From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Dec 08 1999 - 10:10:58 MST
Damien Broderick <d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au> writes:
> This interests me greatly, because Robin Hanson objected a couple of years
> ago that my treatment of the Wonders of the Nano Future in THE SPIKE is
> inconsistent - I claimed that matter compilers and the like will
> permit/encourage a gift economy utopia (with a bit of luck), whereas the
> prospect of uploads (where I simultaneously take Robin's vivid
> extrapolations seriously) would put savage pressure on resources,
> foreclosing the former option. (I think that's what he was telling me.)
>
> My brutish unmathematical mind tends to side with Anders in this debate.
> But maybe I've misunderstood him as well. (I also suspect that the kind of
> mad-dog ravening exponential runaway that *could* happen under, say,
> Robert's scenarios changes everything so wildly that *anything* we say
> makes no difference - Eliezer's long-held position, of course.)
I think that exponential runaways are relatively rare - sometimes they
happen, but by definition they tend to be brief before they run out of
resources, and then their results become the foundations for the rest
of the system. The solar system might be colonised by a huge explosion
of nanotech conversion, computronium-building and upload-copying, but
once this has reached its inflexion point other activities will likely
take over. This explosion would at the same time be competitive for
all the resources, and likely post-economical in the sense that the
huge amount of resources becoming accessible would likely make each
individual richer and richer unless they multiplied faster than the
econosystem could grow.
Now, I'm of the opinion that even in Robin's scenario it doesn't make
much sense to endlessly copy oneself for the colonisation effort -
most of it will be easily managed routine, requiring relatively few
uploads. Where a lot of uploads would be necessary is the complex,
growing areas of human activities (such as lawyers and
consultants). But here the economics doesn't have to grow as fast, it
is really a balance between values and economics - it could explode
(there are so many lawyers that everybody needs one - even the lawyers
themselves) but it could also (and I believe this is more likely)
diversify into an evolutionary radiation into the new resources, where
the distribution of resources would be less competitive.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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