Re: Post-Singularity Trade (was: Sysops, volition, and opting out)

From: Christian L. (n95lundc@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Aug 15 2001 - 19:04:59 MDT


>At 12:34 AM +0000 8/15/01, Christian L. wrote:
>>John Stick wrote:
>>>Concerning the question of trade post-singularity, Christian L. >scoffed
>>>as
>>>follows:
>>>
>>>> What kind of information/code can you not get from the Sysop?
>>>
>>>1) Any information/code protected by intellectual property rules
>>
>>The function of the Sysop is to give me what I want without
>>violating the volition of others. Intellectual property rules are a
>>way of saying: My wish is that you do not own this information/code.
>>This is a request, but it violates my volition, because I want that
>>information. The person I get it from is not harmed in any way by
>>the fact that I can copy that information. Therefore intellectual
>>property would probably not be allowed in the sysop scenario.
>>Information would be free.

Gordon Worley wrote:
>I think you are totally misunderstanding the Sysop.

My definition of the Sysop would be something like: an entity that will
divide up the energy of the solar-system/galaxy/[what have you] evenly among
the citizens. When this entity recieves energy from a citizen, the energy is
converted to a form asked for by the citizen (information, golf balls,
ice-cream, the color of John Sticks underpants, ...) in the optimal way.

This is my premise for scenario-building. It is not a prediction of What
Will Happen.

>
>To provide a wish granting service, ve is going to have to tax you in
>computronium.
>Ve will come to you and say 'Hi, if you want me to
>continue to grant you wishes, I need some computronium from you so
>that I will have to resources to do that'.

He would say: "I need energy from you to convert into the form you desire".
An amount of this energy is needed to design, think, maybe build
computronium to think some more etc. So basically I agree with the above
statement.

But my point still holds: You have your share of energy, and you can use it
how you like. Everything from getting office furniture to visiting a VR
world can be viewed as the spendig of energy. The point is: the best way to
convert the energy to a form of you desire is to let the Sysop do it. There
is no need whatsoever to have it converted in a less than optimal way.

>My guess is that the
>Sysop is *only* going to be there as the intelligence of the system
>of moral enforcement (well, or rights protection or whatever you'd
>like to call it). Any other tasks will be left up to citizens.
>

Are we debating under different premises? My premise was that the Sysop
would be a wish-granter (as I stated above) in the sence that it converts
your share of energy in the best possible way.

>This will roughly be analogous with the Sysop. Sure, the Sysop
>scales better, but as time goes on and people want bigger, better
>wishes, it's going to get insane and we'll see queues filled with
>backlogged wishes.

I don't think so. If the rescources/energy is divided evenly among the
citizens, the Sysop will devout the same amount of energy to each citizen.
If your wish spends more than your share of energy, you will have to settle
for something smaller. (By spending I mean the energy is converted to an
unusable form like heat). The system wouldn't be overloaded because some of
your energy would go to systems that monitors your wishes etc i.e. everyone
would use some of their energy to power a piece of Sysop computronium.

>
>So, you have your own computronium and grant your own wishes.

I see it as the Sysop using my energy to grant my wish (that is: convert
that energy) I could do it myself but that would be less than optimal.

>Sometimes you might need help. This is where an economy develops
>from. Grandma might not know how to construct her dream VR, so she
>hires someone else to do it for her (using her resources).

Exactly, her energy is used to construct a dream VR. This can be done
optimally by the Sysop or less than optimal by another citizen. Since you
would want to do it optimally, no trade would be needed.

>Also,
>some minds might know what they want to do, but simply not have the
>resources for it. So, they rent (think distributed computing) or buy
>the resources of someone else.

What would they use for payment? You can't buy energy/resources with
energy/resources.
However, many people can probably "pool their resources" if they want to
build something that requires lots of energy.

>
>As for IP laws, it all depends on what turns out to be the most
>Friendly thing to do. My guess is that it is most Friendly for
>information to be free, but that's just my hunch, I haven't really
>looked deeply into the issue and don't really plan to in the near
>future. So, stop worrying about it;

I am certainly not worried about IP-law Post-Singularity, or anything at all
Post-Singularity for that matter. My take on the PS world is: All Bets Are
Off.

My worries are that the militant anti-tech movement is going to change its
focus from Biotech to AI or that some politician is going to try to shut
down SingInst because it is "incompatible with human dignity".

>we're too far away from being
>post Singularity in Sysop Space to say anything useful about what IP
>'laws' will be like then.

Or say anything useful about the PS world at all. Speculating can be fun
though...

/Christian

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