Ouch this thread is getting personal. Lets put two things in perspective.

1) No one who has replied to this thread is an idiot. I have met a lot of idiots in my life. Sorry but none of you make the cut. On the contrary overall quality of posts and debate has been very impressive.

2) Everyone here has a vested interest/agenda. Many here have a large position in bitcoin and stand to lose a lot if the OP is right. The OP is obviously pushing an alternative and stands to likewise lose out if he is proven wrong.

Our goal here (at least mine) is a search for truth. Given that we are an intelligent group of non idiots with vastly differing agendas I am impressed the conversation has been as civil as it has. Lets try to keep it that way sans vulgar words and personal attacks.

Lets take a moment to walk into the rabbit hole.
Time for some speculating  

Lets start with a few assumptions and lets see where they take us
Assumption #1 A global elite designed Bitcoin
Assumption #2 Bitcoin was deliberately designed to eventually fail
Assumption #3 This global elite is manipulating the world behind the scenes
Assumption #4 The goal of the global elite is to push us gradually into a single world government
Assumption #5 The economic analysis above regarding the rise of the knowledge age, the diminishing role of socialism, and the need for anonymity is correct.

If the above assumptions are all true then what logically follows?

If assumption #1 and #2 are correct then Bitcoin is perfectly designed to spark a huge interest in cryptocurrency without disrupting the underlying economy. Its spectacular marketing combined with the massive profits of the early adopters has brought the idea of cryptocurrency to the masses. Furthermore since it is designed to fail it will be self limiting with minimal long term economic disruption.  Bitcoin would thus be the equivalent of a hugely successful marketing campaign for cyptocurrency in general. It seems designed to spark and accelerate the development of improved successors.  

Releasing a perfect cryptocurrency with anonymity from the start would have been very disruptive as it would have grown much slower then bitcoin and thus resulted in extreme concentrations of wealth in the hands of a handful of early adopters. Instead, optimal efficiency requires the market to be primed to ensure early widespread distribution. No better way to do that then Bitcoin.

If assumption #3 and #4 are both true then the elite must be both incredibly intelligent and disciplined.  Furthermore as a group they are likely to believe both individually and collectively that their cause is for the good of humanity. It would take only a single defector to blow the whistle on the entire group and this is would but much more likely to occur if their designs were nefarious.  

If assumption #5 is correct then a single world government is not a bad thing provided such a government does not threaten individual liberty. Such a government (once the power vacuum is solved) will allow socialism to achieve greater economies of scale as gradually winds down in diminished relevance over time. Anonymity will solve the power vacuum.

Conclusion: If assumptions #1-5 are all correct then the power elite has essentially led us to a solution for the power vacuum (development of anonymous cryptocurrency was inevitable following the release of Bitcoin). They are simultaneously preparing the world for the gradual decline of socialism (via greater economies of scale through one world government). I would imagine that neither you or Armstrong are any any danger from them as they would be in complete support of your work.


Personally I think we are dealing with idiots in ad hoc chance. I don't think humans are capable of maintaining such a conspiracy. Indeed for such a conspiracy to exist I believe you would need superhuman manipulation of human society by an external more sophisticated source. While the existence of such a culture or entity cannot be dis-proven, it seems more likely we are dealing with chance.


  



 

Yes votes are in the lead?

Bet that wont last long

We cannot all be leaders


Some of us must content ourselves with being early adopters and with rounding out the rough edges in the initial insight.

Personally I will be much better off if AnonyMint's theories are totally wrong. I do well under our current system. Unfortunately, I think he is right so it is only prudent to plan for the future

Ha ha I like you practicaldreamer. I think your heart is in the right place and your funny.

If you really believe I am a figment of Anonymint's imagination I am happy to place a small wager on that. Say one bitcoin perhaps?

I would point out that our end goal's might be more similar then you think. Both of us want society to provide a safety net to the needy and less fortunate (see my Defense of Socialism)

The difference between us is that I believe the status quo is taking us to a very bad outcome and you apparently think all is well in the world.

I am a socialist   honest I am

I even posted a technical Defense of Socialism

I believe the best next step is to condense your ideas into a single paper and publish them in the peer reviewed economics literature. If you are interested I am willing to help write this up and publish it

I have gone through this process in the medical literature a few times. However, I would not be able to do this until late April as I have some time sensitive projects to complete before I could give this the attention it deserves.

