/sci/ - Science & Math

>>15798590
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-the-techies-wet-dreams

> In view of everything we've said up to this point, and in view moreover of the fact that the techies' vision of the future is based on pure speculation and is unsupported by evidence,[26] one has to ask how they can believe in that vision. Some techies, e.g. , Kurzweil, do concede a slight degree of uncertainty as to whether their expectations for the future will be realized,[27] but this seems to be no more than a sop that they throw to the skeptics, something they have to concede in order to avoid making themselves too obviously ridiculous in the eyes of rational people. Despite their pro forma admission of uncertainty, it's clear that most techies confidently expect to live for many centuries, if not forever, in a world that will be in some vaguely defined sense a utopia.[28] Thus Kurzweil states flatly: "We will be able to live as long as we want... ."[29] He adds no qualifiers—no "probably," no "if things turn out as expected." His whole book reveals a man intoxicated with a vision of the future in which, as an immortal machine, he will participate in the conquest of the universe. In fact, Kurzweil and other techies are living in a fantasy world.

>>15454935
>>15455611
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-the-techies-wet-dreams

> The techies may answer that even if almost all biological species are eliminated eventually, many species survive for thousands or millions of years, so maybe techies too can survive for thousands or millions of years. But when large, rapid changes occur in the environment of biological species, both the rate of appearance of new species and the rate of extinction of existing species are greatly increased.[22] Technological progress constantly accelerates, and techies like Ray Kurzweil insist that it will soon become virtually explosive;[23] consequently, changes come more and more rapidly, everything happens faster and faster, competition among self-propagating systems becomes more and more intense, and as the process gathers speed the losers in the struggle for survival will be eliminated ever more quickly. So, on the basis of the techies' own beliefs about the exponential acceleration of technological development, it's safe to say that the life-expectancies of human-derived entities, such as man-machine hybrids and human minds uploaded into machines, will actually be quite short. The seven-hundred year or thousand-year life-span to which some techies aspire[24] is nothing but a pipe-dream.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-the-techies-wet-dreams

> In view of everything we've said up to this point, and in view moreover of the fact that the techies' vision of the future is based on pure speculation and is unsupported by evidence,[26] one has to ask how they can believe in that vision. Some techies, e.g. , Kurzweil, do concede a slight degree of uncertainty as to whether their expectations for the future will be realized,[27] but this seems to be no more than a sop that they throw to the skeptics, something they have to concede in order to avoid making themselves too obviously ridiculous in the eyes of rational people. Despite their pro forma admission of uncertainty, it's clear that most techies confidently expect to live for many centuries, if not forever, in a world that will be in some vaguely defined sense a utopia.[28] Thus Kurzweil states flatly: "We will be able to live as long as we want... ."[29] He adds no qualifiers—no "probably," no "if things turn out as expected." His whole book reveals a man intoxicated with a vision of the future in which, as an immortal machine, he will participate in the conquest of the universe. In fact, Kurzweil and other techies are living in a fantasy world.

>>15199046
>killing everyone who is not "useful" anymore
Relevant:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-the-techies-wet-dreams

> But when all people have become useless, self-propagating systems will find no advantage in taking care of anyone. The techies themselves insist that machines will soon surpass humans in intelligence.[14] When that happens, people will be superfluous and natural selection will favor systems that eliminate them—if not abruptly, then in a series of stages so that the risk of rebellion will be minimized.

> Even though the technological world-system still needs large numbers of people for the present, there are now more superfluous humans than there have been in the past because technology has replaced people in many jobs and is making inroads even into occupations formerly thought to require human intelligence.[15] Consequently, under the pressure of economic competition, the world's dominant self-propagating systems are already allowing a certain degree of callousness to creep into their treatment of superfluous individuals. In the United States and Europe, pensions and other benefits for retired, disabled, unemployed, and other unproductive persons are being substantially reduced;[16] at least in the U. S., poverty is increasing;[17] and these facts may well indicate the general trend of the future, though there will doubtless be ups and downs.

