From: Eugene Leitl (eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Sat Sep 09 2000 - 06:01:26 MDT
hal@finney.org writes:
> Suppose we don't have a libertarian or private-law world as we move
> forward. Can the modern liberal democracy work in a transhuman world?
That's a rather funny idea. To me, the predictability horizont does
look damn opaque until actual traversal. The only things I seem to
make out (on the truly solid basis of a few educated guesses), is
transformation of humanity into something very strange and
diverse. Talking about conservation of a given political system in
this changed context makes about as much sense as discussion the
continuing importance of the internal combustion engine in the 33rd
century.
> How would we deal with the tremendous potential increase in diversity,
> with a corresponding spread in ability levels? Some people will augment
Globalization must have it's end when travel/communication becomes
expensive due to relativistic lag, in relation to the activity
dynamics. This clearly defines boundaries to size of upper hierarchy
structures and/or in absence of a global synchronizing principle
defines the limits to the time scope of their synchronized action. As
in Roman and Chinese empres, communication once again becomes the
bottleneck of organisational structures.
Economy and ecology are probably based on a deeper principle --
computational or information physics -- I'm lacking a catchy neologism
here. Information ecology?
> themselves to be super-intelligent and have other powers. AIs may
Some will be super-intelligent, some will be dumb as T-cells, some
will be somewhere in between. A few will be as smart as we.
> come into existence with beyond human capabilities. How do those who
After a few iterations both should become indistinguishable, due to
convergent evolution.
> cherish the equalizing efforts of western governments propose to address
> these changes?
>
> Should such transformations be outlawed? If equality is a guiding
Would we care if they would be outlawed? At this very minuted we have
establishment (both political and economical forces conspicuously
unified) going after mp3.com, Napster and freedom of speech (whether
pr0n, 3l33t warez d00dz, anticorporate or personal flames or unwelcome
polical discourse) of individual users in an attempt to shut them
down. The Man does really seem to have a raging hard-on for the
freedom of speech. The front lines are now drawn. If the geek reality
model is anywhere near accurate, we should see the naive user and all
entities with an address in legal, financial and physical space to
draw heavy fire and be rapidly sunk. If there is a user base of a
critical size being interested to maintain a forum where freedom of
speech is guaranteed by untraceable communication and content
publishing -- in this context I recommend checking out
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/swn.pdf
(particularly dear to my heart, having thought of it 4-5 years ago) we
should see such an infrastructure springing up virtually overnight due
to suddenly applied political pressure. We do see signs for it
happening already, but the future still seems unwritten.
As soon as mp3.com is taken out, we should see users rushing to
Napster. When Napster is being shut down, users should flock to
Gnutella. When ISPs start filtering peer to peer traffic recognizable
as such, we will see program suites which use cryptography, and
camouflage as bona fide e-commerce sessions (SSL, https). If this is
being attacked by key escrowing and outlawing of unsanctioned
cryptography plus heavy snooping, we should see advent of widespread
steganography in multimedia streams. The big unknown is resistance of
anonymous communication and publishing to DoS. This can only work if
the infrastructure also supports anonymous realtime digicash. Early in
the game there is already a suite incorporating every single of the
necessary ingridients.
The next years promise to become truly interesting.
In case information anarchy wins, it will become synergistic to
molecular manufacturing. Things will be much more difficult if the
power mongers will win.
> principle, is it fair that a wealthy man can make himself more
> intelligent, giving himself even further advantages? Can we expect to tax
> away their gains if they become clever enough to evade the regulations?
Right now IRS goes mostly after a bin of taxpayers too poor to afford
good legal and financial advice. Those richer than that already enjoy
a relative tax-palliative status.
> And what if we see new forms of intelligent life? Not every AI may be
Not if, when.
> superhuman. We might have enhanced systems everywhere we turn, up to the
> intelligent drains from Josh Storrs Hall's parody. Which of these will
> be eligible for the dole? How do we equalize the lot of a restaurant's
> automated purchasing agent and a strategic economic planning AI?
Restaurant? Purchasing? Strategic? Economy? Do you have any reason to
suspect that any of these concepts and items will be conserved?
> The modern view is that government can smooth the path of life and
> equalize some of the unfairness. But it is hard to see how this can
> translate to the kind of world we envision.
>
> Has anyone done any work on this problem? Is this kind of thing
> discussed on the non-extropian transhumanist lists? Extropians take
Core transhumnist lists lack fresh blood. However, key memes bred here
are currently rapidly diffusing outwards, permeating the more advanced
discussion forums first. We have every chance of becoming dogma (and
hence obsolete ;) in foreseeable time.
> quite a beating for their adherence to principles of non-coercion and
> voluntarism. Do the redistributionists have a better plan for the future?
The future have a way of dealing with problems when they arise. Right
now we don't have the foggiest what kinds of problems will even
arise. I suggest concentrating on the here and now, keeping the
Singularity boundary condition at the back of your head. This might or
might not be your strategic advantage.
> Hal
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