Is Privacy Holding Back Humanity?

[JJMcClure]

Actually the problem is that everyone is looking at this in terms of how we live now, on this one you have to think out of the box. We shouldn't be focussing on privacy either, it's just one of many symptoms of the greater problem. On the other thread it was relevant, on this one it's been singled out and creates a false paradigm. Privacy is not single handedly holding our species back, like I said, it's 'just another barrier', a behavioural adaptation that makes sense the way we live now because hording information gives a competitive edge but one that is helping to lessen our long term survival likelihood. (And part of the problem is right there, we live such short mayfly life spans that we struggle to imagine anything beyond our own life)

There are two main contributing factors to the way we live, behavioural adaptations like intelligence that helped us evolve to a point where we're currently a successful species, and resource availability. Greed, as an example, promoted survival because if you surrounded yourself with material goods you were more likely to survive and pass on that gene for wanting more. It helped us get this far but like many other adaptations it's now holding us back. To imagine a world without everyone striving to have as much as they can, you have to remove the need for them to do it and to do that you have to find a way to provide for everyone without anyone having to lift a finger themselves.

The answer is pretty simple, Artificial Intelligence and the exploitation of off world resources. AI gives us the starting point to develop mechanisms that will do all the work that we currently do and the resources for every human alive to live in comfort are there for the taking just in our own solar system, let alone the rest of the galaxy. Both technologies are in their infancy but instead of spending every effort to develop them and free ourselves from our tiny venerable ball of rock we just waste money and effort fighting each other so that a small minority can remain in power.

Perhaps we'll always keep our economic imperatives, maybe we need them and it's too late to evolve new behaviours. Perhaps we'll free ourselves from them and spend our lives in the pursuit of leisure without the need to worry about paying the bills or where the next meal is coming from. I don't know if the future I hope for can ever realy happen, but I do know that the way we're living now has serious implications for our survival as a species, and they're not good.

The problem is that everyone's version of utopia is different.

What you’re not seeing is that in the future I’d like to see for our species you can have whatever version of Utopia you like as long as everyone involved is a consenting adult…. I wish there were another word for what I’m trying to describe, ‘utopia’ is a word that fills people’s heads with preconceptions.

[Andy]

Rich,

hording information gives a competitive edge

What information, exactly, is being horded?

Andy

[JJMcClure]

Rich,



What information, exactly, is being horded?

Andy

More than I could possibly list in a few thousand chars Andy. Think industrial espionage and the reasons for it, or the CIA/NSA/MI5/MOSSAD etc etc, ask yourself why we keep information from others, what does it benefit us to keep things private? Why does China keep information from it's citizens? Why do religious schools make sure that the information they consider important is the first information young children are exposed to? Even education is the flow and control of information and one of the most important steps towards a better society is the eradication of ignorance.

There are countless countless examples, and all for competitive edge, even in the context of holding power.

[Saul]

what we should to do is pool our incredible collective potential and work out a way to provide enough room and resources for the entire human race to never have to lift a finger to provide for themselves.

While I agree that pooling potential can lead to great things, the real issue is the collectivism. Because individuals don't have equal potential, it works effectively only on very small scale and only when the participants are doing it willingly. Otherwise it requires a ruling minority, regulations and use of force; which is what some collectivist movements in history have tried (such as communism) and failed miserably. And rightfully so - any principle that contradicts human nature will always fail.

Only if you can figure out a way for individuals with potential to create a self-sustaining and self-replicating system that is able to extract unlimited resources from the universe (which is quite a quixotic challenge) by giving them something in return on terms that they'd agree and that doesn't imply power, only then can this utopia work. Frankly, I don't believe it's possible - you'd either have to give them power or force them to do it (effectively make them slaves). Most likely both would happen - someone (guess who) would force them do it and take the power; the power over such a system would make them virtually omnipotent. Is perpetual laziness worth the risk?

I'd rather see humanity do things the laissez-faire way. In real world that seems to work best because it goes along with human nature. And to make this world a better place we should do more of what works and less of what doesn't.

Oh and I don't know about you but I love providing for myself and I'd take it as an insult if someone tried to do it for me without me having to "lift a finger". And I'm sure I'm not the only one in this world who thinks so. So there's that resistance issue too.

[JJMcClure]

While I agree that pooling potential can lead to great things, the real issue is the collectivism. Because individuals don't have equal potential

Only if you can figure out a way for individuals with potential to create a self-sustaining and self-replicating system that is able to extract unlimited resources from the universe (which is quite a quixotic challenge) by giving them something in return on terms that they'd agree and that doesn't imply power, only then can this utopia work. Frankly, I don't believe it's possible - you'd either have to give them power or force them to do it (effectively make them slaves). Most likely both would happen - someone (guess who) would force them do it and take the power; the power over such a system would make them virtually omnipotent. Is perpetual laziness worth the risk?

