X-Message-Number: 15937 Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 00:43:54 -0500 From: James Swayze <> Subject: False dichotomies References: <> CryoNet wrote: > Message #15909 > From: > Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 09:48:25 EST > Subject: Swayze, Bozzonetti > > Apology to James Swayze for the blunder of misnaming him--and again my > admiration for his gallant struggle not only to survive horrors that most of > us can scarcely imagine, but also to remain productive. Let me apologize. I did not mean to sound in need of an apology. As I said it happens all the time and is a little flattering or perhaps fun is a better term. I only wished to alleviate any confusion for any new readers lurking. Imagine the mess if someone said to oh say "The Inquirer", that Patrick Swayze was hoping to freeze himself? Hey that might get us some publicity!! ;) Hehe <wicked grin> Thank you for the vote of confidence. Perhaps a small compensation is that it is in my nature to enjoy solving problems. Boy did I get a bunch to solve!! __________________________________________________________________________ > Message #15904 > Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 10:33:43 -0500 > From: Sabine Atkins <> > Subject: Re: Swayze's question > > >Rhetorical question to everyone: Which would you rather be, super human yourselves or > >serf to super machine? > > This is a false dichotomy. As far as SIAI is concerned, the super intelligent AI we are > planning to build will be a protector and a facilitator. It is also planned to prevent us from > doing harm to each other and ourselves. Respectfully Sabine there is only a false dichotomy if your two premises are true and in my humble opinion they both are false. First, there's no guarantee whatsoever that any brand of super AI will remain beneficent especially if it can reprogram itself. > Our research fellow Eliezer Yudkowsky is currently completing work on his recent online > document about Friendly AI. As soon as he is finished I will forward the link to it to the > CryoNet forum. Can't wait. > In my husband's and my opinion, humans becoming super humans without the control of a > Friendly AI is the recipe for desaster: You seem to be missing some of the points I made about the alternative I hope for to machine AI. There's every reason to believe we'll be much more moral and peaceful by the time and because of becoming super human. Please recall what I said about appreciating individual lives more because of their newly added value. I also feel and it's been said by others here that if people believed this life was capable of perpetuity they would feel they had more to lose with death. They'd take fewer risks like crime, self abuse and war. Your apparent need for a beneficent parental AI supreme being is akin to and reminds me of the argument religionists apply where they claim we are without morals if there is no god. This simply is not so. We have morals out of realization of the benefit of cooperation. We also realize that we are much alike and so empathy to a large degree rules our morals. > Even if I'm super human myself, having to deal with a > whole bunch of moody, warm-fuzzy, violent, confused (maybe even crazy), pretentious super > humans is not what I'm wishing for. Let's take these presumptions on one at a time shall we? moody--As many have said here and other forward looking groups we are working towards eventual elimination of mood disorders. Why assume no progress will be made at amking us all healthy in this regard? For whatever natural moodiness remains there will be no end of distractions to entertain us. May I suggest the following reading as something to tickle the imagination regarding these and more issues. http://www.hedweb.com/hedab.htm warm-fuzzy--I don't get this one frankly. Could you further elaborate on the evils of being warm and fuzzy? If I may presume, I get from it a sense of distain toward our meat shell. Forgive me if this is not true. However, I feel compelled to comment on what I sense from some extropians. I do consider myself extropian but I'm not in a hurry to throw away my humanity and certainly not the human body. I have to wonder if some have poor body or poor self images and if this fuels the desire to go transhuman as soon as possbile. I want to perfect the human body and augment it. I also think it would be neat to have the ability through nano to transform it at will but I in particular would want to be able to return to my human shape. Before I was hurt I was 6'5" tall and 210 lbs and built like Kevin Sorbo just to give you all a visual. I could lift 550lb Lycoming and Continental small aircraft engines from the floor to chest high and hold them there for my Dad to bolt to the airframe. When I walked into a room nearly every head turned. I liked that. I want to get back to it and then some. I also think women look fantastically incredible and I'm really really really glad they are warm and fuzzy. ;) violent--Like I said before I believe reasons for violence will deminish if not entirely disappear. If we are linked as I described we would be able to instantly upload to the mutual network any image of violence being done to us and the perpetrator's identities. Acts of violence would be difficult to hide and too costly personally to commit. confused--Confused? Hardly! Why would we be confused as our intellect and knowledge increases? Confusion comes from misunderstanding. How could we be deficited in understanding if we have all current knowledge available to us instantly and an increased capacity to comprehend that knowledge? crazy--Certainly you can see the trends of medical knowledge and power to cure. As we learn the genome and the proteome and tease at every nook amd cranny of the human being we will be able to eliminate I believe all diseases. Someday I believe we'll be able to "blueprint" human beings. Crazy will cease to be a concern. pretentious--I'm not certain how to respond to this one. Certainly we'll still be individual enough to have pretentious people but I fail to see how it is a major threat. > Even if I can't be killed/erased/terminated, the quality of > my life would be rather bad as I' have to spend precious time with struggling with and > fightingoff super human emperor wannabe's. I know I run the risk of including myself in the following when I confess my distrust of Super AI and the danger of our extinction at it's purposes but I must express my feeling that apocalyptic memes run needlessly rife in our culture. I hate that most Sci-fi entertainment is based on apocalypse. Every view of the future is dark and sinister. Mega corporations or evil power hungry governments will enslave everyone. Aliens will eat us. Nuclear war or power station meltdown will transform us all into trogs. Sci-fi is the methos of our time. The previous methos was religion. Unfortunately the armeggeden apocalypse of religion has carried over not only to the new methos but society in general. Most people expect the future is likely to be horrible. I run into it everywhere. I can't talk some people out of it. I think all the literature from the bible to modern Sci-fi has so entered our language that people seem incapable of seeing a bright future and indeed in my opinion unconsciously seek to self fulfill the doom prophecies. "fightingoff super human emperor wannabe's"? Can you not see it any other way? We can't achieve a bright and wonderful future ourselves without some parental beneficent Super AI? I strongly disagree. Not only that but even if it was beneficent I feel it would be the worst thing for us. Human beings, even transhuman beings need stuggles. We need problems to solve. Furthermore we need to solve them without meddling and smothering parents. I hope the association I just made to how we best raise children came through loud and clear. > Message #15907 > From: "john grigg" <> > Subject: "the Spike" by Damien Broderick is must-buy book! > Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 08:38:08 > > I have recently gotten my own hardcover copy of "the Spike" by Damien > and I am EXTREMELY impressed by it. His intelligence and sense > of humor really shines throughout, making it a very fun read. I > always wanted a book which covered in detail the many fascinating > topics we discuss here and on other cryonics/transhumanist lists and I now > have it. > I have Damien's "The Last Mortal Generation". I just need to quit procrastinting and read it. Sorry Damien, my bad. I'm sure I'll enjoy it emencely when I get some discipline. ;) James Swayze -- Some of our views are spacious some are merely space--RUSH Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=15937