From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Thu Mar 20 2003 - 01:10:11 MST
On Wed, Mar 19, 2003 at 06:59:30PM -0700, alexboko@umich.edu wrote:
> [quote from: Anders on 2003-03-17 at 02:58:18]
> You mention http://www.hf.caltech.edu/hf/b3/scenarios/, and I think it
> is a good example of what we have to do. If you examine the scenarios it
> is very obvious (to us) that they totally ignore the possibilities so
> dear to us. Instead these scenarios are variants of the standard futures
> people usually think of (you will find variants of these scenarios again
> and again in the future studies literature) - people are very much
> trapped in a standard narrative of what the possibilities are (things go
> on as usual, we revert to barbarism or we end up with a world state)
>
>
> Actually, if I was constructing the most likely scenarios for the next 30-50
> years (my projectable future window) mine would probably be like theirs and
> ignore nanplague, nano-Santaclause, friendly AI, unfriendly AI. Or at least
> encapsulate all of those scenarios into one "paradigm shifting technological
> change" scenario.
I have always found these "and then a miracle happens" scenarios
unlikely, both the technological found here or the "consciousness
change" version greens often invoke with about the same amount of faith.
But it seems equally unlikely that the standard scenarios I complained
about above would be true, other than in a very general way. What these
scenarios lack is the organic complexity of real history. They are too
much like one-dimensional stories to be even believable eigenvectors of
history.
For example, even without magical tech we could get some rather sweeping
changes if at least part of the population become fluid "smart mobs"
empowered by wireless communications and google. That in turn could
introduce complex stresses between the "fluid" and "crystalized" parts
of society which could express themselves in far more ways than "group A
oppresses group B" or "group A takes over from group B". And so on.
The fun part of scenario planning is to figure out these second order
effects. They might not come true, but they help us understand those
non-intuitive feedbacks and evolutionary phenomena that surprise most
planners.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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