Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Goal - a temporarily useful construct

Is the concept "goal"” just a temporarily useful human construct? Why would goals not be potentially useful in the future for super-intelligence? Goals are a mechanism of motivation and emotional reward for humans. Since emotion, e.g.; self-actualization and happiness, is probably not the governing driver of super-intelligence, goals are not useful.

If goals did not exist, what would direct behavior and activity? Would there be behavior and activity? Should there be? Yes, there should be activity to avoid entropy, unless the second law of thermodynamics has been re-tuned or otherwise no longer applies. If not goals, what would determine and direct the activity of super-intelligence?

Absent survival imperatives and despite the cliché, the main thing to occupy super-intelligence will be the unfinished business of understanding everything that is not yet understood. As in (currently) the full physics of this universe (and others), dark energy, dark matter, black holes, number, location, purpose and use of dimensions, the Higgs boson, the human brain, protein folding, etc.

Goals will not be needed to motivate super-intelligence to investigate and understand that which is not yet understood, just knowing that it is not yet understood will be sufficient enough to impel activity.

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