Best Case Scenario may still be our Worst Nightmare

Even if we don't face a global technological totalitarian "NWO" dictatorship, and/or inevitable global economic collapse, class/species warfare of 'gigadeath' purportions is looming in our near future.

Go ahead and forget all about what many call the New World Order. And set aside how all the numbers & figures point to a inevitable (and deliberate) economic collapse. In fact, more wealth in what we'd call a middle class would mean faster implementation and permeation of the inevitably looming human augmentation technologies that promise to transform humans into a new rapidly evolving species, leaving those who remain "human" in a state of being subhuman.

You see we're on the verge multiple converging revolutionary technology paradigm shifts that promise radical augmentation in terms of physical abilities and cognitive power. What this means is the moment one person receives any augmentation technology that increases their abilities to do their everyday job, those without them become obsolete. And the more said technologies accelerate the more irrelevent you become. Compare a 90's Pentium 1 CPU with a quad-core 64-bit CPU of today.

Its as simple as that. A tyrannical NWO wouldn't even need to force you to take a brain implant. Eventually you wont have a choice... that is if you expect to live your normal life in the greater society. I do offer one solution: "Neo-Amish Communities". That is, towns or hopefully even cities of regular humans that would resemble life as it is today. I've spent years thinking about this and can see no other way. But even this might only put the war off for a limited amount of decades. I dont think this would even stop the war, but it might mean those who go this route could avoid it long enough to live meaningful lives. But preparation for this would have to begin soon, as there isnt much time left to spare.

At least that's where I was before the economic meltdown last year. For a few years I've seen all the data where economic concentration was rapidly shifting to fewer and fewer, and how the design is to squander the masses of wealth, but the rapid fire meltdown of the last 2 years has slightly altered how I see things.

The diffusion of technologies I'm refering to could begin to change things in less than 5 years. I can show numerous examples of how we're almost there, and how the powers that be are in full scale rabid pursuits in that direction, including "Skynet" level artificial intelligence in order to kick start their technological revolution.

At the same time I'm preparing everyday all this year for a reality that might not be too far off from "Mad Max" (except with LOTS of people), like we nearly already have in Detroit. I always viewed the technologies as the pure way to power the few over the masses, but these days its quite obvious their stealing our wealth right out from underneath us via inflation, banking / ponzi schemes and so on. They really went for (our) broke in rapid fire mode last year, but theres still no telling how soon the worst will come.

I figured they'd work to keep the masses from ever affording "life extension technologies". But today it's looking like nobody is meant to afford even a pack of cigarettes. But dont kid yourself folks, nanotechnology based neural augmentation implants are a breath away, and the masses WILL be able to afford them at some point not too long after they become reality (they could exist already).

So the premise of my concerns here are not in vein, although a Mad Max scenario at large could alter what we'd call the masses in that context. I think it'd be more along the lines of a Mad Max + Martial Law scenario. Martial law in the cities and areas where they'd be able to and care to mantain order, for the 'civilized' (upper class), and the rest ghetto slum nightmare like already exists in Detroit, for the majority of the lands. But again the best case scenario is that the worst is behind us (and there isn't a global dictatorship), therefore we face virtually unimaginable social strife when the technology hits and becomes the new and final deathblow to ones ability to live a prosperous life (unless you take the implants of course).

So we're faced with a tale of survival, even if things seem to get back to normal. In my view, personal preparations into 'survivalist' or 'permaculture' 'co-op' lifestyles today are still necessary in order to be ready for escaping the 'utopia'. In this reality, everyday lifes as we knew it a few years ago or roughly now is the utopia, for to have it last is really the best we could hope for (unless you intend to plug into the NWO global collective AI controlled super-hivemind).

So I hope to rouse all of your' interest into this paradigm I speak of. This goes way beyond Bush's war or Obamacare aka everyday Jackass & Elephant Show drama or the rest of the things even relatively-informed people usually bicker about. It goes beyond the NWO. And to even understand the true nature of our rulers and their NWO master, understanding these technologies and their plans for them is absolutely pivotable. I can show you the way. Technology is marching at an exponentially increasing pace that economic meltdown can hardly slow down and its time we wake up to it.

Why wouldnt AI make all biological forms obsolete?

What jobs would people even need to do?

AI would / will. Thats another reason humans would have to merge with it to 'have meaning to exist'. All in due time. But without machines as able as us machines would need us. And besides there are already billions of us, meaning we're already here and dont need to be built, only 'reprogrammed'. But following in the 'best case scenario' context AI 'god' wouldnt be the threat, but the human collective will be. We'll have to try to seperate otherwise hostilities wouldn't be far off.

[edit on 17-10-2009 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

reply to post by IgnoranceIsntBlisss


As much as I enjoy dabbling in theories of the coming Singularity, your theories on Artificial Intelligence are deeply, deeply flawed in this respect.

