Monomaniacal Mutterings
As a follow up to my post re: Stross on the Singularity, MichaelAnissimov takes offense. His original post went overboard in places, and was heavily edited in response to some points raised by folks in the comment thread (myself included). I know - I have the original post in my email (Go rss2email!).
In Dimitry Orlov's excellent piece on the Collapse Gap between the US and the Soviet Union, he suggests that we actually refrain from ridiculing politicians, regardless of the temptation. Paying attention makes them - and everyone else - think they can do something productive, when they can't. Ignoring them, Orlov says, will make them go away faster.
This is reminiscent of my mangling of one Ghandi's favorite quotes. My version, which I originally deployed to describe how Democrats should handle Republicans now that they hold majorities in government, goes thusly: "First, you win. Then you fight them. Then you laugh at them. Then you ignore them."
I wonder if the same strategy should be applied to singularitarians? In my time online, I have learned that attention is the oxygen of the troll. Fail to respond, and you snuff out the flame war. But more recently, watching Jon Stewart and reading Dale Carrico have both revived my appreciation of ridiculing the ridiculous, when done well.
Look, software and neuroengineering techniques will be wanted and unwanted, powerful and inconsequential, all depending, not on their own inherent capabilities, but on how we use them, or restrict their use. Until such techniques actually show up (as more than a theory) and actually tango with what the broad diversity of people we share the world with can conceive of as possible, desirable, and undesirable, very little that's truly useful can be generalized about whether we, as a species, will welcome or reject any given hypothetical technique.
It doesn't even make sense to me to be trying to put a whole bunch of different possibilities into one basket, and insist that we, collectively, advocate or reject them, collectively, before they've even been delivered. Never mind the divisive "us vs them" bickering I see partisans like Anissimov doing here.
