Re: extropians-digest V7 #22

From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Thu Jan 24 2002 - 04:17:19 MST


Wayne Hayes wrote:

> "Louis Newstrom" <newsnewstrom@home.com> writes:
>
>>I think most of you have missed the real problems with surviving
>>[the Singularity]. Money.
>>

Personally, I doubt money as we know it will survive MNT, much
less the Singularity. And I believe any hard take-off scenario
largely makes how much money you do or do not have fairly
irrelevant.

>
> I doubt money will be a problem. If you can think a million times
> faster than the average human, then you hire yourself out as a
> consultant for --- virtually anything that requires thought. Then you
> spend a month (or a year) of subjective time pondering the question
> posed to you, and then get back to your client with an answer before
> they've had time to finish their coffee.
>

That assumes that all information necessary for solving the
problem is already fully accessible and at high speed. If much
of the information must be supplied by slower entities and
systems then an instantaneous in "real-time" solution will not
be possible. Also, many very interesting problems are not
entirely contained in information-computation space. There is
another caveat in that wealthy purchasers of your services could
also purchase the services of dedicated AI. So your most likely
higher prices for most likely less computational raw power would
  probably only be purchased when that posthuman touch was
required.

        - samantha



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