Re: A vision

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Jul 15 2003 - 11:06:08 MDT

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    On Mon, Jul 14, 2003 at 09:49:34PM +0000, brent.allsop@comcast.net wrote:
    >
    > Very good questions!

    Thanks!
     
    > To take this to the next level will our spreading "garden" consist of
    > evolution - or more precisely death? Will there be lions that eat lambs and so
    > on? Or will everything "natural" or "primitive" be "uplifted" and will
    > progress be made, from then on, by better intelligent and intentional methods
    > than "survival of the fittest"?

    A good question :-) I recall that many years back I posted similar
    sentiments to the list about expanding the sphere of living beings, and
    was chastized by Eliezer (I think) for seeking to create beings living
    painful lives. My position then was essentially to let evolution sort it
    out; to quote from Zindell (who quotes "Jin Zeniumura" who may or may
    not exist):

            "I am not interested in things getting better; what I want is
            more: more human beings, more dreams, more history, more
            consciousness, more suffering, more joy, more disease, more
            agony, more rapture, more evolution, more life."

    I still hold part of this view, but I think it has matured. I don't
    think it is realistic to imagine everything being uplifted to being
    happy and smart (like in the _Hedonistic Imperative_ by David Pearce
    where we will sometime around the year 3000 finally save the last deep
    ocean invertebrate from aversive experience - I love that passage :-).
    We will likely do this a lot anyway, and might even pass laws about
    helping creatures endowed with enough nervous systems. But if we are to
    constantly monitor every environment we have created, deliberately or
    not, to save structures from bad experiences and competition, then we
    are not going to be doing much else. My ethical position is that we do
    not have a moral obligation to help everybody and everything, it is up
    to us to make the judgement from case to case, aided by some general
    principles. Personally I would love to help a lot of beings in creative
    ways, it is just that I don't think I *have to* help them.

    In fact, attempting to "save" every creature is very close to the kind
    of top-down control that stifles surprises and evolution. We want to
    minimize irreversible information loss and unnecessary pain, but there
    is a lot of useful information loss and pain too.

    My taste in gardens is much more towards the British landscape garden
    than the formal French garden.

    > I like to hope that 1000 years from now there will be beautiful
    > gardens in which death (including survival of the fittest) will no
    > longer exist. But I know that many people alive today would want
    > "nature" and "evolution", including survival of the fittest to
    > survive. Because of these desires by some will there be places in the
    > universe where "nature", "survival of the fittest", places where lions
    > consume lambs. and so on continue to exist? Or will rationality win
    > out and will death of all kinds be completely overcome in all places?

    I think death in its general sense as erasure of information is
    unavoidable within the current laws of physics. As Robin pointed out a
    future ecology/evolution is likely going to be dominated by rational
    self interest and economic style interaction, and that looks a lot more
    humane than current ecology. But the introduction of metazoans
    or vertebrates did not remove the single-celled organisms or
    invertebrates from the system, and I think there will be plenty of
    old-fashioned survival of the fittest going on in the interstices and
    frontiers of the technosphere. Who notices the plight of spontaneously
    evolving viruses within the M-brain communications networks, or what
    creatures evolve from a stray terraforming seed?

    -- 
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    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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