Upgraded and adapted from the Moot... I ask a Question:
Is it even possible to separate assessments of reasonableness from political assessments when it comes to Robot Cultists? If "reasonableness" amounts to little more than logical compatibility with present theories doesn't that actually radically underdetermine feasibility given all the intermediate technodevelopmental steps between present knowledge and technical affordances and the superlative outcomes that interest the Robot Cultists, especially since so many funding, publishing, regulative, marketing, implementation decisions material to those intermediate steps are political in character, eg, involve distributional questions of risk, cost, and benefit to a diversity of stakeholders? And this is not even to delve into the level of palpable limits in our present biological knowledge, understanding of intelligence, advanced and detailed physical theories when it comes to the specific sorts of outcomes transhumanoids like to bloviate about -- sustainable engineered negligible senescence, digital consciousness emulation, traversible wormholes, robust controllable programmable self-replicative room-temperature nano-manufacturing, mega-scale climate engineering projects and so on. Setting temperament aside (that is to say, my hunch that generality here provides a whiff of technoscientific respectability enabling arrant wish-fulfillment fantasizing of the most infantile sort imaginable, daydreams of never having to die, of being irresistibly sexy, of never being caught in an embarrassing error, of rolling in dough without effort, and so on, all in the name of Science!), isn't it rather clear that sub(cult)ures fixated on such outcomes will mostly be susceptible of analysis on political, cultural, discursive terms?
Is it even possible to separate assessments of reasonableness from political assessments when it comes to Robot Cultists? If "reasonableness" amounts to little more than logical compatibility with present theories doesn't that actually radically underdetermine feasibility given all the intermediate technodevelopmental steps between present knowledge and technical affordances and the superlative outcomes that interest the Robot Cultists, especially since so many funding, publishing, regulative, marketing, implementation decisions material to those intermediate steps are political in character, eg, involve distributional questions of risk, cost, and benefit to a diversity of stakeholders? And this is not even to delve into the level of palpable limits in our present biological knowledge, understanding of intelligence, advanced and detailed physical theories when it comes to the specific sorts of outcomes transhumanoids like to bloviate about -- sustainable engineered negligible senescence, digital consciousness emulation, traversible wormholes, robust controllable programmable self-replicative room-temperature nano-manufacturing, mega-scale climate engineering projects and so on. Setting temperament aside (that is to say, my hunch that generality here provides a whiff of technoscientific respectability enabling arrant wish-fulfillment fantasizing of the most infantile sort imaginable, daydreams of never having to die, of being irresistibly sexy, of never being caught in an embarrassing error, of rolling in dough without effort, and so on, all in the name of Science!), isn't it rather clear that sub(cult)ures fixated on such outcomes will mostly be susceptible of analysis on political, cultural, discursive terms?
> [S]o many funding, publishing, regulative, marketing, implementation
ReplyDelete> decisions material to those intermediate steps are political in character,
> eg, involve distributional questions of risk, cost, and benefit to a
> diversity of stakeholders?
Well, in David Brin's new _Existence_, the folks with the most sophisticated
computer simulations realize that democracy is unsustainable, and that
humanity is inevitably dragged back to its best-fitting form of
social organization -- feudalism.
So that kind of future means Peter Thiel, the Koch brothers, and the other 1-percenters
get to **assign** the risk, cost, and benefit to whomever they see
fit.
(I noticed the other night that there's an article in -- is it _Psychology
Today_ or _Scientific American_? -- discussing the overlap between the
$$ 1-percenters and the IQ 1-percenters, and salivating over the
fact that there **really are** people out there with genuwine
200 IQs, and they're so incredibly superior to the rest of us,
and some of 'em are billionaires too.
Lady Gaga is an IQ 1-percenter, you know -- she was identified by
the same Johns Hopkins gifted-and-talented kid search as, I dunno,
Sergey Brin or somebody.)
Stand back, Democrats, and let the Indigo Billionaires lead the way.
You whiners are just suffering from ressentiment, and may the
ghost of Friedrich Nietzsche strike you dead!
The sooper-intelligent computer I imagined SAYS I'm a Galtian Overlord, so I guess that makes all the rest of you moochers who deserve the lash! It would be anti-science and anti-progress to deny it! Liber-techno-topia here we come!
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I suspect Nietzsche would have some highly choice words of disdain for our self-appointed techno-elites and the smell of their lies.
>By the way, I suspect Nietzsche would have some highly choice words of disdain for our self-appointed techno-elites and the smell of their lies.
ReplyDeleteNot exactly anti-Randian-Heroism, but general anti-Robot-Cultism:
>I go not your way, ye despisers of the body! Ye are no bridges for me to the Superman!
> I go not your way, ye despisers of the body!
ReplyDelete> Ye are no bridges for me to the Superman!
That must have been after Richard Wagner tried to convince
Nietzsche's doctor that Nietzsche was getting sick because
he was a chronic masturbator.
Isn't it nice when friends look after one another?