On Thu, 30 Sep 1999, Robin Hanson wrote:
> Robert B. wrote:
> >Nanotech stands a good chance of leaving bankrupt most older
> >forms of wealth storage. If you aren't alive to manage it,
> >I would doubt you are going to wake up wealthy.
>
> I'm skeptical about this. A broad-based index mutual fund
> should work fine, as long as the index is remixed frequently
> to include new upstart forms of wealth. Even a stock fund
> would probably do fine, as new corporations should be big
> players in whatever the nanotech economy turns out to value
> most.
I agree, in theory. You may have to remix very fast or have an AI managing things however. In terms of "older forms", I was mainly thinking of gold, bonds, funds managed by risk-averse individuals, etc. Land remains an interesting question in my mind since as the saying goes "they aren't making any more of it" and the places with the naturally great weather, views, etc. are limited. Whether the desire for these places is offset by nanotech moving many more people into tall cities will be an interesting question. Does one want to live in the small house on Malabu Beach or on the 538th floor of the Floating Bahamas Tower?
> > (b) Reanimate using the first upload technology. ...
>
> That is my choice. I expect the first unfrozen will be uploads,
> and the first uploads will be the unfrozen. As I've argued
> before, descendants of the first uploads stand a good chance of
> grabbing a big chunk of all future wealth, just from selling
> their labor.
>
By "descendants", should I assume you mean self-evolved or copied entities?
So you think there are/will be frozen people who say "use the first available technology to upload" (even if the failure rate is say 70%)?
The question becomes what is "future wealth" and to what degree "labor" in any traditional sense will be displaced by "non-conscious" machines. From my perspective, the only wealth that might exist in the future is intellectual property (i.e. designs). But I think their value may be quite limited by open source designs.
The control of matter or energy might be considered wealth, but only to entities that put themselves on an exponantial "self"-growth path. If the first successful unfrozen does that, then one potential result would be the rest of us getting left in the cold and dark. If societies see that in advance then presumably they would try to outlaw it. So you could have the conscious entities operating in such a way as to prevent the unconscious entities from regaining consciousness.
Robert