[ExI] reddit on Shortwhile

[Samantha Atkins]

On 03/21/2011 05:47 PM, Keith Henson wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 4:59 PM,  Bryan Bishop<kanzure at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>> I'm just interested in knowing if it's because his work has been discredited
>> and redditors don't bother mentioning this to me when they comment on what I
>> say or if it's simply because redditors are more agreeable with Bill Joy's
>> interpretation of technological progress.
> That's a bit weird if not entirely unexpected.  Ray Kurzweil and Bill
> Joy don't really differ very much, they both expect runaway
> technology, neither one of them thinks it can be stopped.  Both were
> partly inspired by Eric Drexler (among others).
>
> But Ray thinks we can do neat, and even good stuff with stuff like AI
> and nanotech while Bill thinks it will be the end of us (or that's
> what he thought the last time I was up on his thinking).
>

Well, it was a bit more than that.  In the Wired article from Bill Joy 
he actually advocated relinquishment of further progress in several 
technological areas.  I am not sure how much his opinion has changed.  I 
remember at a Foresight conference he attended it seemed that he was 
pretty sure that such relinquishment either would not happen or at least 
not globally.   It was unclear to me at the time whether his views had 
softened.  I did admire him for coming to a conference where almost 
everyone disagreed with his position pretty strongly.

> They might both be right.

I don't see anything right about relinquishment of progress.

- samantha