Although I agree with Nick Bostrom that we need to space out our probability estimates far when forecasting events like the singularity this planning tool seems like a reasonable approximation for the time at which various events will occur (let's just call "omnipotence" something like a Jupiter Brain or Matriosha Brain).
http://danila.spb.ru/papers/planning/future.html
Teach your children well, and ideally teach them to program and an in-depth science (e.g. "Biohacking"/DIYbio) or mathematical subject. Programming = many rewarding opportunities, options and personal empowerment.
I've been told the Russian Transhumanist Movement is focusing on optimization of research and development by working with industry on advancing technologies ready to be integrated. Here is a summary analysis of the Russian state of tech interest:
http://danila.spb.ru/papers/futureperception/futureperception_summary_ENG.html
Source: http://danila.spb.ru/
Blog: http://livingtomorrow.livejournal.com/
RTM: http://transhuman.ru/
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Eventual Cloning Tech and Lifestyle Improvements
The idea of advanced adult cloning (depending on advanced nanotech and supercomputing as well as greater control of biology) understandably leaves many people feeling ambivalent if not hostile based on gut reactions and negative hypothetical scenarios. However, in time it should be welcomed for its life-saving and life-enhancing qualities. As previously mentioned, at the subatomic level at least there seems little if any continuity of physical substrate over time, especially across discontinuities of consciousness as occur during sleep (or even, arguably, shifts of attention). Therefore, advanced cloning should be considered in many ways as "continuous" with identity as a single body existing through time, at least at and near the point of copying and highly similar in relevant ways if not technically identical over longer timespans.
The foremost benefit of the ability to produce cloned copies of a person would be to serve as a fall-back in case of lethal accidents. Yet mature utilization of the technology also would reward more rational risk-taking in careers and life and reduce the damage incurred from poor decisions or risky efforts that do not succeed. Indeed, the equivalent of suicide missions could be lived out as merely strange days in a much longer lifespan with a broader scope of experience (both interpersonally from the view of others and subjectively either as gaps of experience or experiential endings minus the existential finality of historically normal death). Beyond the individual perspective, families and friends could retain loved ones over longer lifespans.
I once spoke with Eliezer Yudkowsky on the death of his younger brother Yehuda - an unmistakeably brilliant materials science student, active Republican college radio pundit and Jewish cultural leader - to what appeared to be suicide. He found it annoying that his religious family at the time were consoling one another by stating he was "in a better place." I mentioned that at least on some interpretations of physics a wide array of possibilities were realized and that Yehuda would still be alive in many of them. Eliezer replied that although that might provide some consolation in the abstract it still doesn't change the lived experience of continuing through life without his brother.
Any overpopulation issues could be worked around through policies limiting the number of clones via something like a carbon tax differentiated by levels of pollution in energy extraction (not the apparently ineffective cap and trade approach), or analoguously the waste or benefit derived from income sources (e.g. gambling and prostitution versus software development or college instruction). Preferably, the policies would be ones that did not disincentivize reviving deceased people but placed productivity demands (via rational and limited taxation, for example) on the number of coexisting clones one could produce of oneself (in the case of geniuses or popular people, others might foot the bill). Drawing again on the analogy of renewable energy incentives, we might even pay people for the excess productivity of their clone groups beyond given thresholds.
In short, I see advanced cloning as offering a potential bridge between rational interests for the self, society, and communities of affiliation. If we manage to avoid destroying ourselves first, I think such cloning will become an integral part of the future of humanity, even as we also pursue computer uploading, computer-brain interfaces and other technological advancements that will continue to transform the nature of human beings.
The foremost benefit of the ability to produce cloned copies of a person would be to serve as a fall-back in case of lethal accidents. Yet mature utilization of the technology also would reward more rational risk-taking in careers and life and reduce the damage incurred from poor decisions or risky efforts that do not succeed. Indeed, the equivalent of suicide missions could be lived out as merely strange days in a much longer lifespan with a broader scope of experience (both interpersonally from the view of others and subjectively either as gaps of experience or experiential endings minus the existential finality of historically normal death). Beyond the individual perspective, families and friends could retain loved ones over longer lifespans.
I once spoke with Eliezer Yudkowsky on the death of his younger brother Yehuda - an unmistakeably brilliant materials science student, active Republican college radio pundit and Jewish cultural leader - to what appeared to be suicide. He found it annoying that his religious family at the time were consoling one another by stating he was "in a better place." I mentioned that at least on some interpretations of physics a wide array of possibilities were realized and that Yehuda would still be alive in many of them. Eliezer replied that although that might provide some consolation in the abstract it still doesn't change the lived experience of continuing through life without his brother.
Any overpopulation issues could be worked around through policies limiting the number of clones via something like a carbon tax differentiated by levels of pollution in energy extraction (not the apparently ineffective cap and trade approach), or analoguously the waste or benefit derived from income sources (e.g. gambling and prostitution versus software development or college instruction). Preferably, the policies would be ones that did not disincentivize reviving deceased people but placed productivity demands (via rational and limited taxation, for example) on the number of coexisting clones one could produce of oneself (in the case of geniuses or popular people, others might foot the bill). Drawing again on the analogy of renewable energy incentives, we might even pay people for the excess productivity of their clone groups beyond given thresholds.
