Sounds fun. I made a little video last month about what Hanson calls “Ems” that’s supposed to grow into a bigger discussion on the political and social consequences. I call ’em “Uploads” though.
That’s more immediate-future rather than fifty years hence though. The script for later episodes talks more about their having failed to make any kind of AI work properly other than by scanning and uploading though, how learning facts is not the same as understanding with digs at the Cyc project.
If you’re setting something further future I’d think a lot about exactly how this whole internet thing is going to be affecting social change over the next fifty years. Everyone’s presumably connected wirelessly all the time, google and the wikipedia closer to everyone’s brain than merely “at their fingertips”. How does conversation change when everyone know everything there is to know about everything?
Having access to information and actually having assimilated it are two entirely different things. Hainv Wikipedia wired into your brain will allow you to check cursory definitions and article-introductions near instantly, but your interlocutor must wait a couple of minutes for you to read and understand. That time will vary depending on how enhanced your intelligence is and how much you are already acquainted with the topic at hand. It might grow enormously if, say, upon meeting a lesswrongian for the first time, you’re forced to make a wiki walk through their archives just to be up-to-date with them (seriously, this habit of peppering articles with links to other articles when they aren’t strictly necessary for the understanding of the texts should stop, it creates an unhealthy in-house feeling and forces new users into month-long ermitatges trying to close the exponentially exploding army of tabs!).
Given the fact that History is in constant acceleration and that things are more and more inter-connected, I assume there’d be a state-sponsored effort (if not an entire industry) of developing digest history books and other introductory material, not for Dummies, but for Thawees (we should get a better name than that for the Resurrected… we should also get a derogatory one, because racism and priviledge: “The Walking Dead”? “They’re History”? “Time-Skippers”? “Dinosaurs”? (Cue jokes about blood in amber and the prophesized Dinoday),
Having access to information and actually having assimilated it are two entirely different things.
Indeed, this is what I was talking about with the Cyc project, just having the information isn’t enough, it needs to be integrated, to have meaning.
Still, it seems many of my pub conversations are already changing with wireless mobile internet access as what would have been a large discussion about whether or not something was real, or what it did, or when it was, can be quickly checked by a source both people would agree is better than anyone physically present.
Which also points to ways conversation in general changes. Just coz you aren’t there, doesn’t mean you can’t be consulted immediately. In Farscape, the characters would be conversing with each other even when remote, without having to have an obvious comms device or think to turn it on or all. Just shout at ’em and they hear, wherever they are, whatever they’re doing.
You’re talking to some resurrected dude about his grandson, and suddenly grandson is there in the conversation saying hello from the beach where he’s lazing with a cocktail.
I always thought that looked fun, but given the rants I get from people wondering why I’d bother to log into a website to show ’em pictures of a beach holiday while I “should be off having fun” perhaps there’d be social pressure to keep conversation local.
Dunno. Look forward to finding out how it’ll all pan out anyway :)
Watched the video. Loved it. Except for the bit at the end, the positions were made to look too emotional rather than reasoned. Instead of saying an outraged “going to church makes him moral?” he could have said something along the lines of “you know who else went to church every day? Archbishop Richeleu and Girgori Rasputin. You know what they had in common, besides being high-ranking priests? They shanked a number of women that’s in the order of the hundreds” or maybe some shorter but equally strong counterexample in the “him going to church doesn’t prove anything” line, including that exact phrasing, especially if they’ve talked about the topic before.
There’s also a serious audio problem, I really had to strain my ears to listen.
Otherwise, as I said, I loved it, especially the implications of “living in the Metaverse”.
Yeah, you should have heard the sound before Danny cleaned it up ;) I should buy better equipment probably.
I think showing that the Uploads still react emotionally is going to be an important part of any work which features ’em, especially if they’re “smart” people, otherwise it can look like uploading turns you into a Spock-Bot. Mostly I was just trying to keep the dialog tight. My natural writing is way too verbose for a five minute video, perhaps I overcompensated there a little.
