Is Privacy Holding Back Humanity?

[tke71709]

Even married couples exchange services. I do the cooking, Dave does the washing up. It's a partnership. Is that not "trade" of a sort?

So you have an agreement that so long as Dave washes up he is allowed to eat the food and if he should cease to wash the dishes you would no longer allow him to eat?

Then that would be trade

And there are other family/domestic situations which occur, otherwise you wouldn't get the "trophy wife" phenomenon. The woman didn't choose the hunkiest male most able to physically bring home the bacon to mate with. She chose the guy with plenty of dosh so she could have more new pairs of shoes. That's trade, no?

She is trading sex and companionship (services) for money (a good) so that would be trade.

But feeding your kids isn't trade (for normal people) because no exchange is taking place. If your kids only get to eat if they do chores then that would be trade.

[mgallone]

JJMclure, I'm sorry- I took a breather to think back and get back to your original post but in the that has gone by I seem to have missed 5(??!) pages of discussion.

So, taking a completely different tact, and one that probably brings some much needed relief into the debate- please view the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSROlfR7WTo

Yes, it's from a comedy film, but for me it perfectly sums up my viewpoint on what will happen if we ever get to the stage where our lives are sorted by AI and we can getbby without doing jobs.

[Kay]

So you have an agreement that so long as Dave washes up he is allowed to eat the food and if he should cease to wash the dishes you would no longer allow him to eat?

LOL! The "agreement" isn't actually that rigid. But, yes, we each bring our own skills to the partnership.

As for the trophy wife thing, lots of women trade their "services" for a home and financial security. Otherwise you wouldn't get all these dolly birds marrying stupid old codgers in countries like Thailand. He gets sex and a pretty young wife. She (usually) gets a much higher standard of living than she could otherwise expect. I don't doubt that some of these relationships develop into love as time goes on, but I would most definitely call it trade in the early days of their relationship. And it's no coincidence that many of these women were originally in the business of selling sex in return for money, meals, and nice holidays.

BTW, I apologise for my English language schoolboy howler in my earlier posting.

The woman didn't choose the hunkiest male most able to physically bring home the bacon to mate with.

I did not mean to imply that anyone would mate with the bacon.

[JJMcClure]

You're saying that interchangeably with removing trade. Solving the problem of resource scarcity is not ridiculous. Suggesting that we need to remove trade to do that is. You've never given a reason why, other than the absolute that trade is the problem by its very existence.

I might be giving confusing messages. I want to solve resource scarcity and the way I highlighted the need to do that was to point out that Trade, which was the behavioural adaptation our species made in response to the environmental pressure of resource scarcity, is a far from ideal answer at this point in our evolution. I think it helped us get where we are but it now causes serious problems and some of them are threatening to our long term survival. So what we need to do is solve the problem of resource scarcity and trade will just go away without us having to do anything. (This also explains why it's never happened, those with the power are very reluctant to let go of it)

Is that more clear?

Are you now not in favor all of humanity sharing all information and physical resources?

Yes I am but I wouldn't define that as a collective (if that's what you're refrring to) unless it's because we're collectively spending our lives in great health and with nothing to do except expand our minds and enjoy ourselves? The type of behviours that would result from that are anyone's guess, it might implode, it might be very successful, but it would be better than what we have now.

Also, how do you expect to get to a state where humans are free from work without setting up some sort of commune for that technology, given that not every person on the planet will have contributed to those advances?

It doesn't matter if only one person gets us to that point, we'll be there. AI will do all the work otherwise the culture I envisage can never happen because humans will have to do it and then the model would fail.

JJMclure, I'm sorry- I took a breather to think back and get back to your original post but in the that has gone by I seem to have missed 5(??!) pages of discussion.

So, taking a completely different tact, and one that probably brings some much needed relief into the debate- please view the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSROlfR7WTo

Yes, it's from a comedy film, but for me it perfectly sums up my viewpoint on what will happen if we ever get to the stage where our lives are sorted by AI and we can getbby without doing jobs.

No worries mate. Funny film but you're looking at it with a 21st century perspective. Trailer trash could never exist in my vision of the future because of genetic enhancement and selective development ( I touched on this in an earlier post).

Funnily enough, it's trade that's led us to a point in our evolution where trailer trash can exist and HAVE to exist since they're the mindless consumers that make smart people rich. (And why do the smart couple in the video not have kids? Because they're too busy working.....) So, I put a different persepctive to you, if we solve the problem of resource scarcity and take our technology to a level where AI is doing all the hard work for us and where disease and genetic weaknesses have been removed from the genepool, what we'd also lose as well as the trailer trash are the Simon Cowells and Rupert Murdochs of the world. How would you feel about that?

