[ExI] text singularity

Fri Jan 13 03:14:25 UTC 2023

…> On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] text singularity

>…Pondering the meaning of life has wasted more time in human history than sex, violence, foraging, killing something, or anything else…

Eh Billw, the way the comment is worded almost makes it sound like that list of items compared to pondering the meaning of life are also meaningless.  On the contrary, sex and foraging are definitely not a waste of time, killing something is a form of foraging, and violence is ambiguous (in some cases it is beneficial.)

There are a lot of ways I could go with it.  We get tangled up in meaning of life questions, and does the universe have a point and all that, but look at it this way: for most of the history of this planet, more specifically most of the history of life on this planet, the life was all just blue-green algae.  That doesn’t seem all that meaningful to me, pointless really.  But it was all leading up to something pointful.  If it hadn’t resulted in multicellular life, it would seem pointless still.

If humans experience a series of singularities in which most humans find ourselves with nothing to do and no value to mankind, I can still find some pointfulness to it: we are having fun here.  Living is fun.  I am having fun living now, even if I have no job and I am not needed by anyone.  I need me,  for I cannot have fun without me.

>…If you could program people not to ever think of the question, would you do it?  bill w

No.  If we freed up all that extra time, what would we do with it?  Violence.  Foraging.  Killing something, probably.  No deal.  

Oh wait, sex.  Hmmmm, OK Billw, perhaps I would program people to not think of the question, just to free up time.  Well, better idea, I would program the ladies to not think about that question, leave the men to ponder the meaning of life all they want.  Good idea Billw!

Hey perhaps that’s what happened on Elba II in the original series season 3 episode 14, Whom Gods Destroy, with Kirk and the green chick.

spike

On Thu, Jan 12, 2023 at 6:22 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

…> On Behalf Of Gadersd via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] text singularity

>…Answers don’t matter unless there is someone to care about the answers. Maybe the machines will just do the job but not really care about what is accomplished. If the machines could be proven to care on an emotional level then that would be a different story… Gadersd

Ja.  There might still be people, even if they have nothing to do.  

One might suppose answers don’t need to matter.  We need not suppose that there would be no one to care.  We can suppose that in the future, we need not do anything about anything, because we cannot.

When you think about it, for most of human history, people cared about stuff but couldn’t do anything about it.  We could go back into that mode, where we care, but cannot do.  

We can still have existential crises, however.  Let’s see software do THAT.  Heh.  We can ponder the meaning of life WAY better than some software which doesn’t even have life.

spike

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