From: Rüdiger Koch (rkoch@rkoch.org)
Date: Wed Apr 10 2002 - 16:23:47 MDT
On Wednesday 10 April 2002 18:53, Mike Lorrey wrote:
>
> However, consider the situation logically: is humane behavior inherently
> logical, rational, or is it irrational? If it is inherently logical or
Our behavior is dictated by our personalities which have been formed when we
grow up. It keeps changing, but slower and slower. If the environment is
threatening we develop paranoid behavior. If people feel secure they develop
a relaxed, carefree and confident behavior.
> rational (and considering the politics of individuals relative to their
> intelligence, it is) then we really have nothing to fear from SI, unless
> we are inhumane ourselves and fear being told by an SI to behave
> ourselves.
I was thinking of employees (wage slaves) who are forced to play a tech catch
up game with brain gadgets to increase their **efficiency**, not their
(trans)humanistic education, in order not to get fired in an economy where
the GDP is falling and the unemployment rate is rising and approaching 100%.
This would be a deflation scenario, I guess.
This setting assumes that we **fail** to get the Singularity to really take
off, maybe because strong SI is __much harder than we think or maybe because
luddites or Bill Joy get international laws passed to suppress strong AI or
maybe because strong SIs run away from Earth as fast as they can, leaving us
behind.
The tech growth curve would not take the shape of a spike, but rather a
sigmoidal curve. We would get stuck with weak SI (e.g. being directly hooked
up to computers) for those who can afford it. What appears to support such a
scenario is that most of us, particularly in the US have a blind faith in
capitalism after we "won" the cold war. Could it result in Manchester
Capitalism v2.0?
No, I don't intend to spread FUD. It might just be worthwile to think about
solutions for extreme unemployment rates and not just leaving that to the
market. The free market system works great for traditional goods like cars.
It fails badly for software (an abundant good). Why else are lobyists trying
to create artificial scarcity on software these days e.g. by trying to
indirectly outlaw OpenSource? The free market system will also fail to deal
well with strong nano. The free market system just cannot handle abundance
well. It's time to think of alternatives, preferrably alternatives that are
compatible to the free market so there can coexist different economic models
for different industries.
-- Rüdiger Koch http://rkoch.org Mobile: +49-179-1101561
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