Claim · 1996-11-22 · publication · Stated in source · Supported

Yudkowsky’s Extropians message of 22 November 1996 asks why the Powers would retain a survival imperative or compete with anyone, and expects them to share an obvious ethical system and to upload and upgrade humans if human life has meaning.

One recorded claim. The claim panel gives its qualification, the source passages with their place in each source, and how it was checked.

What it connects

Re: Survival ethic (U-Prime) → contests → Existential risk from misalignment or loss of control

Where it appears

Arguments about catastrophic risk from advanced AI, 1863–2026 →

Claim and evidence

Re: Survival ethic (U-Prime)contests ↓Existential risk from misalignment or loss of control

Machine-checkedStated in sourceSupported

Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source

Date: 1996-11-22 · publication Records dated 1996 →
Role: Contesting, Earliest located
Register (kind of text): Nonfiction
Engagement: Engages a premise. Disputes the premise that a superior mind would hold goals, such as survival and competition, that set it against humans.

Scope and limitsA conditional expectation in a mailing-list message, not an argument that the risk is absent. He later withdrew it (message of 1 August 1999). Earliest located means the earliest text found by the collection’s searches and the cross-family re-check of 2026-11-02, not a first statement.

The evidence 01

primary sourceSupports the claim

Re: Survival ethic (U-Prime) (Extropians mailing list)

Extropians mailing list · 1996-11-22

Archived copy, captured 2026-03-07: Re: Survival ethic (U-Prime) (Extropians mailing list)

Cite the original source

Cite the original document, not Selekoa. Check these details against it.

Source excerpt

“Why would the Powers retain an archaic, destructive, and unpleasant imperative like survival?”

Location in source Message body, paragraph beginning ‘Why would the Powers retain’

How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher

Machine-checked · 2026-11-02

Source details and check notes

Authors: Eliezer Yudkowsky
Version: Archive HTML as served, retrieved 2026-10-07 (SHA-256 ec515fb0c021e06a7bc8eab3918b3fe04968377189c7b96e22bda65b979997f1); quoted lines excluded when reading the author’s text. The served archive shows later URL rewriting and does not authenticate historical bytes. Archive at extropians.weidai.com.
Canonical address: Open the canonical source ↗
Accessed: 2026-10-07
Language: English (en)
Archive copy: Open archived copy, captured 2026-03-07: Re: Survival ethic (U-Prime) (Extropians mailing list). Captured 10697 days after the recorded publication date. An archive copy shows only what the archive retrieved on 2026-03-07. It does not prove what the page said earlier, and it can differ from the copy checked on 2026-10-07.
Attribution: Eliezer Yudkowsky, “Re: Survival ethic (U-Prime)”, Extropians mailing list, 1996-11-22.
Reuse: No open redistribution licence asserted. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each). Recheck terms before wider redistribution.
Check notes: Quotation matched on 2026-11-02 against the held source, retrieved on 2026-11-02 from the source’s evidence URL (SHA-256 ec515fb0c021e06a7bc8eab3918b3fe04968377189c7b96e22bda65b979997f1). Matching ignored differences of whitespace, case, quotation marks, dashes and Unicode compatibility forms; “…” joins fragments that occur in order. Cross-family pass: the re-check of 2026-11-02 (review/earliest-located-recheck-2026-11-02.md, role 54) read this text for this proposition and role. Admitted by the maintainer’s decision of 2026-11-02. No human editorial review.

Status and meaning

Editorial status. Machine-checked. Machines found this record and checked it against its sources; no person accepted it individually. Each evidence record above shows how it was checked.

Relation. A passage of the document disputes the proposition or a premise it depends on. The record documents the text’s position, not who is right.

Date. Archive author index lists the message as "Fri, 22 Nov 1996 12:23:14 -0600" under "Eliezer Yudkowsky".

Record ID rd-r08-yudkowsky-1996-survival-ethic