From: Chen Yixiong, Eric (cyixiong@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Dec 28 2001 - 10:36:21 MST
> Instead use state-of-the-art ethical and political
> terminology in the constitution, and be aware that it might need future
> updating (and that this updating may be troublesome).
Well, that does mean that we should continue to use the an old system. I did not mean that we should search for a perfect system,
but a better one.
Even though I do not promise anything, I think I have discovered some hints on how a better system would work and I intend to
discover and elaborate more of it. It would, however, seem rather futile to try to explain how this unconsolidated tangle would have
superiority over the old system currently.
<< Are you saying all these approaches are futile, or are you doubtful about certain commonly used rights concepts? >>
I find the idea of using "inherent" and "God-given" rights to base our decisions on what *any* society must provide for its people
the most questionable. How can we speak for God or even for our unspoken "nature" when we claim certain such rights? How can we
decide that all humans wish to seek happiness, or that all humans would work most efficiently if they merely concentrate on
self-serving behaviour?
I also find the concepts of rights itself problematic in practical use:
1) rights often conflict with each other in common usage. When a smoker claims he or she has the right to smoke, the other can claim
that he or she has the right to breathe fresh air. You could claim that the legal system can solve the problem, but it seems like
legal systems in democratic societies suffer from red tape and lobbying influence.
This system can lead to significent complexity in a system that could cause globally inefficient behaviour. If you have a read a few
encylopedias' worth of text to know you never commit any crime and when the law says that it will not excuse any ignorance of
itself, then you know some problems do exist.
2) rights imply that there exists a governming body distinct from the "common people", from whom the rights can originate. This
would have little relevance in a society without such a "seperated" government.
3) rights demand that others respect them. How do you police such compliance? Why don't we design a system that would prevent the
problem from occuring in the first place?
4) rights had remained with us for quite some time already. The current implementations cannot solve our problems, as different
fractions continue to claim conflicting rights against each other. We should definitely find alternatives that can work, or work
better.
<< With a rights system you can add a generalization layer to the rules: people have the right to leave, with a rule telling certain
conditions on this like having to settle debts but also with a clause telling that this rule only applies for reasonable
situations - i.e. the "administrative fee" could be judged against the right. >>
This has little difference other than explictly expressing a part of the system. Would it have any difference if we say something
like: "You can leave if you have performed the following operations: 1) ensure no outstanding debts, 2) ... 3) ..."
If you would like to have some more details, you can provide hyperlinks to a page with detailed explainations of the problem and
possible known solutions so that people will know the rationale for the rules. The rules can exist independently while others can
keep challenging the reasons (which we explictly express rather than implictly imply) and finding better ways to implement them (as
in Intellicracy, the "open-source" political system for societies). They can change the rules abritarily whenever they discover a
better implementation.
Rights do not tell us the actual rationale behind the rules but just provide a more "general" layer. It does not allow easy
challenging due to its ambiguity. To see an example, try telling me what "the right to liberty" means, then ask a few other people
what they think it means. Even a rigorously elaborated example still remains constrained by Godel's Theorem so loopholes or
inconsistencies can exist.
Concerning the problems of debt problems, I agree that a lot of problems do lie with the details. The current approach I know would
require complete trust with the society's members (but on an as needed basis) to avoid allowing such freedom. This could cause
problems with other societies who do not operate on such an "open" system, discouraging them from joing the Federation.
I hope that someone will eventually find a far better solution to solve this problem. Since we don't have to build such a Federation
today, we still have quite some time. The solution would definitely require us to transcending the current limitations of know legal
systems (i.e. using a different, more "global" approach).
I could not express this easily but instead would offer provide an analogy of "thinking out of the box". For instance, the problems
of Quantum Physics can dissolve quite well when we use the perspective of Digital Physics to illuminate them instead.
> So? The fact that a lot of people doesn't get it doesn't mean it is not
> a practical idea. The Internet developed wonderfully long before it was
> known to many people, and in fact it was likely this long try-out period
> that made it so resilient and robust once a lot of people began to flock
> to it.
