X-Message-Number: 29754
Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2007 21:07:42 -0400
From: Francois <>
Subject: To Flavonoid, a possible type of Singularity-Human interracti...

During the summer, I use my bicycle to go to work. I find it a pleasant and 
relaxing exercise. During my ride, I pass next to a pond. In that pond, 
there are no doubt a great many micro organisms, bacteria and protozoa of 
all sorts going about their simple bacteria and protozoa business. I barely 
give it a glance as I go by and I am perfectly happy to leave the little 
critters alone. In fact, most people are just as happy as I am to leave the 
pond alone, and some would even make some effort to protect it. Of course, 
if a developper ever wanted to build something on the piece of land where 
the pond is situated, the bacteria and protozoa living in it would be out of 
luck.

I expect the machines of the Singularity would be just as happy to ignore 
us, and may even extend some form of benevolent action toward us. They would 
be existing on a level so very different from ours that we would barely show 
up on their concern radar. Of course, should we ever find ourselves in the 
way of one of their projects, we would be just as out of luck as the 
protozoa in my pond.

Or would we? Those machines will be unbelievably powerful. For instance, 
they probably will be capable of restructuring entire galaxies to suit their 
purposes. Without strong ethics guiding their actions, conflicting goals 
among them would probably drive them toward their mutual anihilation very 
quickly. These ethics may lead them to see organic life in general and 
humans in particular as primitive kins which should not be harmed. That is 
very speculative of course, and probably not very reassuring in any case, 
but it's probably the best we fragile flesh and blood creatures can hope 
for, except maybe for the possibility of letting the machines "upgrade" us 
to their level.


Francois
Good health is merely the slowest
possible rate at which one can die.

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=29754