From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Dec 23 2002 - 15:26:06 MST
On Sun, Dec 22, 2002 at 05:14:52PM -0800, spike66 wrote:
>
> Thanks Anders, I couldn't have said it better.
And thank *you*! :-)
> I wish to get very specific, at the risk of boring you with my saying
> the same thing over and over. We really really cannot stop infotech.
> We can't, it is coming. Orwell's novel is an example of what happens
> when infotech empowers a government and the proles do not compensate
> somehow. We compensate by reducing the number of laws and the budget
> of government, and not just the Feds, but also the state, county, city
> and homeowners associations. Start by *always* voting for the guy who
> runs for lowered taxes. spike
This might be a good heuristic, but there are two additional snarls:
Have any bureaucracy/state power ever reduced its size without violent
or near-violent upheavals? I have so far not managed to recall any
examples of this. The government apparatus seems to withstand quite
dramatic pounding; even if the leadership is purged the system often
remains and quickly rebounds. This suggests a nasty problem:
bureaucracies tend to grow for a variety of reasons, but if reducing
them demands drastic coercive methods it will be hard to set up a
libertarian system with libertarian means.
Infotech is both a sword and a shield when it comes to freedom. The PC
and Internet made government information control much harder, and
allowed decentralized alternative solutions. Pattern recognition and
data mining technology helps centralized organisations to sift
information better, enabling better control over citizen speech and
communication. And so on. So far tech development and the surrounding
legal and social development has not been very well connected with each
other. We get new powers to the governments which are not put under
checks and balances, and also new civil powers which are not fitted into
reasonable legal frameworks.
To some extent this is healthy trial-and-error: we learn as we invent,
and bad laws will be recognized after a while and changed (but possibly
after much pain). What might be worrying is that we encounter a very
stable attractor state during these socio-technological fluctuations
that puts a lot of power to bad uses and prevents the natural shift to a
more human-friendly state. 1984 is one example, unlikely today due to
the technological changes, but other nasty states can surely exist
(AI-supported Chinese-style Internet censorship for example).
An interesting issue is how to avoid them *well*. Precautionary tales
are one useful source of warnings; essentially they are scenario
planning exercises and sometimes just a warning is enough. But in
accelerating times we need to accelerate the detection of potential
problems, the spread of this knowledge and avoidance behaviors. In
short, we need faster dodges when risky laws are proposed or someone
suggests a great new DRM system that will make everybody happy. It would
also be interesting to see if we could develop a "science of avoidance",
studying the shared properties of this kind of dystopian (or merely
disastrous) problems and help detect them early. Far more humble than
Nick's existential risks, more like applied social science/political
science/law/technology history.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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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