Re: Free Will

Brent Allsop (allsop@fc.hp.com)
Tue, 17 Aug 1999 10:06:26 -0600 (MDT)

J. R. Molloy <jr@shasta.com>,

Thanks for this great explanation of the law of comparative advantage. That's really cool how such anarchy systems self regulate themselves like this.

Julian Assange <proff@suburbia.net> original comment was:

> Those SI's which have motivation to control the substrates on which
> SI's are built shall proliferate and others will become food.
> The idea that SI's will do anything else with humanity but grind it up
> for spare atoms and is nothing short of religious faith.

This does seem to help current societies like the Amish who refuse to accept progress, but one might wonder if it will still apply to such backwards people when progressive people become hundreds of thousands of times more Godlike than today. But it seems to me people that think like Julian are missing the fact that the more powerfully advanced the leading people become, all resources become more abundant to everyone, not just the few at the top. Sure, the much more advance and Godlike people will have ever more than the Amish societies, but life for the Amish will still get better, though not as fast the more aggressive societies.

The more power an advanced set of people achieve, the easer it will be for them to simply stay out of the way of and more likely even help societies desiring something other than brute force aggressive progress.

As Max mentioned at Extro-4, this kind of zero sum thinking, where one society can only benefit and progress at the cost of some other society like Julian is thinking here is completely wrong. True, there is more difference today between the rich and the poor, but even the Amish or the most poor people of today have a hugely improved and a much longer life than the poor people of a hundred and even more so than a those of a thousand years ago. Take one example: before there was radio, when famine (or an evil dictator or whatever...) hit a large region of the world, no one on the other side of the world even knew about it. People just died and nobody else even knew about it, let alone cared. Today, it's front page news around the world and lots of powerful people do lots of things to try to help. There is no reason to think that good things like this will not get more and more prevalent as the most powerful people are able to do that much more to help than the most powerful yet still very limited and desperately wishing they could do more to help people of today.

We are finally growing beyond the primitive survival of the fittest dog eat dog to progress world. As is already clearly happening, from here on out things can finally only get better for everyone, not just the most fit.

Brent Allsop