From: Joao Magalhaes (joao.magalhaes@fundp.ac.be)
Date: Tue Sep 24 2002 - 15:49:31 MDT
Hi!
The article is quite provocative. I enjoyed it. Yet if the pleasures of
life--love, humor, knowledge, music, etc--are just deceptions, then what is
the objective of life? To survive is not enough. What is the goal of life?
All the best.
At 11:13 24-09-2002 -0700, you 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
Joao Magalhaes (joao.magalhaes@fundp.ac.be)
Website on Aging: http://www.senescence.info
Reason's Triumph: http://www.jpreason.com
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