On Sat, Apr 28, 2001 at 07:57:57AM -0700, J. R. Molloy wrote:
>
> It would be a whole lot easier to teach children rationality if their parents
> hadn't already cognitively crippled them with their own belief systems and
> political memes. Come the singularity, it will be a felony to infect innocent
> children with irrational beliefs.
Anybody see the big problem with that? :-)
Actually, I think the above usage of the singularity is a good example
of another bad meme among us transhumanists: the wait for the
nano-rapture (or AI or uploading rapture or whatever...). One day all
the old rules will be thrown out, and a new better world will emerge
where all our views are held as self evident truths and posthumans reign
as gods for eternity...
The problem is of course that it is totally unjustified. Just because
dramatic changes are likely to occur doesn't mean they will be in *our*
direction. The millennialist elements of the meme also tempt us into
some kind of complacent end times thinking that some problems doesn't
matter because they will be fixed by the Singularity (which according to
the latest cabalistic interpretations of _Nanosystems_ will occur on
June the 12th GMT 2024 8:34 GMT ;-)
What I would like to see is a bit more discussion about the problems in
the present and near future that does not end in "The singularity will
make it irrelevant", "The government/illuminati will stop all such
attempts", "People are too stupid to get it" and "Oh, it is trivial to
fix".
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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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