Please do recall that the Internet started with the blessing and support of the US military (which seems to have limitless
resources) and the US Government. Then, it had also received the support of the scientific community before the public started using
it.
I wish to point out that it does not have an "enemy" determined to prevent or sabotage its formation. In the case of the Federation
things may not seem so straight forward.
<< If 99% of humanity views the federation(s) with apathy or scorn, so what? That gives plenty of time to iron out the bugs and see
if the system really is worth anything. It also gives time to people to come up with new ways of seeing things and ways of
presenting the new ideas to others. >>
If this happens, then the Federation would not have sufficient influence to help solve the problems of our world. I suppose most of
us here had heard of the powers of network, in that the whole has more value than the sum of its parts. With each additional member,
the Federation gains more than just a linear increase in power (and thus seeming much more attractive to others).
Of course, I didnt originally intend this to solve current world problems, so it might have less relevance in this respect.
> But frankly, the federation idea is hardly
> revolutionary and would be a trivial blip on the world political scene
> compared to current and near future issues like terrorism, the rise of
> China and India, the federative changes in Europe, globalization and
> everything else.
While the Federation idea seems non-revolutionary to us, it may seem revolutionary to some who have the power to stop us. In game
theory, we had learnt that any change in the power structure of a society will only either preserve a leading party's current
hierarchy or worsen it. When things cannot get better, then it can only get worse.
It would seem (locally) reasonable if some of these rather powerful entities try to stop this idea because they do not wish to take
the (perceived or real) risks. Meanwhile, only time will tell what will actually happen. For now, I will take the pessimistic
assumption and "buy insurance" by embarking on the Ascension Colony Project.
If we thought pessimistically we can also feel motivated to prevent or at least to escape from the incoming problems that we
perceive. When we believe that we would strike (a rather unlikely) cosmic lottery of an asteroid strike we would start searching the
skies and devising ways to stop such nasties from happening.
If we believe that, surely, all will eventually go well, we can always sit back and enjoy the show. We do not need to build asteroid
defences since "statistically, the money would only go to waste". For the case of our societies, we might think: "Surely, our world
would make it. Let us just go into cryo-freeze and skip the waiting".
In fact, the signs around the world seem to show our societies have started experiencing severe stress due to the great changes
happening around us. A backlash had occurred as some people started feeling disillusioned with technology. It appears that such
people have significent power because quite a number of countries around the world had banned human cloning or research into it
(irrationally). This will certainly put a damper on Singularity and transhuman society formation.
When one thinks that the story will always have a happy ending where the humans, transhumans and AIs lived happily ever after, then
we can just focus on solving the technological problems and ignore the sociological ones (since it will eventually sort itself out
anyway). If we think that we will face some great dangers and risks, we will have to go ahead and uncover these while finding ways
to mitigate or resolve them.
In this case, I think that the biggest difference between my thinking and some of the other vocal extropians on the Net, consists of
my "gut feel" that the largest problems we face in the creation of a transhuman society would consist of sociological, not
technological ones. It would remain as "gut feel" because I cannot prove it with my current knowledge and/or abilities.
Since I assumed such, I would find it wise to *focus* on sociological problems to uncover the risks and solutions to resolve them. I
would like to mitigate the risks by setting up a colony where I can always optionally escape to if things get too bad on Earth. This
comes as a bonus if things turn out good, and a neccessity if things go bad.
[However, I think the majority of known proposals concerning building isolated colonies would require more serious and comprehensive
thinking before implementation.]
I would like to say, that pessimistic people do not necessary act in an apathetic manner. If they do, they will only most likely
create self-fulfilling prophecies, which will not help much. Perhaps I has also overly generalised those of optimistic people.
I think, if we have sufficient intelligence, we should forge ahead in a cautious manner, thinking in a more pessimistic manner as to
what can occur and thinking in an optimistic manner as to what will occur. We should then *act on* such thinking to ensure that our
optimistic thinking comes true rather than just believing it will *definitely* come true.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:12:53 MST