From: mark@unicorn.com
Date: Tue May 18 1999 - 10:47:05 MDT
david_musick@juno.com wrote:
>mark, now you're just being silly (although you do make a good point).
I'm not being silly; this utopian fantasy is itself just as silly as the
Christian utopian fantasy, and I see no reason why enslaved SIs would
willingly support humans who just sit on their ass all day watching TV.
The more work you move from humans to machines, the smarter the machines
become relative to the humans, until eventually the humans are simply
obsolete.
>I wonder, though, how optimistic you are about the future.
Fairly, provided we can get out of the current phase of rampant busybodyism
without catastrophic results.
>It seems like
>you attack anyone who proposes that things will turn out very well for
>everyone.
Things cannot turn out very well for everyone, because people have different
desires which contradict each other; often when one person wins another
loses. Personally I find most of the recent utopias suggested on the list
hideous.
>Or perhaps you simply disagree with the means they propose for
>things turning out well for everyone.
I'm not interested in optimism, I'm interested in rational optimism; in
fact I'd say that irrational optimism ('let's just ban [insert whatever
the peril of the day is today] and everything will be wonderful') is one
of the greatest problems we have today. Again, the recent utopias are
irrational and try to skim over their fundamental problems in their rush
to be optimistic.
Mark
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