Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> måndagen den 30 april 2001 18:14 Brent Allsop wrote:
> >
> > > In fact, just adding a friendly SI to the current world is not
> > > obviously going to help. How is it really supposed to make religious
> > > fanatics nicer?
For that matter, how will it make anti-religious fanatics nicer? :-) I
get pretty damned tired of some of the religion/spirituality bashing on
here. Not all relgious people are a bunch of mis-programmed
bible-waving idiots.
> ...
> > The only reason the religious fundamentalists fight and war
> > with each other is because they all believe in a different God and
> > they think their particular God is God, that he is undeniably so, the
> > implication being that all others that do not think the same are the
> > enemy and must be destroyed. But when people really come in contact
> > with a Real Undeniable God that can do real good miracles, they will
> > finally all say: "Boy, that God IS God" and "My God was nothing even
> > close to this!"... Finally there will be no more reason to fight and
> > kill each other!
>
> Do you really think so? When the SI parts the Red Sea, feeds the worlds
> hungry, demonstrates that it can give total bliss and explain everything,
> they will just say: "So what? You are note a real god, since you were created
> by humans. *God* is beyond the universe and far, far beyond what you are. In
> fact, He even predicted you - read Revelations about the Antichrist!"
>
Actually, it would be good to pause now and then and consider whether
what we build is more likely to lead toward a heaven-on-earth or to
hell. Now and then it is not a bad idea to just for a moment consider
whether we are designing "the Antichrist" in what it does and does not
mean for humanity.
But I doubt that most believers are going to fail to see that what is
promised in their religions is delivered (if it is). Those who want a
God beyond this will simply posit a deeper level of mystery or of higher
Power than the local ones. They might claim ours is the anti-Christ
regardless but their claim would be weak as it would be based on their
own fallible interpretations of ancient texts and on their own "gut
feelings". It will help if our efforts truly are full of universal
goodwill.
> You make the mistake to apply our way of thinking (highly empirical,
> rationalist) to people who do not think that way (religious fanatics).
You must be joking. Saying that any human based creature is fully
rational in all respects is highly dubious. Implying that all relgious
people are fanatics and/or so different from you and yours is also
highly dubious and very much at the heart of religious and greater meme
conflicts.
> Sure,
> plenty of them will fall to the lure of the SI, but given what we know of
> human nature the SI would likely have to resort to direct brain surgery to
> convince some of them. Which is of course the problem: exactly how far do we
> allow a "friendly" entity to go in its quest to help us? I would definitely
> not support such an entity if it ignored the right to one's life, body,
> thoughts and property.
Yes, if we start talking about direct brain surgery to change the minds
of sentient beings then we are straying into "anti-Christ" territory.
That said, it might be that many types of sentients cannot peacefully
coexist in the same space and the only way to avoid a massive war and
kill-off is to move them to different physical or virtual worlds and let
them work out their own understanding perhaps over multiple lives worth
of experience.
Here's to the technological Boddhisattvas!
- samantha
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 10:00:01 MDT