People have suggested dozens of scenarios, from taking over the Internet to hacking militaries to producing nanoassemblers & eating everything. The scenarios will never be enough for critics because until they are actually executed there will always be some doubt that they would work...
Speaking as one of the critics, I’ve got to say that these scenarios are “not enough” for me not because there’s “some doubt that they would work”, but because there’s massive doubt that they would work. To use an analogy, I look both ways before crossing the street because I’m afraid of being hit by a car; but I don’t look up all the time, despite the fact that a meteorite could, theoretically, drop out of the sky and squash me flat. Cars are likely; meteorites are not.
I could elaborate regarding the reasons why I doubt some of these world takeover scenarios (including “hacking the Internet” and “eating everything”), if you’re interested.
I could elaborate regarding the reasons why I doubt some of these world takeover scenarios (including “hacking the Internet” and “eating everything”), if you’re interested.
Not really. Any scenario presented in any level of detail can be faulted with elaborate scenarios why it would not work. I’ve seen this at work with cryonics: no matter how detailed a future scenario is presented or how many options are presented in a disjunctive argument, no matter how many humans recovered from death or how many organs preserved and brought back, there are people who just never seem to think it has a non-zero chance of working because it has not yet worked.
For example, if I wanted to elaborate on the hacking the Internet scenario, I could ask you your probability on the possibility and then present information on Warhol worm simulations, prevalence of existing worms, number of root vulnerabilities a year, vulnerabilities exposed by static analysis tools like Coverity, the early results from fuzz testers, the size of the computer crime blackmarket, etc. until I was blue in the face, check whether you had changed your opinion and even if you said you changed it a little, you still would not do a single thing in your life differently.
Because, after all, disagreements are not about information. There’s a lot of evidence reasoning is only about arguing and disproving other people’s theories, and it’s increasingly clear to me that politics and theism are strongly heritable or determined by underlying cognitive properties like performance on the CRT or personality traits; why would cryonics or AI be any different?
The point of writing is to assemble useful information for those receptive, and use those not receptive to clean up errors or omissions. If someone reads my modafinil or nicotine essays and is a puritan with regard to supplements, I don’t expect them to change their minds; at most, I hope they’ll have a good citation for a negative point or mention a broken hyperlink.
Any scenario presented in any level of detail can be faulted with elaborate scenarios why it would not work.
That is a rather uncharitable interpretation of my words. I am fully willing to grant that your scenarios are possible, but are they likely ? If you showed me a highly detailed plan for building a new kind of skyscraper out of steel and concrete, I might try and poke some holes in it, but I’d agree that it would probably work. On the other hand, if you showed me a highly detailed plan for building a space elevator out of candy-canes, I would conclude that it would probably fail to work. I would conclude this not merely because I’ve never seen a space elevator before, but also because I know that candy-canes make a poor construction material. Sure, you could postulate super-strong diamondoid candy-canes of some sort, but then you’d need to explain where you’re going to get them from.
there are people who just never seem to think it has a non-zero chance of working because it has not yet worked.
For the record, I believe that cryonics has a non-zero chance of working.
...until I was blue in the face, check whether you had changed your opinion and even if you said you changed it a little, you still would not do a single thing in your life differently
I think this would depend on how much my opinion had, in fact, changed. If you’re going to simply go ahead and assume that I’m a disingenuous liar, then sure, there’s no point in talking to me. Is there anything I can say or do (short of agreeing with you unconditionally) to prove my sincerity, or is the mere fact of my disagreement with you evidence enough of my dishonesty and/or stupidity ?
The point of writing is to assemble useful information for those receptive, and use those not receptive to clean up errors or omissions.
And yet, de-converted atheists as well as converted theists do exist. Perhaps more importantly, the above sentence makes you sound as though you’d made up your mind on the topic, and thus nothing and no one could persuade you to change it in any way—which is kind of like what you’re accusing me of doing.
Speaking as one of the critics, I’ve got to say that these scenarios are “not enough” for me not because there’s “some doubt that they would work”, but because there’s massive doubt that they would work. To use an analogy, I look both ways before crossing the street because I’m afraid of being hit by a car; but I don’t look up all the time, despite the fact that a meteorite could, theoretically, drop out of the sky and squash me flat. Cars are likely; meteorites are not.
I could elaborate regarding the reasons why I doubt some of these world takeover scenarios (including “hacking the Internet” and “eating everything”), if you’re interested.
Not really. Any scenario presented in any level of detail can be faulted with elaborate scenarios why it would not work. I’ve seen this at work with cryonics: no matter how detailed a future scenario is presented or how many options are presented in a disjunctive argument, no matter how many humans recovered from death or how many organs preserved and brought back, there are people who just never seem to think it has a non-zero chance of working because it has not yet worked.
For example, if I wanted to elaborate on the hacking the Internet scenario, I could ask you your probability on the possibility and then present information on Warhol worm simulations, prevalence of existing worms, number of root vulnerabilities a year, vulnerabilities exposed by static analysis tools like Coverity, the early results from fuzz testers, the size of the computer crime blackmarket, etc. until I was blue in the face, check whether you had changed your opinion and even if you said you changed it a little, you still would not do a single thing in your life differently.
Because, after all, disagreements are not about information. There’s a lot of evidence reasoning is only about arguing and disproving other people’s theories, and it’s increasingly clear to me that politics and theism are strongly heritable or determined by underlying cognitive properties like performance on the CRT or personality traits; why would cryonics or AI be any different?
The point of writing is to assemble useful information for those receptive, and use those not receptive to clean up errors or omissions. If someone reads my modafinil or nicotine essays and is a puritan with regard to supplements, I don’t expect them to change their minds; at most, I hope they’ll have a good citation for a negative point or mention a broken hyperlink.
That is a rather uncharitable interpretation of my words. I am fully willing to grant that your scenarios are possible, but are they likely ? If you showed me a highly detailed plan for building a new kind of skyscraper out of steel and concrete, I might try and poke some holes in it, but I’d agree that it would probably work. On the other hand, if you showed me a highly detailed plan for building a space elevator out of candy-canes, I would conclude that it would probably fail to work. I would conclude this not merely because I’ve never seen a space elevator before, but also because I know that candy-canes make a poor construction material. Sure, you could postulate super-strong diamondoid candy-canes of some sort, but then you’d need to explain where you’re going to get them from.
For the record, I believe that cryonics has a non-zero chance of working.
I think this would depend on how much my opinion had, in fact, changed. If you’re going to simply go ahead and assume that I’m a disingenuous liar, then sure, there’s no point in talking to me. Is there anything I can say or do (short of agreeing with you unconditionally) to prove my sincerity, or is the mere fact of my disagreement with you evidence enough of my dishonesty and/or stupidity ?
And yet, de-converted atheists as well as converted theists do exist. Perhaps more importantly, the above sentence makes you sound as though you’d made up your mind on the topic, and thus nothing and no one could persuade you to change it in any way—which is kind of like what you’re accusing me of doing.