[mgallone]

No worries mate. Funny film but you're looking at it with a 21st century perspective. Trailer trash could never exist in my vision of the future because of genetic enhancement and selective development ( I touched on this in an earlier post).

Funnily enough, it's trade that's led us to a point in our evolution where trailer trash can exist and HAVE to exist since they're the mindless consumers that make smart people rich. (And why do the smart couple in the video not have kids? Because they're too busy working.....)

Well there's the rub... in a world where everything is done by intelligent machines, what becomes of the stupid people whose idea of 'something to do' is getting as many people pregnant/having as many kids as possible?

So, I put a different persepctive to you, if we solve the problem of resource scarcity and take our technology to a level where AI is doing all the hard work for us and where disease and genetic weaknesses have been removed from the genepool, what we'd also lose as well as the trailer trash are the Simon Cowells and Rupert Murdochs of the world. How would you feel about that?

I've gotten a bit lost here. With no disease or genetic weakness, how would we lose any characteristic from the gene pool? With no disease, no predation, (presumably) few fatal accidents, the most prevalent genes would be of those who had the most offspring, regardless of them being better equipped for survival (more intelligent, more creative etc.) Under that kind of situation, the 'brain drain' that I referenced earlier is almost inevitable. Presumably the people who learn for the sake of learning are akin to those in the clip who were too busy working at the time- whilst they be learnin', the rednecks be gettin' busy.

With all disease and genetic weakness removed

[tke71709]

I've gotten a bit lost here. With no disease or genetic weakness, how would we lose any characteristic from the gene pool? With no disease, no predation, (presumably) few fatal accidents, the most prevalent genes would be of those who had the most offspring, regardless of them being better equipped for survival (more intelligent, more creative etc.)

You're missing the frightening endorsement of eugenics. The AI will decide who gets to breed and will "tweak" their offspring at a genetic level to make them "perfect".

[JJMcClure]

Well there's the rub... in a world where everything is done by intelligent machines, what becomes of the stupid people whose idea of 'something to do' is getting as many people pregnant/having as many kids as possible?

Suppose we were all stupid and all we did was breed and spread out into the galaxy? Why would that be a bad thing? It wouldn't be that different from what's happening now here on Earth would it really.

In my version there simply aren't stupid people but I'm being as elitist as anyone else there, there's no reason why we couldn't all be complete morons and still populate the galaxy for millions of years to come, babysat by our AI support system. Hey, it's another version....

I still don't understand though why you think that being freed from having to work would make us all go stupid. Work is only one of many types of stimulus and we're nothing if not inventive.

You're missing the frightening endorsement of eugenics. The AI will decide who gets to breed and will "tweak" their offspring at a genetic level to make them "perfect".

And this is frightening because....? We're already making several inroads into this area. For example, pregant women have a test for Downs syndrome and then have the choice to abort, is that not tweaking the genepool? I'd much prefer that those kind of genetic abnormalities weren't able to occur in the first place though, wouldn't you? Why would you be against us making changes to genes that would create stronger more intelligent offspring? You want us to still produce handicapped children?

And if you start tweaking genes to prevent retardations or handicaps, well then you're doing the very thing you object to and you now have to start figuring out where the line is. And why would the AIs get to decide? Who said anything about that?

[mgallone]

I should probably let JJMclure step in on this, but I'm hoping that's an inference rather than the actual vision...

*EDIT*

And he did... ah well, good old posting at the same time

[JJMcClure]

I should probably let JJMclure step in on this, but I'm hoping that's an inference rather than the actual vision...

If you mean that you hoped I wasn't talking about eugenics then I guess I'll have to disspoint you. I woudn't have called it that and I wish this sort of thing wouldn't conjour up image of Joseph Mengales or creepy scientists concocting super children in test tubes. We have Hollywood to thank for that short sightedness and rabble rousing crap. Quick, grab your torches and pitchforks....

We already do plenty to try to ensure the wellbeing of our offspring, more and more women eat organic food during pregnancy, don't smoke or drink etc etc. What is that if it's not trying to prevent unpleasant birth defects or to give our kdis the best chance to be viable human beings? The line between that and ectively tweaking genes to eradicate disease or genetic abnormalities is very thin indeed, perhaps non-existent. We shouldn't be so afraid of change and anyone who thinks it's blasphemous is living in the dark ages.

Yes, in my perfect culture, there is no more disease or sickness, no more birth defects, or childhood Leukemia, no more eye sight problems or deafness, no chronic encephalitus or cancers or children bron wihtout limbs ect etc because they've been eradicated from the gene pool through medical interventions.

[tke71709]

And why would the AIs get to decide? Who said anything about that?

They're making the rest of the societal decisions why wouldn't they make these as well?

Personally if this was to happen (and let's hope it never does) I would hope it would be the AI's and not people who made these decisions.