From: Mitchell Porter (mitchtemporarily@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Oct 27 2004 - 18:14:10 MDT
Well, this could be a real clash of civilizations! In the
blue corner, weighing in at 24 paragraphs, we have
Paul Ziolo, psychohistorian, sociologist-futurist, and
(Google tells me) associate of the Warsaw Orthodox
Theological Seminary, whose own peers probably think
he's a bit crazy for taking an interest in quantum
consciousness and the Singularity. In the red corner,
fighting on their home turf, we have the SL4
Technocrat Tag Team, who (despite their weakness
for 'all-is-information' cosmologies) I'd say are
fundamentally atheists, materialists and pragmatists,
and most of whom would prefer the openly bogus
"dilithium crystal" to the apparently pseudoscientific
"holoscape manifold".
Let's see, what else divides the two contending
parties? Paul, while conceding that high technology
like Friendly AI may be pragmatically necessary in the
hard-pressed world of the near future, implies that
the impulse to transcendence which also motivates
transhumanists has a pathological dimension,
originating in something as embarrassingly
all-too-human as *birth trauma*. SL4ers, meanwhile,
are likely to view "psychodynamics" as more of a cult
than a science, and will react with the characteristic
hostility of people on the receiving end of an
unrequested psychoanalytic diagnosis. Also, they
just don't have time to indulge in scrutinizing
whatever mere-human weaknesses they may
possess; with every passing second, more people
die of nano-curable illnesses like 'old age', and the
world hurtles closer towards a grey-goo release or
a self-enhancing AI designed without regard for
Friendliness.
Good luck to both sides!
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