From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Jul 01 1998 - 10:34:45 MDT
"Scott Badger" <wbadger@psyberlink.net> writes:
> I understand that we should all be concerned with our own welfare. But your
> "So what?" attitude is still a bit disconcerting. Perhaps I'm misreading,
> but it sounds like you're saying, "Just don't be one of the unfortunate
> ones. You can't stop crazies so don't even try. Save your own butt." I hope
> this is not a common perspective among extropians. I don't conceive of
> Transhumanism as being about ME transcending MY limits, but about US
> transcending OUR limits.
Exactly!
(sorry for getting game theoretical)
The extreme individualist solution of just trying to avoid the crazies
is not as fit as a cooperative solution under a wide set of
assumptions (under some assumptions such as the possibility of
extremely powerful untraceable attacks cooperation might not be
optimal, but we are clearly not in that domain *yet*). We manage to
deal with the problem of destruction today rather well by tracking
down offenders and punishing them (it doesn't matter if it is done by
the king, the police or a PPL). One doesn't even need to care about
other people to adopt a cooperative strategy if it is more fit and
evolutionarily stable, it is the rational thing to do.
What I want to find out is:
1) When do we have a problem? (This involves estimating the risks of
various technologies carefully)
2) What solution strategies exist for this problem?
3) Are they good enough that they can handle the problem? (And what
are their limits, when we *should* run up into the hills?)
4) How to implement them? (Even the best solution might be completely
impossible to put into use, we need to find solutions that can be
implemented for real)
I'm a bit worried that the discussions on this list (and elsewhere)
tend to be dominated by less well considered opinions (or what
*appears* to be little considered opinions at least). There are many
people out there who actually think extropians are gun-toting
survivalists beliving in a technocalypse, and all this talk about
creating heavily fortified island nations, surviving the Y2000 problem
and escaping into space doesn't help that image.
Let's use rational thinking instead, and use our tools of theoretical
applied science, game theory, economics and sociology to do some
serious analysis of the problem.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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