[extropy-chat] Singularity Blues

[Samantha Atkins]

On Apr 5, 2005, at 9:11 AM, Mike Lorrey wrote:

> I think history shows that not only are humans more capable than cynics
> think to handle change, actual change tends to be far less dramatic
> than the cynics fear and the optimists hope for.

We are not talking about something that has any historical analogue.   
So historical experiences of change are disastrously irrelevant.


> Despite the
> dislocation portrayed by Egan in "Singularity Sky", I have some doubts
> that things will be so bad for us as we gradually ease into the event
> horizon.

Since the subject is about whether humans are ready for or will survive 
Singularity, we will tie off one possibility and instead say that 
humans remain largely as they are - still human in common 
understanding.

At some point the self-evolving intelligence of our creations far 
outstrips our ability to keep up on any level sufficient to give even 
the illusion of control.  That is about as "gradual" as it gets.   At 
no point in recorded history have we been unable in principle to 
understand, predict and control events around us.   In short,  original 
issue humans will be too inferior to direct much of the world around 
them.   They might  be kept around anyway though.

Want a softer alternative?  OK, no self-evolving AI but humans figure 
out more and more technology.  Remember by our rule that there are 
strict limits on how much of the technology gets applied to them lest 
they become other than human and thus no longer within the domain of 
our discussion.  Then without changes sufficient to overcome a lot of 
evolution laid dangerous programming, we become super technology 
powered versions of what we see around us today.   We each have more 
real power for good or ill with no functionally greater intelligence 
and no better oversight and control of our evolutionary programming 
than today.   Somehow that doesn't seem long term viable to me.   We 
also would be inhabiting a faster continuously faster moving and more 
interconnected world.  At some point our strictly limited abilities and 
our proclivities would result in an inability to make critical 
decisions correctly and in the relevant timeframe to be effective.     
Sometimes I believe we already have reached that point.

>  Most people will choose to live their lives out as they always
> have, with a few marked improvements, and change will happen, but
> outside of those who fear change reacting more strongly to it, change
> will happen and people will adapt because people have been adapting to
> change for a century or more now.


You don't seem to have much idea what is coming, or you don't believe 
it.

- samantha