From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Thu Aug 28 1997 - 16:13:02 MDT
(no, I simply can't stay out of a thread with this name :-)
"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience@pobox.com> writes:
> I can't really claim to understand what happened, or how to prevent it -
> but it looks like Sandberg was right; the "Singularity" CAN lead to passivity.
> Insofar as there IS going to be a Singularity, cultish or not, does anyone
> have suggestions on how the concept could be presented so as to avoid a repeat
> of the above error?
I think it is a matter of what kind of optimism you have: passive
optimism ("Things will get better, so I can as well relax") and
dynamic (or active) optimism ("We can make things better").
One way of presenting the Singularity idea to avoid passivity is to
point out that we can detemine what kind of singularity it will be.
Do we want a singularity where a small nano-elite transcends and leaves
everybodye else in the dust, a Borg-de Chardin singularity where we
all become one, a cambrian explosion of new kinds of beings or
a heads-in-the sand Singularity where things happen without any
attempts to control them? Individual choices will make these
more or less likely.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~nv91-asa/main.html GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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