My Son, the Robot

by phil on Saturday May 17, 2003 7:43 PM
artificial intelligence, transhumanism

My Son, the Robot - Will technology end human life as we know it? Yes, says Bill McKibben. By Jim Holt The problem with this sort of thinking is that it violates the Copernican Principle, which says, in essence, "You're not special." (It's named after Copernicus because he realized that we are not at the center of the solar system, let alone the universe.) More precisely, the principle says that, as a matter of statistical necessity, most observers must be "typical." So, if a given set of observers believe in a scenario that makes them highly atypical, they are almost certainly mistaken.

and this.. +1 Witty comment:

"Myself, I don't much like how people are now," Minsky says. "We're too shallow, slow, and ignorant. … We have learned a lot in two thousand years, yet much ancient wisdom still seems sound, which makes me suspect that we haven't been making much progress."