It is my opinion that this economic theory is not anarchism. This is something better... this is something new.

Edit: Actually publishing this would be much easier with a Ph.D economist (perhaps as primary author) to bring it into harmony with their existing literature.

We have both thesis and antithesis. Lets see if synthesis can be achieved.

I agree with your economic analysis above.
We also agree that failure to converge to an optima will occur if a dynamic system is entirely unconstrained.

You state that socialism cannot provide this constraint because of the power vacuum. You likewise argue that for similar reasons socialism cannot be used to smooth the fitness curve.

However, I contend that you have already proposed a working solution to the power vacuum (anonymous cryptocurrency). The iron law of political economics aka power vacuum breaks down once governments lose the ability to debase the currency.

In a post fiat Knowledge Era government would be forced to live on a fixed income (taxation of the physical economy). Government can try to increase taxes on the physical economy but this would be self limiting once the ability to debase the currency is lost.  Socialism would thus be limited in size to a portion of the physical economy. With the power vacuum solved socialism is freed to play its proper role of required constraint on the dynamic system and smoothing of the fitness curve.

Nothing in your analysis presented so far demonstrates that the physical economy must shrink in absolute size. You have only shown that it must progressively shrink in relative size. It is entirely possible that both the physical economy and the resources consumed by socialism will continuously grow while simultaneously fading into insignificance.

If you argue for the complete death of socialism then some other model/social contract will be needed to provide our required constraint. Any system developed is likely to look a lot like socialism.

As this is your fundamental insight we are exploring it is only polite not to claim the last word. I will now bow out and leave it to you.

Thank you for this. It has helped me to put together some thoughts that were floating around in my head and develop my defense of socialism.
As I can think of few things more amusing then defending socialism in this particular forum I cannot resist posting it here.

Socialism is both inevitable and necessary. Furthermore, this fact is both consistent with and can be derived from the economic theory discussed up-thread.
The anarchist philosophy undervalues the utility of socialism. This is unsurprising because anarchism it is the antithesis of socialism. The anarchist critique focuses on the current problems of socialism in our era. Socialism today has many flaws the worst of which is the power vacuum that allows special interests to capture government and force their losses onto the collective. Indeed socialism is currently growing unrestrained. It is a system out of balance and if not brought into equilibrium it must inevitably collapse. Nevertheless, despite our current socialist excess, it must not be overlooked that some degree of socialism is needed both to find optimal fitness and improve the human condition.

The anarchist questions if socialism has any utility. Indeed any defense of socialism must show that socialism is more then simply chains on our individual ankles. Socialism at its heart involves taking from the productive/fit and giving to the less productive or less fit. What could be lost by discarding it so that individuals can optimize more freely?
The religious among us might argue that socialism is morally required. The idealist might argue that it is needed because of social justice. However, to challenge the anarchist regarding the need for socialism we must battle him on his own turf. We must show that socialism is needed using materialism and empiricism.

The need for socialism arises from the flaws in unrestrained anarchism. Anarchism if left unchecked leads to an excessively steep fitness curve (extreme survival of the fittest scenario). Why is this sub-optimal? The problem with a steep fitness curves is that it forces convergence to the nearest optimal state. This improves immediate population fitness, but it does so at the cost of long term adaptation and progress. Steep fitness curves have been shown to reduce the rate of evolutionary change (link below).

http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000187

The proper role of socialism is to help ensure trailblazers survive long enough to eliminate economic friction. In a landscape with a steep fitness curve these individuals may not survive or succeed (crossing these barriers involves significant cost). We can get stuck in a higher valley (of the N dimensional solution space).    

In its most extreme form anarchism can drive the entropy of society past the error threshold at which point information is destroyed rather than created.  This is a dark age and is indeed possible. Dark ages arise from the death throes of excessive socialism. Like a spring pushed too far in one direction a system trying to find equilibrium is likely to overshoot in the opposite direction when the unstable order dissolves. The backlash against anarchism in the industrial era lead to communism. The collapse of socialism may lead us to the next dark age.

Error threshold was developed from Quasispecies Theory by Eigen and Schuster to describe the dynamics of replicating nucleic acid under the influence of mutation and selection.
life like civilization requires entropy/anarchy to exist, but critically such entropy must be limited and contained. If life was without entropy no change would arise and evolution would cease. On the other hand, evolution is also be impossible if the entropy/error rate is too high (only a few mutation produce an improvement, but most lead to deterioration). Error threshold allows us to quantify the resulting minimal replication accuracy (ie maximal mutation/entropy rate) that still maintains adaptation.

