Zack_M_Davis | v1.12.0Nov 17th 2009 | (-21) byline removal | ||
Zack_M_Davis | v1.11.0Nov 1st 2009 | spacing repair | ||
Vladimir_Nesov | v1.10.0Oct 30th 2009 | (+20) /* See also */ | ||
Zack_M_Davis | v1.9.0Oct 19th 2009 | (-26) fixing obvious errors | ||
Zack_M_Davis | v1.8.0Oct 19th 2009 | (+999) wrote page | ||
PeerInfinity | v1.7.0Sep 28th 2009 | (+67/-67) | ||
PeerInfinity | v1.6.0Sep 8th 2009 | (+28/-28) | ||
Vladimir_Nesov | v1.5.0Sep 3rd 2009 | (+55) /* See also */ | ||
Vladimir_Nesov | v1.4.0Sep 2nd 2009 | (+16) | ||
Vladimir_Nesov | v1.3.0Jul 9th 2009 | (+31/-51) removed boilerplate |
Mind design space refers to the configuration space of possible minds. As humans living in a human world, we can safely make all sorts of assumptions about the minds around us without even realizing it. Each human might have their own unique personal qualities, so it might naively seem that there's nothing you can say about people you I don't know. But there's actually quite a lot you can say (with high or very high probability) about a random human: that they have standard emotions like happiness, sadness, and anger; standard senses like sight, vision, and hearing; that they speak a language; and no doubt any number of other subtle features that are even harder to quickly explain in words. These things are the specific results of evolutionary psychology|adaptation pressures in the ancestral environment and can't be expected to be shared by a random alien or AI. That is, humans are packed into a tiny dot in the configuration space: there is vast range over of other ways a mind can be.
Mind design space refers to the configuration space of possible minds. As humans living in a human world, we can safely make all sorts of assumptions about the minds around us without even realizing it. Each human might have their own unique personal qualities, so it might naively seem that there's nothing you can say about people you I don't know. But there's actually quite a lot you can say (with high or very high probability) about a random human: that they have standard emotions like happiness, sadness, and anger; standard senses like sight, vision, and hearing; that they speak a language; and no doubt any number of other subtle features that are even harder to quickly explain in words. These things are the specific results of evolutionary psychology|adaptation pressures in the ancestral environment and can't be expected to be shared by a random alien or AI. That is, humans are packed into a tiny dot in the configuration space: there is vast range over of other ways a mind can be.
byEliezer Yudkowsky