[extropy-chat] SOC: Nano-santas and society [was: PHIL: Derrida and Deconstruction]

[Robert Bradbury]

On 11/3/06, Anders Sandberg <asa at nada.kth.se> wrote:

> I'm at the 4S (Society for Social Studies of Science) conference in
> Vancouver right now, surrounded by amazing amounts of postmodern thought
> (and other styles I don't even know what to call). It is great fun,
> especially since I don't have a great stake in it.


Some people get to have all the fun... :-(

But at the same time it was so clear that this was done from the
> perspective of *another* machine, this one producing analysis, concerns
> and criticism for a living. Just as the military industrial complex is a
> business so is academia. But admitting it is impossible for either, since
> both have to hide their essential self-servingness under the image of
> "protecting democracy" or "intellectual inquiry" (of course, some people in
> these respective machines actually strive for these goals, but to thrive you
> have think about the bottom line, whether it is counted in
> dollars or tenure probability).


This little paragraph says a lot!  Because both machines can pay a lot for
the "stars" one has to wonder how it will play out as the siege machines
begin to disassemble the castles.

One is seeing the start of this, as Spike and others have mentioned, with
the disassembly of the traditional "media" (news & 3-channel TV) by (a)
cable; (b) Satellite and/or Internet radio; (c) blogs; (d) consumer specific
advertising (google & gmail).  I haven't yet seen it creep into Academia --
MIT & Stanford seem to have some online courses but one has to wonder *why*
I can't sit in a house in MA (or India) and have Nobel prize winning
physicists or Pulitzer Prize winning writers teach me and in return I make a
deposit via PayPal based on my perceived quality of the lecture [1].  This
would take apart the *entire* structure of undergraduate education around
the world.  The only "real" work in academia seems to be at the edges (in
the graduate world) where one is taking apart stuff which has yet to be
understood or inventing stuff from scratch.  Q: Much of academia seems ripe
to have the rug pulled out from under it -- why doesn't this seem to be
happening?

The Military-Industrial Complex is a different can of worms.  But its raison
d'etre largely goes away once the nano-santas arrive (at least one can
hope).  Why does one want to "conquer" (or "destroy") anything if all of
ones survival needs are easily met [2].  One can imagine certain individuals
who have a mindset that seeks to "control" everything but if these are kept
in check then everyone else simply gets to go "play".  For example once I
live in a relocatable "nano-home" in international waters with my own
personal defense system (remember my discussion about "simple mass defense")
I am (a) not paying taxes to support said complex; and (b) could care less
about the survival of the U.S.  Q: Will sufficient numbers of people buy
into this that the MIC will decay from within (i.e. why would one work for
them if one didn't have to?) or without (i.e. the market for ones services
has evaporated?)

One has to wonder about this given the tendency of the M.I.C. to take
emotion out of the equation (remotely piloted planes, self-driving cars,
etc.).  Will it become something that keeps going and going and going due to
its own inertia?  (AIs managing AIs that do the "killing"?)

Robert

1. I've had professors that were or would be Nobel prize winners, listened
to some at conferences and actually had dinner with one.  Some were
impressive some were not.
2. This is a doubling time question.  Once the technology for "meeting human
needs" exists and it can produce itself faster than the rate at which humans
can reproduce (assuming one doesn't enable unlimited uploading & copying)
then one is effectively living in "paradise".
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