Hit and Run: “We can all agree that Ron Bailey defecates better transhumanism coverage than I can ever hope to produce”
Coverage of the recent H+ Summit is available at Reason's Hit and Run blog. Here is a funny bit:
Futurist John Smart is wrapping up the Humanity + Summit by noting that human enhancement believers are too focused on pie-in-the sky visions. Instead of making weird flying-car predictions about the far future, transhumanoids should be pointing to contemporary advances.
John Smart is known for predicting that the Earth will be artificially collapsed into an engineered black hole in an effort to compress matter and energy to more efficiently run uploads. I think he is right.
There is coverage of Aubrey and Todd Huffman's "Rasputin beards". An informal poll found that three out of three women found Todd's finger magnet implant hot.
More reporting:
I don't know enough about transhumanism to say whether the movement is at any kind of crossroads, but I was struck by how modest the claims were at this event -- in addition to all the calls for empathy, which I referred to yesterday. Toe shoes seem useful and ergonomic, but don't these things just beg for a new breed of humans with opposable big toes? If there are transhumanists out there calling for human antennae, wings, pineal gland enhancers and the like, they don't seem to have been in Irvine this weekend.
The organization I'm with, the Singularity Institute, is claiming to have the potential to quickly wipe out poverty and suffering for all humanity for the rest of eternity if we successfully construct a recursively self-improving Friendly AI that embodies our collective volition. (We consider this feasible albeit extremely challenging and a very long-term project, on the scale of decades but not centuries.) A number of professional ethicists and philosophers agree with us on the plausibility of our arguments. Is that extreme enough for you?
Check out the comments section on those blog posts for some illuminating insights and reflections on the conference.
December 7th, 2009 - 22:52
“More reporting:
I don’t know …”
This is definitely Giant Cheesecake Fallacy. It’s more rational to wonder if there are transhumanists out there calling for male “enhancers.” Antennae could get interesting…
Even as critics attack our brands or our beliefs, they cannot oppose our goal of an increasingly empowered world.
December 8th, 2009 - 00:30
“The organization I’m with, the Singularity Institute, is claiming to be able to quickly wipe out poverty and suffering for all humanity for the rest of eternity by constructing a recursively self-improving Friendly AI that embodies our collective volition.”
More clearly: conditional on having such a thing (if it is feasible) poverty and suffering could be alleviated quickly, not that we can quickly or confidently get there.
December 8th, 2009 - 06:51
Yet you apparently want to keep the present hierarchical economic system intact in your vision of ending poverty and suffering. Not so extreme after all.
December 8th, 2009 - 15:45
Where does anyone say this?
December 8th, 2009 - 16:46
Like Nick points out, no one ever says this.
I suppose if you’ve marinated in left vs. right economics debates for years and that’s your hammer, then everything looks like a nail.
December 8th, 2009 - 20:05
“Khannea, your contempt for income inequality is ridiculous. You are so worked up about it, it is bizarre. If people want more income, they need to produce economic value. I believe in a social safety net, but completely leveling the playing field has already been tried dozens of times in history and the result was always utter disaster. Learn from history.”
How did you expect me to interpret that, Michael?
December 9th, 2009 - 02:25
That’s my personal political belief, it has nothing to do with what world we’re collectively trying to steer the future into. For that, you have to read Coherent Extrapolated Volition.
Even if you go back to 2001, the whole premise of the Friendly AI project is to create an AI that embodies the wishes of humanity and not any particular programmer or any other individual. Creating Friendly AI takes this consideration to obsessive levels.
December 10th, 2009 - 10:34
There are “professional philosophers?”
December 10th, 2009 - 11:45
Yes, there are academics that do philosophy for a living. (…) Seriously?
December 12th, 2009 - 10:06
You could wipe out poverty and suffering for all humanity for the rest of eternity if you disposed of all the humans. I figure that’s the most likely way that outcome will come to pass.