[extropy-chat] Space: The Final Constraint

MB mbb386 at main.nc.us
Wed Jun 14 01:41:30 UTC 2006


> [...] But the context here is a thread about extinctions, and
> what felt like a dismissal of environmental concerns today because we'll
> just be able to simulate it later.  Or in your case, simulate the
> experience of it!  Dismissing real problems and *loss* today for the
> sake of hypothetical abilities tomorrow, to use your words, fills me
> with dismay.
>

Yes. If I'm just a brain in a vat plainly I cannot *really* hold my snakes
or pet my cat or dig in my garden or taste the fresh veggies.  Everything
physical will have to be simulated for me.

But I'm not (I don't think! ;) a brain in a vat at present, and the
physical still holds great charm for me. Heck, it gives my life purpose
and meaning.

I also object strongly to dissing the millions of years of natural
selection and evolution. We do not know enough to replicate things. Not
yet, not by a long shot. We don't even know what all is out there.  We
don't know how the weather works, we're just beginning to see some trends.
We don't know so damn much, it is startling, when we consider what we *do*
know. We couldn't make a house cat or a ball python or a flying fox if our
very lives depended on it. Can we make a hurricane? A tree?

So although this discussion is of some interest, it's not getting *me*
anywhere at all. Except upset! It does not seem to apply to my present
situation nor my forseeable future. Tossing away a complex reality because
some time in the future we may be able to make a low quality fake does not
strike me as an advance.

                      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Personally I think things will slowly change, rather as they have over the
last centuries. Telephones, radio, tv, cars - all are "new" to humanity.
Computers, airplanes and satellites are *very* new. But they're becoming
mainstream. As are dental implants, hip replacements, radically improved
cataract surgery, prostheses that respond to the patient's own nerves,
heart (and other) transplants, growing new bits for when you need them,
like skin. Computers that have more and more capability, that *will* learn
from what they do. And at some point they *will* be real AI. But I cannot
imagine where they'll go from there.

And at some point, these will all be ordinary, as bifocals are now. Or
false teeth. Or 40 GB harddisks. Nothing special there. There are cut-rate
places where you can buy those for minimal cost.

And some day in the future then-humanity will look back and see that there
was a radical change and they'll argue over whether it was "here" or
"there" or "somewhere else". And the Singularity will have come, only
folks likely won't see it at the time.

Rather like identifying when day becomes night. When you're well into it,
you can say, "It is night", but while it's changing it's still evening and
twilight and dusk...

Regards,
MB




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