[extropy-chat] Bluff and the Darwin award.

[KAZ]

----- Original Message ----
From: Keith Henson <hkhenson at rogers.com>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 16, 2006 3:10:31 PM
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Bluff and the Darwin award.


> In really broad brush now is the time to think about the relations we would 
> like the AI "gods" and human uploads to have with whatever is left of the 
> physical world and the people in it.

Isn't it likely that the AIs and others will have no more interest in messing with humanity than we have of messing with particularly harmless strains of bacteria?
 
Technology, in effect, "creates" resources where none existed before, by changing what is useful and how it's desirable to use it, as well as by exponentially increasing efficiency. The technologies centering around oil "created" a substitute for wood, coal, stone, and steel out of "nothing" (something which was regarded as an unfortunate blight upon any land which had it). We have "created" trillions of new barrels of oil in the last few decades, by improving our location and extraction techniques...therefore it seems likely that AI could advance so quickly, technologically, as to not really see us as a threat to what THEY consider precious resources, much as you and I aren't worried about people building log cabins in Montana.

> Incidentally, the consequences of the singularity not being "soon" are 
> rather dire, the death of a large part of the world's population in wars 
> and other events driven by too many people and too few resources.

This has been the fear since the days of Thomas Maltus, and I've never seen any evidence that it's more than the fallacy of static analysis.
 
In reality, resources keep expanding /faster/ than humanity, thanks to technology, and despite all the warfare the world keeps becoming more populated (yet not truly overpopulated, aside from inefficient resource distribution thanks to socialism) and prosperous, not falling into the disaster that Mathusians predicted by 1800, then by 1850, then by 1900, et cetera.
 
--
Words of the Sentient:
He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. --J.S.  Mill

E-Mail: KazVorpal at yahoo.com
Yahoo Messenger/AIM/AOL: KazVorpal
MSN Messenger: KazVorpal at yahoo.com
ICQ: 1912557
http://360.yahoo.com/kazvorpal