John G. Messerly

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“Perhaps A Society Comprised Of Contented People Doing What They Wanted Would Be Better”

May 27, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In the IEET essay “Aristotle, Robot Slaves, and a New Economic System,” philosopher John G. Messerly uses Jaron Lanier’s Who Owns the Future? as a jumping-off point for a discussion of how we’ll live should we experience a critical mass of technological unemployment. Messerly is largely sanguine, predicting we’ll still enjoy life when we’re second best, the way we continue to play chess despite being checkmated by our silicon sisters. Of course, he doesn’t explain how we’ll get from here to there, how we will come to “share the wealth.” It may not be such a smooth transition.

An excerpt:

I think that Lanier is on to something. We can think of the non-automated work as anything from essential to frivolous. If we think of it as frivolous, then so too are the people that produce it. If we don’t care about human expression in art, literature, music, sport or philosophy, then why care about the people that produce it.

But even if machines write better music or poetry or blogs about the meaning of life, we could still value human generated effort. Even if machines did all of society’s work we could still share the wealth with people who wanted to think and write and play music. Perhaps people just enjoy these activities. No human being plays chess as well as the best supercomputers, but people still enjoy playing chess; I don’t play golf as good as Tiger Woods,  but I still enjoy it.

I’ll go further. Suppose someone wants to sit on the beach, surf, ski, golf, smoke marijuana, watch TV, or collect coins. What do I care? Perhaps a society comprised of contented people doing what they wanted would be better than one informed by the Protestant work ethic. A society of stoned, TV watching, skiers, golfers and surfers would probably be a happier one than we live in now. (The evidence shows that the happiest countries are those with the strongest social safety nets, the ones with the most paid holidays and generous vacation and leave policies; the Western European and Scandinavian countries.) People would still write music and books, lift weights, volunteer, and visit their grandchildren. They would not turn into drug addicts!

This is what I envision.•

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“Super-Intelligence May Be As Much Of A Curse As A Blessing”

February 24, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

New knowledge that awakens us from a collective stupor can be initially disquieting, whether it’s in the area of art or politics or science or anything else. It drives us from comfort. But we have a way of adapting, and eventually what shocks us is put in a museum. I would think that superintelligence, should we ever create it, would adapt to fresh–and sometimes disappointing–information as well or better than we would. But in “Will Super-intelligences Experience Philosophical Distress?” an h+ post, philosopher and computer scientist John G. Messerly wonders if this is so. An excerpt:

Will super-intelligences be troubled by philosophical conundrums? Consider classic philosophical questions such as: 1) What is real? 2) What is valuable? 3) Are we free? We currently don’t know the answer to such questions. We might not think much about them, or we may accept common answers—this world is real; happiness is valuable; we are free.
 
But our superintelligent descendents may not be satisfied with these answers, and they may possess the intelligence to find out the real answers. Now suppose they discover that they live in a simulation, or in a simulation of a simulation. Suppose they find out that happiness is unsatisfactory? Suppose they realize that free will is an illusion? Perhaps they won’t like such answers.
 
So super-intelligence may be as much of a curse as a blessing. For example, if we learn to run ancestor simulations, we may increase worries about already living in them. We might program AIs to pursue happiness, and find out that happiness isn’t worthwhile. Or programming AIs may increase our concern that we are programmed. So superintelligence might work against us—our post-human descendants may be more troubled by philosophical questions than we are.•

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“Should Societies Fund And Promote Research To Defeat Death?”

November 16, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Despite the best efforts of the Immortality-Industrial Complex, I think it very likely that you and I and Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec and Michio Kaku and Marshall Brain and Aubrey de Grey will pass away this century, without the opportunity to choose forever. But that doesn’t mean that an everlasting arrangement of some sort–of many different sorts?–won’t be possible in the future. That might get interesting. From John G. Messerly at Salon:

Now more than ever, the topic of death is marked by no shortage of diverging opinions. 

On the one hand, there are serious thinkers — Ray Kurzweil, Hans Moravec, Michio Kaku, Marshall Brain, Aubrey de Grey and others — who foresee that technology may enable humans to defeat death. There are also dissenters who argue that this is exceedingly unlikely. And there are those like Bill Joy who think that such technologies are technologically feasible but morally reprehensible.

As a non-scientist I am not qualified to evaluate scientific claims about what science can and cannot do. What I can say is that plausible scenarios for overcoming death have now appeared. This leads to the following questions: If individuals could choose immortality, should they? Should societies fund and promote research to defeat death?

The question regarding individuals has a straightforward answer: We should respect the right of autonomous individuals to choose for themselves. If an effective pill that stops or reverses aging becomes available at your local pharmacy, then you should be free to use it. (My guess is that such a pill would be wildly popular! Consider what people spend on vitamins and other elixirs on the basis of little or no evidence of their efficacy.) Or if, as you approach death, you are offered the opportunity to have your consciousness transferred to a younger, cloned body, a genetically engineered body, a robotic body, or into a virtual reality, you should be free to do so.

I believe that nearly everyone will use such technologies once they are demonstrated as effective. But if individuals prefer to die in the hope that the gods will revive them in a paradise, thereby granting them reprieve from everlasting torment, then we should respect that too. Individuals should be free to end their lives even after death has become optional for them.

However, the argument about whether a society should fund and promote the research relevant to eliminating death is more complex.•

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