Technology, the future and abuse

[eugene]

 

 

 

there have been a few instances where a nuclear war could have been started that would destroy the earth and we sort of passed this test

 

True, we've done OK so far, but this isn't an exam. The test continues so long as there is risk. As for the values of "the west" causing the stop of nuclear war, I call shenanigans. What value that was entirely western can you claim stopped these wars? Is there really some Eastern or primitive value that says "Fuck this gay earth" any more than your average westerner might? Claiming that as a Western Value Triumph seems really arbitrary.

 

humanism i guess, the idea that human life in general is the ultimate cause.

 

 

what role would you say was played by this western value in the development of nuclear bombs and their actual use against innocent people?

 

dunno, maybe if you mix nationalism in then you can construct all kinds of justifications and narratives, like "yes, all people's lives are valuable but OUR people's lives are more valuable, so in extreme situations etc etc..."

[Alcofribas]

 

 

 

 

there have been a few instances where a nuclear war could have been started that would destroy the earth and we sort of passed this test

 

True, we've done OK so far, but this isn't an exam. The test continues so long as there is risk. As for the values of "the west" causing the stop of nuclear war, I call shenanigans. What value that was entirely western can you claim stopped these wars? Is there really some Eastern or primitive value that says "Fuck this gay earth" any more than your average westerner might? Claiming that as a Western Value Triumph seems really arbitrary.

 

humanism i guess, the idea that human life in general is the ultimate cause.

 

 

what role would you say was played by this western value in the development of nuclear bombs and their actual use against innocent people?

 

dunno, maybe if you mix nationalism in then you can construct all kinds of justifications and narratives, like "yes, all people's lives are valuable but OUR people's lives are more valuable, so in extreme situations etc etc..."

 

in that sense i think the security of "western values/humanism" is something that calls for a more critical mode. imo if this is indeed a "test" it has certainly not been passed. which isn't to say the west has failed miserably but it's just not the case that this humanism has proven itself to be the decisive factor your original post seemed to claim. nuclear first strikes are still called for by prominent voices in the west, from israel to sam harris.

[Rubin Farr]

I keep touching the screen, but nothing's happening.

 

[doublename]

It only show reruns of Martin and A Different World.

[Rubin Farr]

All I can get it to run is fucking WINGS

[caze]

You know, caze talks about humans being virtual constructs in a solar computational material. How would anyone know who is in charge, how we got there, what is being planned, etc? He can say that and be taken seriously, while my worries of exploitation of tools on earth are not. That is mysterious to me.

 

 

I don't see how knowing who's in charge in such a system (or the other things you mention) would be any more of a mystery to those involved than it would be for us in our current system; and two things to note there: it may well be that it would be in fact easier to know the answer in this hypothetical future (due to better integrated data processing and evaluation capabilities), and many people today spend an inordinate amount of time trying to create control narratives well outside of what is commonly accepted, or justified.

If I was a simulation inside a computer somewhere, I would by definition not have any power. I would be at the mercy of whoever was 'administrator' of the hardware of that simulation.

 

 

This is simply not true, the entire universe itself could be a simulation and we'd not necessarily be able to detect it, and we would still have whatever control within the system that was built into it. This is also true for any fundamental reality as well, we are constrained by the laws of nature as to what is possible, and to emergent patterns that arise out of complex interactions of those laws, our notions of free will are also likely illusory. So it is reasonable to assume that the same would be true for any possible future system, the control that autonomous agents within such a system would have would depend entirely on the design of the system, the rules created to allow for the interaction between those agents. It is of course possible there could be some form of authoritarian top-down control that would subjugate those agents, but it is in no way a definitional aspect of any such system, there is no requirement for an Administrator, and in fact, I think it is highly unlikely such a system is even plausible, due to the inherent intractability of massively complex nonlinear systems (even quantum computation is unlikely to solve such problems in any general sense).

[coax]

I don't see how knowing who's in charge in such a system (or the other things you mention) would be any more of a mystery to those involved than it would be for us in our current system; and two things to note there: it may well be that it would be in fact easier to know the answer in this hypothetical future (due to better integrated data processing and evaluation capabilities), and many people today spend an inordinate amount of time trying to create control narratives well outside of what is commonly accepted, or justified.

 

 

The main difference for me is that reality is not made by humans, while this simulation would be. The system of governance and social norms has been tacked onto an otherwise anarchic substrate that nobody really knows what is.

 

 

 

This is simply not true, the entire universe itself could be a simulation and we'd not necessarily be able to detect it, and we would still have whatever control within the system that was built into it. This is also true for any fundamental reality as well, we are constrained by the laws of nature as to what is possible, and to emergent patterns that arise out of complex interactions of those laws, our notions of free will are also likely illusory. So it is reasonable to assume that the same would be true for any possible future system, the control that autonomous agents within such a system would have would depend entirely on the design of the system, the rules created to allow for the interaction between those agents. It is of course possible there could be some form of authoritarian top-down control that would subjugate those agents, but it is in no way a definitional aspect of any such system, there is no requirement for an Administrator, and in fact, I think it is highly unlikely such a system is even plausible, due to the inherent intractability of massively complex nonlinear systems (even quantum computation is unlikely to solve such problems in any general sense).

 

 

Yeah you may well be right, but when you create an abstraction layer that is completely manufactured, you enable the possibility for illusory mechanisms of detection of control. If you were in a game, and someone had set up all the rules of the game, and they gave you the illusion of being autonomous as well, you couldn't even commit suicide. If we can make a simulation that complex, it would be a breeze to control memories, control action, etc. And so far, there is nothing distributed about the internet, most of it is controlled by corporations. So who is supposed to initially create and run the hardware and "OS" before everything goes virtual?

 

Also I didn't mean that such a system is inherently authoritarian, but I do think total control is a feature of it. A simulation is by definition completely modifiable. I mean take a look at the Black Mirror episode and tell me it isn't freaky, because once your consciousness is in the virtual realm, there is no way to escape. You'd need to be pretty damn certain nobody could take control and that you knew what was going on before committing to eternal virtual life. My main notion is that the virtual is an abstraction layer built upon something physical, and so if you control the physical, you by definition can control the virtual. There's no way around it. You can probably with nanotechnology or something control the CPU's and other things directly rather than altering the software from inside the virtual etc. It all comes down to a physical substrate somewhere. there's just so many questions and possibilities it's hard to discuss. Are you thinking of ray kurzweils mind uploading scenario? Replacing the brain cells one by one with chips etc?