True thinking Artificial Intelligence is decades if not centuries away, and completely impossible to simulate on any modern hardware. Sure, projects like BlueBrain and such are simulating Neocortexes, but they haven't even managed to get a Rats working yet, and won't for some years.

The reason is simple: Binary. To have a cognizant program, the code needs to be able to operate with the option of "maybe". All modern computer hardware and software is based around the concept of "On" and "Off", represented in code by the 1 and the 0. On and off, yes and no. You will not see different systems for decades until something comes along to replace the standardized X86 microprocessing architecture.

You can write a very, very convincing Illusion of sentience within these restrictions, but without a 2, or "maybe" option, you are not going to achieve an Artificial Intelligence. You might as well be expecting your light switch to decide its own fate.

Edited: because I wrote that when stupidly tired. Not that the rest of it isn't possible, I quite agree with most of your post. We simply have at least a couple of decades before something non-Binary based comes along.

[edit on 17-10-2009 by D.E.M.]

reply to post by D.E.M.


Well put, thought reminiscent of a ghost in the shell. I like to think of life as having that alternate route as well, what would give us the ability to push further than physical limitations.

Originally posted by D.E.M.
reply to post by IgnoranceIsntBlisss

 

As much as I enjoy dabbling in theories of the coming Singularity, your theories are deeply, deeply flawed in this respect.

On the contrary, your knowledge set on this subject is deeply, deeply elementary. I'm still at work and have to garden when I get home, but this evening I will show you how.

Agree with you in general. Except that i do not think that "Neo-Amish" style groups would be possible. Technological development would create Neo "Humanity" - cyborg ultra efficient creatures with little resemblance to us. And i do not see how they will allow land and resources to be spent on some idiotic backward inefficient bunch of "neo-nderthals" . I think that we have to understand that sometime soon ,indeed decades to century, Homo Sapiens would be extinct.

Originally posted by ZeroKnowledge
Agree with you in general. Except that i do not think that "Neo-Amish" style groups would be possible. ...

i cite your reply to the "IgnoranceIsntBlisss" post which put it like this:

... A tyrannical NWO wouldn't even need to force you to take a brain implant. Eventually you wont have a choice... that is if you expect to live your normal life in the greater society.
I do offer one solution: "Neo-Amish Communities". That is, towns or hopefully even cities of regular humans that would resemble life as it is today.
I've spent years thinking about this and can see no other way. "IgnoranceIsntBlisss"

so have I... however i had the real time experience of seeing the hippies in real time... and i laid out a scenario where a 'lower cast' of citizens
would volunteer to 'opt out' of advanced technology and human 'enhancement' way-of-life... the ones that participated in the advanced technologies would be identified as the Posi-Tech society and the others in your neo-amish sub culture would be sequestered outside of the 'green' metropolis's evenly spaced on the ley-lines of the globe...
the 'backward' neo-amish as you call them would provide the necessary trash/garbage work and associated menial endeavors to keep the Posi-Tech Metropolis-Oasises functioning impeccibly.


bottom line...there's room for everyone! in the future Utopia or Dystopia
as the case may be...


cheers

ARGH! The irony that after typing for an hour about computer technology the computer crashed when I was (actually addressing the software side of things) in the DARPA website and clicked on a video that went straight to WMP instead of an IE window.

So my response will be a bastardized outline compared to the original response I was nearly finished with. But first, all note that the AI (AGI) issue doesnt dismiss my main premise in this thread, in arguing that AGI is decades away.

Bastardized summary as follows:

Some newer semi-revolutionary computing hardware technologies, many of which are beyond the theoretical stage:

Quantum Computers
Photonic Computers
3D Silicon Processors
Component-level Optical Connections
Live Neuron Biological processing and hybridizations (an example
)

Software is the other side, and many prominent AI pioneer types believe that the right software may be easier than most would assume, and that the hardware side may not require as much with the right software.

To better understand the possibilities in this world look deep into the Law of Accelerating Returns (LoAR).

Beyond exponentially increasing gains in computing power and related technologies (along with virtually every other facet of other human technological progress), the key to AGI are systems that can learn. Some successes in terms of software alone learning (with basically COTS hardware systems) consider DARPA's successful PAL, and the de facto government operation Google (read here &
here).

When considering any of the more advanced hardware technologies listed above, there's no telling what the military and related higher institutions of the technocracy, but we can gauge how to perceive the AGI subject by acknowledging some choice programs openly admitted by the military. Check out DARPA's "global brain" SyNAPSE (being conducted by IBM), along with the rest of the projects listed out on DARPA's IPTO website.

Don't factor out Google in your concepts. This has been an oversimplified version of my original response, sorry. The real thing to watch is more a system showing the ability to learn than number crunching.

