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Marc Geddes's avatar

Comparing intelligence, and consciousness, I've come to the conclusion that extreme rationality isn't that great.

The film 'Equilibrium' (starring Christian Bale) tells the story of a totalitarian state where all superstimuli have been banned (thus high art is banned and emotions are not allowed).

In the finale of the film, Bale fights his way into the office of the 'father' (ruler of the totalitarian state). He is amazed to find... you guessed it... the office of the main bad guy is saturated with high art and super-stimuli! Watch the final fight scenes, this is very cool, Bale's character uses 'Gun Kata', the ability to dodge bullets based on extrapolating opponents moves in advance. It tuns out that emotions are the source of his power all along.

Equilibrium Finale: Emotion beats Reason

The moral of the story is clear. The coming Singularitarian battle for the dominion of the universe will be decisive. Consciousness (Sentient AI wireheads/super-stimulants) will beat Intelligence (Non-sentient RPOPs).

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

I wax eloquent about the ideas about consciousness from this book in my post. Among other things, I consider that considering intelligence without consciousness is a lot like what we are getting as we try to do Artificial Intelligence. That is, we are finding it is a lot easier to build a dead brain than a live one.

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