From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Jun 24 2002 - 12:36:03 MDT
On Mon, Jun 24, 2002 at 10:05:42AM -0700, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
>
> On Mon, 24 Jun 2002, Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> > Another approach would be the economic problems. If the scenario in
> > http://hanson.gmu.edu/uploads.html works (not entirely plausible in
> > this setting, as AI does exist) then xoxing might lead to an economic
> > depression. This might be the strongest worry in a world were Fukuyama
> > arguments have begun to crumble from technoshock.
>
> I'm not buying it Anders. Much common economic activity "disappears",
> since your survival needs are easily met by freeware. The only things
> left of value that people might actually pay for are inventions of
> greater fun levels (along the lines of what Eliezer proposes in his
> theory of fun paper), forms of entertainment to keep people with
> lots of free time occupied (the use for xoxing might be to create
> an audience watch you perform because you can't afford to pay anyone
> else to sit in the audience...) and nanodesigning (because the phase
> space of what can be designed is so damn large).
Exactly. The more entities there are, the larger the market. And most
people even in nanotopia will likely not want to persist on public
domain nourishment/entertain,ent. While I might compete with myself if I
xox myself, as soon as the two copies diverge they will start benefiting
by specializing themselves.
Still, the threat of radical economic transition could scare many people
that has not gone introdus. In the scenario I am thinking of the vast
majority is still flesh and uploading is a relatively rare procedure,
and a large and influential group of elderly are loath to risk their
savings and long term investments. This would make a fertile breeding
ground for the idea "if we allow xoxing the entire economy is going to
turn into something alien" - which is enough to get many conservative
and risk aversive people to try to slow things down or even stop them.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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