RE: [wta-talk] Specific areas lacking advancement

From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Sun Jul 06 2003 - 14:25:23 MDT

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    Erik Starck [mailto:es@popido.com] wrote,
    > It's nice to see someone from the "inside" questioning the axioms that
    > transhumanism is based on. Such reflections are important. I don't quite
    > agree with your pessimism, though.

    Pessimism implies a poor attitude. I am not trying to throw cold water on
    future predictions. I am trying to describe accurate history that people
    seem to be ignoring.

    > I think shortly after that we will reach a point at which living in space
    > is considered safer then being exposed to the threats of living on earth.

    I know, but when this was scheduled for the 1970's and has been delayed 30
    years, it is hard to call this exponential growth.

    > However, the cost of leaving earth is steadily declining.

    Untrue. NASA's shuttle fleet is much more expensive than single-use
    rockets. The cost savings that were predicted by reuse never materialized.
    Our current payload sizes, ranges, orbital heights and costs are all worse
    than the rockets we replaced. The shuttle is a poor competitor to the
    Saturn V. It can't go as high. It can't even put satellites in orbit. The
    satellites need their own little boosters to go higher than the shuttle can
    fly. The shuttle cannot escape earth orbit. It may not even qualify as a
    space ship in the stricter sense of the word.

    > I wouldn't be
    > surprised if Microsoft announces a move of their HQ from Seattle to space
    > sometimes around 2020-30. At that time, Bill Gates will of course already
    > be living there.

    Since NASA was previously approved to have a 1000-man permanent colony on
    the moon in the 1970's, I don't see how the above prediction contradicts my
    position. I have no doubt that this will happen some day. But how can
    anyone deny that this has been delayed from previous plans? Instead of
    accelerating exponentially, we have had major setbacks and have not
    recovered our former capabilities yet.

    > I fail to see how you can draw that conclusion. The average life span is
    > steadily increasing, as well as the quality of life as a senior. At the
    > same time, we are close to eliminating a whole range of
    > age-related diseases.

    I am talking "predicted" life-span. Antioxidants were thought to extend
    animal lifespans to the equivalent of 120 human years. People on those
    antioxidant diets literally predicted 120-year lifespans. We don't do this
    anymore. Our own personal predictions have decreased. What part of this do
    you not understand?

    > Heck, even the worlds biggest rock band today is a bunch of 60-year olds
    > (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&uid=MISS70306281736&sqlB
    Bly09ke9t7q79)

    60 yeas old is a pathetically young age to die. This is not a good example
    to give me for longevity. Nobody on a life-extension diet would be happy
    with those kinds of numbers.

    > Conclusion: time will be on our side.

    Perhaps in the future, but it has not been so in the past decade or two of
    life-extension therapies.

    > I have personally never really believed in cryonics

    Neither do a lot of former believers, unfortunately. Cryonics has to
    advance back up to the point where we once thought it already was. We now
    know more than we did before, and it doesn't look as rosy as it once did.

    > Hans Moravecs book "Robot" describes how AI-researchers ever
    > since the dawn
    > of the field has been limited to 1 MIPS-computers. It isn't until
    > the 90's,
    > when ordinary PCs broke the 1 MIPS-barrier, that the computational
    > resources available to AI-researchers has begun to climb.

    I totally disagree with this analysis. AI research has never been limited
    by processing power. It is not like folding@home where we know what to do
    but can't get enough cpu power. AI programs simply don't work or don't pass
    a basic Turing test to appear conscious. It is not a speed issue. I could
    deal with a perfect AI that is very slow. What we have fast-enough programs
    that simply don't work. I assume that is why Eliezer is working on FAI
    instead of tweaking hardware to run faster.

    > While it is difficult for me to know anything about your initial level of
    > expectation, I gather from your post that it was quite high (world peace
    > and immortality isn't exactly something that happens over night).
    > When you
    > aim for the moon, the tree tops feels like a failure.

    You seem to have missed my point. I clearly gave you my level of
    expectations. We were exploring the moon. There were multiple permanently
    manned space stations. We thought we had already doubled human lifespan.
    We thought cryonics was a pretty good bet. AI was progressing nicely.
    Communism had fallen and the world seems more politically whole. None of
    those things are true anymore. We have years if not decades of work to get
    back to where these statements are all true again.

    People who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. And I am afraid that
    this is exactly what is happening.

    --
    Harvey Newstrom, CISM, CISSP, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC
    Certified InfoSec Manager, Certified IS Security Pro, NSA-certified
    InfoSec Assessor, IBM-certified Security Consultant, SANS-cert GSEC
    <HarveyNewstrom.com> <Newstaff.com>
    


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