NFTs are, by now, old news. No single aspect of crypto has been more derided than the ‘million dollar jpegs’ which headlined the last crypto bullrun. Around coffee tables, bars, and Discords all over the world, snide remarks about the utter insanity of the modern market reigned supreme. To many, the idea that a duplicable image of an Ape could set you up for life was cause for bemusement, anger, and not the least bit of jealousy.
Has this modern speculative capitalism gone mad? Was it the outrageous excess of the crypto-minted tech bros’ 1% indulging themselves in the new ‘roaring 20s’ of the 21st century amid a backdrop of pandemic and war? Or was someone, somewhere, actually on to something: that the dizzying prices and speculative excess was a harbinger of a newly consecrated form of online ownership and digital demesnes that would lead to a new concept of cyberspace.
The answer, of course, is that all three are true. Though the positive narrative has, to date, almost been entirely sunk by the precipitous, and in some cases hilarious, losses that early NFT ‘investors’ suffered. All gold rushes bring charlatans, and nowhere was this more acute in the insane pell mell towards the jackpot that occurred as literally anyone with a few thousands dollars and a basic concept of programming, blockchain or otherwise, could spin up a brand new NFT collection, promising insane gains, ambitious roadmaps, and eternal friendship among the community. The barrier to entry was near-zero, and the market was hungry for every new ape collection that rolled off the bedroom CEO production line. A lot of people – mainly the young – made a lot of money.
Everyone else lost everything. Very few projects ever grew beyond the initial launch. Leaders collected the minting fees and promptly stopped working, realising perhaps innocently, perhaps not, that the roadmaps they had set out would be difficult even for Apple to execute in the timeframes spoken about. Discords turned feral as thousands of users realised a 14 year old, perfectly innocently, had sold them a few pictures of whales to test his skills with Rust, with zero plans to do anything else for the project. It was just a hobby to make a few dollars.
Credit: Tesfu Assefa
Yet even without a roadmap, communities wrote one in their heads. This was going to be the latest craze, the keys to a better virtual future where whale-owners would walk tall in the new halls of cyberspace, a chance to pay off the mortgage. How dare this 14 year old kid rob us of that future they’d already dreamed they were in. Scammer, I can doxx you! I know where you live!
How did this happen? What is it about those jpeg apes that so seized the cultural imagination? Yes, there were an incredible amount of push factors – Covid, quantitative easing, stimulus, lockdown, BTC’s massive gains creating crypto-related mania. But there must have been more – what was the pull?
First, they’re not jpegs. The picture associated with an NFT is not truly the NFT itself. An NFT is a token created (‘minted’) by a smart contract that has certain information on it (like pointing to a webhost hosting a jpeg), is completely unique (even if duplicates are made, each NFT would still a specific blockchain signature), and has an owner ascribed to it (usually the person sending tokens to the smart contract to make it execute its creation function. The NFT’s information, the transaction that created it, and the current ownership is all publicly visible, irrefutable, and benefits its blockchain’s security, making fraud impossible without breaking the network entirely.
This means that we’d finally figured out a way to record digital ownership, and thus digital items, which due to their reproducibility had very little worth, but could suddenly have a lot. It started with art, but games quickly realised they could consecrate ownership over their in-game assets to players, creating cooperative gaming experiences. Ownership of the first digital ‘printing’ of your favourite artist’s new album having kudos. The ability for vibrant secondary economies to spring up around their favourite talent as users could trade NFTs with one another, or sell them. NFTs created a whole new economy to be exploited where there was none before. And boy, was it exploited. Influencers, artists, and anyone with a following could create new engagement models using NFTs, with bespoke experiences attached. At time of writing, Cristiano Ronaldo’s instagram bio asks his 600m followers to join him on his NFT journey, and bid for NFTs in open auction for a chance to meet the man himself.
What’s wrong with a ticket though? Just tell me why an ape picture is worth millions. Well, the reason is, as with so many new technologies, is the possibilities. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Cosmos – whichever – blockchains by their nature are designed to be permanent, digitally-native operating systems for our future. An NFT bought in 2017 will keep its functionality for eternity. It can’t be erased from the blockchain, or from time.
That means that should, in the future, a new business, say, declare that the only way to buy the first release of their hot new product is by owning said NFT, it would be easy for them to borrow the operation security of the blockchain and create instant exclusive access to whatever ‘club’ of people they those at near-zero outreach cost. Membership of said clubs would be powerful, digital cartels impossible to access except through the NFT and the key it provides. Or a blockchain game grows and develops a powerful online community over a decade. The first NFTs of in-game assets would be priceless, and nothing would stop developers engineering new functionality for them over time. Only a fool would suggest that we are not becoming ever more cyberised as history advances, so why wouldn’t the first digital artefacts – the first time we can truly declare failsafe ownership of a digital asset – have value?
As alluded to, all of that is decades hence. NFTs have been mooted for use in retail, supply chains, schools but, as ever, the integrative technology to make that happen and make it useful has a long way to go. Those most in the know are too busy getting rich, or at least were, to truly focus on advancing NFTs as a useful digital technology. Now, as almost every project suffers on the wind-down from mania, perhaps it’s time to take stock of what digital ownership could truly give us. As a blaze of stimuli, images, and simulacra race past us in virtual headsets, NFTs just give us something to hold on to.
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There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy.
