Comment by Footkerchief

3 years ago

We're allowed to assume the existence of cat carriers in this metaphor, but not the existence of the humans that are the sole reason cat carriers exist?

I was trying to be generous! But you are of course right, in the better analogy Hawking would find himself born into a feline-centric world and face an even harder task.

  • He’d have to be able to communicate with the cat for it to be a worthwhile metaphor to the ai in a box case and humans.

    If he can do that it requires one weak link human over an infinite time horizon.

    Humans are already terrible at preventing breaches in a lot dumber circumstances without something smarter than them trying to do it.

    • You're kind of falling into the fallacy this point is criticizing. You can't assume anything about communication between entities that are orders of magnitude apart in intelligence.

      I have a profound understanding of my puppy's psychology, motivations, and capabilities; I even exercise complete control over her physical environment, and yet she ate my fitbit strap (again, goddamit!) as I was typing this very comment.

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