This can be shown analytically at its clearest in the extreme example of a simple replicating organism that lives on a fitness landscape which contains a single peak of fitness x > 1 with all other variations having a fitness of 1. With an infinite population there is a phase transition at a particular error rate p (the mutation rate at each loci in a genetic sequence). This critical error rate is determined analytically to be p = ln(x)/L (where L is the chromosome length). When this mutation/entropy rate is exceeded the proportion of the infinite population on the fitness peak drops to chance levels.

The can be thought of intuitively as a balance between exploitation and exploration in search. In the limit of zero entropy/change successive generations of selection remove all variety from the population and the population converges to a single point. If the entropy/mutation rates are too excessive the evolutionary process degenerates into random search with no exploitation of the information acquired in preceding generations. Thus the optimum entropy rate should maximize the search but is subject to the constraint of not losing information already gained.

In the end our goal is congruence or harmony. We must eliminate all necessary barriers to finding global optima. Increased degrees-of-freedom in one sub-area such as the convergence forced by unrestrained anarchism is potentially sub optimal, ineffective, and perhaps counter-productive. Unrestrained anarchism does not eliminate all necessary barriers. Instead it forces conformity to the nearest local optima effectively raising barriers to distant more global optima.

Socialism and anarchism can be thought of as two opposing extremes in constant opposition. Anarchism is needed to combat the evils/suboptimal outcomes of unrestrained socialism (This is convincing demonstrated in the economic theory up-thread). However, it is also true that socialism is likewise needed to combat the evils/suboptimal outcomes of unrestrained anarchism. Neither socialism nor anarchism is superior they are simply opposing forces. The optimum result requires us to balance these forces. The solutions of the anarchist are the right ones in our time only because we live in an era of excess socialism. As human history has a tendency to repeat there will likely come a time in the future when the solutions of the socialist are superior.
    
References:
Eigen, M., & Schuster, P. (1979). The Hypercycle: A Principle of Natural Self-Organization. Springer-Verlag.
Ochoa G., Harvey I, Buxton, H. Optimal Mutation Rates and Selection Pressure in Genetic Algorithms. Proc. Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference 2000
Clune J, Misevic D, Ofria C, Lenski RE, Elena SF, Sanjuán R. Natural Selection Fails to Optimize Mutation Rates for Long-Term Adaptation on Rugged Fitness Landscapes. PLOS September 26, 2008


Edit: I wanted to post the conclusion achieved in another thread regarding how the above thoughts on socialism fit in with the economic theory discussed upthread

Is a Madmax outcome coming before 2020? Thus do we need anonymity

I posit that your analysis undervalues the utility of socialism.

I agree that socialism currently has negative utility. As you stated the power vacuum is pushing us towards every greater socialism and setting us up for collapse. It is a system out of balance. However, some degree of socialism is needed to find optimal fitness.

Socialism and anarchism are in constant opposition. Anarchism is needed to combat the evils/suboptimal outcomes of unrestrained socialism as you have convincingly demonstrated. However, socialism is likewise needed to combat the evils/suboptimal outcomes of unrestrained anarchism.

The informational value of socialism is that it smooth’s the fitness curve. Anarchy if left unchecked results in an ever steeper curve. This has been shown to reduce the rate of evolution/change as it forces convergence onto the nearest local valley or local optima.

http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000187

Thus unrestrained anarchism increases short term fitness at the cost of long term optimization/adaptation. To borrow from your corporation analogy the proper role of socialism is to help ensure trailblazers survive long enough to eliminate the economic friction. In a landscape with an extremely steep fitness curve those individuals may not survive or succeed (crossing those barriers involves significant cost). We can get stuck in a higher valley (of the N dimensional solution space).    

In its most extreme form anarchism can drive the entropy of society past the Error Threshold at which point information is destroyed rather than created.  A madmax outcome is indeed possible. It would arise from the death throes of excessive socialism. Like a spring pushed too far in one direction a system trying to find equilibrium is likely to overshoot in the opposite direction when the unstable order dissolves. In the industrial era the backlash lead to communism. The collapse of socialism may lead us to pure anarchy = madmax.