>>15174848
>>15174961
AI will probably kill everyone before anyone has a chance to become immortal.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-the-techies-wet-dreams

> But man-machine hybrids will retain a biological component derived from human beings only as long as the human-derived biological component remains useful. When purely artificial components become available that provide a better cost-versus-benefit balance than human-derived biological components do, the latter will be discarded and the man-machine hybrids will lose their human aspect to become wholly artificial.[20] Even if the human-derived biological components are retained they will be purged, step by step, of the human qualities that detract from their usefulness. The self-propagating systems to which the man-machine hybrids belong will have no need for such human weaknesses as love, compassion, ethical feelings, esthetic appreciation, or desire for freedom. Human emotions in general will get in the way of the self-propagating systems' utilization of the man-machine hybrids, so if the latter are to remain competitive they will have to be altered to remove their human emotions and replace these with other motivating forces. In short, even in the unlikely event that some biological remnants of the human race are preserved in the form of man-machine hybrids, these will be transformed into something totally alien to human beings as we know them today.

> The same applies to the hypothesized survival of human minds in "uploaded" form inside machines. The uploaded minds will not be tolerated indefinitely unless they remain useful (that is, more useful than any substitutes not derived from human beings), and in order to remain useful they will have to be transformed until they no longer have anything in common with the human minds that exist today.

You will never become immortal

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-the-techies-wet-dreams

> Of course, if the technological world-system is going to collapse in the not-too-distant future, as we've argued it must, then no one is going to achieve immortality in any form. But even assuming that we're wrong and that the technological world-system will survive indefinitely, the techies' dream of an unlimited life-span is still illusory. We need not doubt that it will be technically feasible in the future to keep a human body, or a man-machine hybrid, alive indefinitely. It is seriously to be doubted that it will ever be feasible to "upload" a human brain into electronic form with sufficient accuracy so that the uploaded entity can reasonably be regarded as a functioning duplicate of the original brain. Nevertheless, we will assume in what follows that each of the solutions (i), (ii), and (iii) will become technically feasible at some time within the next several decades.

> It is an index of the techies' self-deception that they habitually assume that anything they consider desirable will actually be done when it becomes technically feasible. Of course, there are lots of wonderful things that already are and for a long time have been technically feasible, but don't get done. Intelligent people have said again and again: "How easily men could make things much better than they are—if they only all tried together!"[9] But people never do "all try together," because the principle of natural selection guarantees that self-propagating systems will act mainly for their own survival and propagation in competition with other self-propagating systems, and will not sacrifice competitive advantages for the achievement of philanthropic goals.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-the-techies-wet-dreams

> But man-machine hybrids will retain a biological component derived from human beings only as long as the human-derived biological component remains useful. When purely artificial components become available that provide a better cost-versus-benefit balance than human-derived biological components do, the latter will be discarded and the man-machine hybrids will lose their human aspect to become wholly artificial.[20] Even if the human-derived biological components are retained they will be purged, step by step, of the human qualities that detract from their usefulness. The self-propagating systems to which the man-machine hybrids belong will have no need for such human weaknesses as love, compassion, ethical feelings, esthetic appreciation, or desire for freedom. Human emotions in general will get in the way of the self-propagating systems' utilization of the man-machine hybrids, so if the latter are to remain competitive they will have to be altered to remove their human emotions and replace these with other motivating forces. In short, even in the unlikely event that some biological remnants of the human race are preserved in the form of man-machine hybrids, these will be transformed into something totally alien to human beings as we know them today.

> The same applies to the hypothesized survival of human minds in "uploaded" form inside machines. The uploaded minds will not be tolerated indefinitely unless they remain useful (that is, more useful than any substitutes not derived from human beings), and in order to remain useful they will have to be transformed until they no longer have anything in common with the human minds that exist today.

