Comment author: Timo 15 January 2016 11:32:39PM *  0 points [-]

This /seems/ to contain great insight that I can't comprehend yet. Yes, please, how do I learn to see what you see?

In response to comment by Timo on Thou Art Godshatter
Comment author: aaq 14 May 2016 03:57:05PM *  1 point [-]

I'm very wary of this post for being so vague and not linking to an argument, but I'll throw my two cents in. :)

The future will not have a firm concept of individuals.

I see two ways to interpret this:

  1. You could see it as individuals being uploaded to some giant distributed AI - individual human minds coalescing into one big super-intelligence, or being replaced by one; or
  2. Having so many individuals that the entire idea of worrying about 1 person, when you have 100 billion people per planet per quadrant or whatever, becomes laughable.

The common thread is that "individuality" is slowly being supplanted by "information" - specifically that you, as an individual, only become so because of your unique inflows of information slowly carving out pathways in your mind, like how water randomly carves canyons over millions of years. In a giant AI, all the varying bits that make up one human from another would get crosslinked, in some immense database that would make Jorge Luis Borges blush; meanwhile, in a civilization of huge, huge populations, the value of those varying bits simply goes down, because it becomes increasingly unlikely that you'll actually be unique enough to matter on an individual level. So, the next bottleneck in the spread of civilization becomes resources.

This is probably my first comment on this site - feel free to browbeat me if I didn't get my point across well enough.

Comment author: aaq 29 January 2016 08:08:59PM 6 points [-]

Hello from Boston. I've been reading LW since some point this summer. I like it a lot.

I'm an engineering student and willing to learn whatever it takes for me to tackle world problems like poverty, hunger and transmissible diseases. But for now I'm focusing my efforts on my degree.

Comment author: aaq 20 November 2015 01:30:30AM 2 points [-]

I'm still a student, so I don't think I'd be able to take this sort of job. But consider my volunteer application sent. You guys are doing important work! -Andrew Quinn