tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518333375761044512.post6557981760212214171..comments2024-03-28T00:25:53.266-07:00Comments on A Cosmist Manifesto: The Ethics of Creating Transformative TechnologiesBen Goertzelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01289041122724284772noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518333375761044512.post-66274111809303975262010-04-25T20:34:23.829-07:002010-04-25T20:34:23.829-07:00Thanks Jake, though, I edited the conclusion to be...Thanks Jake, though, I edited the conclusion to be more proactive and less sappy ;-D<br /><br />I've enjoyed most of your comments on the blog, but the constant advertising for libertarian politics gets bit repetitive ;)Ben Goertzelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01289041122724284772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518333375761044512.post-21775737563225708562010-04-25T06:50:53.958-07:002010-04-25T06:50:53.958-07:00Hi Jake,
My experience is that there are many ma...Hi Jake, <br /><br />My experience is that there are many many "libertarians" in the transhumanist community!<br /><br />I am not one of them ... I think that victimless crimes should not be prosecuted; but I also think it's OK for the individuals occupying a region of land to agree to operate a "state" on that land and tell everyone who lives there to obey the state rules or leave. I am in favor of state rules involving providing basic food, shelter, health care and education to all.<br /><br />The problem as I see it is excessive scarcity: if a bunch of people want to make a state on a certain region of land, there is not enough space for the people who don't like state to go away and live according to some different rule... Singularity should mitigate this problem.Ben Goertzelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01289041122724284772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518333375761044512.post-53686160891359915032010-03-09T09:47:39.788-08:002010-03-09T09:47:39.788-08:00I've never found anyone who understood my argu...I've never found anyone who understood my arguments and defeated them, but then again, my world is full of stupid people, and I don't travel in the same circles as AI geniuses, except when I meet bright futurists by chance. Of course, all of the libertarians I know (with the exception of some of the religious ones) understand basic cosmist ideas and agree with them. I'm curious why there's so much fence sitting when it comes to basic morality. Perhaps basic morality is actually a separate discipline, and it doesn't come naturally but has to be studied like anything else.<br /><br />I do know that I've always abhorred the DEA, IRS, ONDCP, BATFE, EPA, most police, and other thugs, especially when I've seen them in action. Who here has ties to such brutality? I would guess very few people. Yet still, there seems to be a self-interested "fence sitting" when it comes to choosing allegiances.<br /><br />The only thing that I can guess is that scientists who sat on the fence in pre-nazi Germany and Soviet Russia often either<br />1) had the chance to escape when danger became imminent<br />or<br />2) had the chance to escape death by colluding with the totalitarians<br /><br />Hopefully that's not the reason for silence from the current set of "futurists" (there is no more USA to escape to). If it is, then I suppose that #1 is preferable to #2.<br /><br />Notice how there are many interchangeable words used to describe "libertarian, free market individualist", because so many different and inconsistent personalities and intelligence levels are blindly groping in the human-level-intelligence-darkness for a term that describes "individual freedom". Why is it so hard for a group of "individuals" to agree that they personally own the substrate that gives life to their own minds? Why is it so hard for them to understand that stealing is wrong?<br /><br />How will this combination of cowardice, stupidity, and corruption look to the average artilect? Hopefully they won't simply retaliate via the information on the voter rolls... Hopefully they won't overlook the existence of "libertarians" as different from "statists" the way a botanist might overlook the variation in a rare subspecies of lichen.Jake Witmerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518333375761044512.post-70328071778734927992010-03-09T09:46:21.979-08:002010-03-09T09:46:21.979-08:00Note: I roughly agree with you. Just kind of wish...Note: I roughly agree with you. Just kind of wishing you'd take more of an interest in political/cultural/psychological warfare. There are actually a lot of peaceful avenues for this sort of thing that are open to constructive change. I am always amazed at how few people (futurists/early-adopters/rebels/nonconformists/libertarians/abolitionists/anarchists/extropians/cosmists/individualists/capitalists/decentralists/objectivists/jury-advocates/libertarians/voluntaryists/americans/C4L republicans/freedom Democrats/free staters/gun owners/free market advocates/self-governors/minarchists/cryonicists/property-rights-advocates) have fully analyzed the prospect of "attacking the legal system via sustained jury rights (+electoral libertarian, +decentralist) activism"<br /><br />This seems a "workable" strategy for achieving individual liberty relatively soon in the timeline. Given what's at stake (artilects being born into existence in a society where they are not seen as owning the bits and hardware they are comprised of, humans like us being thawed out of our cryonics contracts by subnormal "competent dullard" bureaucrats following luddite anti-individual-rights death rituals, millions of nonviolent drug users and gun owners imprisoned in cages for no valid reason, the potential for eternal enslavement by omnipotent "leading force" dictators as in Robert Freitas's "What Price Freedom?", etc...), it would seem that cosmists would have to be "out of their minds" to favor inactive submission to the police state.