In short, I see advanced cloning as offering a potential bridge between rational interests for the self, society, and communities of affiliation. If we manage to avoid destroying ourselves first, I think such cloning will become an integral part of the future of humanity, even as we also pursue computer uploading, computer-brain interfaces and other technological advancements that will continue to transform the nature of human beings.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Cloning and Self-Enhancement in Relation to Life Extension
I used to be opposed to the idea of cloning oneself as a means of life extension for three reasons: 1) early cloning work resulted in sickly animals, 2) a newborn clone will have different life experiences that shape its biology and mind, and 3) I held a naive materialist view of the locus of a subject of experience and action or self-same mind.
I have moved beyond my third objection to view information processed in a manner that is relevantly the same to be an identical mind. Now, if cloning techniques were better, say, even allowing healthy identical copies of adults to be produced (perhaps with advanced nanotech and supercomputing) I would consider that fully adequate for life extension. Moreover, it easily could encourage venturesome risk-taking rather than discourage it among people who find appealing the incentive of a long and youthful lifespan.
At some point, I suspect that such approaches to life extension will be adopted in part because it offers the best of both investment strategies: high risk and novelty seeking / high reward potential and long duration of learning and expertise cultivation through risk aversion / likelier reward potential even if comparative returns are modest. Additionally, more of the same person could be applied to a given problem or challenge (e.g. several clones of the same nobel prize winning physicist could compete and collaborate with one another and other as well as clones of other notable or highly capable physicists to save the planet from the latest existential risk).
Notice I mentioned physicists. On a morning news show with a section on radical life extension I saw an interviewer ask Aubrey de Grey if it really was worth living to watch a million episodes of reality television (to which Aubrey replied something like he wouldn't want to watch a million microseconds of reality television but you can't do anything when dead). Although I see nothing wrong with enjoying reality television we should hope to achieve a bit more with our resources; for example, reaching the stars to seed the galaxy with life and averting extinction in the near future.
In developed nations the tested intelligence of the general population has risen slowly based on a more cognitively demanding environment. At the upper end of the spectrum there also are social filters that encourage some traits to an eccentric extent (e.g. the higher rates of Aspergers Syndrome in Silicon Valley). However, the very word "eugenics" is tainted with the murderous and sadistic regime of the Nazis and any explicit program of genetic enhancement through selective breeding might risk promoting sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies along with intelligence.
One genetic enhancement strategy that doesn't risk oppressive social regimes would be voluntary self-enhancement through the use of early childhood education, nootropic drugs and eventually more dramatically effective forms of neural enhancement and nanorobotically achieved genetic engineering within the self-same person. Ultimately, uploading onto another computational format could enable much more radical enhancement. Let's hope that the leaders, legislators and judges of today and tomorrow have the wisdom and foresight to provide both access to such technology (lest the users become outlaws) and regulation for safety (lest unforeseen glitches in cognitive tech seriously harm the users or those who they interact with while under the influence).
I have moved beyond my third objection to view information processed in a manner that is relevantly the same to be an identical mind. Now, if cloning techniques were better, say, even allowing healthy identical copies of adults to be produced (perhaps with advanced nanotech and supercomputing) I would consider that fully adequate for life extension. Moreover, it easily could encourage venturesome risk-taking rather than discourage it among people who find appealing the incentive of a long and youthful lifespan.
At some point, I suspect that such approaches to life extension will be adopted in part because it offers the best of both investment strategies: high risk and novelty seeking / high reward potential and long duration of learning and expertise cultivation through risk aversion / likelier reward potential even if comparative returns are modest. Additionally, more of the same person could be applied to a given problem or challenge (e.g. several clones of the same nobel prize winning physicist could compete and collaborate with one another and other as well as clones of other notable or highly capable physicists to save the planet from the latest existential risk).
Notice I mentioned physicists. On a morning news show with a section on radical life extension I saw an interviewer ask Aubrey de Grey if it really was worth living to watch a million episodes of reality television (to which Aubrey replied something like he wouldn't want to watch a million microseconds of reality television but you can't do anything when dead). Although I see nothing wrong with enjoying reality television we should hope to achieve a bit more with our resources; for example, reaching the stars to seed the galaxy with life and averting extinction in the near future.
In developed nations the tested intelligence of the general population has risen slowly based on a more cognitively demanding environment. At the upper end of the spectrum there also are social filters that encourage some traits to an eccentric extent (e.g. the higher rates of Aspergers Syndrome in Silicon Valley). However, the very word "eugenics" is tainted with the murderous and sadistic regime of the Nazis and any explicit program of genetic enhancement through selective breeding might risk promoting sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies along with intelligence.
One genetic enhancement strategy that doesn't risk oppressive social regimes would be voluntary self-enhancement through the use of early childhood education, nootropic drugs and eventually more dramatically effective forms of neural enhancement and nanorobotically achieved genetic engineering within the self-same person. Ultimately, uploading onto another computational format could enable much more radical enhancement. Let's hope that the leaders, legislators and judges of today and tomorrow have the wisdom and foresight to provide both access to such technology (lest the users become outlaws) and regulation for safety (lest unforeseen glitches in cognitive tech seriously harm the users or those who they interact with while under the influence).
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