​So superintelligence may be as much of a curse as a blessing. For example, if we learn to run ancestor simulations, we may increase worries about already living in them.

We might program AIs to pursue happiness, and find out that happiness isn’t worthwhile. Or programming AIs may increase our concern that we are programmed. So superintelligence might work against us—our post-human descendents may be more troubled by philosophical questions than we are.

I suppose this is all possible, but I don’t find myself too concerned. Ignorance may be bliss, but I don’t think so. Even if we do discover that reality, value, freedom and other philosophical issues present intractable problems, I would rather know truth than be ignorant. Here’s why.

We can remain in our current philosophically ignorant state with the mix of bliss and dissatisfaction it provides, or we can become more intelligent.  I’ll take my chances with becoming more intelligent because I don’t want to be ignorance forever. I don’t want to be human; I want to be post-human. I find my inspiration in Tennyson’s words about that great sojourner Ulysses:

for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles …

I don’t know if we will make a better reality, but I want to try. Let us move toward the future with hope that the journey on which we are about to embark will be greater than the one already completed. With Ulysses let us continue “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

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1. I would like to thank my former student at the University of Texas, Mr. Kip Werking, for bringing my attention to these issues.