I often find people are
surprised when they witness my despair. I think I am being transparent
but often what is obvious to me is not obvious to others. The whole
motive behind my striving for utopia is because civilization is a waking
nightmare; my life is an utterly atrocious hellhole of deepest pain
because humans are generally very stupid. People are very depressing.
If
my life was happy and secure I would have no pressing need to focus on
making the world a better place, I wouldn't need to try and accelerate technological progress towards utopia. For example if I was a billionaire then chances
are I would relax peacefully in my secluded country manor, without
trying to raise awareness about the Singularity, I would ignore all the
morons while I casually awaited the Singularity.
My life is far
from happy. In the short-term I have a very despairing outlook but
long-term utopia is inevitable. As time goes by my despair will
decrease. These intricacies regarding my outlook should be obvious
because why would someone so ardently be interested in intelligence
exploding. Note the explosion is utterly colossal, the most powerful
event in the history of the human race. Would a stupid person be
interested in intelligence exploding? Possibly stupid people could be
drawn to intelligence exploding but generally stupid people are too
stupid to even think about intelligence in any shape or form. Do
mindless thugs think about intelligence exploding? Surely it should be
obvious I am at least somewhat intelligent thus by inference it should
be obvious I am very aware of all the stupid people in the world, so now
ask yourself whether it is a happy state of affairs to be in an
intelligent minority?
It is obvious I am interested in
intelligence from a intelligent perspective. Now ask yourself how it feels
to be intelligent living in a world of fools, is it painful? Are they
always trying to break us down, when they should all just let us be?
I am a precious gem amidst pitiful dross. If I had enough money to
shelter myself from the horror, the HORROR of civilization, then I
wouldn't need to rush to change the world thus you can safely assume I
am in the lion's den suffering amidst the rabble, thus DESPAIR is a big
part of my life but diplomatically I try to focus on the positives. I
will not however completely hide my true feelings because honesty is
crucial for intelligence, thus sometimes I may exclaim MEH!!!!!
Despite
the misery of our mindless pre-Singularity civilization there's hope
for a utopian future. It is constructive to focus on the positives so I
don't always explain how I am deeply unhappy. I want to break the
vicious circle of hate and stupidity, but changing people's minds... IT
REALLY IS A HARD BATTLE
Giulio writes extensively about his techno-religious views therefore I feel it is important for me to explain how technological progress is not religious. The Mormon Transhumanist Association is another religious futurist factor necessitating this response. If our goal is intelligence augmentation it's important to explain the flaws of religious thinking. Ben Goertzl also seems to have religious leanings in his Cosmist Manifesto, which Giulio Prisco explains:
"In A Cosmist Manifesto, Ben writes also about meditation, positive thinking, mental health, achievement, relationships, sexuality, zen, joy and (why not?) religion. Ben’s book is a unique blend of science and spirituality, futurism and compassion, technology and art, practical life strategies and cosmic visions, where every reader will find snippets of spiritual wisdom and practical advice."
My comments inspired by Giulio and others:
There is no "intersection of science and religion", they don't
intersect. Robots or uploaded entities are not "cyber angels" but
considering the legacy of Christianity (2012 years since the start of
the Christian era) it is understandable how people with religious
leanings want to fit everything into the religion box. Our lives so
often must conform to the religious bent of civilization, but thankfully
religious conformity is less forced these days (no Inquisition or
stake-burnings). Thankfully religion is becoming redundant. To describe
technological advancement as "Religion 2.0." is absurd. Belief in God is
absurd thus the absurdity of seeing religion in something not religious
(technology) is understandable.
I fail to see what benefits people get from thinking technological advancement is religious. Sloppy thinking is bad, there is no excuse, no justification. Instead if wasting brainpower upon deluded techno-religious thinking, religious futurists would make a better contribution to the world if they embraced rationality, logic. The whole God issue is a waste of brainpower which causes suffering on many levels. If God created the universe why does God allow excessive suffering and why does God refuse to communicate (in any meaningful, logical sense) with humans?
If I
was designing a universe/humans I could a far better job with my mere
human brain than God has done. If God exists I think God is an a-hole (I
am not trying to offend you). Surely you can see how our world is
deeply flawed? Surely you can see how no rational being would create
life and the universe to be the way it is? We can't know for certain at
this point in time how our universe was created but it's structure and
human life indicates accident rather than design, unless God is a
sadistic lunatic. Religions and cults are essentially the same thing (note Opus Dei) but technology is neither.
