[extropy-chat] Bill Moyers' Comments

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

One of the important major characteristics of a religion that is missing 
from Singularitarianism, and will remain missing so long as I have any say 
in the matter, is the revenge fantasy.

There are many people out there with silly phobias and prejudices - people 
convinced that being photographed will steal their soul, or that being 
uploaded will steal their soul, etc.  It may be that much of Earth's 
population, perhaps *all* of it, will require emergency first aid 
post-Singularity.  I do not think those decisions should be made (solely) 
by human minds, with such weak grasps on futures and consequences; or to 
put it more vividly, you can't ask people to make that kind of decision 
while their minds are still described by the volume "Choices, Values, and 
Frames" (edited by Tversky and Kahneman).

But that choice which must be made by some decision process, should not be 
chosen in a spirit of revenge.  Nor condescension.  Nor even annoyance.  If 
my own efforts are successful, and my hopes and insights have any validity, 
it will not be so.  So these emotional forces which lead you to take 
vicious satisfaction in envisioning these outcomes, are not the forces 
which shall shape the true future.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence