Psychoengineering was Re: [extropy-chat] The existential threat ofinternational law

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On 12/24/05, Hughes, James J. <james.hughes at trincoll.edu> wrote:
> > ### As if building a world-spanning apparatus of enforcement,
> > ...would stop torture, rather
> > than leave no sanctuary for the victims.
>
> Some believe the best way to protect human rights is to eliminate
> states, and some (like me) believe it is to build political cultures and
> states that can protect human rights. Since I only see empirical
> evidence for the latter, and not the former, I think the burden of proof
> is on the anarchists. I would rather have the rights enjoyed by Swedes
> than those enjoyed by Somalis.

### We have been over this ground before, even the examples are the
same. Let me then repeat some of my previous answers:

You cannot compare Swedes and Somalis because they differ in more than
political organization - political culture differs as well. Compare
Somalis and Rwandans, or rather, the numbers of murdered Somalis and
exterminated Rwandans. Compare Swedes with Americans - look at the
economic growth rates, general affluence, and cultural diversity to
see the pernicious effects of state-enforced conformity. Compare North
and South Korea, and then compare Hong Kong and mainland China.
Finally, compare the levels of corruption and waste at the UN, as
close to the maxi-state as you get, to the corruption and waste in
Luxembourg, the mini-state.

These valid comparisons are direct empirical evidence that human
flourishing happens best when the state is reduced to a minimum
necessary to protect private property, which in turn happens best when
there is a competition between states for citizens, which in turn
crucially depends on the absence of the World Government. Depending on
the political culture, the minimum size of the state necessary to
assure protection of private property may be a low as zero (i.e.
complete absence of the state in some isolated small societies).
Conversely, a large state influence invariably destroys the fabric of
the society by promoting violence and theft.

Therefore, your stated intention of building political cultures
capable of protecting the so-called "human rights" (itself a loaded
term) is at odds with the means you propose. You are guaranteed to
destroy human rights if you were to achieve universal world
domination. I am quite confident that the WG would be more similar to
1984 and Uganda than to Sweden.

--------------------------------------

>
> > Maybe we will be even able to live symbiotically with
> > borgans, like intestinal bacteria live in us.
>
> I'm very impressed with your description of the borganismic evolutionary
> possibility, and agree with you. I've talked about the erosion of
> discrete, autonomous, continuous individuality as the coming "political
> Singularity" since it would be an end of the consensual illusions that
> undergird liberal individualism.  Our values - such as "one person, one
> vote" or "free, fully informed choices" - would become meaningless. Nick
> Bostrom has gestured at Borganisms as a "whimper" version of an
> existential threat.
>
> I'm also disturbed by this prospect, as you are, because social
> democrats and anarchists share the autonomous individual as a starting
> point, even if we come to different conclusions about ideal political
> order. As you also suggest, our understanding of the way Borganisms
> might work, and what values they might manifest, have been
> overly-determined by our experiences with fascism, theocracy and
> totalitarianism. (The fear of psycho-engineered totalitarianism is what
> led Frank Fukuyama to decide there had not in fact been an "end of
> ideology.") It is equally possible that there might be liberal
> borganisms, hierarchial or non-hierarchical borganisms, borganisms
> devoted only to imperial "self interest" and borganisms that have
> "selfless" goal structures.

### Indeed, this is the case. Looks like the farther away we get from
talking about current politics, the less we disagree.

-------------------------------------------
> Some of the fiction that I think is helpful in imagining these varieties
> is:
>
> - John C. Wright's Phoenix series, which imagines a society in which
> humanity has been borged, and de-borged, and now has borganisms and
> individuals in co-existence;
>
> - Alastair Reynolds' idea of the Conjoiners, among whom there is a great
> deal of individual identity, although other species fear being absorbed
> into their collective;
>
> - Stephen Baxter's Convergence, which suggests that the evolution of
> human collectives into vole-like insectile borganisms is an ever-present
> evolutionary dead-end that future individualist posthumans will have to
> stamp out like rat nests

### I would also add some books by Greg Egan ("Diaspora"), Robert
Heinlein (some of the Methuselah stories feature borganisms), and
Stanislaw Lem ("The Invincible").
---------------------------------
>
> Bringing it back to world governance, I don't think it would be a step
> towards borganism. In fact, since I believe emergent borganisms, like
> religious cults and totalitarian states, are likely to be seen as
> threats to the rest of us, and global governance will likely be
> necessary to suppress borganisms and protect the global individualist
> majority as long as possible.
>
### Actually I agree with you that the World Government would not
necessarily lead to the World Borg but I don't see it as an argument
in its favor. The WG could save us from the borg, just as you say, but
only by preventing the singularity and by universally suppressing
scientific progress. This would lead to a long period of inevitable
stagnation and eventual decline into outright tyranny, followed by
breakup and titanic bloodshed, similar to what happened in China but
on a much bigger scale. Any hopes for personal immortality would be
squashed right at the start (just imagine a World-Bush on stem cell
work). The WG cure would be likely worse than the Borg disease. I'd
rather take my chances with a SAI than give up my life to an
anti-progress regime.

Luckily, the singularity will most likely happen long before the
changes in political culture needed for the formation of the World
Government take place.

Rafal