On Tue, Oct 23, 2001 at 03:17:17PM -0400, Smigrodzki, Rafal wrote:
>
> As Anders mentioned earlier, the universe does not care about our wishes. It
> is possible that the transhuman form of consciousness best adapted to
> survive over long periods of time might be the supersociety rather than the
> society of free individuals as we know them. The supersociety is not morally
> superior and has no more of an idependent claim to existence than we or
> slime molds have but it could work so much better as to make us obsolete.
>
> If this is true, then only the cosmic equivalents of rotting logs would
> offer ecological niches for individualistic transhumans.
But if these rotting logs are amazing environments allowing us to
fullfill our potential and striving, does it really matter? I don't
think having humanity as number one for all eternity is a particularly
important goal - it reeks of mammalian territoriality. What really
matters is what we can get out of a situation, and if some other
entities can get even more out of it but we still do wonderfully, then I
think that is a win-win situation.
Of course, we should never abandon our ambition to become greater, but
there may be many different directions of greatness.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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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