http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/08/how-independent-could-seastead-or.html

New independent nations are possible and that is could be possible for seastead and space colonies to house a viable entity that had a Libertarian system.

Closest example to Thiel breaking off and forming his own independent thing is Sultan of Brunei. Taking the 500,000 people of Brunei out of being a British protectorate and being a part of the commonwealth of nations.

The alternative is to be a billionaire within a nation that lets billionaires on their own island or whereever to whatever they want.

1. What kind of governance will people need as nanotechnology and the other accelerating technologies do more? Will bureaucrats be needed to do less or more? Laws? Less or more? Regulations? Less or more. Will some areas of governance simply vanish while others grow?

2. Economic scarcities? Completely vanish? Utterly transform their nature? Lead to less in the way of market activity or more?

3. Economic exchange of all types: Money? Markets? Stores? Work? Wealth? Poverty? What will stay? What will disappear? What will become utterly nonsensical?

4. Enforcement: the core of all governance. Military? Police? Weaponry? Enforcement decision-making institutions?

5. Government as decision-making process, or who decides what gets decided. Which system will mesh best with acceleration?: Democracy? Republic? Anarchy? Tyranny? Authoritarian? Caste? Class? None of the above?

My contention is that all of the above will change drastically, faster and faster as enabling technologies accelerate.

Here is one of my favorite quotes from a favorite book of political philosophy: “Do not block the path of inquiry.”

Perhaps there is something in that sentiment to guide us and to suggest or to hint at what might be coming.

I can’t get away from the us v. them meme and all the impact it has on humans.

AI that sees it self as different and separate from humans will either be benevolent, indifferent, or hostile. Benevolence sounds nice – but temporal. Indifferent sounds dangerous though perhaps not as dangerous as hostile.

Better that AI doesn’t see it as self as separate from humans.

Meanwhile, the whole uvt thing is ripping us apart. Others have done a nice job of exploring the risk of hostile and indifferent AI. And they include the hostile and indifferent other humans. The better question however is whether we can create, or allow to emerge an AI that doesn’t define itself in an us/them split- even though we still do.

Keep doing it like you have been. It’s no more or less arbitray than any rule we can dope out.

The standard should be that when it’s a useful discussion or it illuminates the Speculist topics.

BTW- I was the 2nd anonymous- by accident.
So what about b) How do you know…?

By Dr. Rodney Karr

History and Experience

Dr. Karr has over twenty-eight years of clinical experience dealing with clients who have been severely abused, emotionally, physically and sexually. He is currently doing research to differentiate between dysfunction and Evil and has been developing therapeutic processes for the survivors and victims of Evil people and families.

Ok, well, Dr. Karr is working on the problem too.

I looked for “characteristics of evil” on the computer, and this was the first one in the list, from 2nd Timothy. My advice in finding the Singularitarian definition of evil would be to begin in the Wisdom Tradition. The “new thing” is built from the “old thing” or it is without a foundation. While religion has come to be blamed for everything, it has been an effort to improve mankind. So many people are eager to disregard it, and that would be a mistake. Much of the experience of being human has never changed, and the Wisdom Tradition represents the knowledge of this experience passed to us from long ago.

Well, “evil” is a really loaded word, obviously. When Democrats and Republicans try to smeer each other as being evil, they typically use a subjective (and usually pretty arbitrary) standard for evil. I think there’s a danger of crying wolf. If everybody who disagrees with me on taxes or abortion or immigration is a Nazi, I’m seeing an awful lot of Nazis out there. If a real Nazi were to then show up, who is going to listen to me if I denounce him?

I don’t know what the different psychological theories of evil are, but as for the Singularitarian definition…I guess that’s what we’re working out now!

Anonymous(es) –

My real concern about discussing politics and religion on this blog is that we don’t get sucked into the same tired arguments that get trotted out on thousands of other blogs. So we can talk bout those things if they are far enough removed from current policy arguments that we won’t get sucked into the standard arguments.

That’s a very thin line.

When in doubt, my standard approach has been to punt. I’m all for opening things up more. We need some guidelines for the correct Speculist approach to discussing politics (religion we can do later.)

Suggestions?

b) How do you know/track all the bloggling of your comment that goes on? Is there a button you push?

All the to-do you posted between the leftists and the libertarians brings up what I hope is an interesting and not very ideological point:

A number of major players retain their underlying assumption about what human life will be like as we approach and enter the technological Singularity–that it will effectively remain the same, just more-so, even though we know from history that this kind of political stasis can’t possibly come true.

Haven’t you noticed how many major players actually assume as a matter of course that we will still have money, still have jobs, and still have the kinds of scarcities 19th and 20th century industrial societies suffered from in the Singularity?

I’ve noticed it and this kind of futurist laziness really annoys me. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe things actually won’t change all that much. But I sure wouldn’t bet on it.

My annoyance doesn’t spring from disagreement with them, but with their unthinking assumptions.

And I think these unthinking assumptions have been laid bare for all of us to see in the exchange Phil posted. This is a valuable heads-up for the rest of us.

Technological change has directly led to massive political change over the centuries. What would a growing continental power like the United States have been in the 19th century without the rapid development of steam power, railroads and the telegraph?

We Singulatarians MUST begin taking our vision of revolutionary change in human affairs much more seriously. This includes discussion of what sorts of governance people (and AIs?) will need as we enter the nanotechnology society, approach the Singularity, and enter the Singularity.

I have my own series of hunches on the distribution of political power, economic power, and political coordination systems that may grow out of this upheaval, but as Phil strictly rules these discussions out as too political for this blog, I’ll refrain.

I simply wish to make the point that I think Phil was making: Things may very soon get way too weird for 19th and 20th century political ideology and political philosophy as usual.

Our leaders have fallen down on the job analyzing such things. What are we at the Speculist gonna do about it?