[extropy-chat] silent night

[Brett Paatsch]

Damien wrote:


> Has everyone died and gone to Xmas?

I'm still out here too. I've been particularly interested in some of the 
discussion on Exi chat lately and I am impressed by the quality of some of 
the posts particularly in the John Wright finds God and the Damien grants 
psi evidence threads.  Its good to see Harvey posting again and Eugen and 
I'd like to kick around some ideas in the How soon can we get an Ipod to 
read to us thread.

Yet of all the ideas that are circulating in transhumanist circles the one 
that is the most interesting to me personally at present is Robin's futures 
market idea. If *only* it could be implemented in a real money way, I think 
it could be, amongst other perhaps even more important things, the great 
enabling and accelerating "idea" for many other ideas that are discussed in 
transhuman circles. This is because it would encourage sceptics and 
potentially knowledgable naysayers to join the discussion because their 
would be a financial return for their time invested if their criticisms on 
cryonics, molecular nanotech, particular proposals in ai and life extension 
turn out to be valid.  I would immediately start using it to try and get 
some of the transhumanist optimists to break down their visionary claims 
into claims that could be *tested* against milestones in the short term like 
a year or so. When people like Chris Pheonix say Drexlers ideas in 
Nanosystems have never been successfully criticised I'd look to 
operationalise a bet with him, then that bet would provide the reason for 
doing some more research to flesh out my gut reactions and justify the times 
spents crafting the words properly to communicate to a wider audience before 
deliverin that criticism, or failing to, but failing too, in a useful and 
provocative way.  Ditto for papers that purport to show that Cryonics will 
work in principle, in thinking of stuff by Ralph Merkle.

I think I am a skeptic and would be a naysayer to most of the main 
transhumanist ideas. But I like the sort of people that will explore ideas 
like cryonics, ai, radical life extension, molecular nanotech rather than 
just dismiss those things out of hand because they seem unlikely. And they 
do seem unlikely on first impression to people who have experience in the 
development of technology and to people who have life experience where they 
have seen how politics and systemic problems can retard the rates of change.

I don't think the optimism apparently felt by many posters to transhumanist 
lists is not well based to be honest. People like Jules Verne and Da Vinci 
have been imagining what technology could do for a long time. In every age 
it seems like people felt that they were on the cusp of something like a 
singularity and in every age what slowed the rate of progress was the 
mundane, non technological things.

If the main thing stopping Robin's futures market ideas from being 
implemented and providing a mechanism for analysts to pit their skills 
against each other and to profit from the exchange is wowserish laws, then 
what would that say about the state of the world? We'd be living in a world 
where the best sort of free speech and the purest forms of the free market 
are already effectively denied to individuals who want to interact in ways 
that have no harmful bearing on others at all.

It can be hard to develop what seem to be good ideas into real commercial 
opportunities. And Robins futures market idea is pretty esoteric. The 
applications for it
in science and technology prediction and acceleration are not likely to be 
easily understood by legislators.

My gut tells me that once started in a for real money way the idea will take 
off in a big way, but I don't completely trust my gut, and if Robin and 
others feel the same way and find other things more attractive or urgent to 
do with their time then it might not get started at all

Anyway, the reason I haven't been posting is because I've been thinking and 
reading mostly links to stuff of Robin's that Adrian provided and wondering 
about the best ways to proceed.

Cheers,
Brett Paatsch