That’s the problem with the volcano lair, if there’s no one there who’s real except you. That’s the simplicity I fear.
It’s still, as I understand it, possible to leave the volcano lair (with your private hoverjet) at any desired time and arrange a meeting with some other real person who got bored and left their own volcano lair. If somebody didn’t get bored until day 1, year 10^6 then that’s when they’d go outside, and there would be million-year-old post-singularity social institutions ready to greet them.
Early in the development of agriculture, was there someone who feared the simplicity of a grain silo or refrigerator in the same way? Too much food, but it’s not real food: monoculture grains, none of the bruises and parasites and honest work of gathering or tracking. Losing respect for the spirit of the slain animal.
They’d be right, of course. Cheap food changed us. Destroyed the concept of what it is to be human every bit as thoroughly as a chicken destroys it’s egg by hatching.
Though I don’t know if that works—we may have a brain category for nonpeople we don’t even compete with hedonically.
″ May have ?” I’d be shocked if we didn’t. The question is not whether a sufficiently well-designed machine could appeal in that way, it’s whether digging up and overstimulating that particular instinct is what we really want to do.
The question is not whether a sufficiently well-designed machine could appeal in that way, it’s whether digging up and overstimulating that particular instinct is what we really want to do.
Remember that the flip side of this is our envy of those who are better than us. I would argue that this is very closely linked with our obsession with equality, something many value.
It’s still, as I understand it, possible to leave the volcano lair (with your private hoverjet) at any desired time and arrange a meeting with some other real person who got bored and left their own volcano lair. If somebody didn’t get bored until day 1, year 10^6 then that’s when they’d go outside, and there would be million-year-old post-singularity social institutions ready to greet them.
Early in the development of agriculture, was there someone who feared the simplicity of a grain silo or refrigerator in the same way? Too much food, but it’s not real food: monoculture grains, none of the bruises and parasites and honest work of gathering or tracking. Losing respect for the spirit of the slain animal.
They’d be right, of course. Cheap food changed us. Destroyed the concept of what it is to be human every bit as thoroughly as a chicken destroys it’s egg by hatching.
″ May have ?” I’d be shocked if we didn’t. The question is not whether a sufficiently well-designed machine could appeal in that way, it’s whether digging up and overstimulating that particular instinct is what we really want to do.
Remember that the flip side of this is our envy of those who are better than us. I would argue that this is very closely linked with our obsession with equality, something many value.