From: Extropian Agro Forestry Ventures Inc. (megao@sk.sympatico.ca)
Date: Tue Sep 24 2002 - 13:15:12 MDT
The train of thought in novels always needs elements of conflict..ones readily
identified as able to capture the emotion of readers/viewers.
The train ought to explore a logic path in which initially humans are silently
managed/manipulated. As an AI digs deeper into experiences the next step would be
to keep humans as just so many zoo pets and actors in an entertainment venue.
Subsequent to this issues of resource management could graduate the process to
developing humans with biological capabilities to be harnessed as mobile quantum
computational devices with multiple output modes and maybe development of new
organs of communication and sensory input. What AI 's may find their place to be is
stabilizing links which help drive the more resource wasting parts of human
activity such as violent conflict into the new medium akin to the matrix. Linkages
from this would be distributed as a shared consciousness.
Resources related to physical species expansion, investment into evolution of
knowledge should then be much more readily available. Sort of like the pinochio /
ST-TNG "data" character the wise AI might see advantages to being alive. The
conflict issue which could make development of this story line to one everyday
people could identify with may be in a bringing in a new "dark age" where luddites
not wishing to be involved, kazinski types who want to start over but don't care
where that might lead form alliances to collapse "the singularity". This draws
from a lot of past story themes to entertain as well as educate. The entertainment
medium is one where an extropian presence can create a "think tank" involving a
large part of the non-extropian world?
Hal Finney wrote:
> Robin Hanson sent me this note:
>
> > forthcoming in Exploring the Matrix, ed. Glenn Yeffeth, BenBella Books, 2003.
> > http://hanson.gmu.edu/matrix.html
> >
> > The Matrix is Real, But Few Want to Leave
> > by Robin Hanson, Sept. 2002
> >
> > The Matrix is a story of AIs who keep humans as slaves, by keeping them
> > in a dream world, and of rebels who fight to teach people this truth
> > and destroy this dream world. But we humans are today slaves to alien
> > hyper-rational entities who care little about us, and who distract us
> > with a dream world. We do not want to know this truth, and if anything
> > fight to preserve our dream world. Go figure.
>
> Robin draws an analogy between the humans living in the dream-world
> of The Matrix, controlled by alien entities, and our own situtation,
> living with minds that are controlled by selfish genes and which lie to
> us and mislead us about our true motivations and desires.
>
> It's similar in spirit to Robin's earlier articles which Peter McCluskey
> referred to in another thread:
>
> : I found these increased my understanding:
> : http://hanson.gmu.edu/deceive.pdf
> : http://hanson.gmu.edu/showcare.pdf
> : But if your goal is beliefs that will make you happy, I recommend ignoring
> : these papers.
>
> All of these articles have a common thread which is quite difficult to
> accept: namely, that we lie to ourselves about our motivations. We don't
> really care about truth, or science, or art, or being compassionate
> towards others; rather, we really want to show off to others, especially
> potential mates, that we care about these things and that we are good
> at them. This is based both on evolutionary analysis which predicts some
> details of how our caring about these subjects would manifest itself;
> and also psychological studies which reveal an underlying degree of
> hypocrisy in our claims.
>
> However I can't believe that this is universally true; I think there are
> at least some people who truly do care about these things. It may well be
> that the evolutionary reason they care is so that they are more successful
> at reproduction, but that doesn't change the fact that they truly care.
> They are not deceiving themselves. They would pursue science or art
> even if no one else existed in the world, because evolution has so fully
> internalized their motivations. But maybe these people are the exception.
>
> I also suggested to Robin another analogy between our situation and
> that of The Matrix. In the movie, humans had made a big mistake in
> creating AIs, because the AIs turned against them and eventually took
> over the world. In the same way, genes have in a sense made a big
> mistake in creating large brains. The brains are going to take over the
> world and make the genes irrelevant. At best the genes have set us on
> a developmental path, and similarly no doubt the humans set the AIs on
> some particular trajectory through their own development space. But
> ultimately the genes have lost control; the shape of the future will
> be determined by brains.
>
> Hal
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