From: Gordon Worley (redbird@rbisland.cx)
Date: Wed Jul 24 2002 - 22:34:26 MDT
On Wednesday, July 24, 2002, at 10:48 PM, Michael Roy Ames wrote:
> Gordon Worley <redbird@rbisland.cx> wrote:
>
>> ... Given this tendency, for what reasons is
>> transcendence a good idea rather than another irrational thought that
>> we
>> are having a hard time seeing around? Or to make the question
>> unweighted, why should we transcend or not transcend if we ignore the
>> genetic reasons to transcend?
>>
>
> I am not sure what the genetic reasons are to transcend (want to give a
> brief list?)
Anything related to reproduction. Eternal life is a good example of a
genetic reason to develop the Singularity.
> but the first non-genetic reason that comes to mind is: to
> break through the mental and physical limitations of our current
> biological
> substrate. Limitations like: limited life-span, non-programmable mental
> processes (or extremely limited programmability), fixed body/brain plan,
> fixed processing speed. Hmm. There is more to say. Its a good
> question.
I have been thinking along the line of being able to answer more
interesting questions. Some questions have been beyond the reach of
humans for millennia, yet we continue to try to find answers even though
we are fairly sure they are questions humans can't answer (existential
questions like "Do gods exists?", "What is the meaning of life?", and
"What is right and wrong?"). Presumably, just as a dog can't answer
boring human questions like "What is the square root of 4?", a human
can't answer a question that might be boring to an SI. Of course, there
may prove to be unanswerable questions, but we have yet to prove very
many questions unanswerable.
Another is to make life better for everyone in the universe (assuming
that you don't think this should be done as a power play).
-- Gordon Worley `When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty http://www.rbisland.cx/ said, `it means just what I choose redbird@rbisland.cx it to mean--neither more nor less.' PGP: 0xBBD3B003 --Lewis Carroll
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