From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sun Apr 29 2001 - 11:59:11 MDT
söndagen den 29 april 2001 19:06 J. R. Molloy wrote:
> Anders Sandberg enriched the signal with,
>
> > How to manage such
> > cooperations, that remains to be invented - this is an area where
> > transhumanist creativity can participate and produce immediate dividends.
> > Besides, we can use dealing with cyber-attacks as a training for dealing
> > with nano-attacks.
>
> Well, we probably wouldn't want that kind of cooperation to start here,
> because this is an open forum, and who knows how many Chinese
> cyber-attackers are listening. ô¿ô
Actually, the only defense that can ever work is a defense that works even
when the enemy knows how it works. Security through obscurity is not safe. Do
you really think that it would be possible or desirable to keep the
functioning of an organisation that would likely involve thousands of
different groups secret?
> Of course it only makes sense to play abusive
> nation states against each other if you don't have to live in one of them.
> So, how's the real estate business in Stockholm? ô¿ô
I thought you wanted to *avoid* abusive states? :-)
> Incidentally, I don't see any presenters/speakers addressing the subject of
> triggering the Net to transcend. How silly is the idea of the Net awakening
> and thinking for itself?
It is a bit of wishful thinking: if we create something complex enough it
will become intelligent. There is not a shred of evidence for that happening,
since intelligent thought requires a rather sophisticated and deliberate
organisation, so it is unlikely to occur by chance. On the other hand, as
Spike alluded, the effect of billions of people writing, linking and
modifying the Net does introduce an element of intelligence. So my answer
would be that we should look more for something like the global intelligence
of the EarthWeb in Marc Stiegler's novel rather than a god awakening to the
sound of all phones ringing.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:07:20 MST