[extropy-chat] Yesterday's Seminar on Transhumanism and Religion in Second Life

[BillK]

On 5/1/07, Damien Broderick wrote:
> I wrote one 30 years ago, published finally in 1982, in which almost
> all remnant humans have withdrawn into simulations (under the lofty
> custodianship of human-AI cyborgs). I never dreamed it would take so long. :)
>

This scenario is often offered as the reason for Fermi's paradox.
<http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/05/why_we_havent_met_any_aliens.php>

This writer uses EP failings in modern man to support his thesis.

Quotes:
As a result, brains must evolve short-cuts: fitness-promoting tricks,
cons, recipes and heuristics that work, on average, under ancestrally
normal conditions. The result is that we don't seek reproductive
success directly; we seek tasty foods that have tended to promote
survival, and luscious mates who have tended to produce bright,
healthy babies. The modern result? Fast food and pornography.

Fitness-faking technology tends to evolve much faster than our
psychological resistance to it.

This is the Great Temptation for any technological species—to shape
their subjective reality to provide the cues of survival and
reproductive success without the substance.
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Sounds reasonable to me.

BillK