Daily Archives: June 6, 2006

God and the Singularity, the Survey

NOTE: This survey is now closed. Results up soon!

In preparation for my next essay in the series I’ve been doing on God and the Singularity, I thought it would be a good idea to see where Singularity-aware folks stand on the question of God (and of course, where God-aware people stand on the question of the Singularity.)

The 15 questions in the survey might help me to get some idea.

Since these kinds of questions tend to lead to contentious discussion, I would like to make a request. In framing your answers, try to emphasize why you think and believe as you do, rather than why others or wrong. If you must get into why they are wrong, doing so with a minnimum of arrogance / condescension / obnoxiousness would be really nice.

Just a thought.

A Can of Worms

But one worth opening, for discussion purposes at least. Randall Parker opines:

I do not see a clear dividing line between what is human and what is not human. This problem is going to become more obvious to the general population when biotechnology allows the creation of beings that are sentient and yet very unlike the average human.

Also (and I’m digressing here) as another sign that I’m a thorough heretic from secular liberal dogma: I do not see how all humans can be classified as having equal human rights. Humans do not have equal capacities to respect the rights of others (don’t believe me? want your kids to live next to a pedophile?). So how can they have equal rights? Seems to me that rights flow from the capacity to respect rights. Seems to me one has to embrace a supernatural belief (God loves us all and we all have spirits) or become thoroughly unempirical about the nature of this world in order to believe we all should have equal rights.

A good discussion ensues in the comments. Various approaches as to how rights can be assigned and recognized are debated. I personally believe that coming technological advances will provide as many answers as they do problems. Technology will enable us to expand the assignment (or recognition) of rights to entities who don’t currently exist or whose rights are hotly contested today.

Take animal rights. Today, only a few of us are ardent animal rights activists (although there are many more than there used to be.) Personally, I enjoy fishing and I like to eat meat. And I think it’s okay for people to ride horses for fun. But when technology provides effective substitutes for each of those activities, I doubt that I will object if their real-world counterparts become illegal.

The nice interpretation is that technology allows us to be kinder than we were. The cynical interpretation is that technology puts us in a position where we have less to lose in recognizing the rights of others, so we go ahead and do it. Previously, I used the abolition of slavery as an example of this principle at work.

Randall then adds in the comments:

Scientific and technological advances will inevitably provide us with greater technical means for measuring a person’s competency to respect the rights of others and to conduct their own affairs. Suppose technological advances allow us to state with confidence that some 15 year old is more competent to drive or more competent to form opinions to vote or enter into contracts than some 19 year old. Should the 19 year old be allowed to drive and vote and form contracts while the 15 year old is denied these rights?

What people said hundreds of years ago about human rights was based on a rougher approximation about human nature than what we know today or that we will know in future decades. I think the law should incorporate new information and adjust to become more accurate in how it treats people differently than it has been in the past.

I think the law will adjust to become more accurate, and that generally that will mean an expansion of rights — for humans at all stages of development, for animals, and for new intelligences.

The Creative Economy

An interesting analysis at Cato Unbound:

In the past two and a half decades, this shift has taken us from the older industrial model to a new economic paradigm, where knowledge, innovation, and creativity are key. At the cutting edge of this shift is the creative sector of the economy: science and technology, art and design, culture and entertainment, and the knowledge-based professions.

The U.S. is at the forefront of this global creative economy. Over the next decade, it’s projected to add 10 million more creative sector jobs, according to the newest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At the present rate of increase, creative jobs alone will soon eclipse the total number of jobs in all of manufacturing. Already, more than 40 million Americans work in the creative sector, which has grown by 20 million jobs since the 1980s. It accounts for more than $2 trillion USD—or nearly half—of all wages and salaries paid in the U.S.

I wonder how this shift in the economy relates to the often-cited drop in science and technical education in the US? Are we in danger of being left behind, or are we simply specializing in the non-technical areas within the creative economy?