Why
do people need to worship things or beings? I think overbearing parents
and institutions have indoctrinated people into roles of submissiveness
and worship. Worship is a weakness of mind in my opinion. A weakness
arsing from an intellectually primitive culture.
WHAT IS THE UNIVERSE?
If the universe is a computer it is safe to assume the creator had a
competent computer to create it. We see how computers allow us to
predict the outcome of creations. We can compute the aerodynamics of a
car, we can compute the requisite strength for the foundations of
buildings. We can forecast many things.
Computational skill and
personal intelligence needed to create a universe implies a level of
thoughtfulness not evident in the structure of our universe. I assert any being competent
enough to create a universe is competent enough to create things far
greater than our universe; what I mean is that the hypothetical creation
of our universe by God was probably akin to humans (circa 2012)
creating a hamster cage and some hamsters to populate the cage, or
perhaps the creation of a tasty God-meal, thus God would have possessed a
computer far more powerful than the computational capacity of our
universe, similar to how our computers are more powerful than the meals
we cook. Both God and I can predict the behavior of hamsters, we can
also state a tasty meal will be tasty. Everything in our universe could
have been easily predicted if our universe was created by an advanced
being.
My views regarding a hypothetical God do not anthropomorphize God or suffering. For example I don't find the suffering of a wolf eating a rabbit
disturbing, but I find human stupidity disturbing. The wolf and rabbit
are not intelligent because they are not human, they don't know any
better, but God would be intelligent, God would be human in the deeply humane
intellectual sense of empathy for fellow intelligent beings, God should
know better, God should have the intelligence, the logic, to comprehend the
ramifications of a creation. Evil and pain do not need to be impossible,
a good and omnipotent God could permit evil, my point is that life
seems to have been created to encourage evil and pain; there is an
excessive focus on evil and pain; it is as though God has intentionally
created the most painful universe imaginable, thus if God exists or
existed then he/she/it is undoubtedly a sadist, but instead of a
mentally deranged God it is more logical and natural to assume no God,
pure accidental creation by nobody.
Things progress. Over
time our computers become more powerful, for example consider the Law of Accelerating Returns defined by Ray's data. When we reach
Singularity we could be seeing, based on the 2001 rate of progress,
around 100 or 2,000 years of progress or more (becoming quicker all the
time) within 1 year, every year.
Upon reaching Singularity circa 2045 I assume we won't immediately be able to create new universes. My guess is the
creation of new universes will be towards the end of this century, which
will be: Singularity plus approximately 55 years, which means the rate
of technological progress will be a lot faster at the universe creating
point.
So if someone wants to create a universe, the question is
would they immediately rush into creating a universe upon the instant
they gain the technological proficiency to do so? Or would they take
time to plan and test how their universe will evolve over billions of
years?
GOOD PLANNING?
If they take time to plan how their universe will
evolve I am sure considering the accelerating rate of progress they
would have better modelling computers, before
they actually create the universe, within a short period of time, due to the Law of Accelerating
Returns. They would quickly surpass the technological pinnacle of
universe creation within a few years or perhaps within a few seconds, or
milliseconds. So it is very likely they would possess computers more
powerful than the universe before the universe is created thus they
could predict absolutely everything that would happen in the universe
they were about to create. I will also contemplate the possibility
they rushed blindly and stupidly into the creation of a universe the
first moment they had the capability to do so.
Consider the
technological accomplishment needed to create a universe; it is safe to
state such creators are very intelligent, thoughtful people, very
considerate regarding their actions, but maybe recklessly insane people
will also exist in the super-intelligent future. People must have an
utterly AWESOME level of technology if they can create universes; the
mind boggles thinking about it but surely we can see how even in the
case where a flawed universe is impetuously created by amateur-creators
the corrections could easily be fixed within a few seconds, hours, or
years after creation due to the Law of Accelerating Returns? Our
universe would be obsolete within a few days or years.
We can
update our computers with patches to secure a vulnerability, we can even
install an entirely new OS. Surely advanced beings could update the
universe to eliminate all bugs?
Surely God has heard of
Beta-testing? How about Alpha testing? Jesus Christ! God is an incompetent fool. I think nobody created our universe but if they did it
would've been very stupid to rush into the creation process. Please note A UNIVERSE IS FOR LIFE NOT JUST CHRISTMAS(think twice before creating a universe):
Our
universe is comparable to a dog, hamster, or a tasty meal. Considering
super-intelligence, our universe is not very technically accomplished.
