From: Dan Clemmensen (Dan@Clemmensen.ShireNet.com)
Date: Wed Apr 29 1998 - 18:40:21 MDT
mark@unicorn.com wrote:
>
> [Concerning posthumanity]
> Now, if you want to discuss possible forms of government -- if there are
> any -- in a relatively stable posthuman society I'd be quite interested,
> but discussions of government policy in the next few decades seem as
> useful as discussions of the future of Monarchy in 1770. As far as I'm
> concerned we either end up with a massive centralised surveillance state
> or an anarchic free market; there's room around those extremes but there
> doesn't seem to be any stable middle ground.
>
Actually I think we are trying to discuss the transition period, and not
the posthuman period. The idea is to figure out how to get from here to
there while minimizing "bad things" and mazimizing "good things'. I agree
that discussing posthuman government is silly--ants discussing the constitution.
IMO, it is also dumb to consider any radical change to the current world
order, because the transition will be complete before any major human governmental
can have a positive effect. Thus, we should consider high-value short-payback
changes, and perhaps ways to ameliorate the "bad things" that may occur
as part of the transition. I do feel that we need to avoid ireversable
information loss (species extinctions, loss of ecosystems) to the extent
possible, but other long-term problems can be deferred until posthumanity
is available to deal with them. We should also attempt to minimize the
time until the singularity, to mininimize the era in which the "bad things"
occur.
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