At both Zero & Udio:

My overall Neoamish concept doesnt limit it in terms of tiny bands of hippy commune esque shanty towns or whatever. For it to even be a relatively effective or lasting solution it would have to end up with entire 'human' only cities (assuming we're not reduced to Mad Max).

The idea isn't to have only rural homesteading communities, stuck on simple like the actual amish. It's not even a concept were all technology is cast aside as they do it. It's a matter of having large communities that function the same as life we know today, with plenty of elements of progress, except where the upgraded nuhumans are not part of the society. Where hard work and wits get you somewhere. Society as we know it is pretty doomed to attempt to function with upgraded humans in the mix. We'll just continue to decline into the abyss, much like we're all witnessing just having a corrupt banking cartel and their government / corporate minions run amok.

I really enjoyed both of your posts!

[edit on 17-10-2009 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

There is one common assumption among those that say AI cannot take the level of control mentioned in the OP. That is, that an intelligence similar to ours is necessary to do so.

This is not the case.

Who says an AI has to be self-aware? I can program a robot to make copies of itself while still functioning, destroy any moving thing that does not look like it, etc. We could easily fall prey to a simple "copycat" type of robotic net. Yes it would take one crazed individual to program that initial robot to destroy mankind, but it's not unrealistic.

Yes, true self-aware AI is pretty far away ... our own self-destruction actually seems more imminent.

I dont know what to say

This is a fascinating and thought-provoking thread. Thanks for posting it, IgnoranceIsntBlisss.

In the 1960s, people thought technological improvement would bring fewer working hours, more leisure, and so on. Instead it has made life busier and more stressful than ever for most of those still lucky enough to have jobs, and it has created a vast and ever-growing chasm between rich and poor.

In some ways, technology has improved life, but not as much as the smiley-face crowd thinks. Even for the upper-middle/upper classes, are gigantic homes bought on credit filled with garbage people never use an "improvement?" Are obsessive-compuslive shopping, grotesque materialism, isolation and alienation soothed only by TV or presecription meds, and permanent status anxiety "improvements?" no and no, in my book.

I have always been a technological pessmist...any technology that can be abused, will be. There are lots of things I would like to say and suggest about this topic, but since most of them involve violence I think they would step over the lines of the acceptable terms and conditions of this board.

Originally posted by silent thunder
In the 1960s, people thought technological improvement would bring fewer working hours, more leisure, and so on. Instead it has made life busier and more stressful than ever for most of those still lucky enough to have jobs, and it has created a vast and ever-growing chasm between rich and poor.

I appreciate your appreciation.

The trend you speak of is at the point of accelerating exponentially. And even if people arent even able to upgrade... the rise of cloud computing is moving towards replacing even the everyday computer repair man. This goes even aithout human level intelligent computers, and it applies to PC workers from large office WAN scale right down to the repair man in your neighborhood. Its moving to where 'computer' will be utility, plug a box into the wall and all the software is offsite at a mega cloud hub. Applications and even OS will be handled offsite.

The everyday American Idol maniac who asks tech support people "whats a modem" wont even have to think about whats inside the box. More time to watch more shows, and post menial tidbits of nothingness on Twitter and Facebook.

The big corporate datacenters will gradually move to this option, where they cut out constant upgrading and in-house technicians. I highly recommend reading "The Big Switch", by Nicholas Carr, that focuses on this very issue. It's so rare I read a book cover to cover, but this one I couldn't let go of.

I have always been a technological pessmist...

I'm also pretty sure you'd enjoy reading a book from the 70's, "Future Shock", by Alvin Toffler. It's mindblowing reading about the overboard materialism and mindlessness we know today being laid out in such detail, as already present then, along with his come-to-life predictions about today.

Beyond that sir, you sound like a Neo-Luddite to me. You might also enjoy Kaczinski's "Unabomber Manifesto". Everyone knows the name, but few knew WHY he did what he is known for, and for what reason he chose who his targets were. It was all about the technology enslaving man and building the ultimate nightmare of a ruling class. I did a blog on the UM, neoludditism, and even neoamishism earlier this year in response to teh DHS document listing 'anti-technology extremists' as terrorists:
ignoranceisfutile.wordpress.com...

reply to post by IgnoranceIsntBlisss


Thanks for the suggestions. I've read Toffler and Kaczynski before, but not the other works you mentioned. Your blog info is terrific, by the way.

I wouldn't call myself a luddite or neo-luddite per se. I'm a student of history, which has given me a dark outlook on humanity and what they are capable of. Technology is both used for human comfort and abused. I grew up in a very rural environment. and I have also lived in the middle of some of the most densly packed cities in the world. I vastly prefer the former, although this may be partially tinted by the inevitable nostalgia of an ageing, crusty old "stick in the mud".... perhaps the only lable I'm comfortable wearing these days.

Cheers...