[SEQ RERUN] The First World Takeover

Today’s post, The First World Takeover was originally published on 19 November 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

The first replicator was the original black swan. A couple of molecules that, despite not having a particularly good optimization process, could explore new regions of pattern-space. This is an event that would have implications that would have seemed absurd to predict.


Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was The Weak Inside View, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.