Eliezer sayeth: “I want to be individually empowered by producing neato effects myself, without large capital investments and many specialists helping” … [is] in principle doable—you can get this with, say, the right kind of nanotechnology, or (ahem) other sufficiently advanced tech, and bring it to a large user base...”
Agreed. But as you hint, Eliezer, this case is indistinguishable from magic. So arguably the class of fantasies I mention are equivalent to living in some interesting future. In any case they don’t seem to match the schema you present in the post.
Eliezer continues: ”...as long as they have the basic psychological ability to take joy in anything that is merely real.” I think that even in a wonderful future, most people will take joy from unusually large bangs, crazy risks, etc. as they do today; fancy technology will make these easier to produce and survive. Most people still won’t get much joy or wonder from the underlying phenomena unless we re-engineer human nature. Ian Banks’ Culture novels and short stories have some pretty good ironic accounts of amazing Culture technology being used for thrills by idiots.
I don’t disagree with the importance of “joy in things that are merely real.” But there are multiple sources of joy, some higher quality than others.
And speaking of wishing for magical power, I wish I could copy a quote from this blog and paste it into the comment box with the text styles preserved. Shows how hard it is to come by magic.
Eliezer sayeth: “I want to be individually empowered by producing neato effects myself, without large capital investments and many specialists helping” … [is] in principle doable—you can get this with, say, the right kind of nanotechnology, or (ahem) other sufficiently advanced tech, and bring it to a large user base...”
Agreed. But as you hint, Eliezer, this case is indistinguishable from magic. So arguably the class of fantasies I mention are equivalent to living in some interesting future. In any case they don’t seem to match the schema you present in the post.
Eliezer continues: ”...as long as they have the basic psychological ability to take joy in anything that is merely real.” I think that even in a wonderful future, most people will take joy from unusually large bangs, crazy risks, etc. as they do today; fancy technology will make these easier to produce and survive. Most people still won’t get much joy or wonder from the underlying phenomena unless we re-engineer human nature. Ian Banks’ Culture novels and short stories have some pretty good ironic accounts of amazing Culture technology being used for thrills by idiots.
I don’t disagree with the importance of “joy in things that are merely real.” But there are multiple sources of joy, some higher quality than others.
And speaking of wishing for magical power, I wish I could copy a quote from this blog and paste it into the comment box with the text styles preserved. Shows how hard it is to come by magic.