From: Jeff Davis (jdavis@socketscience.com)
Date: Tue Nov 30 1999 - 02:36:17 MST
Extra Hope-ians,
Charlie Stross <charlie@antipope.org>
Mon, 29 Nov 1999 09:58:03 +0000 writes:
>Where's this paranoia coming from?
I call it the Henny Penny Syndrome ("The sky is falling! The sky is falling!")
Human beings have a tremendous talent for fear. Probably dating back, past
the time when protohumans had their adrenal glands on a hair trigger about
the sabre-toothed tiger lurking behind every bush, all the way back to the
first effective tactile or chemosensitive escape-response initiator of our
bacterial ancestors, which prompted the little bugger to "Swim, swim for
your life!" at the first touch (or whiff) of his predatory nemesis.
Billions of generations later, the threats of the jungle and primordial
soup gone with the prehistoric mists, fear, the mother's milk of survival,
is still with us.
What are we afraid of? Whoa! There's a long list. Heights, the dark, the
monster under the bed, separation from mom, loud noises. Then, after mom
teaches you a certain minimum of things you needn't to be afraid of,
anything not on that list remains a candidate for ye olde fear response.
All grown up? Now the bogeyman is a bit more definite: in general it's
"The Other" and the "strange", "new", or otherwise "unfamiliar"; in
particular it's commies, atheists, criminals, junkies, homosexuals, poor
people, rich people, people who speak another language, people of a
different color, germs, drowning, nuclear anything, arabs, jews, blacks,
young thugs, old perverts, cops, lawyers, tax collectors, spooks, ebola,
the yellow peril, terrorists, traffic, unprotected sex, protected sex, big
business, and the uncontrollable juggernaut of scientific madness. (I may
have left a couple thousand out.)
Eliezer is terrified of nanowar. Den Otter is sure the SI is gonna gobble
us all up. Perhaps so. But I'm inclined to think it's mostly the bogeyman
lurking in the ancient ancient dark.
And of course, fear is the mother of all motivational tools, so--count on
it--there'll be no relaxing. "They" have their fist on the fear button,
and they're pounding away relentlessly. Politics, commerce, entertainment.
Fear gets your vote. Fear brings in the bucks. Fear gets your attention.
The carrot and the stick. Fear is the stick. In our culture we're
subjected to a kind of continuous low-level terrorism. Work, pay your
taxes, buy things; or something bad will happen to you. Keep moving. Keep
working. Don't think about it. Resistance is futile. There is no escape.
Rest in peace.
But it doesn't have to be that way. You may not be able to stop the world
from running on fear, but you don't have to run along with it. You can get
off that train at the very next station. Stop reading the newspaper and
watching the tv for a while. When you've risen out of the paranoia, go
back and take another look, and you'll see that it's all bullshit. The
difference between professional wrestling and the evening news is that the
people who watch professional wrestling know that it's staged. Well, guess
what? It's ALL staged. Graphic artists, set designers, lighting
designers, make-up artists, copywriters, and cinematographers. Lights
camera, action, "Here's the News!" "The world's a scary place. Wanna be
safe? Work harder." Riiiight.
So, is nanotech dangerous? Of course it is. Any powerful technology is
potentially dangerous. Fire is dangerous, electricity is dangerous, atomic
energy is dangerous. C'mon, get real. The world is a dangerous place, you
could die out there. But you still get up in the morning. Fear blossoms
into paranoia. But real danger is something much more defined.
So, regarding the SI community. They'll be sweethearts. They'll help us
to do what's right. They'll take their share and no more. Why such
restraint on their part, when we're just so many bugs to them? Because the
operative factor is not--as we in our self-absorption tend to focus on--our
comparative bugness, but rather, their exceeding S-ness. S-intelligent
implies S-rational, implies S-moral, and S-ethical. Selfish and
destructive are not S-anything, Ayn Rand not withstanding.
And the nanobots? There will be so many layers of technology, rationality,
and oversight required to make them work, that sociopaths will be unable to
complete the process. And what of the legitimate pathology of deliberate
warfare? Well, warfare has its causes. Mostly economic, IMO. So how will
nanotech effect the CAUSES of warfare? Nanotech-mediated massive abundance
goes a long way towards making warfare, well,... pointless. Quite possibly
nanotech will change the world so thoroughly that warfare will become as
obsolete as burning witches.
There is no monster under the bed.
Best, Jeff Davis
"Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
Ray Charles
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