[extropy-chat] Re: riots in France

[Jef Allbright]

On 11/14/05, Dirk Bruere <dirk.bruere at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 11/14/05, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
> > With material plenty do you think this is likely?  But wait, I thoroughly
> believe in the right to obtain and bear arms.  So we may disagree or
>
>  Material plenty simply means that the fighting will be over power, religion
> and ideology.
>
> > which kinds of things are a problem. A nano-factory cannot produce
> anything it doesn't have a blueprint for.   That is one level of control.
>
>  How much of a blueprint does a gene machine require to synthesise a gene?
>
> > Nanofactories could come with certain built-in restrictions giving another
> level of control.   The problems could also be addressed by something like
> the broadcast model proposed by Ralph Merkle
> (http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/selfRepJBIS.html ).
> >
> >
> > Generally speaking I am more interested in empowering people and in
> fighting abuses they actually do commit  than in keeping them harmless by
> decreasing their abilities and access.
> >
> >
> I think that such factories will be common, and that restrictions on their
> use will be just as effective as DRM is in music today.

Dirk expressed the kinds of dangers I had in mind, but the subsequent
discussion seems to have been about control of threats (and its
ultimate ineffectiveness) rather than the accelerating growth of
wisdom I had in mind.

I see technological risk accelerating at a rate faster than the
development of individual human intelligence (which gives us much of
our built-in sense of morality), and faster than cultural intelligence
(from which we get moral guidance based on societal beliefs) but
maybe--just maybe--not faster than technologically based amplification
of human values exploiting accelerating instrumental knowledge to
implement effective decision-making which, as I've explained elsewhere
in more detail, is a more encompassing concept of morality.

I apologize, as usual, for the density of my post.

- Jef