From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Jun 14 1999 - 09:39:30 MDT
"Raymond G. Van De Walker" <rgvandewalker@juno.com> writes:
> On 08 Jun 1999 13:39:17 +0200 Anders Sandberg <asa@nada.kth.se> writes:
> >"Raymond G. Van De Walker" <rgvandewalker@juno.com> writes:
>
> >>>> . . . Do any of you have specific ideas for preventing an
> interspecific war of
> >>>> extermination . . . [?]
>
> >Suppose tomorrow a transhuman species with a green skin (but no other
> >differences) appeared. Would this cause a war of extermination . . . [?]
>
> Green skin probably isn't enough of a difference. However, let's say
> transhumans all have the IQs of Marilyn Vos Savant, and see what happens
Hmm, maybe she is not a good example since her high IQ doesn't seem to
help her that much given the factual errors and mistakes I have heard
about her columns. Just look at Mensa - lots of people with high IQ
but they do not seem behave that smartly. And I do not seem any
evidence that Mensa is hated by the rest of society or in any risk of
taking it over.
> Ecological research seems to indicate an extinction. Let me quote from
> "The Science of Ecology", Paul Ehrlich & Jonathon Roughgarden, 1987 (pg
> 351),
> the discussion of "resource limited guilds"
>
> "MacArthur and Levins [Am. Nat. 101:377-385, 1967] were the first to
> investigate limiting similarity. They showed that the limiting
> similarity between the two species depends on the ratio of the carrying
> capacities. Specifically, let species 2 be the species with a lower K
> [Ray: the fitness constant] The limiting similarity depends on K2/K1.
> If this ratio is much less than 1, indicating a severe disadvantage to
> species 2, then species 2 must be quite different from species 1 in order
> to coexist with it. However, as K2/K1 approaches 1, the limiting
> similarity approaches 0."
So what about the difference in fitness between the developed world
and the underdeveloped world? The carrying capacity of technological
advanced people can be extremely high, while the carrying capacity of
less advanced people is much less. Are we seeing a situation where the
first world is outbreeding the third world? No, quite the reverse, and
mainly because first world people have fewer children to get a higher
standard of living.
Another example would be people with an academic background compared
to people without; the former can obviously get not just specialized
jobs but also the nonspecialized jobs the latter are dependent
on. Still, you don't see that academics try to crowd out unskilled
labor or unskilled laborers trying to wipe out academics.
> The book then gives two quantitatively studied examples: freshwater fish
> in lakes [Werner, Am. Nat. 111:553-578, 1977], and Anolis lizards on
> Caribbean islands [Roughgarden Am. Nat 108:429-442, with companion piece
> Theor. Pop. Biol. 5:163-186] The above logic and studies were
> originiated to explain structured guilds, groups of similar species that
> partitioned resources by apparently evolving to different sizes, or some
> other accomodation. The book has too many of these to excerpt.
>
> By definition, transhumans will be high-fitness groups, causing
> theoretically certain extinction of ordinary humans in the absence of
> other effects. This gives low-fitness humans strong incentives to
> exterminate transhumans early-on.
No, you are not applying the above ecology correctly here. The guild
phenomenon instead suggest that it will be advantageous to specialize,
so that the high-fitness transhumans will deal with certain parts of
the economy, and the humans with others (likely with further
subdivisions between different levels of transhumanisation). This is
exactly what the law of comparative advantage in economy
suggests. Instead of extermination, specialisation.
> > There is no
> >economical reason for them to try to remove all individuals of the
> >other species. In fact, there might be strong economical incentives
> >for specialization instead (such as the law of comparative
> >advantage).
>
> Gosh, it sounds so plausible. We are so used to intra-specific
> responses, so conditioned to think that anything that talks is the same
> species, that we forget how different inter-specific responses are.
>
> The science is against it. Most species completely ignore other species'
> systems of territory and resource-allocation. I believe that transhumans
> eventually will ignore human systems, too, when they become able to brush
> them aside, in the same way that humans ignore the territories of dogs
> and cats.
That assumes a power gap between humans and transhumans, something I
regard as highly unlikely. An enhancing technology doesn't just turn a
human into a much much powerful transhuman (with no emotional, social
and economic ties to their former friends) - enhancing technologies
improve humans, broadening the normal distribution and pushing it more
in the positive direction. They occur in a social and economic
context. Breakthroughs in technology appear to be rare and are usually
more qualitative at first than quantitative (the first airplanes were
less useful than baloons and zeppelins), gradually developing
quantitatively. This means that I consider it unlikely that there will
ever be a situation of mere humans versus super-powerful transhumans,
instead we will have a society where there will be everything from
ordinary humans to superhumans with people of all levels in between.
This means that the superhuman who brushes humans aside will have to
deal with a lot of posthumans and transhumans who dislike it (for
reasons ranging from ethics to pure economy - "you wiped out the cast
of my planetary soap opera?!"). There may even be powerful entities
acting on the behalf of lesser entities, paid by them to act as their
protector. In short, the situation is not clear cut.
> >The main reason for the different behavior is that humans
> >are not just trying to maximize the number of offspring they have, but
> >rather have many other memetic goals.
>
> I'm not sure I believe this. It looks _to me_ like these are secondary,
> lower-priority goals that have floated to the top because
> species-survival is a solved problem at this time. Here's why: memes
> necessarily evolve to maintain their growth-media. Thus growth-media
> survival will have priority over other memtic goals.
This does not follow. Memes do not need to evolve growth-media
maintenance, just look at monasticism. The meme of birth control is
doing great right now, despite limiting the eventual number of
hosts. To a meme human population is not the growth media, it is the
space of information and attention - the Internet is closer to a
meme-driven growth medium.
If people were driven to maximize the number of offspring, the fastest
population growth would be in the rich countries where people can
afford many children, not in the poorest countries. People seem
instead follow a K strategy when resources are rich, investing much in
the children.
> Also, I have grievous doubts that transhuman and human memes will remain
> infective across species. Theory is against that, too, provided that
> memes are any of parasitic, commensal or symbiotic with hosts. All of
> these relations cause strong coevolution, and thus should cause strong
> memetic specialization.
>
> Memetic specialization would prevent shared goals and values from being
> stably-shared between the species, over evolutionary time.
This again assumes strong speciation, with a huge gap in between. But
if transhumans and humans form an economic community, even one where
specialization is advantageous, communication between them is
necessary and would mean there are ways of memes to leak over. And if
you still believe that memes create their own growth-medium, they
would really exploit the possibility of opening communications with
the other side.
> >. . . it looks more like increased diversity . . . makes a win-win
> situation . . .
>
> But the scientific predictions do not depend upon, nor should we expect
> them to be changed by, divergent abilities. The science depends on
> speciation combined with convergent resource use, and asymmetric
> competition. These preconditions are the _hypothesis_ of transmumanity.
Are they? The resource use part becomes doubtful since transhumans
could exploit new resources humans cannot exploit (such as space), and
the transhumanist idea of development doesn't necessarily imply a
one-dimensional form of progress but rather many forms of improvements
that does not have to be along competitive dimensions or lead to
highly nontrivial competitive networks (transhuman A and transhuman B
compete for a resource X, but cooperate in supplying each other with
resources Y and Z).
> The _only_ way out that _I_ see is to explicitly prevent human
> speciation, which really would not be too limiting. Think about it. A
> clade of humans, spanning numerous levels of intelligence, or other
> ability, but all able to interbreed, would be both powerful and
> plausible.
And likely more economically viable than distinct species - that ways
good strategies can spread memetically, genetically and
technologically within the clade.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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