X-Message-Number: 10920 Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 05:48:10 -0500 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #10896 - #10899 Hi everyone! I have already discussed the ideas of Mr. Smith on money. He can believe what he wants. We'll all (I hope, and we all hope) see just how things really develop. However, for Bob Ettinger, I feel a bit surprised that he's taking the line he's taking. There is a difference between reality and any kind of virtual version, and always will be, if only because the universe is far larger and more complex than anything we could program on a computer. But more than that, a virtual world won't give me anything that could not have been foreseen --- not necessarily by my unaided brain, but by any kind of computation, no matter how powerful. While it is the nature of reality to surprise us with changes we could not have foreseen no matter how hard and with how large a computer. There is, of course, no metaphysical reason why we could not invent machines capable of managing everything for us, and then gone off into our virtual worlds. However in effect we would by doing so become no more than pets of those machines, and eventually such a situation is bound to hurt us. The Eloi, remember, no matter how apparently beautiful they seemed, were basically being raised as a source of meat. Nor is it the power of our machines which is important here; the issue is that of control, not power. We are not now Eloi, even though we have increasingly powerful computers. That is so not because we can compute (or even think) faster than these computers, but because those computers have no independence at all from us. They are aids to our own thinking, with no independent ability to do a thing. Yes, such a situation, at least in some places, may well happen to some people. They will no more need money than cows need money: their owners happily give them food and living space, for reasons the cows do not question. Nor, for that matter, do they want anything other than food and living space. (It is human beings who seem never to be satisfied, and always want more --- such as the REAL possession of land, or enough resources to build one's own planet). I sincerely hope that no such situation ever happens to me or anyone I know. Nor do I see it as inevitable. Best and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=10920