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Comment by silverton on Should We Ban Physics? · 2008-07-21T11:20:25.000Z · LW · GW

One response to the tougher question is that the practicality of advising said species to hold on to its horse saddles a wee bit longer is directly proportional to the remaining time (AGI_achieved_date, less today's_date) within the interval between transistors and AGI. If it's five years beyond transistors and thousands of years yet to go to AGI, with a low likelihood of success, ever; then maybe the reward attributable to breakthrough (and breakout of some theoretically insufferably stagnant present) outweighs the risk of complete annihilation (which also is maybe not all that bad -- or at least fear and pain free -- if it's instantaneous and locally universal). If, on the other hand, there is good reason to believe that said species is only 5, 50, or maybe even 500 years away from AGI that could prevent Global Inadvertent Total Annihilation (GITA? probably not a politically correct acronym, ITA is less redundant anyway), perhaps the calculus favors an annoying yet adaptive modicum of patience which a temporary "limit up" in the most speculative physics futures market might represent.