Kenneth Stanley's and Joel Lehman's book Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective has two components: theoretical, describing something about the reality, and ethical (practical, political), prescribing what people and other agents
"there should always be paths only through the stepping stones that satisfy a certain (reasonable) limitation or constraint"
Sounds like wishful thinking and a fragile position.
What if there's no such a path and not following an "unsuitable" path (one, that doesn't satisfy a certain (reasonable) limitation or constraint) is posing an existential risk itself?
As we can not predict consequences in a complex system in the long run, I cannot see how one can evaluate a "reasonability" of constraints beyond open-endness principles.
It's obvious that *all* stepping stones are still available (none is completely locked out), sooner or later. For example, Elon Musk wants to launch many rockets per day to develop Starlink. That would probably be prohibited until the fuel is produced from the CO2 from the air itself. But in 30-40 years (or much sooner), we should have very cheap energy from nuclear fusion, and these rockets will become permitted.
So, the limitations are just the guardrails that guide differential technological development, mentioned in the post.
> As we can not predict consequences in a complex system in the long run, I cannot see how one can evaluate a "reasonability" of constraints beyond open-endness principles.
To me, this is akin to saying "nobody can predict whether a particular child is a future Adolf Hitler, so we cannot judge a child murder beyond open-endedness principles". And this is also what Stanley and Lehman are saying. To me, this is nonsense, but we are back to this political debate that I already covered in the post.
"there should always be paths only through the stepping stones that satisfy a certain (reasonable) limitation or constraint"
Sounds like wishful thinking and a fragile position.
What if there's no such a path and not following an "unsuitable" path (one, that doesn't satisfy a certain (reasonable) limitation or constraint) is posing an existential risk itself?
As we can not predict consequences in a complex system in the long run, I cannot see how one can evaluate a "reasonability" of constraints beyond open-endness principles.
It's obvious that *all* stepping stones are still available (none is completely locked out), sooner or later. For example, Elon Musk wants to launch many rockets per day to develop Starlink. That would probably be prohibited until the fuel is produced from the CO2 from the air itself. But in 30-40 years (or much sooner), we should have very cheap energy from nuclear fusion, and these rockets will become permitted.
So, the limitations are just the guardrails that guide differential technological development, mentioned in the post.
> As we can not predict consequences in a complex system in the long run, I cannot see how one can evaluate a "reasonability" of constraints beyond open-endness principles.
To me, this is akin to saying "nobody can predict whether a particular child is a future Adolf Hitler, so we cannot judge a child murder beyond open-endedness principles". And this is also what Stanley and Lehman are saying. To me, this is nonsense, but we are back to this political debate that I already covered in the post.