[ExI] POST-SCARCITY SYMBOLS Launched

[Keith Henson]

On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 5:00 AM,  Singularity Utopia
<singularity.utopia at yahoo.com> wrote:

snip

> We create reality. We can easily create utopia. Despite some people not
> believing utopia is possible I assure you it is possible and it will happen.

You may be right.  Actually I *hope* you are right.

However, the evidence is not in favor of it.  Either we are the first
technophilics in our light cone or the singularity process deletes
itself in some way.  Or they don't make any visible difference in the
wild universe we see out there.

snip

> You can control your dreams. You can dream of whatever you want to. You >  can dream of utopia and your dreams can become real.

Perhaps this is colored by being involved a *long* time.  I have been
up on the elements of the singularity since the late 1970s.  Know Eric
Drexler, wrote space engineering papers with him, helped edit Engines
of Creation, wrote a column for Alcor's Cryonics magazine, learned
enough cardiac surgery to put patients on bypass.  RU Serius talks
about me being an original (ur) transhumanist.

My most optimistic view is that the friendly AIs will eat our brains
(make reversible uploaded life more attractive than physical life).
They may even convince us that we are still in charge when we really
have the status cats have to us.  I put this in a story here:
http://www.terasemjournals.org/GN0202/henson.html

Comment on it if you like.

In the meantime, how about some background?  How much education?  What
fields?  Have you read the basic materials about the singularity?  Are
you signed up with a cryonics organization?

Keith Henson

PS.  For the people advocating various economic systems, in
Accelerando Charles Stross goes into AIs effectively allocating
resources, better than what the market can do.  That system is
displaced by Economics 2.0 which sounds very much like the programmed
trading that nearly melted down the stock market a few months ago.

Incidentally, Charlie was a participant on the early version of this
list, back in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  Many of the ideas in
that book have origins in the list discussion of those days.  (And he
does an excellent job of making them into plausible fiction.)