GeorgeStephen

Thanks for your reply.

From the linked proposal:

Personally, I have never found this line of thinking particularly compelling. An embryo, as created in IVF, is a ball of about 100 stem cells. It has no heart, no brain, and no circulatory system to speak of. It doesn’t even have a digestive tract. There is little to distinguish it from any other random clump of cells other than its unique DNA and its potential to become a person if implanted in a receptive uterus.

Some people might believe those two facts alone means an embryo already qualifies as a human. But

Was anyone signing up to be part of 20th century eugenics? Of course not. It wasn't a voluntary process at all. It was state sponsored sterilization and murder.

If you don't see the difference between that and embryo selection, you either haven't thought deeply about it or you're catholic.

If it's the latter, I understand. One day we'll have a way to do this without any excess embryos. But not yet.

Speaking as an actual Catholic, I do see that you are at least trying to avoid sterilization and murder (by not applying them to those that you recognize as person... (read more)

I understand that you don't want to have kids who will be killed by ASI and not have any kids of their own.

But you also think that there is a possibility of utopia.  Under these assumptions, wouldn't it make sense to wait for utopia and then have kids?

I see that you express reservations about having kids in utopia, of two types: 

1. You don't want them to be deluded denizens of a simulation, or zombies.
2. You want them to grow up in a world similar to the world you grew up in.

I agree that 1 would be a showstopper.  I would not want to raise kids in... (read more)

Thanks, your changes helped.

I. Introduction

I watched a 40 minute video by Eric Drexler called Reframing Superintelligence. I take it the content somewhat overlaps with his PDF book of the same name.

In it he expresses the opinion that under the Comprehensive Artificial Intelligence Services model, high level actors will not try to take over the world, because there is a serious risk of being stopped, with a bad outcome for the aggressor.

Dr. Drexler made the point that a subgoal of 'take over the world' is 'overthrow the government of China', and tha... (read more)