From: Keith M. Elis (hagbard@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Sat Jan 09 1999 - 16:09:25 MST
Mike wrote:
> Subjectivity only exists as a consequence of each individual conducting analysis
> with incomplete facts, and purposely excluding commonly obvious facts that
> conflict with one's prejudices, while rationalizing that denial. Both are errors
> of logic.
Nicely and succinctly put. In my mind, the basics are these: socialism
is unlikely to work in the long term because its primary means is force.
Assuming that some intelligent people, when forced, do things that they
would not otherwise do, it follows that a socialist government sometimes
forces intelligent people to behave unintelligently. Assuming
intelligence is better than stupidity, the more people who are forced to
behave unintelligently means more people doing stupid things. That
stupidity is undesirable is a personal a priori.
However, and this *may* be something that occurred to Einstein, the
weakness of this line of thought is that some people aren't that
intelligent. In fact nearly all people aren't geniuses. Einstein may
have been hoping that the intelligence of a rule-making body might be
greater than the combined intelligence of most people. Today, we can see
that modern democracies don't seem to be attracting the best and the
brightest to government (how many politicians do we have here? ;), but
it remains to be seen whether government is dumber than most people.
Anyway, regardless, it's a stupid idea to force intelligent people to do
unintelligent things. All intelligent people should be free. But it is
also the case that unintelligent people can be forced to do intelligent
things. I'm sorry, but until we have some foolproof method of deciding
who's who, it's better to let them all do what they want, with the hope
that intelligent people can figure out how to reach a Singularity
quickly, so we all can be intelligent.
A rub:
Who am I talking about when I say 'intelligent people'? Few people are
intelligent enough to ignore their memetic script entirely and reason
from first principles, and hardly anyone (no one?) is intelligent enough
to ignore their genetic script entirely. This may be one of the commonly
obvious facts that Mike was talking about. An hypothesis: all incorrect
facts are either genetic or memetic, often both, but never neither. If
'intelligence' can be defined (for the moment) as one's actual or
potential ability to know what is the case, then anyone suffering from
genetic or memetic imperatives (which deflect them from actual or
potential knowledge of what is the case) is unintelligent to some
degree. This arguably includes every last bit of pink goo.
The most unintelligent reality (assuming human life) occurs where no one
can ignore their memetic or genetic script at all. Here we are
guaranteed, assuming that some of the facts known are incorrect, to be
unable to assess what is the case. In this situation, there is no
possibility of anyone changing their mind about anything, even if the
apparent idea is perfectly true. I know that I have changed my mind on a
few things in my lifetime, so this is not the world we live in.
The most intelligent reality occurs where everyone can ignore their
genetic or memetic script as necessary or desired. In this case we would
expect a convergence over time toward agreement on what is the case,
maybe even quickly. The advent of AI/neurohacks will surely speed this
up as the ratio of augments to gaussians increases. But today, this may
or may not be happening, so unlike Liebniz I will not suggest this is
the best of all possible worlds.
One nice thing about transhumanists is that we (I?) understand
transhumanism as an evolving world-view, ready to be modified or changed
as the facts roll in. There is a memetic flexibility to varying degrees
among transhumanists that I see missing in many of the people around me
who purport to be intelligent. However, what about (for the sake of
symmetry) 'genetic flexibility'? I don't mean changing our genes just
yet, I mean letting memes rule genes as much as possible. Memes are
arguably much easier to acquire and get rid of than are genes. We have
these genes that tell us to want happiness and pleasure, to avoid
sadness and frustration, and to compete with each other. We don't have
to use these genetic imperatives as the starting point for our
philosophies. In fact, I would argue, if we do it without thought, we
are just being unintelligent. We are hindering our actual or potential
ability to know what is the case.
One thing that does seem apparent to me is that a lot of people do use
genetic imperatives as the starting point for philosophies, and I'm only
speaking of people who have something that can be called a 'philosophy.'
The rest just live. A good-sized chunk of Western philosophy, from
Epicurus and Lucretius, to Hutcheson, Bentham and Mill, assumes
happiness as part or parcel of the 'good.' I see this need for happiness
as a biological limit that needs to be overcome in order to know what is
the case. Of course, it may be that happiness is indeed the good, but it
must be rational to think so. If it is rational then it can be
demonstrated logically. Otherwise, one is merely thinking what cannot be
otherwise thought.
And this has at least one implication for views of posthumanity. Given
no genetic pressures, and near-perfect memes, what will a posthuman do?
We have no idea what it is like to exist without genetic pressures, and
we have no idea what perfect memes are. In fact, logic itself may not be
sufficient to know what is the case. Anything not logical is illogical
so would the posthumans, in order to know what is the case, think
illogically?
It makes my head spin.
_____________________________________________
Keith M. Elis
mailto:hagbard@ix.netcom.com
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