From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sat May 19 2001 - 01:39:50 MDT
dwayne wrote:
>
> [ Charset ISO-8859-1 unsupported, converting... ]
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > > Looks like procedings from a conference I attended last year.
> > > > They're not clueless, given that you reject a singularity
> > > > and anticipate human expansion will follow a sigmoid curve.
> > > > While we all agree the sigmoid is unlikely until we bump
> > > > the limits of nature, others disagree. A lot genuinely
> > > > believe we'll knock ourselves off soon.
> > >
> > > Yeah, I'm one of them. 30 years, I'd say.
> > >
> > > Dwayne
> > >
> >
> > You've got the conch shell, Dwayne. I'd like to hear your reasoning.
>
> The entire history of the human race.
>
> you're kidding, right? You really think we will survive the mucking about that is being
> done now?
>
> I understand people here are a *bit* biased in favour of tech, but look at the monkeys
> pushing the buttons and tell me we are all safe.
Safe? No. But if we don't develop some better technology that
increases our reasoning and communicative power (perhaps
supplanting it with AI), then we will be pretty well done for in
my opinion. We cannot sit where we are or survive our current
limitations for long without some major stress destroying us.
Risky as it is, I honestly believe our only hope lies in going
forward.
That said I don't believe that technology is all we need by any
means. We need a vision of where we wish to go and a unified,
rational ethics really badly if we are going to increase the
odds of our not only surviving but thriving.
- samantha
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