[ExI] 10 Predictions About the Future That Should Scare the Hell Out of You

[Adrian Tymes]

On Jul 18, 2016 9:19 AM, "BillK" <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:
> George Dvorsky has an article in Gixmodo. 13 July 2016
> The future looks bright, except when it doesn’t.
> Here are 10 exceptionally regrettable developments we can expect in
> the coming decades.
> Listed in no particular order.
>
> <
http://gizmodo.com/10-predictions-about-the-future-that-should-scare-the-h-1783538821
>
>
> Being of a pessimistic outlook (i.e. a realist) all ten scenarios seem
> pretty likely to me, some sooner than others.

They're things to watch out for, sure, but most of them can be guarded
against.  Authoritarian governments, for instance, can be resisted in the
same fashion they always have been, regardless of their reasons for
desiring tighter control.  ("But but they'll be authoritarian and use
military force", or any knee jerk response along those lines, has already
been answered if you look at what has eventually happened to most previous
governments that did that.)

Number two is the old identity fallacy: insisting that someone thinking
they are the same identity after some significant shift (like being
uploaded) must inherently be mistaken for no other reason than that shift.
But there are similar shifts in human beings which we do not take as cause
to have someone believe the former identity is dead and this is now some
new person inhabiting the same flesh.  (Granted, some people do believe
that - "that's not my mother/wife/daughter, clearly she must be a demon/a
spirit/an imposter" - but we treat such cases as mental illness on the part
of those who insist the old person is dead and refuse to recognize the new
person as a person at all, let alone the same person but changed.  I
suspect the same approach might start being used once there are actual
uploads who others attempt to treat as nonpersons with this justification,
rather than because of some demonstrable and measurable lack of mental
capacity on the upload's part.)

Number ten is...so?  It is possible, no matter how unlikely some may claim,
that we really are the first sentient life to arise within our lightcone
(or even within the entire local cluster so far, whether or not light from
other species' stone age campfire equivalents would have reached us yet).
That would not be a disaster for us, nor would it be any sort of herald of
such.
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