[extropy-chat] Desirability of Singularity (was Are ancestor simulations immoral?)

[The Avantguardian]

> On 6/3/06, Harry Harrison <xyz at iq.org> wrote:
> >
> > No, but many seem to have a religious optimism
> about the singularity that
> > defies rationality (for some reason I thought you
> were one of these people,
> > forgive me).

Nah, Russell is actually a self-proclaimed pessimist.
I on the other hand am a mystic optimist (optimystic?)
although I have been known to do some serious
scientific research from time to time. Although I may
have faith in my ability to survive the singularity, I
have every reason to believe that rationality is on my
side as well.

The way I see it, I am the scion of an unbroken chain
of life that stretches back to the primordial ooze.
Through the cambrian explosion, asteroid impacts, the
ice age, and the never ending evolutionary arms race
not a single one of my ancestors failed to survive
long enough to pass their genetic legacy on to me.

But I am not alone. Anyone reading this email has good
reason to be optimistic too. . . even Eliezer. The way
I see it the Darwinian-Bayesian score card of survival
reads - Our germ line: 3.5 billion years, AI run
corporations: 0 years. Even Vegas would have give us
good odds.

--- Russell Wallace <russell.wallace at gmail.com>
wrote:> 
> Frankly, the entire Singularity mythology has become
> the modern day
> equivalent of Armageddon, the Rapture etc; yes, I
> used to call myself a
> Singularitarian, before I realized just how far over
> the edge the myth had
> gone, in terms of both irrational optimism and
> irrational pessimism.
> 
> The truth is there isn't going to be any
> Singularity, in the usual
> definition of the word [. . .] if we go down, we
>die. I say we go
> up, and look to life, not
> death. What say you?

Well I for one see no point in betting against
ourselves in mortal combat. Rest assured I for one
will spit defiantly in the photodiode of any AI that
manages takes me down. On the bright side, we still
have time to hone our matter and energy domination
skills before the main event, which as Russell points
out may not happen at all. Rather than worrying about
it, I say we prepare for it. As any true pessimist of
the Murphy school would concur, any emergency that one
is prepared for seldom happens. 


Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

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