From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sat May 25 2002 - 04:42:19 MDT
On Sat, 25 May 2002, Wei Dai wrote:
> What Lee said was that a woman is more useful than a man in saving
> potential people from non-existence.
Context-sensitive -- current reality, likely to be transcended
int the not-so-distant future (either by artificial wombs or
engineering humans to really be "bi"-sexual.
> I understand from his other posts that he considers non-existence
> to be one of the worst fates anyone could have.
I'd have to agree, you can't project an elimination of humanity
as being good unless it happens in conjunction with a more extropic
transhuman environment.
> I think Lee is wrong here, even given his position on non-existence. Most
> people raise children in monogamous relationships, and fathers tend to
> provide resources to their children in amounts comparable to mothers.
> Therefore it does not seem rational to value women above men (or men above
> women) on that basis.
Certainly. But there are many models in the animal world which
survive quite successfully where the contribution of the parent
of one sex significantly outweighs the other.
> Lee seems to imply that he wants people to have as many children as
> possible.
I don't know if Lee feels this way, but at least in some circumstances
this is a dubious goal. According to:
http://www.aeiveos.com/~bradbury/Papers/SW.html
Israel and Palestine are at the low end of the solar wealth per capita
scale. I would tend to argue that pushing population to levels
where the available technology cannot easily support it, or worse,
infanticide is necessary is a questionable strategy.
> But if one wants to maximize the number of people who will have
> lived from now until the end of the universe, it's not clear that having
> as many children as possible is the best strategy to execute.
Yes, for the reasons cited above. In general, having more children
in the wealthiest countries, to parents most able to support the
education of such children might be the most extropic perspective.
(Not "politically correct" mind you, but a "reasonable" strategy.)
The reason being that if some fraction of those children become
productive scientists, technology development moves forward more
quickly.
> It's probably better to devote yourself to increasing the wealth and knowledge
> of the world, so that the Singularity is brought closer, or the number of
> people the world can support in the future is increased.
No argument -- if you can find a way to do that without having to have
people involved in it. If you have to have people involved in it, then
you need to bias the expertise mix towards professions that tend to
produce knowledge and technology.
I'll assert (in a highly politically uncorrect statement) that building
settlements (even on the West Bank) to house educated Jews from Russia
would be more extropic than allowing the repatriation of millions of
less educated Palestinians. Mind you I do not suggest that this is
good reason for violating previous treaty guidelines. I'm simply
noting that the solar "wealth" of the Palestinians is greater than
that of the Israelis. So they can afford to share more of that
wealth. In a "rational" discussion Palestinians would support
the establishment of enclaves of such educated people within their
borders. (This is *not* to say that Palestinians are "uneducated",
it is a suggestion that the Russian educational system has been
more robust than the Palestinian educational system over the last
50 years or more.)
Robert
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