From: Karsten Bänder (kbaender@bigfoot.com)
Date: Tue Nov 24 1998 - 03:23:38 MST
> It appears to me that Anders and Robin (and Max?) have a tendency to
> think that there are lots of checks and balances in the nature of
> things, and that tradeoffs and diminishing returns guarantee that a
> large variety of different strategies will always co-exist. Eliezer
> and other extreme singularians (and to some extent me) seem to think
> that the world and posthuman society might well be more brittle, and
> that system could easily end up in one of the "boring" states,
> i.e. simple states. (If the universe were transformed into a giant
> pleasure-machine, for example, it might be a simple state, but not a
> boring one from the insiders point-of-view.) In a factor analysis of
> different thinking styles in transhumanism, I would expect this to
> turn out to be one of the basic dimensions.
"Simple" states mostly turn out to be less than libertarian. Any simple form of government is to some extent a dictatorship. The more you want to get away from that, the more complex it wil be. The "giant pleasure machine" would be something like "Brave New World", which might be heaven for some, but not for me.
Well, it might be possible that we end up somewhere between "Brave New World" and "1984", but only if we don't fight against it.
Checks and Balances exist in the form of evolution. If any part of the system gets too strong, sooner or later there will evolve someone to prey on it. If not, it will grow stronger and stronger. Then, eventually, it will fall of its own weight.
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kbaender@bigfoot.com
http://members.ivm.de/~Kasimodo/
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"Viele Leute glauben, daß sie denken, wenn sie lediglich ihre Vorurteile neu ordnen."
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