Oh and I don't know about you but I love providing for myself and I'd take it as an insult if someone tried to do it for me without me having to "lift a finger". And I'm sure I'm not the only one in this world who thinks so. So there's that resistance issue too.

Why is not working 'lazyness'? It's not, that's just a type of thought that arises from the fact that we've always had to provide for ourselves and is a good example of not thinking out of the box. Your love of providing for yourself is a product of that system, it rewards hard work and we’ve been trained and encouraged through social pressure to feel good about it. We could easily create new rewards, replace existing social behaviours with new ones.

It doesn't matter if humans have equal potential or not, it's not even relevant. I'm not a communist. If you could go anywhere, do anything, own an entire planet if you wanted to, why wouldn’t you. In the society many people envisage the only question in everybody else’s mind would be 'why does he want to own a planet' because the very concept of ownership would be meaningless.

To get what I'm saying we have to cast aside all current orthodoxies and paradigms, the way we’ve evolved and been encouraged to think, it doesn’t have to be like this.

Only if you can figure out a way for individuals with potential to create a self-sustaining and self-replicating system that is able to extract unlimited resources from the universe (which is quite a quixotic challenge)

Most likely both would happen - someone (guess who) would force them do it and take the power; the power over such a system would make them virtually omnipotent. Is perpetual laziness worth the risk?

Yes it is quite a challenge but we're already started on the path towards it and we could be so much further down it. We could have had people on Mars in the eighties but instead we chose to stop the Apollo program and develop an orbital shuttle vehicle with a blatantly military role and which can’t get us any further than low earth orbit.

As for power, what is power? How would it exist in a society where everyone has anything they could possibly want? Try controlling someone who doesn’t need you or anything you can do. We’ve evolved to want power, to want to accrue material goods so again, it’s a case of casting aside they way things are and learning new ways to think.

Or we could keep killing each other over oil and who’s version of which god is the right one until a big rock comes along and makes it all academic.

[tke71709]

We could easily create new rewards, replace existing social behaviours with new ones.

Easily?

It doesn't matter if humans have equal potential or not, it's not even relevant. I'm not a communist. If you could go anywhere, do anything, own an entire planet if you wanted to, why wouldn’t you. In the society many people envisage the only question in everybody else’s mind would be 'why does he want to own a planet' because the very concept of ownership would be meaningless.

It seems to me that your version of Utopia has nothing to do with privacy (or lack thereof), but rather has to do with eliminating scarcity. Until someone finds a way to do so, the rest is irrelevant.

[benitez17]

Actually the problem is that everyone is looking at this in terms of how we live now, on this one you have to think out of the box. We shouldn't be focussing on privacy either, it's just one of many symptoms of the greater problem. On the other thread it was relevant, on this one it's been singled out and creates a false paradigm. Privacy is not single handedly holding our species back, like I said, it's 'just another barrier', a behavioural adaptation that makes sense the way we live now because hording information gives a competitive edge but one that is helping to lessen our long term survival likelihood. (And part of the problem is right there, we live such short mayfly life spans that we struggle to imagine anything beyond our own life)

There are two main contributing factors to the way we live, behavioural adaptations like intelligence that helped us evolve to a point where we're currently a successful species, and resource availability. Greed, as an example, promoted survival because if you surrounded yourself with material goods you were more likely to survive and pass on that gene for wanting more. It helped us get this far but like many other adaptations it's now holding us back. To imagine a world without everyone striving to have as much as they can, you have to remove the need for them to do it and to do that you have to find a way to provide for everyone without anyone having to lift a finger themselves.

The answer is pretty simple, Artificial Intelligence and the exploitation of off world resources. AI gives us the starting point to develop mechanisms that will do all the work that we currently do and the resources for every human alive to live in comfort are there for the taking just in our own solar system, let alone the rest of the galaxy. Both technologies are in their infancy but instead of spending every effort to develop them and free ourselves from our tiny venerable ball of rock we just waste money and effort fighting each other so that a small minority can remain in power.

Perhaps we'll always keep our economic imperatives, maybe we need them and it's too late to evolve new behaviours. Perhaps we'll free ourselves from them and spend our lives in the pursuit of leisure without the need to worry about paying the bills or where the next meal is coming from. I don't know if the future I hope for can ever realy happen, but I do know that the way we're living now has serious implications for our survival as a species, and they're not good.

Completely eliminating scarcity is impossible. Even if we did to the point where scarcity of essential items has been eliminated for the entire planet (and we are a long, long, long way away from that), time, land, attractive mates, certain information, and plenty of other resources that can't be manufactured will still be limited. How will you allocate them?

Also, claiming that the AI and extraplanetary mining are simple answers to our problems is rather naive. At this point, it's not much different than claiming that a time machine is a simple answer to all of our problems.

What you’re not seeing is that in the future I’d like to see for our species you can have whatever version of Utopia you like as long as everyone involved is a consenting adult…. I wish there were another word for what I’m trying to describe, ‘utopia’ is a word that fills people’s heads with preconceptions.

