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

[Keith Henson]

At 08:24 AM 5/1/2007 +0100, you wrote:
>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 all remnant humans have withdrawn into simulations (under the lofty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.
>--------------

I wrote about this 20 years ago in a nanotechnology context.

"Another problem is how to improve ourselves without getting completely lost.
Today the mental modules at the root of our personalities change slowly if at
all.  When our deepest desires can be quickly modified with trivial effort, how
much of us will survive?  The results of modifying ourselves could be as tragic
as being modified by others.*  This and nanotechnology based "super dope" that
make everyone happy but without ambition (or even the desire to eat) are among
the subtle dangers we face.  It is time for those of us who are concerned about
our futures to start thinking about these problems."

But the idea has been around *much* longer.  I remember a short story about 
a time traveler who finds the world almost deserted, then he is grabbed and 
stuffed in an entertainment machine becoming the lead in a cowboy movie.

Keith