From: Gerhard Kessell-Haak (gerhard_kessell-haak@mail.tait.co.nz)
Date: Tue Jul 21 1998 - 16:27:04 MDT
>>> Hal Finney <hal@rain.org> 22/July/1998 08:58am >>>
"It's an attractive analogy that a posthuman will be to a human as a
human is to an insect. This suggests that any attempt to analyze or
understand the behavior of post-singularity intelligence is as hopeless as
it would be for an insect to understand human society. Since insects
clearly have essentially no understanding of humans, it would follow by
analogy that we can have no understanding of posthumans. ....."
>>>>
I've always thought that a superior analogy would be between humanity
and "chimpanity" - chimpanzee's have relatively complex social
behaviours, have a simple sense of self, have a primitive ability for
communication, and have a simple number sense. However, humanity
has developed all these abilities far beyond the capabilities of any
chimpanzee. By analogy, it then seems probable that transhumans (and
note that I'm not talking about SI here) will retain these abilities, though
developed to a more complex level.
Caged chimpanzees can, to a certain extent, predict the behaviour of
humans within their small sphere of influence (ie. within their cage), but
can not even begin to fathom the deeper concepts that drive their
keepers.
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