From: Brett Paatsch (paatschb@ocean.com.au)
Date: Sun Nov 03 2002 - 01:49:36 MST
> > Anders wrote:
> > > Most new nation schemes are just idle pipedreams
> > > or somewhat suspect economic ventures. The virtual
> > > nation idea mentioned earlier in this thread is far more
> > > realistic.
> >
<snip>
(Anders)
> If you look through the list archives you will see it is a
> recurring theme on this list. Targets include building artificial
> islands on international water, buying islands or regions in
> third world nations, setting up space colonies and similar
> projects. Usually followed by my response "get real" :-)
I do remember reading about artificial/floating islands and
wondering what those folks thought they were going to do
for a defence force, or if they actually believed no one would
bother them without one. Whilst it doesn't seem impossible to
buy an island, I'd see this as merely a potentially useful detail
to be born in mind rather than as a key design principle for a
virtual country.
I guess it shouldn't be too surprising if most attempts to found
virtual nations fail. I think the democracies that are today the
USA and France would have seemed like pipedreams at one
stage too. I don't presume a virtual country would be easy to
create but I do presume it would be possible.
Whether or not the creation of a virtual country/democracy able
to transcend the limitations of existing national democracies will
be necessary or desirable in order to achieve the effective
conquest of aging in my life time is an open question for me. I
am 36.
I remain open minded but sceptical with respect to the
singularity. I think that homo sapiens are themselves proof in
principle of the possibility of AI but it seems to me (I know
little of this area) that general AI remains a long way off.
On the other hand, I think developments in information
technology, biotechnology and nanotechnology taken together
should be sufficient to provide a technological solution to aging in
my life time provided that societal, psychological and political
obstacles don't prevent these technologies from progressing
and leveraging at the requisite rate. It is in the rate of change,
not in technology, but in our social institutions that I sense that I
am most fighting for my life. I'd be bored without a challenge :-).
<snip>
(Anders)
> It is probably less efficient to first start an organisation and
> try to affect things than to first affect things so that there is
> ample members, interest and money for the organisation.
I agree. But it was my thought that simply brainstorming some
design principles for a virtual country/democracy didn't actually
require starting an organisation. Although clearly that might
follow.
(Brett)
> > Would you think that a great organisation is more likely to
>> emerge organically without being designed and that attempts
>> to distill optimal design principles to save time and effort are
>> futile?
(Anders)
> I am a firm believer in spontaneous order, but usually the
> spontaneous order has to be created by someone :-) What I
> mean is that organic emergence of organisations is an enormously
> powerful process where different approaches can compete and
> interact, allowing the best to grow and learn from the failures of
> the others. But each organisation in this soup of hopeful
> institutionlets is the creation of somebody. I don't know if there
> are optimal design principles that work for organisations (my
> hunch is that they only work if you have clear and simple goals),
> but it might be worth a try.
I think your probably right about clear and simple goals. But not
all organisations are equally complex or ambitious. One possible
clear goal for a virtual country might be to work towards a world in
which all people, or at least all it's citizens, could reasonably expect
to live a radically longer life. This goal seems clear enough but
achieving it in my life time seems to me to be anything but simple.
I can't see that any existing national democratic structure would be
able to credibly undertake such a goal, or that any politician would
dare to articulate it. Indeed, with the possible exception of Mike
Perry ("Forever for All") I don't think I have heard any
transhumanists talk about the conquest of aging for *everybody*.
Which raises the questions for me, is it implicit to the thinking of
most transhumanists that large numbers of citizens in western
democracies, or people in the world in general, will simply miss out
on and accept missing out on radically longer lives? And if so, do
transhumanists really believe that the general population and existing
political structures progressing at their current rates will permit the
conquest of aging in their lifetimes? If so, (and I don't know that it
is so), perhaps there is a need for some group reality checking here
too.
I think that realistic design principles for a virtual country would
involve at least three aspects.
First it would involve articulating a clear vision of what the virtual
country might do that existent countries cannot. This vision would
need to be sufficiently compelling that it would grab the interest of
and be attractive to a wide group of people.
Second the design principles would need to be firmly grounded in
a realistic appraisal of the strengths and limitations of existing
democratic countries, institutions and systems. This is perhaps
harder to do than observing, researching and extrapolating the
trends in developing technology.
Third, the design principles would need to address in a practical
way how we get from here to there. What is the critical sequence
of bootstrapping steps? How could a virtual country best be rolled
out, being born, as it must be, from within the jurisdiction of
existing nation states?
