[ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell)

[Stefano Vaj]

On 29 June 2011 05:43, Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com> wrote:

> What if the Singularity can only be avoided if human beings and
> corporations and countries stop acting in self-interested ways as
> modeled by economists?
>

I suspect "self-interest" to be at the end of story an empty, formal
concept.

This is why the classic economic theory is not falsifiable in a Popperian
sense, because whatever an economic subject chooses to do or prefers is by
definition what he considers its "self-interest"; or, in other terms, the
"self-interest" of an economic subject is defined as what it chooses to do
or prefers.

It remains to be seen *what* an economic subject actually considers its
"self-interest" to be. And this is not a given, but is determined
culturally. Not by the economy, not by the "nature". Nor it can be even
remotely considered as "universal", since it varies wildly from an era to
another, from an individual to another, from a civilisation to another.


> This does not seem likely to me, so I think progress will
> continue to march forward unabated until it all collapses into anarchy
> or explodes into utopia (at least for some).
>

What if what we are inclined to see as "progress" from our peculiar
perspective is nothing else than an arbitrary abstraction of the legacy of a
number of rather dramatic revolutions and paradigm shifts which took place
only because *a will was there* (and sometimes against all bets), and which
could have very well never happened, or could have happened in an altogether
different direction?

If we zoom in on human history, stagnation and regression might well be the
normal state of things, superficially and very rarely punctuated by
extraordinary changes which were originally the feat of very small group of
people.

Bacteria remains amongst the very dominant species of our ecosystem, but
their strategy has involved very little "progress" in the last gigayear...

This is why I think that a self-aware trashumanist stance is crucial.
Because if we embrace change and fight for it we have a chance to achieve
what we dream of, if we do not, our best chance is that of congratulate
ourselves for what are at best progressive refinements and fine-tunings
operated by complacent dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants.

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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