From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Fri Mar 01 2002 - 15:36:36 MST
On Fri, 1 Mar 2002, Richard Steven Hack wrote:
> My point is that a fully developed nano entity has no need for "allocation
> of resources" - at least not as we understand it. Without biological
> death, and with the nano ability to construct anything at will from cosmic
> resources, the only need to construct anything will be in pursuit of goals
> we cannot now imagine.
Hmmmm... There are goals we "can" imagine, survival comes at the top
of my list. While the cosmic resources are large you don't have
access to a relatively "infinite" amount of them over short time
periods (perhaps of the order of millions of years). You hit the
limits of the solar system fairly rapidly after the singularity
takes off (probably in less than 1000 years).
> Granted, it is possible that some of these goals
> may require cooperation between such entities, but it is not certain that
> this cooperation will need to be "traded for" - it might be freely given if
> the goal is considered desirable by all the entities concerned.
Agreed. But meta-"entities" at interstellar distances have a
difficult time "cooperating" on anything. The light speed limits
on probes and the spreading of communications beams makes the costs
of "cooperation" very high unless the communication requirements
for cooperation are *extremely* small relative to the amount
of computation that has to go into what is being communicated.
> [snip] There may be such a thing as "posthuman
> economics" but I have yet to determine what it might entail, other than the
> exchange of information.
I don't think you can escape from the "economics" as a means for
optimal resources allocation paradigm. If I give you free tickets
to a award winning broadway play and the Metropolitan Opera for the
same night you have to make a choice. There are opportunity costs
for using your resources (your time) for one thing and not another.
Now presumably a completely self-regulating mind could "forget" about
the opera tickets and not realize that it had to pay the opportunity
cost of going to the play, but that doesn't mean that the cost wasn't
"really" paid. If the Universe is handing JBrains and MBrains stuff
to think about they actually have to make actual choices. Costs will
be incurred.
> I don't think a "hive mentality" is at all likely, either. I suspect that
> posthumans will be just the opposite - absolute individuals with no need
> for social interaction as we know it - but perhaps with the capacity for
> extremely intimate social relations when desired or necessary.
Sure, free-floating intergalactic JBrains & MBrains.
> [snip] that this will not take long. I predict that by the end of this
> century, humans will no longer exist
I'm not so sure that you can make that conclusion. I could easily see
the "post"-humans becoming "Angels" for the humans.
If there is a "moral" (ethical?) posthuman path, it would require
that natural humans be allowed to follow a "natural" course.
This of course gets into the very complex issue of whether
posthuman morality trumps human morality.
Robert
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