Re: An essay I just wrote on the Singularity.

From: Lawrence Foard (entropy@farviolet.com)
Date: Sun Jan 04 2004 - 19:36:39 MST


On Sun, 4 Jan 2004, Perry E. Metzger wrote:

>
> Randall Randall <randall@randallsquared.com> writes:
> > Right, but if no one ever considers their own needs,
> > others have to guess at what those needs are, and
> > they will often guess wrong.
>
> Luckily, of course, parasitism takes over and very rapidly the
> altruists die, sucked to death by the others.

Such parasites would not be operating in there own self interest since
destroying the altruists would destroy themselves as well (or atleast
end there career as parasites).

> However, it would be amusing to see two true altruists sitting in a
> desert together with only enough food to keep one of them alive. Both
> will starve, but unlike the donkey starving to death between two bales
> of hay because of metastability, the result is not just predictable
> but necessary. (Solutions like drawing straws will not work, btw --
> the true altruist will refuse any solution that gives him a chance of
> surviving when others might do so instead.)

Going to the same degree of absurdity you could make the same claim
for capitalists, if you assume perfect symmetry. They would both likely
fatally injure each other fighting over the food. If anything in a
realistic scenerio the altruists are more likely to have one come out
alive.

> Rand satirizes this sort of stupidity very effectively, but it is
> amazing how people who don't grok the economic way of thinking
> continue proposing it through the ages even though the problems with
> it are so utterly manifest.

I understand it, and I also see its limits.

> Anyway, Communism has been tried. It doesn't work.

The so called communist countries where hardly a reasonable attempt.
Thats not to say it would work with humans as presently wired, just that
you can't point to a drastically flawed attempt and say that its
universally impossible.

-- 
 Laughter-Confusion, Pleasure-Pain, Happyness-Sadness, Excitement-Fear,
 Love-Hate, etc. The true primary emotions, a modifier makes each into two.
 This modifier is acceptance/unacceptance. Let go, surrender, accept...
  Be a counter terrorist perpetrate random senseless acts of kindness


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:00:43 MDT