Talk:Global Admin debate

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A logical inference too far  by 143.182.124.3 14:56, 8 Apr 2005 (CDT)

"As technology gets more powerful, it will require more wisdom to avoid misusing it disastrously. The world has billions of people and millions of groups, and we can't expect them all to be wise. Therefore, access to the raw power of the technology must be restricted somehow. "

This makes a big logical jump. A more correct logical inference would be "Therefore, we can expect some individuals or groups to use the power of the technology to cause harm."

The inference actually made assumes much: (a) people will continue to be "not wise"; (b) we want to stop such harmful uses; (c) limiting access to the power of the technology is the only possible restraint on such uses; (d) such limitations can somehow be successful. I think it's virtually certain that (d) is false if taken over any significant span of time. And there may be alternatives, which would make any of these false.

Alternatives:

- Universally change human nature - make everyone "wise". - Intense surveillance of every person, with retaliation for harmful actions far more harmful to the interests of any identified initiator of violence than their original attack was to their victims. - Intelligent and extensive defensive systems. E.g. divide everything up into 1km-sq sealed cells, and analyze everything passing through the cell walls for threats and to allow back-tracking of anything that turns out to have been an unknown threat. - Universal and frequent mind back-ups. If someone kills you, you lose maybe a day of your life, so the practical loss is minimal. This makes it much harder to harm someone. Though psychologically it might be hard for someone from today to go through "restoration", in the future people may be far more flexible in their concepts of personal identity. E.g. they might have multiple instances of themselves that synchronize memories nightly.

What kind of global admin can emerge  by DanilaMedvedev 11:01, 21 Sep 2005 (CDT)

We can't argue abstractly about whether GA is desirable or not. There is only a limited array of options that can realistically be expected to emerge. For example, a global administration of enlightened philosophers envisioned in Plato's Republic is not a realistic options (so Nick Bostrom is out).

Some of the options are:

  • corporate control - today MNCs squared. I'd rather be dead.
  • a dictatorship - thanks, I'll pass.
  • oligarchy - a small circle of elite, like in the US. That wouldn't be nice at all.
  • international bureacracies - EU/UN-like abominations. Well, that's not desirable, but that's not the end of the world either.
  • a socialist/communist central control - without the profit motive and with unlimited means of production that can work quite well for the humankind. Unfortunately, the word communist has such a stigma that no one can discuss this calmly (even when it's what is discussed).

So unless we can have a global socialist revolution, I don't like the idea of central control, because under all other options the controllers would only think about themselves.

  • The Nanotech Network, a sci-fi book about nanotech assemblers being developed in USSR and unleashed on the unsuspecting world in mid-1990s.

DanilaMedvedev 11:01, 21 Sep 2005 (CDT)

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