<snip>
>>(Brett)
>> How can we rule out a top down approach where perhaps a
>> number of existing successful NGO's are brought together to
>> bud off something close to a real nation in one complicated but
>> orchestrated move?
>(Anders)
> I distrust top down approaches for ill-defined problems. If it was
> a project to engineer a space station with a self-contained
> ecosystem for Mars travel I would trust this kind of orchestration
> - there is a single goal (maybe different views on why to achieve it),
> there are clear ways of figuring out who to do what and so on.
Whilst I agree with your Mars travel example as being a good
candidate for a top down approach, I am not sure the problems with
current democracies are so ill defined anymore, although I may have
done a poor job in outlining them in my opening post.
1) National democracies are poorly equipped to manage things such
as the environment and to civilise global financial systems. Quite
naturally as part of the political process they also favour the interests
of their own nationals over foreigners to the extent that they can
influence such things. Foreigners don't vote and only the elected
politician can implement policy. Further pollies must work to electral
cycles which can be relatively short.
2) Human rights are at various stages of development in various
countries. Obtaining cheaper labour draws multinationals to the
underdeveloped world not because multinationals are evil but because
investors like superfunds quite reasonably want the best returns on
investment (to be competitive) and so companies have to compete as
best they can in the circumstances in which they find themselves.
3) The processes of technological innovation for all its promise is
nonetheless undermining the basis of employment and the potential
livelihood for large numbers of willing and capable workers, not just in
developing countries, but also in developed ones. This increasingly,
includes highly skilled knowledge workers such as those in IT. I further
argued, picking up a point raised by Hans Moravec in "Robot" that AI
will accelerate this trend and that the smartest thing for people to be
holding on to is not their job (which for many will be impossible) but
their vote. With their vote they can at least vote for a redistribution of
wealth. Provided of course the national tax systems can still collect it.
4) Even strong countries like the US cannot stop the wealthy from
using tax havens, and the wealthy can't be blamed for acting in their
own interests, so democracies leak the money that their very openness
and stability provided the opportunity to create.
These points may well be simplistic or wrong. They are not original to
me. I think I picked up most of them from a book I read a couple of
years ago by William Greider. "One World Ready or Not: The manic
rush to global capitalism". But if they are right then what is suggested
is a global financial system that is spirally out of control in a way that
no
country, politician, business conglomerate, NGO, union or currently
existing institution is able to control or to easily break out of. What is
suggested a systemic problem arising as a result of a global financial
system that is not underpinned by a global society. This appears to be
a problem that has no simple solution and is not readily solvable by any
of the majors stakeholders themselves. Any stakeholder that does
attempt to change the system stands to take a substantial hit. It is also
worth noting I think that it is not a cycle for which one can
meaningfully talk of blame.
5) Substantial portions of the population have always looked to
god, the king, or the government as sources of power and targets
of blame, when the reality is that humans, and human societies are
evolving. There never has been an Eden, there was no fall from grace,
whilst imo, we are on the contrary, on the way up, not on the way
down. Our ancestors dragged themselves out of the primordial slime
and the story of history is the story of their lives as they took one
difficult step forward at a time. But this view of the human
predicament of human frailty and mortality is not something that sits
well in the psyche of individual people and it is hardly surprisingly
that historically people have looked to religions, superstitions, or
anything rather than add a gloomy prognosis to the weight of their
daily struggles. Perhaps the greatest impediment to individuals
achieving actual "immortality" now that it is almost within our grasp
technologically, is that so many voters still cling desperately to the
institutionalised illusions that were in many cases all that previous
generations had to sustain them.
Contemporary politicians, like priests, are unlikely to fare well by
advising their constituents of how little power they actually have.
(Anders)
>But societies aren't machines and they are not solutions to any
> particular problem. They are the result of what humans think
> and do.
I agree they are not machines. And they are not *merely* solutions
to particular problems. But I think they are *importantly* and
*partly* solutions to problems. Societies afford their members a
better chance in the struggle for survival and for resources. It seems
the simplest form of a society is a family and as human beings are
born dependent (unable to even lift their heads) we are predisposed
to be social as naturally and necessarily as we are predisposed to eat.
I think societies are at least partially a solution to our inabilities to
satisfy
our needs and desires alone. I think the ancestors of homo sapiens were
social before they were rational, but this doesn't alter that we now can
rationally recognize that collectively we may each do better, sometimes.
> (Anders)
> Just getting a lot of people who roughly agree together is hard
> enough, and experience from all those utopian commune
> experiments in the US and elsewhere shows that once the initial
> ideological fervor and enthusiasm wear off the society tends to
> crumble - it has no reason to exist beyond the ideological goal.