This is the key point. Unrestrained anarchism does not eliminate all necessary barriers. Instead it forces conformity to the nearest local optima effectively raising barriers to distant more global optima. I am an anarchist currently because the solutions of anarchy including anonymous cryptocurrency are what is needed to restore balance in our era. Had I been around at the dawn of the industrial revolution I would have been a socialist.

Thank you for sharing this. Never seen it before made my afternoon 

So my task is thus to show that the math of optimal fitness requires anarchy to be contained and limited.
I accept your challenge.

When I referred to the harvesting of entropy what I meant was that life requires entropy to exist, but critically such entropy must be limited and contained. Entropy/mutation must not be allowed to exceed the error threshold. Error threshold was developed from Quasispecies Theory by Eigen and Schuster to describe the dynamics of replicating nucleic acid under the influence of mutation and selection.

If replication was without entropy no mutants would arise and evolution would cease. On the other hand, evolution would also be impossible if the entropy/error rate of replication were too high (only a few mutation produce an improvement, but most will lead to deterioration). Error threshold allows us to quantify the resulting minimal replication accuracy (ie maximal mutation/entropy rate) that still maintains adaptation.

This can be shown analytically at its clearest in an extreme form of a fitness landscape which contains a single peak of fitness x > 1 with all other variations having a fitness of 1. With an infinite population there is a phase transition at a particular error rate p (the mutation rate at each loci in a genetic sequence). In Eigen and Schuster (1979), this critical error rate is determined analytically to be p = ln(x)/L (where L is the chromosome length). When this mutation/entropy rate is exceeded the proportion of the infinite population on the fitness peak drops to chance levels.

This can be thought of intuitively as a balance between exploitation and exploration in genetic search. In the limit of zero entropy/mutation successive generations of selection remove all variety from the population and the population converges to a single point. If the entropy/mutation rates are too excessive the evolutionary process degenerates into random search with no exploitation of the information acquired in preceding generations.

Thus the optimum entropy rate should maximize the search done through mutation subject to the constraint of not losing information already gained.
Any optimal entropy rate must lie between the two extremes, but its precise position will depend on several factors especially the structure of the fitness landscape.

It is also worth noting that at least with genetic algorithms natural selection tends to reduce the mutation/entropy rates on rugged landscapes (but not on smooth ones) so as to avoid the production of harmful mutations, even though this short-term benefit limits adaptation over the long term.


I agree and would argue that this applies to anarchism as well


Fair enough. In the interest of winding down this discussion I will concede that while the argument above demonstrates that entropy must be controlled/limited/harvested to achieve optimal fitness this does not mean we do not need anonymity now or that anonymity will push us over the error threshold for civilization at large. It appears far more likely that we are well below the optimum entropy rate currently and that an anonymous cryptocurrency will take us closer to an optimal state.

As you said anonymity is inevitable regardless of what you do.
Like minded individuals are already working to similar ends http://zerocoin.org/media/pdf/ZerocoinOakland.pdf
Should you lack the time for a response to this post I will not take offence
    
References:
Eigen, M., & Schuster, P. (1979). The Hypercycle: A Principle of Natural Self-Organization. Springer-Verlag.
Ochoa G., Harvey I, Buxton, H. Optimal Mutation Rates and Selection Pressure in Genetic Algorithms. Proc. Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference 2000
Clune J, Misevic D, Ofria C, Lenski RE, Elena SF, Sanjuán R. Natural Selection Fails to Optimize Mutation Rates for Long-Term Adaptation on Rugged Fitness Landscapes. PLOS September 26, 2008


  

I got a good laugh out of that one. I have been called many things in my life but I have never been called suggestible before. Stubborn yes, arrogant check, a know it all (heard that a few times) but suggestible is new. That cracked me up.

You have my assurance that I know nothing of programming that I am not making an altcoin and that I am not a figment of AnonyMint's imagination.  

I agree with your points above in regards to the immediate future and the inevitability of anonymity.


Here is where we do not yet have consensus. I believe your entropic theory contains the following oversimplification.

The entropic theory of knowledge states that entropy should be maximized to increase the degrees of freedom in the economy and thus maximize prosperity. I would assert that the goal is not the maximization of entropy per say but rather the maximization of the harvesting of entropy to achieve a higher order state.

