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A review by gnug315
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom
4.0
Bostrum’s seminal work is impossibly ambitious, addressing a veritable slew of critically important questions regarding the possible/eventual/nascent arrival of SGI.
Unfortunately, it creates a million more questions than it answers, and at a breakneck speed at that. As such, I found it absolutely exhausting to get thru.
Often going off on tangents closer to science fiction, most of them utterly unanswerable with our current levels of understanding, it is simultaneously intruiging and boring, because it is so far beyond our comprehension and ability to deal with one might as well give up.
One thing I miss is a more pragmatical approach to these unanswerable questions: instead of trying to logically deduce what we should literally do, as he does a thousand times, a more pragmatic and philosophical approach is in order - think Taleb’s streetwise trader’s mindset. For example, Bostrum briefly acknowledges the moral conundrums we face, but doesn’t try to answer them philosophically, which is what I personally believe we should do.
It’s a shame so little of the space is devoted to doing som because his closing statement puts forth our challenges in a timelessly wise manner much less prone to drown in the growing ocean of endlessly detailed problems to solve, so he is certainly very capable of philosophical thought.
A must-read for anyone seriously interested in the subject, but be prepared to buckle under the sheer amount of insolvable problems he lays on you.
Humankind is not ready for this challenge.
Unfortunately, it creates a million more questions than it answers, and at a breakneck speed at that. As such, I found it absolutely exhausting to get thru.
Often going off on tangents closer to science fiction, most of them utterly unanswerable with our current levels of understanding, it is simultaneously intruiging and boring, because it is so far beyond our comprehension and ability to deal with one might as well give up.
One thing I miss is a more pragmatical approach to these unanswerable questions: instead of trying to logically deduce what we should literally do, as he does a thousand times, a more pragmatic and philosophical approach is in order - think Taleb’s streetwise trader’s mindset. For example, Bostrum briefly acknowledges the moral conundrums we face, but doesn’t try to answer them philosophically, which is what I personally believe we should do.
It’s a shame so little of the space is devoted to doing som because his closing statement puts forth our challenges in a timelessly wise manner much less prone to drown in the growing ocean of endlessly detailed problems to solve, so he is certainly very capable of philosophical thought.
A must-read for anyone seriously interested in the subject, but be prepared to buckle under the sheer amount of insolvable problems he lays on you.
Humankind is not ready for this challenge.