[I_Like_Plants]

We won't exterminate the planet though, I think Lovelock has the best projection of what's likely to happen. We will go through a genetic bottleneck. We will do so because the few breeding pairs will have to survive a very hostile environment, something like the Australian Outback or the deserts of Africa where the Bushmen live. Or consider Hopi country. In all of these cases, the result has been cultures that are very cooperative, and people who in general are much nicer to each other than we slaves of the Machine can imagine. Now, in the cases of these groups, they were pushed into hostile environments by more aggressive groups, and fairly recently - within the last 1000 years and in some cases within the last few hundred. For our descendents, hostile conditions will last for much longer than that. We will learn to act not like a new virus which seems to do all it can to kill the host, but like a more mature virus which learns to co-exist with the host.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rsch20', '
')
Even if we were exterminated, I would argue that that it is preferable for us to be exterminated by a new and superior life form/intelligence, than for us to just exterminate ourselves and leave a sterile planet.

[rsch20]

wow, your position is so weak that you need to invoke Godwins Law this quickly?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Godwins Law', 'A')s an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one

[rsch20]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('I_Like_Plants', 'W')e won't exterminate the planet though, I think Lovelock has the best projection of what's likely to happen. We will go through a genetic bottleneck. We will do so because the few breeding pairs will have to survive a very hostile environment, something like the Australian Outback or the deserts of Africa where the Bushmen live. Or consider Hopi country. In all of these cases, the result has been cultures that are very cooperative, and people who in general are much nicer to each other than we slaves of the Machine can imagine. Now, in the cases of these groups, they were pushed into hostile environments by more aggressive groups, and fairly recently - within the last 1000 years and in some cases within the last few hundred. For our descendents, hostile conditions will last for much longer than that. We will learn to act not like a new virus which seems to do all it can to kill the host, but like a more mature virus which learns to co-exist with the host.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rsch20', ' ')in this case the new race actually would be superior as opposed to just thinking they are.

[rsch20]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rsch20', ' ')in this case the new race actually would be superior as opposed to just thinking they are.

[Plantagenet]

No problem. I fully understand why you wouldn't want to defend
your ideas about a post-singularity "superior" race exterminating humanity.



Cheers!

PS: I don't know how many times I watched Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise persuade the various super-intelligent alien master races he met on his five year mission to seek out new worlds not to exterminate him, his crew, and poor pitiful humanity.

Take us out of here, Sulu.

[rsch20]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TheDude', ' ')No Woman Born by CL Moore is an excellent example, a woman has lost her body in a fire, and now her brain controls a sleek golden robot, very powerful and strong. Is such a construct still "human"?

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rsch20', '
')
I'm willing to bet, that in this story, the woman herself is not 'enhanced' in anything but physical ways, a 'powerful and strong' body as you say, but what about a powerful and strong mind? does she have increased math capabilities? does she have instant and complete recall? is she 'networked' with other beings like her? are her 'thoughts' operating exponentially faster than the regular humans?

If she were, how would you represent that in a story?

[Plantagenet]

The Borg are an amalgam of humanoids of many different species that are enhanced with implanted cybernetics, giving them improved mental and physical abilities, called drones. The name Borg is short for cyborg (cybernetic organism). The Borg function as automata; the minds of all Borg drones are connected via implants and networks to a hive mind, the Borg Collective, personified by the Borg Queen and controlled from a central hub, Unimatrix One. The Borg claim to only seek to "improve the quality of life for all species" by integrating organic and synthetic components in their quest for perfection. To this end, they travel the galaxy, increasing their numbers and advancing by "assimilating" other species and their technologies, and subjugating captured individuals by injecting them with nanoprobes and surgically implanting prostheses, quickly changing their biological anatomy and biochemistry to the Borg standard.

from Wikipedia.

Do you think the Borg are a reasonable cinematic portrayal of a post-singularity "superior" race?

[rsch20]

Incorrect, the borg are depicted as techno-zombies. controlled through a top-down system (the queen), rather than a true interactive environment.

They are constantly depicted as downright stupid, letting the crew walk around their ship and ignoring them, and are also depicted as not creating any of their own technology, but only stealing it from other races.

