Open Thread: September 2011

Pavitra

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

If continuing the discussion becomes impractical, that means you win at open threads; a celebratory top-level post on the topic is traditional.

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

If continuing the discussion becomes impractical, that means you win at open threads; a celebratory top-level post on the topic is traditional.

I'm getting increasingly pessimistic about technology.

If we don't get an AI wiping us out or some form of unpleasant brain upload evolution, we'll get hooked by superstimuli and stuff. We don't optimize for well-being, we optimize for what we (think we) want, which are two very different things. (And often, even calling it "optimization" is a stretch.)

I, on the contrary, remain a techno optimist, even more so.

It's a kind of sad, that so many clever people here are losing their confidence into the techno progress. Well, maybe not sad, but it certainly means, that they are not onto something big themselves.

9[anonymous]15y

Natural selection does not cease operation. Say, for example, that someone invents a box that fully reproduces in every respect the subjective experience of eating and of having eaten by directly stimulating the brain. Dieters would love this device. Here's a device that implements in extreme form the very danger that you fear. In this case, the specific danger is that you will stop eating and die. So the question is, will the device wipe out the human race? Almost certainly it will not wipe out the entire human race, simply because there are enough people around who would nevertheless choose to eat despite the availability of the device, possibly because they make a conscious decision to do so. These people will be the survivors, and they will reproduce, and their children will have both their values (transmitted culturally) and their genes, and so will probably be particularly resistant to the device. That's an extreme case. In the actual case, there are doubtless many people who are not adapting well to technological change. They will tend to die out disproportionately, will tend to reproduce disproportionately less. We have a model of this future in today's addictive drugs. Some people are more resistant to the lure of addictive drugs than others. Some people's lives are destroyed as they pursue the unnatural bliss of drugs, but many people manage to avoid their fate. Many people have so far managed the trick of pursuing super stimuli without destroying their lives in the process.