Re: A vision

From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Sun Jul 13 2003 - 20:56:47 MDT

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    On 7/13/2003 Anders Sandberg responded to Samantha Atkins:
    > > There was one thing missing imho. That is how society and people will
    > > change. ... sociol/political/psychological/economic/ethical structures
    >
    >True. This is in some sense "deep green transhumanism". When I wrote
    >this I was not looking at people, but the Big Picture (TM) ...
    >They think we envision a sterile high-tech future where we live like
    >posthuman gods in towers of diamond and steel and where all of creation
    >is centered on human desires. ... aiming ... to embrace complexity,

    On 7/13/2003 Hal Finney wrote:
    >We might suggest that the value of life is in evolution, in creating
    >new kinds of life forms and new adaptations. But even that, frankly,
    >can be done better by people than by natural processes. ...
    >The process of natural biological evolution is an eternal, ongoing,
    >heartless war of predator against prey, with no quarter given or expected.
    >Every step forward on the evolutionary ladder is accomplished through
    >millions of deaths ... filled with terror and despair.

    The universe that follows from now on need not be filled with humans, but
    it will look rather human to us, since many innovations pioneered by
    humans will soon spread until most all life uses it or goes extinct. One
    of the most important is that of law; predator/prey relations will mostly
    disappear and be replaced by farmer/farmed or other much more cooperative
    relationships. A related innovation is that specialization in production;
    rather than have each organism produce most everything it needs for itself,
    they will share an economy where they specialize.

    There is TV show on the future of evolution (I forget the name at the
    moment), and they called me to ask me if I had something to
    contribute to their show, and I told them that their speculations were
    mostly off because they ignored these crucial issues. Since they had
    already invested a great deal in what they had done, they decided that
    however persuasive were my arguments, they would do best to ignore them.

    Anders continued:
    >complexity needs
    >growth. But it is not enough. I'm planning to write a more full analysis
    >of the cancer cell/orchid issue, because it is really at the heart of
    >the problem. The burning of the cosmic commons in Robin's paper is great
    >growth, but it does not seem to lead to much complexity, just more and
    >more efficiency at expanding. Here growth and evolution seems to reduce
    >complexity instead of enhance them. Under what circumstances do we see
    >an evolutionary radiation and the creation of new niches, and under what
    >circumstances do we get goo?

    Actually a richer cosmic commons model might well give a radiation.
    What I did is more akin to modeling life in an ocean, where the main
    variable of interest is how close each organism is to the surface.
    In such a simple model, you'd get just a one-dimensional variation in
    strategies.

    Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
    Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University
    MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
    703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323



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