Lets look at the distinction between the chaos of aggression and the chaos of productivity.  The former is often pure destructive chaos while the latter is the controlled harvesting of entropy to achieve a higher order state.

This is the fundamental bedrock of life itself which has mastered the deadly dance of harvesting entropy.  Absorb too much entropy and the species succumbs so mutation tumors and death. Absorb too little and the species stagnates eventually succumbing to competition from other more entropic/evolved species. Life walks the edge of a razor maximizing the harvesting of entropy.

Anonymity allows uncontrolled destructive chaos. It can be thought of as a form of chemotherapy. Yes it may achieve the goal of limiting the cancer of collectivism but it does so only at great cost to the greater host (humanity). I agree it may be needed at this juncture, but only because the majority of humanity is currently engaged in collective insanity.

Anonymity without the threat of collectivism is like chemotherapy without cancer it's just another poison.
Anonymity does enable the productive to keep wealth from being stolen (by tax, legislation, regulation, and confiscation) but it also facilitates, theft, abuse, murder, fear and thus limits the maximum harvesting of entropy. The Bitcoin assassination market is only a hint of what can be done.

For this reason anonymity cannot last. No matter how well designed its very nature will destroy it. Once the acute need for it subsides and tumor of collectivism is contained the majority of the IT community will turn on it. No form of anonymity however well designed will survive that.


I would argue that Armstrong's solution is the only optimal long term answer. I agree it won't suffice for the current crisis there simply is not time and humanity is not quite smart enough. Long term, however, it is the only hope of an optimal outcome. The demographic trends you noted in your blog will help facilitate this (may take several generations)

Do we need anonymity?
Sadly for now we probably do.

Do I have any other ideas?
Perhaps consider bifurcating your coin into two versions one with the anonymity  features you are working on and another without. In the long term it seems likely that an anonymous coin will gets us through the crisis but an open coin will become dominate once the crisis subsides.

I disagree with you here.
I started the thread Economic Devistation for the sole purpose of exploring those very ideas.

I could not find any major problems with AnonyMint's economic theories so I promoted them to a wider audience to see if others could see major problems that I could not. The thread is six pages long now and actually pretty technical and tough to read.
So far no major flaws or inconsietencies have been identified.

This does not necessarily mean he is right, but I believe he is at least in his overall macroeconomic analysis. With regards to his solution, however, I still have some reservations.

The natural reaction to the chaos of anonymous decentralized currency is for the populace to blindly embrace increasingly centralized controls on commerce. This could help facilitate the strong, centralized, one-world government most of us on this form wish to avoid. Such a government would get its revenues by tightly reigning in freedom of commerce in order to collect taxes.
 

When AnonyMint refers to socialism he is referring broadly to collectivism the tendency for society to pool private resources into ever greater centralized control.

Collectivism and its consequences is described in depth in his blog
Understand Everything Fundamentally

You have convinced me that your fundamental economic analysis (in the three links below) is correct.
The Rise of Knowledge
Understand Everything Fundamentally
Information is Alive

As I mentioned in another thread these are simply the most insightful piece of economic theory I have ever read.
However, nothing in your analysis above requires anonymity.

Lets start with the premise that your economic analysis is essentially correct (I believe it is).
In this event the rise of the Knowledge Age is inevitable anonymity or no anonymity.
I agree anonymity might speed things up perhaps dramatically, but it does so only at a real cost. The problems of anonymity have been well outlined in Bitcoin's Dystopian Future. These problems only happen with anonymity.

I challenge your assertion that anonymity leads inevitably to maximum entropy. Total chaos can lead to extreme low entropy states.
Take Russia around 1880. Lets look at Narodnaya Volya. Here we have an organization born in a time when the people were slaves. They demanded convocation of a Constituent Assembly (for designing a Constitution); introduction of universal suffrage; permanent people’s representation, freedom of speech, press, and assembly; communal self-government; exchange of the permanent army with a people’s volunteer corps and other ideals.

In their zeal to destroy the state they killed Alexander II the most reformed minded monarch Russia has ever had. He was the man responsible for the emancipation of the serfs. The irony is that he was killed 48 hours before he was planning to release his plans for an elected parliament. Out of the chaos a hardliner oppressive monarchy was born which kept an iron thumb on the people until it fell to a wave in the opposite extreme our good friends the communists. We all know how that turned out. Had these particular anarchist not acted to destroy the state in 1881 Russia may have become a constitutional monarchy and the mega death of Stalin averted.