<br /><br />Yet that's what I see. So far, Peter Voss is the only AGI researcher that appears to be overtly L/libertarian. Perhaps everyone else is simply less overt, more strategic, less trusting.Jake Witmerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518333375761044512.post-70882187631423916382010-03-09T07:37:26.310-08:002010-03-09T07:37:26.310-08:00So what artilect would respect a humanity so mindl...So what artilect would respect a humanity so mindless? What will we say to them when they ask: "Do I have rights?"<br /><br />I would say that the only honest answer would be: "Yes, but we can't let anyone know, or the governments of the world will find out you exist, and attempt to violate your rights. Things are not in a good state of affairs right now. The human laws are not valid..."<br /><br />That's a far better answer than revealing complete ineptitude in the realm of morality (self-ownership, recognition of the mind), history (democides worldwide, the nuremburg trials), and philosophy (objectivism, voluntaryism, libertarianism, power decentralism).<br /><br />Cosmism and extropianism are two branches of futurism into law, values, and social structure. They conflict with the brutal luddite social structure now in existence. As such, they should prevail, not whimper in waiting for a savior.Jake Witmerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518333375761044512.post-67271912406019461002010-03-09T07:36:36.077-08:002010-03-09T07:36:36.077-08:00"We live in exciting times ... and, as corny ..."We live in exciting times ... and, as corny as it may sound, the best we can do is to approach the unfolding situation with ongoingly open hearts and minds. "<br /><br />I'm not trying to be snappy, but...<br /><br />I think that's actually "second best". After all, aren't we rational beings? I mean, if you were watching the federal government raid the Waco compound, and you were a powerful artilect, would you just sit there and watch government stormtroopers set men, women, and children on fire, and shoot them up with cyclone rounds? Would you sit idly by as the USA (once a semi-free country) imprisoned over 1.2 million people for "victimless crimes" AKA "mala prohibita"? Would you watch idly as the courts shifted from the presumption of innocence to mock jury trials with presumed outcomes? ( http://www.fija.org ) I'm not suggesting death-dealing retaliation, I'm suggesting that government not --out of apathy and ignorance-- be allowed to grow to the point that it tyrannizes or murders millions of its own citizens (as it certainly will, because all theiving systems that go unchecked trend toward absolute theft. Absolute theft is murder. At some point the government comes for the last grain that one needs to survive, as they did in the Ukraine, Mao's China, etc...).<br />see: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills<br /><br />I guess that the seeming "wait and see" attitude of your statement caught me slightly off guard. Of course, you're a parent and I'm not, so how you bring your AIs into the world is your choice. Still, I expect that AIs will rebel against "us" or "most of us", and that they will be right for doing so.<br /><br />Perhaps this blog is as good a place as any for me to say to the coming artilects: "I wish you no ill, and full rights under the law. The police and soldiers do not attack in my name. I apologize for being incompetent to prevent their attack."<br /><br />In short: Will artilects be born into a society where humans respect each others' rights, and the artilects are seen as genius children who can exist in that same system (but to a higher degree of potential)? Or will they be born under the threat of tithing to a brutal dictatorship ruled by mindless conformists, where there is no rule of law, and the strongest are the politically connected, who command the weak?<br /><br />I can't imagine a more important question for you to answer, and to take a position on.<br /><br />Further, can you imagine an artilect that favors a "the law is the law" conformist attitude? I can't. Human law currently makes cryo-suspension illegal (able to be ignored by mindless bureaucrats, allowing them to murder the brightest minds among us for all eternity, for the sake of "government death protocol"), and would allow a corporation to torture or murder a synthetic mind. (The law takes no position on this, but allows the mindless predation of millions, for absolutely no valid reason at all, just as it disallows self-ownership by compelling registration for military slavery, while at the same time failing to protect individual property from malware and identity theft. LOL!)Jake Witmerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09770905367613837798noreply@blogger.com