Re: Future Perfect

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
18 Mar 1999 13:09:35 +0100

"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience@pobox.com> writes:

> And today's question is:
>
> Where do you want to live?
>
> Permutation City?
> The Culture?
> The High Beyond?
> (I'm guessing these will be the top three.)
> Or some creation of your own?

Hmm, tricky question. I assume "everywhere" isn't a good answer, but I relly would like to distribute myself into a wide variety of cultures, civilizations and states :-)

Permutation City (or the polises of _Diaspora_) might be a bit too isolationist for my taste, even if I find virtual universe construction very enjoyable.

The Culture is *fun*, but might become a slight bit bland - maybe I should join Contact or that trade/assimilator offshoot mentioned in _Excession_.

The High Beyond seems to be an interesting place - dangerous, but filled with potential. But I might be a bit too careful and risk aversive to get close to the Transcend.

Just like Dale I might enjoy the Logarchy. Having daemons enabling me to work on all sorts of projects at once, uniting art with technology in a very free way sounds like heaven. The problem might be that the political system has its drawbacks.

Stapledon's minded planets, galaxies and universes: no thanks, his descriptions sound somewhat boring, they just sit there being enlightened.

David Zindell's universe: Hmm, maybe Agathange would suit me, a life as a nanotechnologist porpoise could be fun. The Order seems a bit too conservative, but I'm an academic at heart and sometimes enjoy intrigue; however, they are limited from a transhuman point of view. And of course, a life as a Hakra jupiter-brain wannabee might be exciting (and short :-).

To sum up, I think I would like to live in the Logarchy, working to make it more dynamic. But I sure would want to visit the other cultures the rest of the list may end up in.

-- 
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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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