Dath ilan's entire macrostrategy is premised, their Conspirators are sharply aware, on the notion that they have time, that they've searched the sky and found no asteroids incoming, no comets of dark ice.

If an emergency were to occur, the Basement Conspiracy would try to build something that wasn't perfect at all.  Something that wasn't exactly and completely aligned to a multiparty!reasonable-construal of the Light, that wasn't meant to be something that a galactic Civilization could live in without regretting it, in continuing control of It not because It had been built with keys and locks handed to some Horrifyingly Trusted Committee, but because It was something that Itself believed in multi-agent coordination and not as an instrumental value, what other places might name "democracy" since they had no precise understand of what that word was even supposed to mean -

Anyways, if dath ilan suddenly found that they were wrong about having time, if they suddenly had to rush, they'd build something that couldn't safely be put in charge of a million galaxies.  Something that would solve a single problem at hand, and not otherwise go outside its bounds.  Something that wasn't conscious, wasn't reflective in the class of ways that would lead it to say unprompted "I think therefore I am" or notice within itself a bubble of awareness directed outward.

You could build something like that to be limited, and also reflective and conscious - to be clear.  It's just that dath ilani wouldn't do that if they had any other choice at all, for they do also have a terror of not doing right by their children, and would very much prefer not to create a Child at all.

(If you told them that some other world was planning to do that and didn't understand qualia well enough to make their creation not have qualia, any expert out of the World's Basement would unhesitatingly tell you that this was a silly hypothetical; anybody in this state of general ignorance about cognitive science would inevitably die, and they'd know that.)

Dath ilan's entire macrostrategy is premised, their Conspirators are sharply aware, on the notion that they have time, that they've searched the sky and found no asteroids incoming, no comets of dark ice.

If an emergency were to occur, the Basement Conspiracy would try to build something that wasn't perfect at all.  Something that wasn't exactly and completely aligned to a multiparty!reasonable-construal of the Light, that wasn't meant to be something that a galactic Civilization could live in without regretting it, in continuing control of It not because It had been built with keys and locks handed to some Horrifyingly Trusted Committee, but because It was something that Itself believed in multi-agent coordination and not as an instrumental value, what other places might name "democracy" since they had no precise understand of what that word was even supposed to mean -

Anyways, if dath ilan suddenly found that they were wrong about having time, if they suddenly had to rush, they'd build something that couldn't safely be put in charge of a million galaxies.  Something that would solve a single problem at hand, and not otherwise go outside its bounds.  Something that wasn't conscious, wasn't reflective in the class of ways that would lead it to say unprompted "I think therefore I am" or notice within itself a bubble of awareness directed outward.

You could build something like that to be limited, and also reflective and conscious - to be clear.  It's just that dath ilani wouldn't do that if they had any other choice at all, for they do also have a terror of not doing right by their children, and would very much prefer not to create a Child at all.

(If you told them that some other world was planning to do that and didn't understand qualia well enough to make their creation not have qualia, any expert out of the World's Basement would tell you that this was a silly hypothetical; anybody in this state of general ignorance about cognitive science would inevitably die, and they'd know that.)

Dath ilan's entire macrostrategy is premised, their Conspirators are sharply aware, on the notion that they have time, that they've searched the sky and found no asteroids incoming, no comets of dark ice.

If an emergency were to occur, the Basement Conspiracy would try to build something that wasn't perfect at all.  Something that wasn't exactly and completely aligned to a multiparty!reasonable-construal of the Light, that wasn't meant to be something that a galactic Civilization could live in without regretting it, in continuing control of It not because It had been built with keys and locks handed to some Horrifyingly Trusted Committee, but because It was something that Itself believed in multi-agent coordination and not as an instrumental value, what other places might name "democracy" since they had no precise understanding of what that word was even supposed to mean -

Anyways, if dath ilan suddenly found that they were wrong about having time, if they suddenly had to rush, they'd build something that couldn't safely be put in charge of a million galaxies.  Something that would solve a single problem at hand, and not otherwise go outside its bounds.  Something that wasn't conscious, wasn't reflective in the class of ways that would lead it to say unprompted "I think therefore I am" or notice within itself a bubble of awareness directed outward.

You could build something like that to be limited, and also reflective and conscious - to be clear.  It's just that dath ilani wouldn't do that if they had any other choice at all, for they do also have a terror of not doing right by their children, and would very much prefer not to create a Child at all.

(If you told them that some other world was planning to do that and didn't understand qualia well enough to make their creation not have qualia, any expert out of the World's Basement would tell you that this was a silly hypothetical; anybody in this state of general ignorance about cognitive science would inevitably die, and they'd know that.)