Fight fire with fire. It takes a thief to catch a thief. To defeat your enemy, know and become your enemy. Across the long sweep of history, our ancestors have greatly changed. Animals to primates to foragers to farmers to the industrialists of today. Across these many ages, we’ve greatly changed our environments, habits, styles of thinking, and priorities. During the ages of humanity, this has led to increasing “alienation”, as our worlds drift increasingly far from the worlds in which human nature was formed.
My guess is there will always be those who will resist change of any sort e.g. economic, technological, political, religious. I think there would be a subset of the pre-human hominid and forager population who would resist the global dominance of humanity. The sages among them may predict that agriculture and industrialization would lead to environmental catastrophe and the mass extinction of Earth’s species. Some today view advances in technology as a curse, nuclear weapons, some as a blessing, solar panels.
When it comes to creating AI more intelligent than human beings, I agree with Hugo de Garis, the world will be divided. Many will be in favor of merging with or creating these “Artilects” many will be diametrically opposed. How would you feel about Siri being a trillion times more intelligent than you?
As far as becoming an expansive species and spreading throughout the cosmos, I don’t see too many having an issue with that. After all, just like how persecuted, minority religious sects moved from Europe to America, like-minded individuals could hop in their spacecraft and colonize moons and planets. So the Scientologists could colonize one of Jupiter’s moons, other religious or ideological groups could colonize other planets and moons. Of course there would be mining opportunities, and just plain awesome space exploration. Of course we may need the help of advanced AI in order to achieve widespread galactic expansion.On second thought, I guess there may be those who want to leave space untouched and preserved, just like there are those who want to preserve rainforests and National Parks.
"Ponderous" movie Replicas (Keanu Reeves) does have a few minutes of clear Em uploading of organic mind into a robot mind. Too many different ideas mushing for one movie, tho.Saw it in Slovak with my wife.
Rod Dreher claims that Christians today are facing this question vis-a-vis post-modernists. The Benedict Option is to prepare more faith based living. Recently he wrote of Plenty Coups, last great Crow Indian Chief - who faced this issue against tech superior palefaces.https://www.theamericancons...
The Sioux more fought to the death, with Indian noble honor, and died, and lost most of their land. The Crow kept more of their land - but were unable to be "Crow" as before.
If you presented the future scenario as a vastly rising number of "other" humans then you might get a different response than if you presented that same scenario as a growing of the tribe, or even direct descendants of that individual.
beautiful vision "And this, I expect, is one of the greatest obstacles to our descendants becoming expansionist, and taking our place among the great alien civilizations who fill the universe and thereafter set its destinies."
Best popular movie fictional account of this (in my view) is Spielberg's 2001 movie A.I. Artificial Intelligencehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wi...
Has it's logic problems, but gets the central point correct, that AI are the child civilization of humans, who expand out into the universe, leaving humans behind.
If they are too far from our values to the point of being repugnant, our descendants might as well be cockroaches for all I care. Let society end rather than support such changes. There is no end which would justify supporting those whose values I would abhor.
My guess is there will always be those who will resist change of any sort e.g. economic, technological, political, religious. I think there would be a subset of the pre-human hominid and forager population who would resist the global dominance of humanity. The sages among them may predict that agriculture and industrialization would lead to environmental catastrophe and the mass extinction of Earth’s species. Some today view advances in technology as a curse, nuclear weapons, some as a blessing, solar panels.
When it comes to creating AI more intelligent than human beings, I agree with Hugo de Garis, the world will be divided. Many will be in favor of merging with or creating these “Artilects” many will be diametrically opposed. How would you feel about Siri being a trillion times more intelligent than you?
As far as becoming an expansive species and spreading throughout the cosmos, I don’t see too many having an issue with that. After all, just like how persecuted, minority religious sects moved from Europe to America, like-minded individuals could hop in their spacecraft and colonize moons and planets. So the Scientologists could colonize one of Jupiter’s moons, other religious or ideological groups could colonize other planets and moons. Of course there would be mining opportunities, and just plain awesome space exploration. Of course we may need the help of advanced AI in order to achieve widespread galactic expansion.On second thought, I guess there may be those who want to leave space untouched and preserved, just like there are those who want to preserve rainforests and National Parks.
Fredric Brown's 'Letter to a Phoenix' should be included in the discussion: https://www.you-books.com/b...
"Ponderous" movie Replicas (Keanu Reeves) does have a few minutes of clear Em uploading of organic mind into a robot mind. Too many different ideas mushing for one movie, tho.Saw it in Slovak with my wife.
Rod Dreher claims that Christians today are facing this question vis-a-vis post-modernists. The Benedict Option is to prepare more faith based living. Recently he wrote of Plenty Coups, last great Crow Indian Chief - who faced this issue against tech superior palefaces.https://www.theamericancons...
The Sioux more fought to the death, with Indian noble honor, and died, and lost most of their land. The Crow kept more of their land - but were unable to be "Crow" as before.
Yes, it is a great movie.
Yes, it seems that way to people with selfish values like yours. Luckily they will soon be irrelevant.
If you presented the future scenario as a vastly rising number of "other" humans then you might get a different response than if you presented that same scenario as a growing of the tribe, or even direct descendants of that individual.
beautiful vision "And this, I expect, is one of the greatest obstacles to our descendants becoming expansionist, and taking our place among the great alien civilizations who fill the universe and thereafter set its destinies."
Best popular movie fictional account of this (in my view) is Spielberg's 2001 movie A.I. Artificial Intelligencehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wi...
Has it's logic problems, but gets the central point correct, that AI are the child civilization of humans, who expand out into the universe, leaving humans behind.
Did agriculture cause foragers to diminish?http://hertzlinger.blogspot...
Interesting ideas. Perhaps humans will generally become "decadent," cacooned in material comfort, virtual reality and drugs.
Today we regard such an outcome as undesirable.
But what if people are happy to be homebound?
What if free markets develop a homebound society or civilization?
If they are too far from our values to the point of being repugnant, our descendants might as well be cockroaches for all I care. Let society end rather than support such changes. There is no end which would justify supporting those whose values I would abhor.