Robin Hanson wrote:
>
> Where are the people who believe that big technology-induced
> change is coming, and think that is a terrible thing?
This does not correspond to my experience, in which such people outnumber the optimists. While three out of four people who contact me are enthusiastic, explaining nanotechnology/uploading/Singularity to an intelligent person (who is a relative or acquaintance but not a known Extropian), ten out of fifteen believe and eight of those ten are frightened. Technophilia for modern gadgets predicts belief but not optimism.
Of course, certain over-optimistic Utopian-enthusiastic warfare-ignoring positive-feedback-atheist personality-persisting fantasy-of-omnipotence formulations may tend to produce optimism among those credible enough to believe it.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/AI_design.temp.html
http://pobox.com/~sentience/sing_analysis.html
Disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.