[extropy-chat] Consciousness vs. awareness [was: I keep asking myself...]

[Russell Wallace]

On 4/7/06, Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Now, I suspect when we are hitting the resource limits of the planet and
> the time comes to send in the nanorobots in to harvest the silicon contained
> in the Kaaba [6] in Mecca that there may still be around a fairly large
> number of non-enlightened people who would perceive this as "painful" and
> most likely would seek to kill those responsible for this (of course its
> kind of hard to "kill" distributed replicated uploads so the natural fear of
> retribution which might hold one back from this action now will be of
> significantly less concern in the future).  The question for the enlightened
> then becomes how one handles this nonproductive use of resources (in silicon
> in the Kaaba or in carbon in unaware meme replicators) in the long term.
> Perhaps we should prohibit the use of life-extension technologies by those
> who are unenlightened and simply wait until they all die.
>

And perhaps we should recognize that:

1. There is no such thing as one group having a monopoly on a technology, at
least not as more than a transient phase; if the background knowledge is
there for group A to invent something, even if leaks don't occur (which in
reality they do) it's there for group B to reinvent it.

2. "Unenlightened" people are perfectly capable of using a technology as a
weapon even if they didn't independently invent it themselves.

3. Numbers matter, and there are more unenlightened people than enlightened
- this is true no matter whose definition of the terms you use!

4. An awful lot of misery has resulted from people thinking it's a jolly
good idea to go out and spread "enlightenment" by force; this misery often
falls on the heads of the "enlightened" as well as the "unenlightened"; and
being really really confident in the power of one's tools and the
righteousness of one's cause is no guarantee of being correct.

Yes, there are abhorrent things in the world, and doubtless will be in the
future (the real life treatment of women in some Muslim countries; your
fictional example of the pedophile civilization; one could continue at
length). No, flinging hydrogen bombs/grey goo nanites/etc around the place
is not likely to be the right answer. I'll ask again - did you read my post
last time this came up where I argued in specific detail why starting a
nuclear war over religion is a bad idea?
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