[ExI] Best case, was Hard Takeoff

[Keith Henson]

Re these threads, I have not seen any ideas here that have not been
considered for a *long* time on the sl4 list.

Sorry.

I see in the *best* case a really friendly, helpful, nanotech medicine
capable AI changes humanity to the point it is as if the whole species
vanished.

How and why or when it happens are nearly immaterial.  Creatures who
were shaped by evolution to have a certain set of characteristic
desires for limited resources (particularly women and food/territory)
are just going to be radically different when those desires can be
easily met in either real or simulated worlds with trivial effort.
Technology advances could give us this world without AI, though it is
my opinion that the capacity to upload is the same we would need for
AI.

A closely related topic was this.

http://swns.com/one-million-men-dumped-because-of-computer-game-obsessions-151620.html

It's really amusing to analyze how this comes about using EP.

Why do people play computer games?  At the root of it, why do the
games tickle some part of our evolved brains?

The most direct rewarding tickle is sex, but improving opportunities
for sex ranks just about as high, maybe higher at times.

When our ancestors lived as hunter gatherers, nothing beat high social
status for getting nookie.  In the EEA high socal status for men was
the result of being a successful warrior or (in good times) a hunter

A friend commented that video games are just more interesting than
real life.  That's because opportunities to hunt mastodons are far and
few between today.  WoW gives the trill and the feeling of status gain
without the problem of being killed.  Play is essential to figure out
how human social status is gained.  For the most part gaining status
is not bad.  In the stone age kids learn to to be nice mostly, to
share what the killed, become known as a good warrior when needed.
For a million years these guys were the winners in reproduction.

Back to games, the very things that attracted people to do things
which would lead to lots of nookie in the olden days makes them WOW
addicts and reproductive losers today.

Same thing is going on with people who get into drugs or get involved
with cults.  One of them (which I won't name) aborts the women of the
inner circle who get pregnant which is the wrong way to go about
"reproductive success."

'Nuff ranting for today.  Off to do more or less real things.

Keith