[extropy-chat] The Golden Transcendence

[Anders Sandberg]

Rafal Smigrodzki said:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Anders Sandberg" <asa at nada.kth.se>
>
>> I was a bit surprised by the length of the historical eras (there is an
>> appendix describing much of the setting, although not in excessive
>> detail); I had the feeling the setting was maybe just a few tens of
>> thousands of years in the future, but it appears to be nearly half a
>> million years ahead.
>
> ### Yes, this is the implausible part of the story - I hope to upload to a
> Phoenix of my own in no more than three-four hundred years :-)

Implausible? You mean against the grain of our timescale guesses? Wright
seems to take a more Stapledonian than Vingean perspective on speed of
development (which I also find somewhat unlikely, but we shouldn't assume
everything will progress according to a simple positive feedback loop).

>> I'm thinking about modelling hortator-like structures in Axelrod's Norm
>> Game. So far there seems to be some interesting effects due to the
>> topology of the social networks.
>
> ### Tell us more. I found the idea of Hortation (maintenance of
> second-order
> public goods by the threat of ostracism) to be exceedingly interesting,
> even
> though I wasn't unfamiliar with some historical precedents. I would think
> that a graded form of ostracism (e.g. quoting higher prices to customers
> undergoing censure, in collusion with other private providers) would be
> even
> more efficient, while less harsh. Wright's books opened my eyes in this
> respect.

I have put down some of my thoughts and results at
http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2004/01/norms_and_hortators_in_small_worlds.html
but it is still somewhat random. I have not yet undertaken a systematic
simulation study, more like doing a parameter safari looking at what
happens when I change parts of the model.

-- 
Anders Sandberg
http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa
http://www.aleph.se/andart/

The sum of human knowledge sounds nice. But I want more.