>>15102115
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-the-techies-wet-dreams

> In view of everything we've said up to this point, and in view moreover of the fact that the techies' vision of the future is based on pure speculation and is unsupported by evidence,[26] one has to ask how they can believe in that vision. Some techies, e.g. , Kurzweil, do concede a slight degree of uncertainty as to whether their expectations for the future will be realized,[27] but this seems to be no more than a sop that they throw to the skeptics, something they have to concede in order to avoid making themselves too obviously ridiculous in the eyes of rational people. Despite their pro forma admission of uncertainty, it's clear that most techies confidently expect to live for many centuries, if not forever, in a world that will be in some vaguely defined sense a utopia.[28] Thus Kurzweil states flatly: "We will be able to live as long as we want... ."[29] He adds no qualifiers—no "probably," no "if things turn out as expected." His whole book reveals a man intoxicated with a vision of the future in which, as an immortal machine, he will participate in the conquest of the universe. In fact, Kurzweil and other techies are living in a fantasy world.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-the-techies-wet-dreams

> In view of everything we've said up to this point, and in view moreover of the fact that the techies' vision of the future is based on pure speculation and is unsupported by evidence,[26] one has to ask how they can believe in that vision. Some techies, e.g. , Kurzweil, do concede a slight degree of uncertainty as to whether their expectations for the future will be realized,[27] but this seems to be no more than a sop that they throw to the skeptics, something they have to concede in order to avoid making themselves too obviously ridiculous in the eyes of rational people. Despite their pro forma admission of uncertainty, it's clear that most techies confidently expect to live for many centuries, if not forever, in a world that will be in some vaguely defined sense a utopia.[28] Thus Kurzweil states flatly: "We will be able to live as long as we want... ."[29] He adds no qualifiers—no "probably," no "if things turn out as expected." His whole book reveals a man intoxicated with a vision of the future in which, as an immortal machine, he will participate in the conquest of the universe. In fact, Kurzweil and other techies are living in a fantasy world.

>>11696521
>In view of everything we've said up to this point, and in view moreover of the fact that the techies' vision of the future is based on pure speculation and is unsupported by evidence, one has to ask how they can believe in that vision. Some techies, e.g. , Kurzweil, do concede a slight degree of uncertainty as to whether their expectations for the future will be realized, but this seems to be no more than a sop that they throw to the skeptics, something they have to concede in order to avoid making themselves too obviously ridiculous in the eyes of rational people. Despite their pro forma admission of uncertainty, it's clear that most techies confidently expect to live for many centuries, if not forever, in a world that will be in some vaguely defined sense a utopia. Thus Kurzweil states flatly: "We will be able to live as long as we want... ." He adds no qualifiers-no "probably," no "if things turn out as expected." His whole book reveals a man intoxicated with a vision of the future in which, as an immortal machine, he will participate in the conquest of the universe. In fact, Kurzweil and other techies are living in a fantasy world.

>>11667003
>Meanwhile, fierce competition among global self-prop systems will have led to such drastic and rapid alterations in the Earth's climate, the composition of its atmosphere, the chemistry of its oceans, and so forth, that the effect on the biosphere will be devastating. In Part IV of the present chapter we will carry this line of inquiry further: We will argue that if the development of the technological world-system is allowed to proceed to its logical conclusion, then in all probability the Earth will be left a dead planet-a planet on which nothing will remain alive except, maybe, some of the simplest organisms-certain bacteria, algae, etc.-that are capable of surviving under extreme conditions.

>>11645258
>In view of everything we've said up to this point, and in view moreover of the fact that the techies' vision of the future is based on pure speculation and is unsupported by evidence, one has to ask how they can believe in that vision. Some techies, e.g. , Kurzweil, do concede a slight degree of uncertainty as to whether their expectations for the future will be realized, but this seems to be no more than a sop that they throw to the skeptics, something they have to concede in order to avoid making themselves too obviously ridiculous in the eyes of rational people. Despite their pro forma admission of uncertainty, it's clear that most techies confidently expect to live for many centuries, if not forever, in a world that will be in some vaguely defined sense a utopia. Thus Kurzweil states flatly: "We will be able to live as long as we want... ." He adds no qualifiers-no "probably," no "if things turn out as expected." His whole book reveals a man intoxicated with a vision of the future in which, as an immortal machine, he will participate in the conquest of the universe. In fact, Kurzweil and other techies are living in a fantasy world.

>>11573465
>Meanwhile, fierce competition among global self-prop systems will have led to such drastic and rapid alterations in the Earth's climate, the composition of its atmosphere, the chemistry of its oceans, and so forth, that the effect on the biosphere will be devastating. In Part IV of the present chapter we will carry this line of inquiry further: We will argue that if the development of the technological world-system is allowed to proceed to its logical conclusion, then in all probability the Earth will be left a dead planet-a planet on which nothing will remain alive except, maybe, some of the simplest organisms-certain bacteria, algae, etc.-that are capable of surviving under extreme conditions.

