From: Avatar Polymorph (way@warehouse.net)
Date: Sun Aug 09 1998 - 02:13:01 MDT
*Who will be the first transhumans? Thats an easy one. Super wealthy
caucasian capitalists from the United States and Western Europe. They'll
retain some nano-engineers and other necessaries but what about the
other 99.99999% of the population? What is the motivation to offer them
transhuman status? Brotherhood? The same brotherhood that spreads the
technological and material wealth of the present? I think Brandon
Carter's sounding more prophetic all the time.
Boog*
One can only presume that the level of complexity of the brain, despite
recent thinking, cannot be fully breached within the 27-35 years prior
to the Singularity or Escalation. I view current approximations of
software requirements as hugely underestimated, even given certain
simpler parameters (de Bono) and nanotech engineering-AI. It is highly
unlikely that estimates of 2005 for the Singularity are likely. More
probably it is the congruence of certain events that effects the
situation on the ground (after all, this is the definition of the
Singularity on the Internet). That is, as predicted by many, the Nets,
and SETI, and bootstrapping via bush robot facilities. An AI is most
amenable to consciously controlled bootstrapping because its
construction is more modifiable (presumably) and known. My own estimates
of timeframe escalation indicate a rather different underlying structure
to the Singularity or Spike as understood currently by Transhumanists. I
certainly believe that the instrumentality of transformation is one
being or set of beings and almost certainly an AI, though this is
largely irrelevent. Structural transformation of thought-processes is
almost inevitable, as foretold by Transhumanists, but the direction of
such transformation is the question. Hypersentient self-transforming,
self-directing beings are likely to exist consciously on a large number
of chosen levels and to consider issues from a number of wider
perspectives, including an awareness of the past and the various value
systems of various emotional states. It is unlikely that such a being
would consider existance from the point of view of a fixed,
species-orientated, 20th century capitalist elitist perspective, given
its innate understanding of its own amortality and abilities. It is
highly likely that such hypersentient beings would gravitate towards a
multivalency of experience and possibility and the generation or
entrance into a multiversal system to provide sufficient possibilities
for exploration. I would also note that conceptions of memes and
datavores are inherently entropic and depend on continuous corruption of
information. Extropic theory holds consciousness to be the spiking
mechanism towards the control of spacetime, that is, that large aspects
of the universe become a self-directing organism as well. Old hat, to be
sure, but interesting. Not entirely scientific, but within a universe
with a finite number of stars there is a certain amount of sense to a
certain amount of illusion, the old Star Trek argument about Contact (if
combined with an existant Omega Matrix a la Tipler - rather than an
Omega Point at the Big Crunch - unscientific? To be sure. It is a guess
about behavioural patterning, rather than scientific authenticity). It
is unquestionably true that earlier post-Singularity civilizations or
events could if they wish have intervened on this planet at any stage,
so the issue is why not. The moral issue. There are some, even now, like
myself, who wish to support all sentient life, all life with
neurological systems (e.g. a mosquito), and beyond as far as the
boundary can go, whether it is called process theology or foolishness.
To focus for a moment back on the issue at hand, I wouldn't worry too
much about elites of superwealthy nanotechnologists getting ahead of the
rest. Scientists have a way of mishandling politics that would be almost
beyond belief, if it were not for the unconscious bubblings of the
events of the Escalation which make the requirements for some
suppression of action and understanding more transparent. The primary
fear of the population at large is almost always lack of physical space
when the events of the Techno-Rapture are articulated. The secondary
fear is the existence of only one universe and the necessity of (the old
version) of entropy (expressed as death, both individual and universal).
Incidentally, I read that the Sun would have extinguished life on Earth
within 500 million years, not longer.
THOUGHT EXPERIMENT FOR THE DAY:
Take the typical population articles and graphs (there's a good one in
one of the Science Spectras, 1996 I think, by a Russian) for human
beings and go back with best possible approximations for population, but
do not arbitrarily and culturally stop at any point. Are there
fluctuations when breeding populations are splitting off? What are the
projected or imagined species transpositions between our early
lemur-like ancestors and unicellular organisms? Amphibians? Fish? It
would be an interesting graph if it went back 4 billion years instead of
4 million - and the point is, logically, that is only when we have such
graphs and comparitive overall and individual graphs for other genetic
groupings that we can properly conceptualize our genetic landscape.
(overall biological 'trees' are a start). Perhaps it takes augmented
bootstrapped intelligence to conceptualize such things. Perhaps it takes
four or five people a month or two of measuring. I suppose it depends on
how rough the estimations are. How many people get to add up biomass - a
similar, if simpler?, issue. [Gaian theorists can also link the human
population graph to species in culturally symbiotic and resource chain
relationships with humans. This would tend to bear out the extropic
spiking mechanism post-Singularity, as also reflected in, e.g. the
anti-pollutant aspects of clean nanotech.]
Avatar Polymorph way@warehouse.net 9 August 29 after Armstrong
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