[ExI] Transhumanism from first principles

[Jef Allbright]

On 11/4/07, Bryan Bishop <kanzure at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sunday 04 November 2007 09:19, spike wrote:
> > I see no down side of this philosophy becoming a playground of
> > ideas for shaping the future.
>
> Signal-to-noise? But I also agree with you- we should encourage
> diversity, it is good, but how will we maintain the original signal?

I'm encouraged by the perspicacity of Bryan's comments in this thread,
and I share his concern for, in over-simplified terms, the quality of
the signal to noise.  I also share his interest and appreciation for
understanding in terms of principles (of thermodynamics, information
theory, complex systems, etc.)

I'll leave his reference to the question of morality (involving
theories of interactive epistemology, and of rational cooperation over
increasing context/scope) for another time.

I would like to highlight, however,  a common bias that has appeared
already a few times in this thread, relevant to the topic of the
thread itself, and which impedes our thinking about probable futures.

Bryan says here "but how will we maintain the original signal?"

and "has become a playground encompassing more than was originally, perhaps,
intended."

and quotes Natasha as saying "the commitment to overcoming human
limits in all forms..."

Each of these statements carries an implicit assumption of a fixed
reference for comparison, a heuristic effective within the environment
of our tribal ancestors, where change in the context of their daily
lives was indiscernible, but less applicable to contemporary life, and
quite inappropriate for extrapolation to complex, evolving futures.

We see the "original signal" as good, but its contextual environment
is evolving, so it too must adapt, or become irrelevant.

The "playground" does tend to encompass more and to become more
unruly, but as Spike pointed out, this is good.  It corresponds to the
evolutionary aspect of superabundance, feeding recombination and
mutation, followed by selection necessary for ongoing growth.

Natasha once said "overcoming human limits in all forms", but I know
she's a student of systems theory, and she might now appreciate that
extropy is not so much about overcoming limits but more coherently
about promoting ongoing meaningful growth.  The former assumes
knowledge of limits "out there" which is incoherent (can't be modeled)
precisely because it's "out there."  The latter assumes an open-ended
evolutionary model, working outward with no need to know what it is to
overcome. In fact all growth is defined by its constraints, and
intelligence is all about increasingly effective understanding and
exploitation of constraints rather than overcoming them in any
practical sense.

The foregoing, with some consideration of the dynamics of dissipative
systems from a first-person point of view within the system, might be
be reassuring with regard to *subjective* concerns [what other kind
could there be?) about the ultimate thermodynamic fate of the
universe.

- Jef