Re: "Cyberpower" and futurism in Forbes magazine

From: Eliezer Yudkowsky (eliezer@pobox.com)
Date: Tue Nov 26 1996 - 16:28:09 MST


> You can also twist information for any use such as
> religious or pollitical to make it sound like you're agreeing with their
> ideals such as telling bleeding heart liberals that nano will be the
> utility to accomplish their goal of world peace and unlimited wealth. (Even
> though there will still be capitalism, we just won't meantion that!)

Let's not, shall we? It is true that nanotech - or my own vehicle, the
Singularity - would be able to completely fulfill almost any ethical
wish imaginable. BUT. If we go around preaching nano-paradise, we will
be rightly regarded as loons.

In the words of Drexler:

      "I would emphasize that I have been invited to give talks
      at places like the physical sciences colloquium series at
      IBM's main research center, at Xerox PARC, and so forth,
      so these ideas are being taken seriously by serious
      technical people, but it is a mixed reaction. You want that
      reaction to be as positive as possible, so I plead with
      everyone to PLEASE KEEP THE LEVEL OF CULTISHNESS AND
      BULLSHIT DOWN, and even to be rather restrained in
      talking about wild consequences, which are in fact true
      and technically defensible, because they don't sound that
      way. People need to have their thinking grow into
      longer-term consequences gradually; you don't begin
      there." [Emphasis mine.]

And my own reply:

The problem with people expounding their Utopian visions of a nanotech
world is that their consequences *aren't wild enough*. Looking at
stories
of instantly healing wounds, or any material object being instantly
available, doesn't give you the sense of looking into the future. It
gives
you the sense that you're looking into an unimaginative person's
childhood fantasy of omnipotence, and that predisposes you to treat
nanotechnology in the same way. Worse, it attracts other people with
unimaginative fantasies of omnipotence. There's no better way to turn
into a bunch of parlor pinks, sipping coffee and planning the Revolution
without actually doing anything.

-- 
         sentience@pobox.com      Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
          http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/singularity.html
           http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/algernon.html
Disclaimer:  Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I know.


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:35:51 MST