I don't know much about the commune experiments but my gut
feeling is that the individual desire to continue, to avoid death and
annihilation, and to have the choice about whether to age or not is
unlikely to go away any time soon. Whether or not it is sufficient to
serve as the core goal or vision of a virtual country (an organisation
that may be necessary to achieve it), I think we could assume the
human desire for immortality is something that can be taken to the
bank.
(Anders)
> A far more likely situation would be for a number of NGOs
> to step in to help run a region with pre-existing inhabitants with
> their own views. Here the issue instead would be to convince
> everybody to work together and get along despite very different
> views and interests. Lots of data in studies of aid organisations
> successes and failures here.
Whilst I accept that this may have happened I can't think of a good
example. Also what is the driver, the motivating shared vision?
(Brett)
> > When before, in the history of the world, has it been possible
>> to say without chicanery to rich and poor alike that a better
>> standard of living is possible for all. Technologically the
>> imminent wherewithal to radically extend life, creates an
>> opportunity to offer something to the rich that they do not have,
>> provided we can get the societal mechanisms commensurate with
>> existant and emergent technological ones. The incentive to
>> cooperation seems to have never been greater. Whether we are
>> the "last mortal generation" or "first immortal" depends on our
>> organisational capabilities IMO.
(Anders)
> Hmm, while I like the tone of this pep-talk, I think the problem
> is that you assume the rich are the most important factor. Sure, they
> have money and usually influence, but without the support of entire
> societies you will not get enough funding and markets to support any
> move towards transhumanity.
Towards transhumanity I agree. Transhumanity is too obscure a
concept to sell quickly to a wide population. Towards radical life
extension maybe. But IMO radical life extension cannot be realistically
pursued in isolation.
I do think the rich, or more specifically the powerful, are an important
factor. In any systemic change they rightly fear they have the most to
loose. They are therefore the ones most likely to oppose change
sometimes perhaps simply because it is change, and possibly, without
even bothering to take the time to understand it. I think there are
plenty of precedents for this.
Perhaps the hardest cohort to persuade are the affluent religious who
sense they have it pretty good in this life and believe that immortality
is coming to them automatically in the next one.
But it is certain that not all the powerful are religious and perhaps the
prospect of real water will remove a lot of personal mirages.
It seems whenever it comes, unless it comes very slowly, (in which
case all of us are dead or in the freezer), the transition from a world
without radical life extension products to one with them is going to
cause a major social upheaval.
It seems that if we are going to mitigate this jolt AND achieve
personal radical life extension then we had better start laying some
serious groundwork and creating an expectation not of if but of when.
I don't know if we can model or simulate this sort of shock, but if we
can outline various possible scenarios in a plausible way we may find
that we can not only mitigate the shock but perhaps for the first time
in history offer the powerful sufficiently large personal incentives to
take the risks and to embrace the changes necessary, not out of
altruism, but out of self-interest.
I do think the wealthy and the powerful are entitled to ask "what's in
any proposed change for me and why should I support it?" Its a poor
form of wealth and an impotent sort of power than can't prevent a
person from dying within 120 years or less.
I think the market for life extension technologies has been historically
quite strong. Its the products that have been weak.
(Anders)
> In order to demonstrate our doubtless limitless organisational
> capabilities :-) we need to demonstrate our cultural capabilities.
Not sure exactly what you mean by cultural capabilities. Perhaps
I'm a philistine. I've never seen the world through any eyes or
perception but my own. I can't tell whether what looks easy and
obvious to me is a result of my naiveté or because I am coming late
to the battle when so much of the hard work that has already been
done. I am glad that people such as Ettinger, Drexler, Fahy, Freitas,
Broderick, More, and Sandberg have not only preceded me onto
the battlefield but they are still very much fighting the good fight.
(Anders)
> If we can show people that we are approaching a cooperation
> revolution where a great deal of desirable, practical and moral
> achievements are possible, then we are going to get the social
> mechanisms we need to support this.
But are we in fact approaching a cooperation revolution? I'd like
to think so, but I thought that particular point was still to be
determined. I think that humanity in the aggregate *is*progressing
but I am not sure there is any evidence of an imminent
cooperative revolution in the same way as there are indications of
a technological one.
Brett
PS: Perhaps the good thing about posts with gloomy aspects
going to the extropian list is that if poor prognoses are justified
corrective action is better able to be taken, if not, education is
a likely result for someone. I can stand it :-)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:57:56 MST