Futurist George Dvorsky: A popular notion amongst futurists … is … that we can proactively engineer the kind of future we want to live in. … I myself have been seduced by this idea. … Trouble is, we’re mostly deluded about this. Now, I don’t deny that we should collectively work to build a desirable future … What I am concerned about, however, is the degree to which we can actually control our destiny. While I am not an outright technological determinist, I am pretty damn close. As our technologies increase in power and sophistication, and as unanticipated convergent effects emerge from their presence, we will increasingly find ourselves having to deal with the consequences. …
"Once you can guess which directions are 'up', you can work to push outcomes in such directions. Even if you can’t push very far, you may still do the best you can, and perhaps make an important difference." But it's not unlikely that the "up" direction in possible-world space depends on my efficacy. Pushing in a certain direction might give me the best result if I can move only one unit away from what I would get by "doing nothing," but pushing in quite a different direction might be better if I can move five units away, etc. So I'd need a good estimate of my strength in order to know which way to push.
Note: I take it that the issue is what *I* can do. *We*--whatever, exactly, is the collection to which this refers--have more power than *I* have; but *I* am the relevant agent.
To be clear, I didn't mean literal heaven, hell, I meant heaven and hell on earth. Either everyone uploads to the Noosphere (utility: positive infinity), or everything is just a boot stamping on a human face forever (utility: negative infinity).
Yes, I could die or commit suicide to avoid these fates, but when I think of the distant future I don't really have all that much more concern for my future self than I do for human beings in general.
Given this view of the world, I don't think it makes sense to try to make marginal adjustments to the outcomes--the important thing is the probabilities of the outcomes.
My subjective probabilities of the future are as follows:
50% change of Hell.50% chance of Heaven.
Small changes within either of these scenarios do not matter to me at all. The best I can hope for, if there is any hope at all, is to make a marginally positive change in the probability.
The Amish have little to no influence outside their local environment, and are extremely vulnerable to existential threats. I think control over your future corresponds to how capable you are of adapting to the future you find yourself in.
Dvorsky Matures
"Once you can guess which directions are 'up', you can work to push outcomes in such directions. Even if you can’t push very far, you may still do the best you can, and perhaps make an important difference." But it's not unlikely that the "up" direction in possible-world space depends on my efficacy. Pushing in a certain direction might give me the best result if I can move only one unit away from what I would get by "doing nothing," but pushing in quite a different direction might be better if I can move five units away, etc. So I'd need a good estimate of my strength in order to know which way to push.
Note: I take it that the issue is what *I* can do. *We*--whatever, exactly, is the collection to which this refers--have more power than *I* have; but *I* am the relevant agent.
To be clear, I didn't mean literal heaven, hell, I meant heaven and hell on earth. Either everyone uploads to the Noosphere (utility: positive infinity), or everything is just a boot stamping on a human face forever (utility: negative infinity).
Yes, I could die or commit suicide to avoid these fates, but when I think of the distant future I don't really have all that much more concern for my future self than I do for human beings in general.
Given this view of the world, I don't think it makes sense to try to make marginal adjustments to the outcomes--the important thing is the probabilities of the outcomes.
Or you could die and cease to persist as an experiencing entity.
My subjective probabilities of the future are as follows:
50% change of Hell.50% chance of Heaven.
Small changes within either of these scenarios do not matter to me at all. The best I can hope for, if there is any hope at all, is to make a marginally positive change in the probability.
The Amish have little to no influence outside their local environment, and are extremely vulnerable to existential threats. I think control over your future corresponds to how capable you are of adapting to the future you find yourself in.
Are the Amish in control of their future? Perhaps we're just not willing to make any hard choices about which technologies we use.