[extropy-chat] RE: Singularitarian verses singularity

[The Avantguardian]

--- Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 12/21/05, The Avantguardian
> <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> The current and
> > historical limitations to this sort of thing are
> not
> > based on intelligence but are instead primarily
> > political.
> 
> ### And where do the political limitations come
> from, Stuart?

Not from a lack of SAI but instead from an
increasingly agregious assymetry in the distribution
of the correlates of political effectiveness between
the ruling and working classes. 
 
> >From voters and politicians having enough
> intelligence to understand
> the world and find positive-sum solutions?
> 
> Surely not.

Politicans and voters don't have to understand the
entire world in order to avoid destroying it. They
just have to understand it resembles a game of
Prisoner's Dilemma where maximizing one's own payoff
by defecting not only lowers the utility of the other
player but lowers the sum of the utility of both
players taken as collective. Thus all else being
equal, any tribe with one or more defectors is weaker
than any tribe without.

The level of understanding of politicians and voters
has nothing to do with the percieved need for SAI.
Unless of course you are suggesting doing away with
democracy entirely and instituting SAD (superhuman
artifical dictators). If this is the case than I am
absolutely against any such use of SAI. Power tends to
corrupt. Software tends to be corruptable. Software
with absolute power is begging for corruption.  

>>  it is,
> > logically speaking, a very simple problem to
> solve.
> > You merely redistribute the wealth of the ruling
> class
> > to globally relevant causes.
> 
> ### Are sure? Just take a few billion dollars, kill
> the people you
> hate, and everything will be fine?

Whoa. Stop right there. I said nothing of killing
anyone. I will forgive you the implication that I am
some blood thirsty revolutionary because of the
actions of the Bolshevics of your homeland are still
on your mind. You think because I criticize the
government and the super-wealthy for the choices they
make that I hate them? Nothing can be farther from the
truth. It is they that must lead the world in the
transition from an economy of scarcity to one of
abundance. It is a foolish team indeed that eliminates
its most talented players in an effort to change its
game plan.

Condoning such a course of action would make me no
better than the those I criticize. History shows such
an approach only serves to substitute one regime with
another equally or more oppressive regime. This has
universally been case from the proscriptions of Sulla
in ancient Rome to Hitler's Final Solution. We must
not till that unfertile ground again. The solution I
would propose is far different. It is a strategy born
of love and not hate.

> 
> If you didn't tell me you were +2SD I could almost
> think would benefit
> from an IQ-boost too.

Funny, I don't remember telling you any such thing. I
tend not to speak of such things because I figured out
as a child, it is not a very effective way to make
friends. On the other hand, I suppose I haven't
exactly been hiding my light under a bushel with you
guys either. So I suppose you had enough evidence to
draw that conclusion on your own.

The Avantguardian 
is 
Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. . ."

- Albert Einstein, "What I Believe" (1930)


	
		
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