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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   38433 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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How much more of a stake in a future can anyone have than literally being an immortal transhumanist?

These are stakes in different futures for different people. Elon Musk has a perspective about human longevity that I am sympathetic to. When multiple groups of people have different future visions, each person is going to align to the leaders who most share their own.

Suppose three tech-billionaires all find a genie (it can be an AI genie if you want) who will grant them one only vision of the future of AI and humanity.

The first wants the fruits of humanity to reach the stars and survive trillions of years. The genie says the way for this to happen is for AI to succeed humanity, which may be destroyed in this process. The first finds this acceptable, echoing "I believe it should be regarded as a privilege to be a stepping stone to higher things". He believes these AI beings are our descendants and the future belongs to them.

The second wants a transhumanist future of long-lividness and maybe techno-immortality. The genie says that for this to happen, human reproduction will have to be bottlenecked to prevent Malthusian destruction. Un-exalted humanity will be culled and may die out as they will be of little use to the exalted, and represent a threat to their resources. The second finds this acceptable since has no need for descendants, as he will occupy their place.

The third isn't opposed to AI space explorers or transhumanist improvements but mostly wants his children and their children and theirs after to have the option to live their life in traditionally biological ways in peace and prosperity. He wants them to be able to form human families and create new generations. The genie says that this is doable but may altogether prevent or delay the opportunity for AI and transhumanists.

So all three futures are not necessarily incompatible, but only one gets to be prioritized. You can call all three of theirs "stake" in the future (though the first much less so), but you can see that each primary purpose comes at the expense of certainty of the other two.

DaeschIndustries and Chrispratt, seem stupified and angry at the idea that I might endorse the third guy, at the expense of the other two because this isn't dEmOcRaTic. I have my values and want to see them survive. Democracy is not a terminal value. Usually democracy is a great compromise, but on an existential scale, it can break down if your real values have an existential bottleneck.

Children exist. Immortal transhumanists do not, and may never.

I find immortal or at least vastly-more-longliving transhumanism within our lifetime to be more likely than FOOM AGI society collapse.

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