[ExI] government corruption & Transhumanism

[painlord2k at libero.it]

Il 27/02/2009 14.13, G P SINGH ha scritto:

> there be corruption that day ?

It is not "if" but "how much".
If you think that becoming posthuman will solve the problem of human 
fallibility, you are deceiving yourself.
The post-humans could be less fallible than the current humans, but it 
will be fallible. Given the new problems he/she/whatever will find it 
could, at the end, be as fallible as us.


> Corruption is basically a problem of valuation and costing.

Corruption is a problem of power and control.
Two people in a free market are not corrupting each other, because they 
are freely exchanging their property.
Corruption happen when one of the two or both exchange what is not 
theirs and do what is not his/their duty to do.

> There is a
> difference in pricing so two people get into consensus mode and then
> mutually satisfying relationship begin which happens to be illegal.

It is not simply illegal, it must be about betraying the duty of one of 
the two.

> In
> this context let me take case of president Obama what he must be going
> through daily morning in this RECESSION ? His thoughts while
> brushing... "how to get more money ? , what if public money gets abused
> , what if people starve out of job loss ? What if people get into
> illegal acts ? , and there will be so many what ifs. So what i mean to
> say that he is also aware of negative fall out of his administration &
> corruption but simply he can not do anything to solve problem of
> corruption.

What about "Hope and Change"?
It is becoming "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any 
further." (cit.)

The problem of corruption, if not solved, will eat anything good.
Corruption imply not only thief but also inefficiency.
The corrupted will destroy or misuse 1 M of $ to appropriate 10 K $.
So the damage produced will be extended.
Larger the government, greater the corruption.

> As a technologist and scientist our job is to think out the problem and
> help government to make the citizens quality of life as best possible
> through technological values.

Do you think this is the duty of the government?
What about ice creams free for all?
Who decide what will do the quality of life better? The government or 
the single citizens. And when different citizens or citizens groups have 
conflicting priorities?

> MIRCO'S point of using recording
> technology is great but it is intrusive which violate basic human right.

Be part of the government is voluntary only.
There must be a price to be paid to wield a power so large and must be 
proportionate to the power wielded.

> Will you accept that if you are administrator of New York City? So there
> may be other ways of solving it without creating 'creative destruction'
> of existing working system of values.

This is not a "creative destruction" of existing system of values (that 
they work is debatable).
This is "great power, great responsibilities and great accountability".

> In such structure of innovation, i was thinking of more efficient
> systems for valuation of asset. Can machines do evaluation ? For example
> suppose there is one person of the age of 29 years has got 12 infections
> of cold then can a machine calculate his life insurance premium by
> calculating his expected life?




> So the corruption is basically problem of creating a machine which can
> do cognitive evaluation of value ? Am i right ?

Absolutely NO.
Evaluation of value is subjective.
And it is not really computable.
Evaluation depend on wants and needs, so when people have different 
wants and needs there must be different evaluations. Then thing always 
change, so past evaluations must be always checked and rechecked and can 
change without notice.

> Is it not repeating the crime is secret question ? What about the idea
> of corrutpion as valuation problem as above ?

The problem is that you don't defined corruption as I do.
It would be useful you define explicitly what you consider "corruption" 
in theory and try to do a few examples.


> Corruption is a global unifier. Every person, public, private or virtual
> suffers from it so calling corruption as only through government is
> insult of grand word like corruption.

I suppose the word will have no feeling.
Without power there can not be corruption; it can be stupidity, hubris, 
naivety, evilness or other. But corruption is about power, not about 
mistakes.


> You have given three solutions

> 1. Reduce discretionary authority
> 2. Use recording technology
> 3. Select genetically incorruptibles

> Agreed to all three. First one is obvious operational solution. Second
> is good one but issue of intrusion into privacy counts substantially.
> Third one require identification of gene of corruption. And it also
> divides people into two categories . Corruptibles and Incorruptibles ...
> What about different degrees of corruption ?

If he/she/it can think and have goals different from respecting the 
rules it can be corrupted. Free will is the cause of corruption.
Anyone have its price and sometimes it is not money but something else.
It could be a child, a dark secret to be keep secret, a need, a want.

People difficult to corrupt are people that internalize rules so 
strongly that they will don't broke them whatever the price is.

I think that really incorruptibles would classified as mental patients, 
obsessive compulsive for sure. They would be so, because they can not 
control their urge to follow the rules, whatever they are.

Mirco