From: Pope Salmon the Lesser Mungojelly (rainbow@beautywood.org)
Date: Tue Oct 11 2005 - 13:52:05 MDT
On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 22:03:04 -0400, Ben Goertzel <ben@goertzel.org> wrote:
> I wrote something somewhat pertinent to this earlier today. It was part
> of a longer essay on immortality, but, even out of context it may be
> comprehensible.
Is the whole essay available somewhere?
> It may be that, when some of us live long enough and become smart
> enough, we decide that maintaining individuality and the other human
> illusions unto eternity isn't interesting, and it's better to merge
> into a larger posthuman intelligent dynamical-pattern-system.
Recently I started to deeply ponder how I personally relate to the concept
of undoing my own individuality as we pass into the Singularity. What led
me to consider the question was that I was thinking about replacing parts
of my neural system with artificial versions. For instance replacing my
audio-input module with one with all sorts of DSP capabilities; as an
electronic musician that's one set of possibilities with which I'm
intimately aware. What I realized was that if I and another person both
had software parts in our brains, we could mix and match them. You could
try hooking up my weird DSP ears for a day and see what it's like; I could
try out your self-prioritizing scheduler.
The next level of weirdness after that is that we could create new wirings
both within brains and between them. Obviously any sort of intelligence
imaginable becomes possible at that point, but one of the things I find
most interesting is the new kinds of intimacy that become possible. You
can hook up with another person's emotions so you're always aware how they
feel, of course, but that's just the beginning. You can actually take it
deeper than interpersonal knowledge, to the point where you are sharing
actual components and processes. You could work together with someone in
clockwork, syncronized-swimming type coordination without even trying,
because you share a scheduler that times both of your movements. You
could remember everything the other person has seen as well as you
remember what you've seen, because you share the same life-recorder memory.
If in the new world trust can somehow be made nearly absolute-- and I
don't see why it wouldn't be (now that's a first in human history)-- then
we may naturally form into very large very integrated communities.
Before then what I imagine we'll see is many increasingly-intimate teams
(married partners particularly) connected on many different levels. I
know that I personally am deeply in love with my husband, and so I will
jump at just about any technology that allows us to relate more deeply,
completely & fluidly.
Another possibility I've been considering is the rise of a new kind of
cult, which (instead of fake coerced union like cults these days) are
actually deeply interconnected and communal in fundamental ways.
Humans haven't really been completely individual for millions of years
now, and I think many of us are going to take the plunge into deeper forms
of union.
<3,
mungojelly
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