Re: 'Singularity Realism' - A few thoughts

From: Philip Sutton (Philip.Sutton@green-innovations.asn.au)
Date: Fri Mar 12 2004 - 09:45:10 MST


Hi Marc,

In my experience most people are really quite nice until they get really
scared. I don't think it helps to build pictures in our mind of 'everyone'
out there being out to get 'us'. That sort of paranoia can actually trigger
scary actions that make things worse.

Sure there are terrorists around, but they are a vanishingly small % of
the population. So I don't think it helps to start hating or despising too
widely because of the barbaric actions of a small handfull of people.

Also I think there's a lot the US (and other countries) could do to reduce
the risk of terrorist attacks on US citizens or US allies by changing the
way the US (and other countries) relates to the rest of the world. The
terrorist attacks don't come out of thin air - there is a lot of history
behind them.

By the way, can you explain exactly how you can escape the 'system'
via the singularity? My guess is that, for those entities that have
escalating post-human brain power, the singularity won't feel that much
different to business as usual with a high innovation rate - because they
will be able to keep up mentally with the speed of the changes. So if
you think you'll be in there amongst the mentally enhanced what makes
you think you won't find 'the system' in there with you?

Cheers, Philip



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