From: Robin Hanson (hanson@econ.berkeley.edu)
Date: Tue Dec 08 1998 - 17:10:43 MST
On 11/23/98, Nick Bostro wrote:
>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.
I don't this this captures my opinion well. I'd say I'm not sure
how much complexity we will see in the long term. My expectations
of complexity are based on expectations of continuitiy of
development. Things are pretty damn complex now and I don't forsee
any sudden transitions big enough to wipe all that complexity away.
There seems to be lots of legacy capital encouraging entities to
retain compatibility with their diverse older versions.
Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar FAX: 510-643-8614
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 510-643-1884
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