Re: The Joys Of Flesh

From: Anders Sandberg (nv91-asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Sep 09 1996 - 05:08:05 MDT


On Sat, 7 Sep 1996, Michael Wiik wrote:

> I asked a friend the other day why there are no groupminds in existence
> now - why specifically some group of people has not gotten together and
> formed some sort of synthetic being, that would exist on the Internet.
...
> Perhaps such groups do exist, yet choose to remain secret. Or maybe I
> just haven't heard of any.

What about Nicholas Bourbaki? I assume "he" still is active and
publishing? [Bourbaki was a joint pseudonym of a group of French
mathematicians, who worked closely together in some areas]

> If you're an advanced AI or some sort of transcendent being, who could
> choose to take the current human race with you or not, how long would
> you give them to get it together - to end war, suffering, murder, etc.
> Civilization has had about 10K years, I'm not sure I would wait that
> long.

If I was an immortal transcient, I might find mankind cumbersome and slow,
and thus unlikely to do the job well on its own. So I might help it along
with some clever devices (say by letting a submind develop cheap space
transport or a powerful nootropic) and start spreading it, while my main
self was busy with important things.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
nv91-asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~nv91-asa/main.html
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