Faith In Technology [ex: Crypto GovBankCorp]

[grarpamp]

On 7/23/19, John Newman <jnn at synfin.org> wrote:
>>	yeah because of blind faith in 'technology'.
>
> There is a lot of blind faith in tech, a lot of hand waving
> about hard problems from ostensibly "smart" people.
>
> Ray Kurzweil, who is 71, thinks he will live forever - he
> predicts by 2029 medical tech will be at a point where
> each year will add at least another year to your life span,
> effective immortality.

2029 could easily be possible with moonshot sized
levels of cooperative research, and a "go" signal.

The real obstacle right now is probably not money
or science, but religion (as infused into politics),
the "go" signal...

Every single major medical advance in history
has been held back or at least shadowed by
comments of "Gasp, you're playing God (or with Fire),
only God can do that, stop now." Especially applies
to any kind of "unnatural" life extension
where you would have otherwise dropped...
organ transplant (historically heart), etc.
The Gasp's aren't making much noise about some
outcomes... cancer cure, your own clone in a vat
of jello in your house, brain / memory transplant,
but seem to have moved on now, as their last stand in
unprovable mystery, to intermediate research dependency
of stem cells, embryonic blobs of a few 100k cells, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rqw4krMOug


> Moore's law applied to renewables, it's
> no fucking problem :).

There seems to be a going hypothesis...
If Humanity can engineer biology (example halt
aging, regenerate arbitrary parts, food, cures, etc) in
time to be useful, then it can engineer any fix
to mistakes, in time to save Humanity.

> It all sounds like technology as religious experience to
> me.
>
> Even if you buy into the inevitability of this future tech,
> is it really a road map for utopia? Humanity is facing some
> tough shit, much of it directly tied to tech progression: massive
> surveillance states on levels never previously
> imagined, wealth continually centralized among a tiny
> world elite, existential risks as a direct result of
> technological advances - atomic weapons, other "WMD",
> and of course turning the heat up on the planet by
> dumping carbon into the atmosphere at ever greater rates.
>
>
> It seems like we are on a race to destroy ourselves... Will
> tech help us or hinder us? Imagine the "democratization of
> high-tech" that comes with all this progress - what
> happens when anybody with the latest & greatest 3d
> printer and a few other relatively cheap odds and ends
> can create an atomic bomb?  What happens when gene
> hacking becomes truly cheap and ubiquitous, and anyone
> with a little biology knowledge and the right hardware can
> engineer a plague?

Independant Nuke and Chem are local threats,
not global existential, thus can be generally ignored.

Independant Bio release is the only direct global existential
threat, and it only needs a brain, a little money, and a small space.

With all things independant, it's extremely hard to
stop a determined player... even with a geopolitical
"no go" progress cap set in the world, an independant
will eventually be able to push at least marginally
through that artificially set development boundary.

Best bet with Bio may in fact rest on having widespread
ability to engineer a fix faster than a total kill can sweep.
That ability requires a "go" today.

It's a bit chicken egg, but you've got zero
chance if you don't.

> What's the answer to the Fermi paradox?

Doesn't matter... alien's either do or do not exist, and
they either will or will not kill us, mod any negotiations.
Until Humanity itself goes interstellar or first contact
or evidence happens, there seems little point in trying to
plan, do, or not do, anything about such possibilities.
Besides, all worthy aliens within at least a 100 light year
radius already have a head start on us.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_for_extraterrestrial_intelligence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_extraterrestrial_intelligence
https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.06024

Best hope might be to bioengineer some brainless
hot blondes to trade with them or use as trojan infiltrators,
because on a galactic scale that might be the only unique
and rare element you've got on your side... The Bimbo Attack.


Another way of thinking is that Human DNA
tends to do whatever it takes to survive, to
advance, etc, and avoids suicide.

Seems many of these debates people have
"Woes, do or not do" end up moot since so long
as it fits within that, it's likely to end up happening
in its own course of time and progress anyways,
no matter what you do.