Accelerating Future

Given adequate food, fuel, and gender equality, mass conflict just might disappear.

This was published by Discover magazine two days ago. By John Horgan:

Frans de Waal stands in a watchtower at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center north of Atlanta, talking about war. As three hulking male chimpanzees and a dozen females loll below him, the renowned primatologist rejects the idea that war stems from “some sort of blind aggressive drive.” Observations of lethal fighting among chimpanzees, our close genetic relatives, have persuaded many people that war has deep biological roots. But de Waal says that primates, and especially humans, are “very calculating” and will abandon aggressive strategies that no longer serve their interests. “War is evitable,” de Waal says, “if conditions are such that the costs of making war are higher than the benefits.”

War evitable? That is a minority opinion in these troubled times. For several years I’ve been probing people’s views about war. Almost everyone, regardless of profession, political persuasion, or age, gives me the same answer: War will never end. I asked 205 students at the college where I teach, “Will humans ever stop fighting wars, once and for all?” More than 90 percent said no. This pessimism seems to be on the rise; in the mid-1980s, only one in three students at Wesleyan University agreed that “wars are inevitable because human beings are naturally aggressive.”

Asked to explain their views, most fatalists offer variations on Robert McNamara’s remarks in the documentary The Fog of War. “I’m not so naive or simplistic to believe we can eliminate war,” said McNamara, who was the U.S. defense secretary during the Vietnam War. “We’re not going to change human nature any time soon.” War, in other words, is inevitable because it is innate, “in our genes,” as my students like to put it.

Continue.

Even given adequate food, fuel, etc., people might still find reasons to make war, but they’d be far decreased. I’d worry more about massively destructive individuals.

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Reading today’s post over at the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology reminded me of this image. The topic at hand was the mechanization of warfare, and the worrisome development of an auto-turret that is accurate at up to half a mile. The image is of Metal Gear D, from the video game series of the same name (minus the D). If human civilization continues as it has, then there are a lot of machines like this in our future. Over at the Lifeboat Foundation blog, I have a few words to say on the militarization of space.

There is a conundrum in the concept of the arms race. The best way to keep the world safe is to have the biggest guns, period. But it’s also an easy way to destroy the world. Keeping the world safe with mere words is impractical. Thus, someone must always have the biggest guns. Anti-authoritarian, well-intentioned people like to whine at length about this. But we have to accept that unless someone keeps the peace, the natural tendency is descent into conflict. All we can do is try to steer things such that the most powerful agent(s) at any given time are truly benevolent.

The best way to accomplish that is not to endlessly shuffle through futile anthropocentric political arrangements, but to actually change the cognitive architecture underlying the most powerful agents to make them more benevolent by nature. You could theoretically do this with enough progress in neuroengineering, but building a Friendly AI just seems easier. Is FAI possible? Yes. Here is a page that argues why.

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