From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Wed May 21 2003 - 21:02:00 MDT
> Anders Sandberg makes a handy chart:
>
> > Tech Social Economic
> > - - - Anti tech authoritarians (reactionaries)
> > - - + Anti tech conservatives (Kass, Fukyama)
> > - + - Anti tech liberals (Rifkin)
> > - + + Anti tech libertarians (small is good?)
> > + - - Pro tech authoritarians (high tech fascism,prometheans)
> > + - + Pro tech conservatives (good for business)
> > + + - Pro tech liberals (left transhumanism?)
> > + + + Pro tech libertarian ("classical" extropianism)
>
> Which is very good, but imho fails to consider the result of
> tech on the
> social and economic scales, from a Lessigian (?) 'Code is Law'
> perspective. The problem being that all this tech is patented or
> copyrighted, and that the tech can use the tech to enforce
> such at the
> level of the tech.
>
> Anders chart considers these three as being of equal value,
I would be *extremely* surprised to see anything produced by Anders in this
vein valuing one dimension over another; I think he just presents the
dimensions with no implication of relative value. Indeed, to assign value to
one over another one must use a value system that lies somewhere inside the
chart.
> yet it seems
> to me that a + on the tech side is currently promoting
> fascism, in the
> Code is Law sense. That is, we have the political issues to resolve
> before the tech side can be value-neutral. One might argue we need at
> least a few decades of -/+/+ before we can hope to reach +/+/+
One might argue that. From inside the chart. The chart is still a valid
representation of the spectra of possibilities, irrespective of which rows
one might personally resonate with.
>
> Again I reference my years-old SimEarth simulation, now seen
> thru this
> chart: +/-/- (Pro tech authoritarians) led to a singularity in ~100
> years, which was an escape from the hellish environmental
> conditions on
> earth (80 hour workweeks, oceans boiling away, massive
> dieoffs, endless
> wars). The -/+/+ (small is good) led to a singularity in ~1000 years,
> but earth remained pleasant (few if any wars, no mass
> dieoffs, 20 hour
> workweeks). My personal natural point seems to be close to
> the 20 hour
> workweek, while another 20 hours of my leisure time is spent on
> research. Which would you prefer?
>
> Thanks,
> -Mike
What an extremely difficult decision. The first scenario looks nasty, but
there is the remote possibility that one might survive it and get to the
singularity. OTOH, the second scenario sounds nice, but you'd be dooming
yourself to miss the singularity. Very possibly, selfishly, I'd choose the
first one.
Emlyn
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