Re: Risk vs. Payoff

From: Neal Blaikie (nrb@porterville.k12.ca.us)
Date: Thu May 10 2001 - 11:03:29 MDT


Emlyn wrote:

> Many here would argue that this
> is fundamentally at odds with extropianism, which has a more individualistic
> outlook... we would save ourselves, at the cost of the long term good of the
> species perhaps. Although it is not at all clear that this is a required
> tradeoff.

If this is true, it may explain why I am not quite willing to say "I am an
Extropian," while as the same time sharing many of the same interests and
values. I'm all for my own individual autonomy and freedom (particularly from
death), but am also concerned about everyone else's--not from any altruistic
sense, but from a practical one. If we're to take, or reclaim, or assert, or
manufacture this freedom for ourselves, there is great danger in at least not
offering it to everyone. (Anyone, of course, has the right to refuse it.)

> Death is death is death. Natural selection is all well and good, it's gotten
> us this far. However, it's capricious, and it's cruel. The idea that
> intelligent beings would willingly submit themselves to it's tempest, given
> the option to not, is ludicrous.
>
> I think the point that you are wanting to make is that natural selection is
> more efficient than the alternative, whatever that may be. I don't think
> that's necessarily so. The idea of becoming transhuman is that we can shape
> ourselves as we see fit, and as is best to meet the challenges of our
> environment. We can use many tools to do this, simulated natural selection
> amongst them. Plain vanilla natural selection (ie: kill lots of intelligent
> beings, repeat) is an extremely slow way to improve our fitness in the
> universe. It would be ludicrous to suppose, for example, that you could put
> a population of practically immortal transhumans next to a population of
> naturally evolving humans, and expect the "natural" humans to compete.
>
> Evolution is fine, fabulous. Natural selection is clumsy, slow, tyranical,
> and incredibly inefficient. Take it down from the pedestal.

Well put! It's long been my contention that where natural selection ends,
artifical selection begins (this is an oversimplification). Intelligent agents
(ourselves, for instance) then become responsible for their own evolution, and
for the evolution of intelligence in general, using whatever tools they are
capable of making. Since we humans have evolved through natural selection to
the point where we can do this, I don't see how it could be anything but
"natural" for us to do so. If we were to continue to rely only on "plain
vanilla natural selection" (as if we could, now), we'd pretty much be headed
for stagnation or extinction.

A similar perspective is presented much more eloquently in the last chapter of
Wyn Wachhorst's The Dream of Spaceflight: Essays on the Near Edge of Infinity,
a book I would highly recommend. His writing is sort of a cross between Carl
Sagan and Loren Eiseley.

Neal Blaikie



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