I enjoy having some level of privacy, and also having private property. That directly conflicts with any collectivist utopia, like yours.

If you are willing to allow people to choose which type of society they want to live in, then I would gladly support your desire to have a completely open commune. If you try to force me to hand over the results of any efforts I make, we are going to have a problem.

[benitez17]

Why is not working 'lazyness'? It's not, that's just a type of thought that arises from the fact that we've always had to provide for ourselves and is a good example of not thinking out of the box. Your love of providing for yourself is a product of that system, it rewards hard work and we’ve been trained and encouraged through
social pressure to feel good about it. We could easily create new rewards, replace existing social behaviours with new ones.

Because not working means that you will die, or others will be supporting you (voluntarily or involuntarily). People will still have to maintain and improve the automated systems running the planet. Why do you get to lounge around all day while others maintain the system that provides you with your leisure time while getting nothing in return?

I don't see a system where people are encouraged to take anything they want and contribute nothing working for very long.

It doesn't matter if humans have equal potential or not, it's not even relevant. I'm not a communist. If you could go anywhere, do anything, own an entire planet if you wanted to, why wouldn’t you. In the society many people envisage the only question in everybody else’s mind would be 'why does he want to own a planet' because the very concept of ownership would be meaningless.

You're certainly suggesting ideas that are collectivist, if not precisely communist (primarily collective ownership of all assets and information).

To get what I'm saying we have to cast aside all current orthodoxies and paradigms, the way we’ve evolved and been encouraged to think, it doesn’t have to be like this.

We didn't evolve this way at random.

Yes it is quite a challenge but we're already started on the path towards it and we could be so much further down it. We could have had people on Mars in the eighties but instead we chose to stop the Apollo program and develop an orbital shuttle vehicle with a blatantly military role and which can’t get us any further than low earth orbit.

Why is a mission to Mars more important than using those limited resources for other efforts?

As for power, what is power? How would it exist in a society where everyone has anything they could possibly want? Try controlling someone who doesn’t need you or anything you can do. We’ve evolved to want power, to want to accrue material goods so again, it’s a case of casting aside they way things are and learning new ways to think.

Or we could keep killing each other over oil and who’s version of which god is the right one until a big rock comes along and makes it all academic.

Again, it's impossible to give every person everything they want at all times.

[JJMcClure]

Benitez, your thinking is very much a product of our times. You think I'm naive and you compare time travel to the exploitation of off planet resources and the development of AI that could free us from the need to work (which is simply a more sophisticated version of many other labour saving devices that we currently use daily), I don't even know how to respond to that it's such a bizarre comparison. If you can watch us mine minerals from our planet but can't imagine mining an asteroid and if you can use a car or a microwave or a TV or many other forms of technology that would seem like magic to people from only a couple of 100 years ago but you can't imagine even more sophisticated technologies that will further reduce our own work requirements then perhaps the problem is that you're not very imaginative. That's not intended to be a slight, it may be a simple fact. What I’m describing is not so long away from being reality.

Of course you enjoy some privacy, that's how our thought processes have evolved because privacy is an adaptation that gives a survival benefit in a society that trades. There was no privacy when we were hunter-gatherers 30k years ago because there was no need for it, it had no benefit. We need to eliminate trade and the behaviour that results from it but to do that everybody has to have everything they need to survive.

If you have to ask why a mission to Mars (or to anywhere that isn't our planet) is more important than using those same resources to build a vehicle more suited to putting military satellites into low earth orbit but which can’t actually go anywhere then really I don't think you're ever going to agree with the concept I'm trying to describe.

Needing a mate. In a future society where technology has eradicated disease and genetic abnormalities (don't think that's possible? Compare our medicinal abilities now to 200 years ago and imagine where we could be in 500 years), looking for the right 'mate' would also be a redundant concept. Everyone would be healthy and we would live a lot longer so choosing between mates would be moot. You wouldn't even need a mate, we don't even need them now do we. We’re already evolving away from that behaviour and in any case, ‘mating’ is itself a change from even earlier times when males would make pregnant any females they could physically lay claim to, the dominant male passed on his genes and there was no such thing as having a permanent partner. That behaviour has changed once, why can’t it change again?

So far there have been many objections and rebuttals but all based on traditional thought processes, shaped by current living styles and evolutionary adaptations but we can evolve further, change these behaviours and stop being so insular and ridiculously short-sighted. We live such short lives that it's literally a struggle to imagine things being different from how they are now, it's normal.

How many of you guys cared one way or the other about the royal wedding? 200 years ago not caring would have practically have been a capital offence, times they are a changing?

[Kay]

Oh no. Not more WeddingBalls.

Earlier today I noticed on the BBC, a reporter was interviewing a member of the general public in America to find their reaction to the killing of Osama Bin Laden. The interviewee said, "You've got the Royal Wedding, we've got this."

Where will it all end? And will we ever be able to escape from it?