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Welcome.

I have recently discussed the perils of our technology driven future with some close friends of mine and I have become shocked by the ignorance I often meet. I also only have a close circuit of available people to air my thoughts to. This site is therefore hereafter going to be used to collect thoughts about this.

Firstly I will collect links to vital sources of ideas related to the singularity, which is a term used to frame the fix-point of our technological progress. Only secondly I will express any opinions of my own, which will most likely be in the form of comments to the links listed.

However, I do feel the need to explain my standpoint briefly and explicitly. I am what Theodore Kaczynski would include in the "lefty" category as expressed in Industrial Society and Its Future . When I read this I was very suprised to find that almost all points he makes are very similar to the thoughts and opinions I have, which adds to my shock from the other end, as it were.... I will discuss the foremost point about that here.

Kaczynski begin and ends his paper describing and lashing out on every will of designing society, and in his view it is the lefties that do that. To this I remark that we are - as biological beings - very lefty . We have a moral that is geared heavily on cooperation. He accept this only when cooperation occurs in the social setting we were built for - mainly small groups - as if we had a moral obligation to let history define us. This is a bit Marxistic, in a fly by sort of way. And in fact, Kaczynski's theory of the "power process" is a very good account of Marx's theory of "alienation", where man is deprived of the joy's of making his own ends meet. It seem's like Kaczynski's political view's are a bit muddled...

In my view, our biological leftism is already evident in the way we make, care and support our children. A fish is very rightwingy in contrast, since fish just produce the minimum necessary for the eggs "to meet their destiny on their own". Kaczynski do interestingly enough identify existentialism as being a likely cause of the narrowing circle of freedom modern man faces. However our leftiness of caring for our children is precisely what gives us the amount of adaptivity and flexibility needed to excel in the evolutionary game - in fact it is blind individuality and raw competition that makes crocodiles frozen evolutionwise and at the same time very sucessfull (and fierce) victory machines. In the same fashion the main driving force towards the singularity is not the lefties, but in the blind allowance of fierce victory machines in the rightwingy form of economies.

Kaczynski is very close to a completely accurate picture, though. The feminists for instance, are mainly working towards the survival of the oppressing technodemocratical system, since they almost always will tell you that freedom is a well integrated place in that system - by attaining power, work and wealth etc. This criticism has been one of my top priorities a long time, but I claim it to be a rightwing disease on a otherwise apt (but fooled) leftism, whereas Kaczynski identifies, in a very behavioristic fashion, leftism to be that very disease. Which is not only very unfair, but will ultimately ruin any chance of coping the accelerated march towards the singularity - at the very least we must understand the process towards singularity correctly, in order to avoid major suffering. Kaczynski don't seem to fully understand this need - he want to stop it, end of story.

In reality victory machines (stable incapsulations of cooperation) and evolutionary flexibility must interplay if fruitful change and evolutionary victory is to become feasible. Again our support to our children are the prime example, because parents provide an envirionment in which their children repeatedly safely can fail and be loosers - for years! Caring for others is enabling fruitful competition, development and at the same time joy, fulfillment and security. I do not see any reason why caring on a scale larger than the hunter/gather resolution necessarily must fail - I do however, see that we currently do fail. I'm not the one who wants to "pull the plugs". I am fully convinced though, that we are headed for a future human role that must involve acceptance of people having good life's without demands to seek employment, that our economical view's are becoming utterly obsolete, and that friendly, low drive people and people interested in "the undogmatic rightful truth", must be given their proper treatment regardless if they succeed in making someone else rich.

The real problem is not design, but that our evident victory is running without competition (that is without regulation, that is design!) and therefore my view is that our evolutionary advantages (raw leftism as in "the wisdom of the crowd" ) has been misused by egoistic victory machines (eg exxon, ussr, etc). We unnecessarily force people to compete unnecessarily hard, thereby forcing them to think in narrow ways, and we do absolutely misuse human resources, which is a luxury "those that have" can sustain at least for now (thereby lowering their own degree competition). Soon money makers will not need ordinary man at all, only hiring 24-7 workers without need for vacation. Of course, even dehumanized systems need control too (which is work!) so 24-7's are put to that task too and soon thereafter there are no obvious need for humans at all from the standpoint of the system. And being forced to depend on them/that which does not need you at all is dangerous, very dangerous; I repeat - dangerous, very dangerous! We might very probably be headed, very rapidly, into gloomy times indeed, unless we make an effort to design our future while we still are the masters of our technology - while we are just irrevocably dependent on it.

Mikael Hall, 2008-08-31.

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