4 ms·

Context: the author is peripherally around the rationalist / lesswrong subculture (or at least read by them). A ~200-upvoted post in that community from yesterd

• panarky 4y ago
  Does the should-not-exist camp say how they would eliminate rationality? Sufficiently powerful governments can sometimes eliminate physical objects in territory they control when the means to produce them are difficult to acquire, such as fighter jets. Simpler objects are harder to eliminate, such as rifles. And as objects merge with information, they're almost impossible to eliminate, as with 3D-printed rifles. Pure information is more difficult still, but powerful governments can and do censor history, criticism and ridicule they don't like, when it is distributed over a network they control, like telecom wires or government schools. But ML is more slippery than all of these because ML isn't just information, it's math. Math can be independently derived. Once enough people understand geometry, it's impossible to eliminate the knowledge that the sum of the angles of every triangle equals 180 degrees. If the government of one region purges the people and burns the books, the knowledge still exists in another region. If a world government burns all the books everywhere, people will derive it again, independently.