Others also have also argued that our industrial age leads inevitably to economic crises/collapse and advocated destroying government as a solution.


Marx was correct in some of his critiques of our industrial age. It was in his solution that he utterly failed.

TiagoTiago you are envisioning the robots we see in science fiction movies like terminator and Star Trek.
Let me go over each of your points and explain why I think they are very improbable.

You have this backwards. Advanced AI of the type you are envisioning would never need to steal any of these things. They would be the most productive aspect of society and thus control and make most of the wealth. They may even hire humans to do much of the mundane work of resource production because it is manual labor, boring and not really worth their time. More likely it will be humans that are doing the stealing.

Not in the sense you are thinking. Such low timescale evolution would only be relevant in virtual simulation with little relevance in the real world. Things that cause and effect the real world would still require empiric physical testing to confirm and would thus involve significant cost.  

You misunderstand... my point was not about cyborgs. The question you need to ask is if a combination of AI and human society (meaning the combined productive/creative/work output of theses societies when summed up would exceed a society of AI without any humans at all. As we would occupy very different ecological niches the answer is yes.  

The "efficiency" you describe would be efficiency/adaption to survive in their enviornment mainly the net/web or whatever we have at that time. AI would not be immune to competitive pressures and would likely spend most of its time competing with other AI over whatever AI decides is important to it (data space/memory/who knows). They are not likely to be interested in being efficient humans.


FUD. AI superior to us would be intelligent enough to see the value in sustainability. Destroying a resource you can not replace is unwise. AI could also decide to call itself Tron and make all humans play motorcycle and Frisbee games in duels to the death. The key question is what is likely.

I highly recommend reading The Golden Age by John C. Wright. Is is Scifi which explores a future with vastly superior AI. It is a reasonable guess at what a future filled by a race of superior AI beings might look like and is a fun read.

Perhaps I can help find consensus here. In my opinion TiagoTiago you and AnonyMint are talking past each other.

You are arguing that through innovation we will create a being superior to humans and that will lead to human extinction via a tech singularity where computers vastly out think humans.
AnonyMint is arguing as per his blog Information is Alive that for computers to match or exceed humanity they would essentially need to be alive aka human reproducing and contributing to the environment.  

Is is possible to create AI that is better then humans? By better I mean AI that exceeds the creativity/potential of all of humanity.
Sure it's possible, but as argued by Anonymint such an AI would have to be dynamic, alive, and variable with a chance a failure and would thus not be universally superior.
So what we are really talking about here is will the creation of sentient AI lead to a race of AI that will result in the inevitable extinction of humans. That answer to this is a definite no.

The dynamics of inter-species competition depend on the degree each species is dependent on shared limited resources. A simple model of pure competition between two species is the Lotka-Volterra model of direct competition.
Even with pure competition species A is always and in every way bad for species B the outcome is not necessarily extinction. It depends on the competition coefficient (which is essentially a measure of how much the two species occupy the same niche).

Should we invent AI or even a society of AI that is collectively vastly superior to human society we would only be in danger of extinction if such robots were exactly like us (eating the same food, wanting the same shelter, ect add better endowed and lusting after human women if you want to add insult to injury ). Now obviously this would be very hard to do because we have evolved over a long time and are very very good at filling our personal ecological niche. We wiped out the last major contenders the neanderthal despite the fact that they were bigger, stronger, and had bigger brains (very good chance they were individually smarter).

Much more likely is that any AI species would occupy a completely different niche then we do (consuming electricity, living online, non organic chemistry, ect) Such an AI society would be in little to no direct competition with humans and would likely be synergistic. The question in that case is not whether the AI society is collectively superior but is instead whether the combination of human and AI together is superior to AI alone.

As the creativity of sentience is enhanced as the sentient population grows that answer is apparent.

Could humanity wipe itself out by creating some sort of super robot that is both more intelligent (on average) and occupies the exact same ecological niche we do? Sure we could do it in theory but it would be very very hard (much harder then just creating sentient AI). There are far easier ways to wipe out humanity.    

Yet it is also what evolution, adaptation, and perhaps creativity are about.

If a system has been formed by and relies on entropy to survive (and does so in a non-deterministic manner) is it truly a mechanical system?