Hanson Podcast on Econtalk Tuesday, May 27 2008
random 10:38 am
Robin Hanson is one of those people you just have to follow, or you aren’t cool.
Check out his Memorial Day podcast with Econtalk on the topic of signaling.
Signaling is one of those amazing concepts, that, when you start to get it, you see everywhere, and witness how it directs huge quadrants of human behavior. As Marshall McLuhan said, the medium is the message. That was him trying to say that signaling matters a shitload.
We automatically signal all the time without even knowing it. Below the threshold of active consciousness our subconscious is making calculations about our signaling all the time. In our active consciousness too, of course. Some people are consumed by the whole thing 24 hours a day. It’s human nature.
Back to Hanson, here’s his tenure statement (pdf). Yes, the man is clearly a genius, but as I like to say, “how genius?” It’s difficult to say, because all human “geniuses” are a lot dumber than what I can vaguely imagine as being just to the right of the Gaussian, but Hanson is definitely in the top five in the transhumanist-oriented community. I wish he would think more directly on how to deal with extinction risk.
Do you see the irony of me signaling how smart I am by listening to Hanson’s podcast? Do you see it!?
May 27th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
There’s nothing to brag about being intelligent. We should be bothered about dragging the bulk of humanity to 140+. Now how do you go about doing that? We can wait for evolution or… qualifications for reproduction? Nature, as always, puts us in a bad, unethical position.
May 27th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Glad you liked it. I do have one paper on dealing with extinction risk. What fraction of intellectual effort overall do you think that risk deserves? My fraction is higher than for intellectuals overall, but I guess less than your ideal fraction.
May 27th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Robin, probably as much attention as you can give it. The only reason I don’t talk about it constantly is that people would get bored of me.
I feel it’s likely that we’re a critical point in history, where we either succumb to global risk or learn how to minimize it permanently.
After we achieve the latter, it’s reasonable to relax. Until then, we have a job to do.
My ethics on this are primarily guided by the “astronomical waste” argument, but much simpler arguments suffice.
May 29th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Do you HONESTLY think that once people see the real world advantages of enhanced intelligence they aren’t going to be clamoring for it? There are people who say that ignorance is bliss, so we’ll just throw in a bliss chip with each intelligence implant for crying out loud. I thought you guys were supposed to be geniuses.
Come on now! Every problem has a solution.