From: Matt Mahoney (matmahoney@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Jul 23 2008 - 19:57:37 MDT
--- On Wed, 7/23/08, Charles Hixson <charleshixsn@earthlink.net> wrote:
> OTOH, saying that something recognizably human will survive a positive
> singularity is almost a tautology. Which singularities that nothing
> recognizably human would survive would you call positive?
As I mentioned, "positive", "good", and "bad" only have meaning relative to an ethical system. A gray goo accident is positive from the point of view of the nanobots that replace us.
It is only recently that we had the technology to wipe out our species. More technology gives us more options, e.g. nuclear weapons, genetically engineered plagues, self replicating nanotechnology, wireheading, etc. So I don't understand the attitude that we need a singularity to save humanity. A singularity is a state of greatly accelerated evolution. Evolution is a chaotic process whose only stable attractor is a dead planet.
-- Matt Mahoney, matmahoney@yahoo.com
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