As I said, popular 'optimistic' SF themes are laughably incorrect, your very use of a fictional past example to describe a real future event shows your cognitive bias.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cognitive Biases Potentially Affecting Judgement of Global Risks', 'N')ow consider how many media stories on Artificial Intelligence cite the Terminator movies as if they were documentaries, and how many media stories on brain-computer interfaces mention Star Trek's Borg. If briefly presenting an anchor has a substantial effect on subjects' judgments, how much greater an effect should we expect from reading an entire book, or watching a live-action television show? In the ancestral environment, there were no moving pictures; whatever you saw with your own eyes was true. People do seem to realize, so far as conscious thoughts are concerned, that fiction is fiction. Media reports that mention Terminator do not usually treat Cameron's screenplay as a prophecy or a fixed truth. Instead the reporter seems to regard Cameron's vision as something that, having happened before, might well happen again - the movie is recalled (is available) as if it were an illustrative historical case. I call this mix of anchoring and availability the logical fallacy of generalization from fictional evidence.

(A related concept is the good-story bias hypothesized in Bostrom (2001).

Fictional evidence usually consists of 'good stories' in Bostrom's sense. Note that not all good stories are presented as fiction.) Storytellers obey strict rules of narrative unrelated to reality. Dramatic logic is not logic. Aspiring writers are warned that truth is no excuse: you may not justify an unbelievable event in your fiction by citing an instance of real life. A good story is painted with bright details, illuminated by glowing metaphors; a storyteller must be concrete, as hard and precise as stone. But in forecasting, every added detail is an extra burden! Truth is hard work, and not the kind of hard work done by storytellers. We should avoid, not only being duped by fiction - failing to expend the mental effort necessary to 'unbelieve' it - but also being contaminated by fiction, letting it anchor our judgments. And we should be aware that we are not always aware of this contamination. Not uncommonly in a discussion of existential risk, the categories, choices, consequences, and strategies derive from movies, books and television shows. There are subtler defeats, but this is outright surrender.

[Plantagenet]

You are predicting a future society with more individualistic cyborgs?

Cool!

[rsch20]

sortof...

it's funny that I slam you for the Borg example, because I have used it myself in the past. You are correct that it is the closest example of what I am talking about. Though it is colored in a negative light.

When explaining this to a few friends of mine recently my most succinct description was 'like the borg but in a good way'. So in a sense you are correct.

But in key ways, the Borg depict the opposite of what I'm talking about, as I said they are stupid and uncreative, and the point raised by the paper I linked is very valid, just referencing the Borg influences our judgement of the issue, we generalize from fictional evidence.

[Plantagenet]

I hate to risk being slammed for another cinema metaphor, but maybe like Ahhhnold in the Terminator? His character is a very independent cyborg.

Who couldn't get into being Ahhnold??? A tough cyborg with a sensitive side.

from Wikipedia:

The Terminator is a 1984 science fiction/action film featuring former bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger in what would become his best-known role, and also starred Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn. Directed by James Cameron, who was only 27 years old at the time, the premise of the movie is that a "Terminator" cyborg (played by Schwarzenegger) has been transported back in time from 2029 to May 12, 1984 to assassinate a woman named Sarah Connor (played by Hamilton). Issues raised by the film include nuclear war, time travel, causal loops and artificial intelligence.
The sequels to the movie, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, further developed the story line and explored the ethical implications of machine intelligence as well as what it means to be truly human.

----------

Its certainly true that coarsely defined concepts in popular culture can be oversimplistic in dealing with these kinds of ideas, but its equally true that film can catch the gestalt of an idea and help us visualize some of its implications in a way that a book or technical article can't.

[Plantagenet]

[web]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Terminator.jpg[/web]

[TheDude]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rsch20', 'c')ould you clarify what you mean by 'read (not view)', if you are implying that I need to read more (or watch less tv) and 'expand my view' then you are barking up the wrong tree.

[rsch20]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'I') hate to risk being slammed for another cinema metaphor, but maybe like Ahhhnold in the Terminator? His character is a very independent cyborg.

[rsch20]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TheDude', 'S')orry - I was taking you for someone who gets their impression of SF from mass media, as that was all you were offering as examples.

[rsch20]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TheDude', 'A')ny good titles? Actually we need a Doomer Porn thread.

[rsch20]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rsch20', '
')One of my enduring favorites from the fantasy field, is the 'Books of Swords' series by Fred Saberhagen