Re: continuity of self [ was META: Sept. 11 and Singularity]

From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Mon Sep 16 2002 - 13:28:29 MDT


Aaron McBride wrote:

> Anyone who thinks humanity can be prepared for the singularity doesn't
> understand what singularity means.
>

I disagree in that I believe that the odds of getting to a
Singularity that is actually beneficial are partially dependent
on preparing the people as much as can be done. I do not
believe in an solely apocalyptic model of how we are saved from
ourselves. I don't believe it all will be done for us by the
Friendly Sysop or equivalent.

>> play the game on the level that the greedy, selfish individuals who
>> currently hold power (by appealing to the masses own sense of greed to
>> create conformity). I believe that "scarcity based" / "zero sum" /
>> "selfish" thinking is 90% nurture and 10% nature, here's why:
>
>
> I suggest you read the Evolutionary Psychology primer
> (http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html). Nature vs.
> nurture is sillyness.
>

Evolutionary Psychology is not immutable uber-explanation that
cuts all efforts and the reasonableness of all efforts to uplift
human consciousness and institutions apart as utterly worthless.
  Using it in such a way is not helpful.

>
>> http://www.guerrillanews.com/globalization/cointel/567.html
>>
>> However, the question we should be asking is how long can we continue
>> on our current trajectory, and does that leave us with enough time to
>> reach the singularity.
>
>
> There are bigger issues than nuclear exchange to worry about, but I
> don't want to get into them here. We probably don't have time for a 100
> year take off though. We may not even have 15 years to wait. (Nobody
> knows of course.) It would seem that the only solution is to try to
> accelerate a friendly singularity (friendly intentionally not
> capitalized to denote a more general case).

I don't think that is the only solution. Only solution
scenarios are dangerous when/if the "only solution" fails to
work out.

- samantha







This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:00:41 MDT