Sounds fun. I made a little video last month about what Hanson calls “Ems” that’s supposed to grow into a bigger discussion on the political and social consequences. I call ’em “Uploads” though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXAuglDs95s
That’s more immediate-future rather than fifty years hence though. The script for later episodes talks more about their having failed to make any kind of AI work properly other than by scanning and uploading though, how learning facts is not the same as understanding with digs at the Cyc project.
If you’re setting something further future I’d think a lot about exactly how this whole internet thing is going to be affecting social change over the next fifty years. Everyone’s presumably connected wirelessly all the time, google and the wikipedia closer to everyone’s brain than merely “at their fingertips”. How does conversation change when everyone know everything there is to know about everything?
Having access to information and actually having assimilated it are two entirely different things. Hainv Wikipedia wired into your brain will allow you to check cursory definitions and article-introductions near instantly, but your interlocutor must wait a couple of minutes for you to read and understand. That time will vary depending on how enhanced your intelligence is and how much you are already acquainted with the topic at hand. It might grow enormously if, say, upon meeting a lesswrongian for the first time, you’re forced to make a wiki walk through their archives just to be up-to-date with them (seriously, this habit of peppering articles with links to other articles when they aren’t strictly necessary for the understanding of the texts should stop, it creates an unhealthy in-house feeling and forces new users into month-long ermitatges trying to close the exponentially exploding army of tabs!).
Given the fact that History is in constant acceleration and that things are more and more inter-connected, I assume there’d be a state-sponsored effort (if not an entire industry) of developing digest history books and other introductory material, not for Dummies, but for Thawees (we should get a better name than that for the Resurrected… we should also get a derogatory one, because racism and priviledge: “The Walking Dead”? “They’re History”? “Time-Skippers”? “Dinosaurs”? (Cue jokes about blood in amber and the prophesized Dinoday),
Indeed, this is what I was talking about with the Cyc project, just having the information isn’t enough, it needs to be integrated, to have meaning.
Still, it seems many of my pub conversations are already changing with wireless mobile internet access as what would have been a large discussion about whether or not something was real, or what it did, or when it was, can be quickly checked by a source both people would agree is better than anyone physically present.
Which also points to ways conversation in general changes. Just coz you aren’t there, doesn’t mean you can’t be consulted immediately. In Farscape, the characters would be conversing with each other even when remote, without having to have an obvious comms device or think to turn it on or all. Just shout at ’em and they hear, wherever they are, whatever they’re doing.
You’re talking to some resurrected dude about his grandson, and suddenly grandson is there in the conversation saying hello from the beach where he’s lazing with a cocktail.
I always thought that looked fun, but given the rants I get from people wondering why I’d bother to log into a website to show ’em pictures of a beach holiday while I “should be off having fun” perhaps there’d be social pressure to keep conversation local.
Dunno. Look forward to finding out how it’ll all pan out anyway :)
You really should make a dedicated discussion-level post for this.
Um, yeah, you’re probably right. Won’t be around to reply/baby-sit it from now till after the weekend though. Maybe I’ll do it Tuesday.
I really enjoyed this, very watchable. Subscribed!
Watched the video. Loved it. Except for the bit at the end, the positions were made to look too emotional rather than reasoned. Instead of saying an outraged “going to church makes him moral?” he could have said something along the lines of “you know who else went to church every day? Archbishop Richeleu and Girgori Rasputin. You know what they had in common, besides being high-ranking priests? They shanked a number of women that’s in the order of the hundreds” or maybe some shorter but equally strong counterexample in the “him going to church doesn’t prove anything” line, including that exact phrasing, especially if they’ve talked about the topic before.
There’s also a serious audio problem, I really had to strain my ears to listen.
Otherwise, as I said, I loved it, especially the implications of “living in the Metaverse”.
Thanks.
Yeah, you should have heard the sound before Danny cleaned it up ;) I should buy better equipment probably.
I think showing that the Uploads still react emotionally is going to be an important part of any work which features ’em, especially if they’re “smart” people, otherwise it can look like uploading turns you into a Spock-Bot. Mostly I was just trying to keep the dialog tight. My natural writing is way too verbose for a five minute video, perhaps I overcompensated there a little.
I know that feel, bro. Whenever I write a play I have to compact the dialogues because there is no time-