[extropy-chat] converging history

Samantha Atkins samantha at objectent.com
Fri Dec 26 06:17:51 UTC 2003


On Sun, 21 Dec 2003 19:27:49 -0800
"Spike" <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:

> Please look at this figure for a minute:
> 
> file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/spike/Local%20Settings/Temporary%2
> 0Internet%20Files/OLKA6/Intel_Roadmap_2003.gif
> 

I'm supposed to be able to see a figure on hour "C:" drive?

> then explain to me how humanity could be doing anything
> other than converging towards an inevitable singularity.
> Clearly ours is a species in open-loop, with no apparent
> equilibrium point that can possibly be re-established.

Because the only superpower on earth is being run by extremely reactionary forces determined to preserve the status quo (re their current relative importance and power) at all costs?  Add in an "Intellectual Property" structure so intent on extracting every penny that innovation is something only big companies with lots of lawyers can afford in various fields of endeavor.  Or perhaps the lack of any real vision just leaves everything moving too slow and every advance being doled yout bit by byte at as high a cost (read high entropy) as possible to again get mine before some you takes it all.  In short, singularity is far from inevitable. Never underestimate the power of human stupidity and general cussedness.


> Any large star inevitably goes supernova, spewing metals
> into the cosmos, which eventually form planets elsewhere,
> which will form life, given the right mix of elements and 
> conditions. 

Actually, opinion varies a lot about just how extreme and rare the proper conditions for life, much less highly intelligent life, are.

? Life may have long periods of equilibrium,
> such as our own 3 billion years of blue-green algal mats,
> but something like multicellular life must eventually
> happen, or so it would seem. 

There is no "must" to it.  Such a possibility exists but it is by no means inevitable for any particular planet or set of stars.

> If there is multicellular
> life, there is interspecies competition, and every available
> ecological niche is eventually filled.  One obvious ecological
> niche is the one humans inhabit: scentient intelligence
> sufficient to modify the environment to its own needs.
> In that niche exists competition for resources and
> competition for mates, which leads to ever more creativeness
> and ever greater intelligence.  

Not inevitable.  Only enough intelligence and other abilities to be not go extinct is neccessarily  required of living species.  

>Societal equilibria may be
> reached in many or perhaps most of those cases, but
> it only takes one society somewhere to precipitate something 
> analogous to the industrial revolution, which makes it
> inevitable as all hell, and when that happens, automated 
> control of machines is clearly desired, leading
> eventually to mechanical computers, then improvements
> leading to electronics, then artificial intelligence appears
> to me to be absolutely unavoidable in the long run, which
> leads to AI and eventually to uploading and the construction 
> of MBrains, to use all the available metals in the star system.
> 

Geez, and you put down religious people for stringing together a lot of hypotheticals, assumptions, telology and wishful thinking.  

> So the history of life apparently eventually converges on 
> this solution, utterly regardless of the path it takes to 
> get there.  
> 
> Please, what am I doing wrong in this line of reasoning?  
> Where is the stepping off point?
> 

You are assuming what you wish to occur.  You are assuming that it is inevitable, that we really can't fuck it up.  You are building on top of that assumption or perhaps sawing off the limb it rests on by assuming that full on singularity is inevitable everywhere there is any really possibility of life.   In actuality we will be damn lucky not to do something stupid to ourselves or get in the way just a bit too long to insure our survival much less that we upload and live happily ever after.    There is nothing to be taken for granted although there is everything to gain.  

- samantha



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