Anders Sandberg <asa@nada.kth.se>
> I prefer to imagine the future as an escalating exponential, which
> we ride while dodging or solving the problems that appear. There
> will be no End of History, just business as usual but each day
> infinitely grander and more complex than the previous one.
Yes, from inside it will be business as usual. When we are
"debating whether the Singularity will arrive in 2008 or 2030
nanoseconds", we must remember that, to us, these time frames will
become hugely vast extents of time. If they are not yet vast extents
of time, through which we can accomplish what once took a life time,
we will not yet have advanced to the point that we are that close to
the singularity.
And as you say, there will be no end to History. Surely one
of our goals will be to complete a perfect history of all time, or at
least, first, of all a near perfect history of all close to human
level life forms. Even at very steep exponential increases, the
millions and millions of such difficult jobs will surely take millions
and millions of years to accomplish.
> In fact, just adding a friendly SI to the current world is not
> obviously going to help. How is it really supposed to make religious
> fanatics nicer?
One of my favorite scenes in a movie (because it is so absurd)
is when Yule Brinner (Pharo) finally admits defeat to Charlton Heston
(Moses) by saying as he sits sulking on his now clearly defeated
throne: "His God IS God!". No real person would ever truly act this
way! If there was a God that could truly do something like prove hist
existence by parting the red sea the way Moses did, Pharo, faced with
the undeniable fact of its reality, would instantly repent, stop
fighting, and starting kissing up to such a being.
The point is, any real SI will be undeniably a God. Not a
childish damning vengeful jealous God that throws tantrums and who's
only supposedly undeniable miracles are to plague and destroy, but it
will be a God that can answer most all of our questions, give us any
material things we want, teach us and help us to become immortal....
and more or less give us anything we want.
The only reason the religious fundamentalists fight and war
with each other is because they all believe in a different God and
they think their particular God is God, that he is undeniably so, the
implication being that all others that do not think the same are the
enemy and must be destroyed. But when people really come in contact
with a Real Undeniable God that can do real good miracles, they will
finally all say: "Boy, that God IS God" and "My God was nothing even
close to this!"... Finally there will be no more reason to fight and
kill each other! They will repent, join in, kiss up (to science and
rationalism), and finally ask - "How do I become like that?! ;) And of
course, the SI will be able to answer this question. And guess what,
it's answer will really work for all like any true miracle should!
From our perspective, about the only thing you can be sure of
is that, whatever it is, it will at least be better than it is today.
We would never choose something worse than today!
Onward
Brent Allsop
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 10:00:01 MDT