Re: Singularity-worship
Peter C. McCluskey (pcm@rahul.net)
Sat, 7 Dec 1996 09:41:20 -0800
nv91-asa@nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg) writes:
>On Thu, 5 Dec 1996, Peter C. McCluskey wrote:
>
>> Strange. I find that the singularity meme is one of the most
>> powerfull motivators possible.
>> The more sudden the transition to a world dominated by electronic
>> intelligence is, the easier it is to imagine one person making an
>> important difference between a future dominated by friendly beings
>> and a future dominated by hostile ones.
>
>Hmm, you might be motivated, but my guess is that 95% of all people would
>become passivated by this. Personal responsibility is hard, and if you
>suggest that *individuals* can change the entire future, they get very,
>very scared. What if they mess things up? Or somebody else does? Most
>probably they ask their politicians to make sure this never happens.
Asking politicians to control the singularity doesn't sound passive
to me. (I didn't mean to imply that the motivation would be constructive
- I can easily imagine a race to be first at world conquest).
Since people have good reasons to be scared by the singularity meme,
and it's harder to spread the government-is-dangerous meme than to
spread the singularity meme, people should at very least heed Fred's
warning about the dangers of poorly thought out memetic engineering,
and should maybe even discourage the spread of the singularity meme.
--
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Peter McCluskey | | "Don't blame me. I voted
pcm@rahul.net | http://www.rahul.net/pcm | for Kodos." - Homer Simpson
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