[ExI] Meanwhile in China...

[Keith Henson]

On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 1:43 PM,  The Avantguardian
<avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:

snip

> Well if Keith is right and the combination of AGI and nanotech?is going to?cause
> the extinction of the human race, maybe we are better off having it start in
> China. It would give the west time to prepare. Maybe I am a bit humanocentric
> but most of my loved ones are human.

It's possible for the human race to go extinct or close to it (remnant
population) and only a few people die in the process.  Easy,
reversible uploading is probably enough to cause it.  I explored this
in "The Clinic Seed" a chapter in a larger work set in a nearly
depopulated world.  (I don't know how to set a story in a completely
depopulated world.)

But having the singularity start in China would not help the west in
any way.  Unless you are on top of the unfriendly AGI problem before
it reaches takeoff, it seems unlikely you could do anything about it.

I am aware of a worm some years ago that had a doubling time around 8
seconds and the fact that there are programs that play the stock
market on a time scale of milliseconds.

Keith