have a hundred years to stop you,
Exactly. And here the parable breaks down. The upload just might have those centuries. Virtual subjective time of thousands of years to devise a cunning plan, before we the humans even discuss their advantage. Yudkowsky has wrote a short story about this. http://lesswrong.com/lw/qk/that_alien_message/
Bugmaster’s point was that it takes a century of action by external parties, not a century of subjective thinking time. The timetable doesn’t get advanced all that much by super-intelligence. Real-world changes happen on real-world timetables. And yes, the rate of change might be exponential, but exponential curves grow slowly at first.
And meanwhile, other things are happening in that century that might upset the plans and that cannot be arbitrarily controlled even by super-intelligence.
Exponential curves grow at the same rate all the time. That is, if you zoom in on the x^2 graph at any point at any scale, it will look exactly the same as it did before you zoomed in.
I think we are using “rate” in different ways. The absolute rate of change per unit time for an exponential is hardly constant; If you look at the segment of e^x near, say, e^10, it’s growing much faster than it is at e^(-10).
Understood, but there’s only so much the conquistadors can do even with gunpowder. Guns can do a lot of damage against bronze swords and armor, but if they have more soldiers than you have bullets, then you’ll still lose.
Of course, if the conquistadors could build a modern tank, they’d be virtually invincible. But in order to do that, they’d need to smelt steel, vulcanize rubber, refine petroleum, manufacture electronics, etc. Even if they had perfect knowledge of these technologies, they couldn’t duplicate them in ye olde Aztec times, because such technologies require a large portion of the world’s population to be up to speed. There’s a limit to how much you can do armed with nothing but a pocket knife and a volcano.
I think this was XiXiDu’s point: knowledge alone is not enough, you also need to put in a lot of work (which is often measured in centuries) in order to apply it.
Understood that, too! But one can optimize and outsource a lot. Conquistadors employed Indians, enslaved Aztecs and Incas. Besides, the subjective time of an upload can be vast. A good idea can trim a lot of work need to be done. And at least my upload would be full of ideas.
Agreed; just as a single conquistador—or better yet, a modern engineer—transported into the Roman Empire would be full of ideas. He would know how to forge steel, refine petroleum, design electronic circuits, genetically engineer plants and animals, write software, plus many other things. But he wouldn’t be able to actually use most of that knowledge.
In order to write software, you need a computer. In order to build a computer, you need… well, you need a lot of stuff that outsourced Aztec (or Roman) slaves just wouldn’t be able to provide. You could enslave everyone on the continent, and you still wouldn’t be able to make a single CPU. Sure, if you were patient, very lucky, and long-lived, you could probably get something going within the next century or so. But that’s hardly a “FOOM”, and the Romans would have a hundred years to stop you, if they decided that your plans for the future aren’t to their liking.
Exactly. And here the parable breaks down. The upload just might have those centuries. Virtual subjective time of thousands of years to devise a cunning plan, before we the humans even discuss their advantage. Yudkowsky has wrote a short story about this. http://lesswrong.com/lw/qk/that_alien_message/
Bugmaster’s point was that it takes a century of action by external parties, not a century of subjective thinking time. The timetable doesn’t get advanced all that much by super-intelligence. Real-world changes happen on real-world timetables. And yes, the rate of change might be exponential, but exponential curves grow slowly at first.
And meanwhile, other things are happening in that century that might upset the plans and that cannot be arbitrarily controlled even by super-intelligence.
Err… minor quibble.
Exponential curves grow at the same rate all the time. That is, if you zoom in on the x^2 graph at any point at any scale, it will look exactly the same as it did before you zoomed in.
I think we are using “rate” in different ways. The absolute rate of change per unit time for an exponential is hardly constant; If you look at the segment of e^x near, say, e^10, it’s growing much faster than it is at e^(-10).
asr got my point exactly right.
Guns? I thought horses were their main advantage.
(What are the Aztecs gonna do, burn down all the grass in the continent?)
The OP used gunpowder as the example, so I went with it. You might be right about horses, though.