From: D.den Otter (neosapient@geocities.com)
Date: Fri Oct 15 1999 - 16:21:18 MDT
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> From: Joseph 1 <joseph1@neosapiens.org>
> > "Breed like rabbits"?! "You and me baby are nothing but mammals,
> > so let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel"...Really, there's
> > no need for such a sacrifice because a) the Singularity, and/or total
> > destruction, will be upon us well before any breeding programs would
> > start to have a noticeable effect...
>
> I've never been a fan of such reasoning. It's kind of like saying "We don't
> have to worry about running out of natural resources, because Jesus will be
> returning in our lifetimes,"
Come on, are you really comparing religious myths to logical
consequences of ever accelerating technological progress? If you
think that the idea of a [relatively near] Singularity/Doomsday
is "silly", then look at the alternatives: perpetual technological
stagnation due to "social" factors or because suddenly ("magically"),
against all odds, human knowledge hits a permanent, fundamental
ceiling which prevents us from developing "strong" AI *and*
nanotech *and* intelligence augmentation by means of genetic
engineering. Profoundly illogical, and almost as silly as waiting
for Jesus IMHO.
> or the Golden Bullet of nanotech which will
> magically make all our technological, social, and economic problems
> disappear.
No, but it will solve *most* contemporary problems, and of course
create some new ones that we currently can't even imagine. Planning
ahead for more than, say, 50 years is probably a waste of time.
Planning ahead for more than a century is utterly absurd. By that
time we'll all be dead or ascended.
> History has proven that humanity's predictive powers are often quite
> lacking, and certainly no reason not to reasonably plan for the future.
History won't be of much use in the future. Unlike our ancestors,
we're about to change some *very* fundamental things; the fabric
of life itself, one might say. Instead of simply making more and
better monkey-tools, we'll cease to be monkeys altogether. Now
*that's* what I call a revolution.
> Raising the average human IQ through a program of Conscious Evolution
What do you exactly mean by "Conscious Evolution"?
> is a
> worthwhile goal, and one that shouldn't be quashed merely because one model
> predicts doom for humanity's future...
That one model (which is in fact two models in one; the roads
to extinction and ascension are paved with the same technologies)
isn't just any model, but the most likely extrapolation of current
trends. If you have a better model, I'd love to see it.
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