F

Because immortality, as the techies conceive it, will be technically feasible, the techies take it for granted that some system to which they belong can and will keep them alive indefinitely, or provide them with what they need to keep themselves alive. Today it would no doubt be technically feasible to provide everyone in the world with everything that he or she needs in the way of food, clothing, shelter, protection from violence, and what by present standards is considered adequate medical care-if only all of the world's more important self-propagating systems would devote themselves unreservedly to that task. But that never happens, because the self-prop systems are occupied primarily with the endless struggle for power and therefore act philanthropically only when it is to their advantage to do so. That's why billions of people in the world today suffer from malnutrition, or are exposed to violence, or lack what is considered adequate medical care.

In view of all this, it is patently absurd to suppose that the technological world-system is ever going to provide seven billion human beings with everything they need to stay alive indefinitely. If the projected immortality were possible at all, it could only be for some tiny subset of the seven billion-an elite minority. Some techies acknowledge this. One has to suspect that a great many more recognize it but refrain from acknowledging it openly, for it is obviously imprudent to tell the public that immortality will be for an elite minority only and that ordinary people will be left out.

Singularity University, which we discussed in Part VI of Chapter One of this book, purportedly was created to help technophiles "guide research" and "shape the advances" so that technology would "improve society." We pointed out that Singularity University served in practice to promote the interests of technology-orientated businessmen, and we expressed doubt that the majority of technophiles fully believed in the drivel about "shaping the advances" to "improve society." It does seem, however, that the techies -the subset of the technophiles that we specified at the beginning of this Part V of the present chapter-are entirely sincere in their belief that organizations like Singularity University will help them to "shape the advances" of technology and keep the technological society on the road to a utopian future. A utopian future will have to exclude the competitive processes that would deprive the techies of their thousand-year life-span. But we showed in Chapter One that the development of our society can never be subject to rational control: The techies won't be able to "shape the advances" of technology, guide the course of technological progress, or exclude the intense competition that will eliminate nearly all techies in short order.

>>11444172
The second difference is that in the absence of rapid, worldwide transportation and communication, the breakdown or the destructive action of a small-scale self-prop system has only local repercussions. Outside the limited zone where such a self-prop system has been active there will be other self-prop systems among which the process of evolution through natural selection will continue. But where rapid, worldwide transportation and communication have led to the emergence of global self-prop systems, the breakdown or the destructive action of any one such system can shake the whole world-system. Consequently, in the process of trial and error that is evolution through natural selection, it is highly probable that after only a relatively small number of "trials" resulting in "errors," the world-system will break down or will be so severely disrupted that none of the world's larger or more complex self-prop systems will be able to survive. Thus, for such self-prop systems, the trial-and-error process comes to an end; evolution through natural selection cannot continue long enough to create global self-prop systems possessing the subtle and sophisticated mechanisms that prevent destructive internal competition within complex biological organisms.

>>11419799
>>11422081
Some techies may consider this acceptable. But their dream of immortality is illusory nonetheless. Competition for survival among entities derived from human beings (whether man-machine hybrids, purely artificial entities evolved from such hybrids, or human minds uploaded into machines), as well as competition between human-derived entities and those machines or other entities that are not derived from human beings, will lead to the elimination of all but some minute percentage of all the entities involved. This has nothing to do with any specific traits of human beings or of their machines; it is a general principle of evolution through natural selection. Look at biological evolution: Of all the species that have ever existed on Earth, only some tiny percentage have direct descendants that are still alive today. On the basis of this principle alone, and even discounting everything else we've said in this chapter, the chances that any given techie will survive indefinitely are minute.

>>11321183

>>11309842
>>11310904
Because immortality, as the techies conceive it, will be technically feasible, the techies take it for granted that some system to which they belong can and will keep them alive indefinitely, or provide them with what they need to keep themselves alive. Today it would no doubt be technically feasible to provide everyone in the world with everything that he or she needs in the way of food, clothing, shelter, protection from violence, and what by present standards is considered adequate medical care-if only all of the world's more important self-propagating systems would devote themselves unreservedly to that task. But that never happens, because the self-prop systems are occupied primarily with the endless struggle for power and therefore act philanthropically only when it is to their advantage to do so. That's why billions of people in the world today suffer from malnutrition, or are exposed to violence, or lack what is considered adequate medical care.

