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

[Kelly Anderson]

2011/7/2 Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com>:
> 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.

My point is that what people perceive currently to be in their self
interest is unlikely to turn on a dime.

>> 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.

The thing is that by the time the meme is widespread enough to prevent
the Singularity, it will already be too late for most people to change
their minds.

This is a timing issue. I don't disagree that people could catch the
transhumanist meme (whatever that is to you) and prevent catastrophy.
However, history is full of examples to the contrary. Easter Island,
Mohenjo Daro, etc. where the people didn't understand the problem
until it was too late to change the outcome. And at that point the
laggards were still using up the limited resources.

So here is an interesting question... looking at the impending
singularity as an Easter Island type event, what is the "limited
resource" we are all blindly consuming now?

-Kelly