From: Alex Future Bokov (alexboko@umich.edu)
Date: Wed Sep 08 1999 - 11:18:57 MDT
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On Sun, 5 Sep 1999 GBurch1@aol.com wrote:
> Seriously, when I'm acting as a mentor (the frequency of which seems to be in
> direct disproportion to the amount of hair I have left), I often tell young
> people to think about surfing as a fruitful metaphor for how to approach a
> career: To be a good surfer, it seems you need three things: (1) to know how
> to surf; (2) a surfboard and (3) a wave. In the regime of career planning,
> this means you need to have (1) basic people and basic business and/or
> technical skills and knowledge; (2) some realistic business or technical plan
> or opportunity and (3) the social context in which (1) and (2) are
> sufficiently useful to a sufficient number of people that you'll get paid to
> do what you'd like to do. I usually use this metaphor to counsel patient
> preparation and the amassing of skills, along with watchfulness for good
> opportunities and over-all trends, often saying that good surfers sometimes
> just park their boards on the beach and have a beer when there aren't any
> good waves, but stay ready in case they see a Big One starting to rise.
>
> But the notion of "the Singularity" (strong or weak, fast or slow, swell or
> Spike) gives a new meaning to this metaphor. In the surfing image, we're
> talking about the Mother of All Waves. Surfing that wave may be the only
> possible way to survive it. I think of this list as a kind of beach party,
> where we're all looking out and waiting for the cry "Surf's up!"
We talk a lot about surviving and flourishing through a singularity, and fears
of humanity being destroyed by out of control nanotech or AI. What I don't see
being discussed is the other, equally horrifying demise scenario: stagnation.
I don't blame you; it's a dull, depressing, unpleasant subject to discuss.
Which makes it all the more necessary to do so.
What if instead of being overrun by grey goo or malevolent SI, we
simply get trapped in a local minimum? For example, what if reactionary
ideologies continue to make inroads into mainstream society? There are
more Greens, socialists, and religious fundies than Extropians and
Transhumanists, and they're not sitting around getting drunk on the
beach, that's for sure. For that matter, inertia alone might take us in
the wrong direction without any effort from the adversaries.
Perhaps a local minimum won't last forever, but:
1. Even a temporary minimum may be enough to extinguish humanity permanently
through natural or human-influenced catastrophe that cannot be dealt
with at current levels of technology.
2. Julian Simon's debunking of the limits to growth theory is
predicated on continual technological progress (correct me if I'm
wrong here, I'm no economist). If political or cultural factors
interfere with progress, we're back to that nasty old Malthusian
nightmare. If we get started down that slope, we might not be able
to *afford* to go back.
3. Let's say I'm being pessimistic and a typical local minimum only
lasts as long as, say, the Dark Ages or even the Soviet Union. Guess what?
Humanity will eventually recover, but YOU as an individual won't. We have
30-50 years of normal lifespan left on the average. Do you think you'll get
taken out of that DeWar and uploaded if Luddites are allowed to run
civilization into the ground?
Eliezer is right, and I'd go one further: we will not only be screwed
if we don't actively prepare for the wave, we'll be screwed even worse
if the wave never happens. We have to make it happen, and step one is
stealing public support from the Luddites. They don't know that they
are our enemies yet, and that is to our advantage, but we forfeit this
advantage when we put on our rose colored glasses and underestimate
them, like we've been doing so far.
In closing, the Greens keep talking about how fragile the environment
is. Well, I say a prosperous and rapidly advancing civilization might
be the thing that's truly fragile, and there's nobody out there trying
to defend it. Maybe that's our job.
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