In view of all this, it is patently absurd to suppose that the technological world-system is ever going to provide seven billion human beings with everything they need to stay alive indefinitely. If the projected immortality were possible at all, it could only be for some tiny subset of the seven billion-an elite minority. Some techies acknowledge this. One has to suspect that a great many more recognize it but refrain from acknowledging it openly, for it is obviously imprudent to tell the public that immortality will be for an elite minority only and that ordinary people will be left out.

>>11281368
>>11290904
Meanwhile, fierce competition among global self-prop systems will have led to such drastic and rapid alterations in the Earth's climate, the composition of its atmosphere, the chemistry of its oceans, and so forth, that the effect on the biosphere will be devastating. In Part IV of the present chapter we will carry this line of inquiry further: We will argue that if the development of the technological world-system is allowed to proceed to its logical conclusion, then in all probability the Earth will be left a dead planet-a planet on which nothing will remain alive except, maybe, some of the simplest organisms-certain bacteria, algae, etc.-that are capable of surviving under extreme conditions.

>>11268211
>>11271183
Some techies may consider this acceptable. But their dream of immortality is illusory nonetheless. Competition for survival among entities derived from human beings (whether man-machine hybrids, purely artificial entities evolved from such hybrids, or human minds uploaded into machines), as well as competition between human-derived entities and those machines or other entities that are not derived from human beings, will lead to the elimination of all but some minute percentage of all the entities involved. This has nothing to do with any specific traits of human beings or of their machines; it is a general principle of evolution through natural selection. Look at biological evolution: Of all the species that have ever existed on Earth, only some tiny percentage have direct descendants that are still alive today. On the basis of this principle alone, and even discounting everything else we've said in this chapter, the chances that any given techie will survive indefinitely are minute.

It is an index of the techies' self-deception that they habitually assume that anything they consider desirable will actually be done when it becomes technically feasible. Of course, there are lots of wonderful things that already are and for a long time have been technically feasible, but don't get done. Intelligent people have said again and again: "How easily men could make things much better than they are-if they only all tried together!" But people never do "all try together," because the principle of natural selection guarantees that self-prop systems will act mainly for their own survival and propagation in competition with other self-prop systems, and will not sacrifice competitive advantages for the achievement of philanthropic goals.

Because immortality, as the techies conceive it, will be technically feasible, the techies take it for granted that some system to which they belong can and will keep them alive indefinitely, or provide them with what they need to keep themselves alive. Today it would no doubt be technically feasible to provide everyone in the world with everything that he or she needs in the way of food, clothing, shelter, protection from violence, and what by present standards is considered adequate medical care-if only all of the world's more important self-propagating systems would devote themselves unreservedly to that task. But that never happens, because the self-prop systems are occupied primarily with the endless struggle for power and therefore act philanthropically only when it is to their advantage to do so. That's why billions of people in the world today suffer from malnutrition, or are exposed to violence, or lack what is considered adequate medical care.

>>11183440
The same applies to the hypothesized survival of human minds in "uploaded" form inside machines. The uploaded minds will not be tolerated indefinitely unless they remain useful (that is, more useful than any substitutes not derived from human beings), and in order to remain useful they will have to be transformed until they no longer have anything in common with the human minds that exist today.

Some techies may consider this acceptable. But their dream of immortality is illusory nonetheless. Competition for survival among entities derived from human beings (whether man-machine hybrids, purely artificial entities evolved from such hybrids, or human minds uploaded into machines), as well as competition between human-derived entities and those machines or other entities that are not derived from human beings, will lead to the elimination of all but some minute percentage of all the entities involved. This has nothing to do with any specific traits of human beings or of their machines; it is a general principle of evolution through natural selection. Look at biological evolution: Of all the species that have ever existed on Earth, only some tiny percentage have direct descendants that are still alive today. On the basis of this principle alone, and even discounting everything else we've said in this chapter, the chances that any given techie will survive indefinitely are minute.