It would be easy to predict everything that happened in our universe; or
if sufficient prediction capability was not available at the time of
creation it would be easy to install an update a few seconds or years
after creation. The update would be feasible due to the ever advancing
nature of progress. There is no justification for creating a flawed universe, but if God never existed the flaws are justified.
THE SIGNS
It is pretty easy to see how the ongoing financial criss can
be interpreted as precursor to the Mayan 21st December 2012 end of the world. My point is people often think things are easy to interpret
according to their bias, thus when they read their star signs or
tea-leaves they may say it is pretty easy to see how the signs apply
wholly to their life circumstances. Or the paranoid schizophrenic thinks
it's easy to see how Obama is an evil robot trying to brainwash
everyone via nanobots in the water supply.
It isn't actually
easy to see how the Bible relates to extreme technological progress
(Transhumanism), unless of course you have a religious bias, a blind-spot, which means you see everything through a religious filter,
thus everything is God's work.
The Bible doesn't actually predict the Singularity but people see signs and codes where there are none, thus at various points in history people believed Nostradamus predicted various events, but most scholars reject the predictive ability of Nostradamus. I hope you will also reject the pseudo-linkage between religion and the Singularity, similar to how rational people reject the end of the world Mayan 21st December 2012 predictions.
Mark Piesing writing in Wired posits an AI threat based on an incomplete appraisal of the future; he neglects to consider Post-Scarcity. His misunderstanding is somewhat understandable because specious luminaries within the field of futurism are paranoid regarding AI, they look at the future in an incomplete manner dependent on their fearful bias. They need to overcome their bias. Their speculations are very wrong, they couldn't be more wrong (flawed intellectualism).
In response to Mark Piesing's article, here is my comment:
Fears regarding AI fail to consider inevitable threat-neutralizing
Post-Scarcity. An inevitable consequence of AI is Post-Scarcity thus the
motive for all conflict is neutralized. Scarcity underpins all
conflict. We fight over limited resources, but we can see via Planetary Resources how one asteroid could easily contain more platinum than has
been mined in our entire history. Asterank was recently mentioned in the
news because the resources of one asteroid (241 Germania) are likely to
produce a profit of $95 trillion, which is as much as the world earns
in one year.
Vast resources of Space are very important but they
are not the principle feature of how Post-Scarcity is inevitable, the
key feature is regarding how computers (AI) allow us to continually
refine the efficiency of resources we use, thus super-intelligent AI
will create ultra-efficient devices, which on the most basic level means
all energy will be free due to energy harvesting.
In the future the smallest amount of matter will provide massive potential, so that efficiency of usage increases by perhaps 99%. AI will create an explosion of intelligence of utterly mind-blowing gigantic proportions. Ours wildest dreams will be possible. There is no threat.
The internet in its current configuration is similar to all computing, it is incredibly primitive, thus based on our current primitive technology, I suppose if you fail to consider how the foundations of tech will change, it is natural to envision a clunking mechanical-type 1980s cyborg type future, but tech from year 2012 will transform radically over the next 20 to 30 years, therefore when we achieve Singularity no later than 2045 there will no longer be a biological-mechanical divide.
The clunking metallic idea of augmentation will be hopelessly outdated. The future will be a place of supreme biological refinement, the internet will comparable be to your voice, it will be an integral part of your body. If you can see infrared and x-rays, via your eyes, it will not be because you have chunks of metal or primitive processors stuck into your eyeballs or brain.
We will re-engineer the human body in ways which are almost beyond description. Recently there was some news about engineered viruses able to translate kinetic energy into electricity, which gives you a glimpse of our future. Bacterial and DNA computing are also important to consider. Everything we do to our bodies in the future will be done freely, free like the thoughts we choose to think, and incidentally at no cost because everything in the future will be be due to Post-Scarcity.
Your current interface between your brain and your thoughts is comparable to the futuristic interface between you and technology. Instead of envisioning a cyborg future it is more accurate to envision billions of years of biological evolution within a few decades. You will fly like Superman, or like The Silkie, apparently unaugmented, through space or underwater, without jet-pack or spaceship, faster than speeding bullets. You will be immortal, you will be all powerful. Everything will be free.
