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A View of Technological Development
(Thursday December 03 2009)
 | From h+ Magazine, some thoughts on the development of transhumanist technologies, such as the repair of aging and radical life extension: "Max More has spoken out against the perception of a technological singularity as an inevitable future event, fearing this is a meme too prone to being hijacked by our tendency to believe in a higher power that will solve our problems for us. Let us therefore adapt technological mount improbable to take into consideration the uncertainty inherent in current transhuman speculations. Technological mount improbable is a mountain range covered by clouds. We cannot see the peaks that stand for cures for aging, artificial general intelligence, or productive nanosystems. We suspect such peaks exist, others claim they do not. One thing is certain. Even if they do exist, our vision is not yet clear enough to allow us to see how to climb up there. There are many paths winding their way along the mountain range. Some may allow us to reach a peak in a shorter time than you might have thought possible. They stand for new technologies such as improved gene-sequencing, or improved knowledge such as an overall theory of how the mind works. With luck and effort, we may find ourselves on such paths and ascend to the peaks of artificial general intelligence (AGI), etc., in years or decades rather than centuries. But there are also paths that lead to dead ends, by which I mean incorrect hypotheses regarding the way to treat aging, how to code artificial intelligence, and so on." |
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