TitaniumButterfly

2 followers follows 2 users joined 2024 January 18 23:49:16 UTC

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User ID: 2854

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Avatar's Dirty Secret: Nature Is Just Fancy Infrastructure

TitaniumButterfly 7hr ago

If they aren't, and it is ever possible that someone other than the Author-Empowered God Stand-In ever claims (or even challenges) that power, then there is not just no story, but no possibility of a story, because the superintelligence would just turn off the laws of physics that permit its enemies to have ever existed.

Now you're just making the opposite mistake, which is assuming that the laws of physics are entirely mutable.

A superintelligence would need to derive a benefit from the existence of a non-sterile galaxy commensurate with the risk of another superintelligence popping up in it and saying "Fuck you and the light-cone you rode in on."; even if it doesn't go full paperclip-maximizer, shouldn't a superintelligence be like "Hey, the fact that failure is a dramatic possibility means that we should pre-empt this?"

This doesn't make any sense from any angle. There's no way to evaluate the values of a superintelligence. Also, there's no reason to assume they wouldn't have plenty of time/ability to stop such a thing from happening, nor foreknowledge that it would be impossible for a competitor to spring up fully formed.

The implication in the book is that galaxies are nurseries where the (distant) equivalent of new child deities arise, and they care to allow that to continue.

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Avatar's Dirty Secret: Nature Is Just Fancy Infrastructure

TitaniumButterfly 17hr ago

This assumes that laws of physics are universal and immutable which we are not in a position to judge.

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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

TitaniumButterfly 19hr ago

By the way you would probably get a lot out of Stepheson's The Diamond Age if you haven't read it.

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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

TitaniumButterfly 19hr ago

Looking forward to it!

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Avatar's Dirty Secret: Nature Is Just Fancy Infrastructure

TitaniumButterfly 19hr ago

To be honest I don't know what your actual objection is.

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Avatar's Dirty Secret: Nature Is Just Fancy Infrastructure

TitaniumButterfly 20hr ago

Yeah it's near the end of the first book.

And even if that's the nominal explanation, there's no way in hell it would work IRL.

I'm sure you know better than transcendent superintelligences =P

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Avatar's Dirty Secret: Nature Is Just Fancy Infrastructure

TitaniumButterfly 20hr ago

I'm pretty sure that's explicitly stated. It's a cradle of sorts to make sure that new sapiences can arise without getting eaten by the sort of (to us) megapredators which would otherwise infest the levels at which things like us are generated.