From: James Higgins (jameshiggins@earthlink.net)
Date: Mon Mar 26 2001 - 01:35:48 MST
We are talking about the future of our species. There are over 3 billion
individual minds currently in existence on the Earth. Sometime in the not
so distant future it is likely that they will be able to upload and become
SIs. So far, so good.
But then everyone keeps talking about this Sysop and what "it" wants. No
one really seems to care about what any of those 3 billion individual minds
might want. The worst description I've heard to date is that all of these
individuals just become sub-goals of the almighty Sysop. Maybe the Sysop
will want to do this, or that, or the other thing.
Has anyone considered that maybe, just maybe, some of those 3 billion
INDIVIDUAL minds might actually want to do something? Maybe they want to
go look around the universe. Maybe they want to do VR sims of Tom & Jerry
24 hours a day. Whatever, but what THEY (we) want should be the #1
priority here.
The Sysop is the ultimate artificial "guardian" of a particular view of
human morals. Nothing more. Becoming a SI is supposed to "improve" life
by reducing the arbitrary limits we are bound to. So why the hell are we
trying this hard to place new arbitrary limits before we even manage to
remove any of our current ones?
I don't know about any of you, but I don't want to live the rest of my life
in a communist paradise.
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