More recent writers, in effect amplifying Shakespeare’s warning, have enthralled us with their depictions of numerous creatures with bewildering mental attributes. The pages of science fiction can, indeed, stretch our imagination in remarkable ways. But these narratives are easy to dismiss as being “just” science fiction.
That’s why my own narrative, in this article, circles back to an analysis that featured in my previous Mindplex article, Bursting out of confinement. The analysis in question is the famous – or should I say infamous – “Simulation Argument”. The Simulation Argument raises some disturbing possibilities about non-human intelligence. Many critics try to dismiss these possibilities – waving them away as “pseudoscience” or, again, as “just science fiction” – but they’re being overly hasty. My conclusion is that, as we collectively decide how to design next generation AI systems, we ought to carefully ponder these possibilities.
In short, what we need to contemplate is the astonishing vastness of the space of all possible minds. These minds vary in unfathomable ways not only in how they think but also in what they think about and care about.
Hamlet’s warning can be restated:
There are more types of superintelligence in mind space, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy.
By the way, don’t worry if you’ve not yet read my previous Mindplex article. Whilst these two articles add up to a larger picture, they are independent of each other.
How alien?
As I said: we humans tend to compare other intelligences to our own, human, intelligence. Therefore, we tend to expect that AI superintelligence, when it emerges, will sit on some broad spectrum that extends from the intelligence of amoebae and ants through that of mice and monkeys to that of humans and beyond.
When pushed, we may concede that AI superintelligence is likely to have some characteristics we would describe as alien.
In a simple equation, overall human intelligence (HI) might be viewed as a combination of multiple different kinds of intelligence (I1, I2, …), such as spatial intelligence, musical intelligence, mathematical intelligence, linguistic intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, and so on:
HI = I1 + I2 + … + In
In that conception, AI superintelligence (ASI) is a compound magnification (m1, m2, …) of these various capabilities, with a bit of “alien extra” (X) tacked on at the end:
ASI = m1*I1 + m2*I2 + … + mn*In + X
What’s at issue is whether the ASI is dominated by the first terms in this expression, or by the unknown X present at the end.
Whether some form of humans will thrive in a coexistence with ASI will depend on how alien that superintelligence is.
Perhaps the ASI will provide a safe, secure environment, in which we humans can carry out our human activities to our hearts’ content. Perhaps the ASI will augment us, uplift us, or even allow us to merge with it, so that we retain what we see as the best of our current human characteristics, whilst leaving behind various unfortunate hangovers from our prior evolutionary trajectory. But that all depends on factors that it’s challenging to assess:
How much “common cause” the ASI will feel toward humans
Whether any initial feeling of common cause will dissipate as the ASI self-improves
To what extent new X factors could alter considerations in ways that we have not begun to consider.
Four responses to the X possibility
Our inability to foresee the implications of unknowable new ‘X’ capabilities in ASI should make us pause for thought. That inability was what prompted author and mathematics professor Vernor Vinge to develop in 1983 his version of the notion of “Singularity”. To summarize what I covered in more detail in a previous Mindplex article, “Untangling the confusion”, Vinge predicted that a new world was about to emerge that “will pass far beyond our understanding”:
We are at the point of accelerating the evolution of intelligence itself… We will soon create intelligences greater than our own. When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity, an intellectual transition as impenetrable as the knotted space-time at the center of a black hole, and the world will pass far beyond our understanding. This singularity, I believe, already haunts a number of science fiction writers. It makes realistic extrapolation to an interstellar future impossible.
Reactions to this potential unpredictability can be split into four groups of thought:
Dismissal: A denial of the possibility of ASI. Thankfully, this reaction has become much less common recently.
Fatalism: Since we cannot anticipate what surprise new ‘X’ features may be possessed by an ASI, it’s a waste of time to speculate about them or to worry about them. What will be, will be. Who are we humans to think we can subvert the next step in cosmic evolution?
Optimism: There’s no point in being overcome with doom and gloom. Let’s convince ourselves to feel lucky. Humanity has had a good run so far, and if we extrapolate that history beyond the singularity, we can hope to have an even better run in the future.
Activism: Rather than rolling the dice, we should proactively alter the environment in which new generations of AI are being developed, to reduce the risks of any surprise ‘X’ features emerging that would overwhelm our abilities to retain control.
I place myself squarely in the activist camp, and I’m happy to adopt the description of “Singularity Activist”.
To be clear, this doesn’t mean I’m blind to the potential huge upsides to beneficial ASI. It’s just that I’m aware, as well, of major risks en route to that potential future.
A journey through a complicated landscape
As an analogy, consider a journey through a complicated landscape:
Credit: David Wood (Image by Midjourney)
In this journey, we see a wonderful existential opportunity ahead – a lush valley, fertile lands, and gleaming mountain peaks soaring upward to a transcendent realm. But in front of that opportunity is a river of uncertainty, bordered by a swamp of ambiguity, perhaps occupied by hungry predators lurking in shadows.
Are there just two options?
We are intimidated by the possible dangers ahead, and decide not to travel any further
We fixate on the gleaming mountain peaks, and rush on regardless, belittling anyone who warns of piranhas, treacherous river currents, alligators, potential mud slides, and so on
Isn’t there a third option? To take the time to gain a better understanding of the lie of the land ahead. Perhaps there’s a spot, to one side, where it will be easier to cross the river. A location where a stable bridge can be built. Perhaps we could even build a helicopter that can assist us over the strongest currents…
It’s the same with the landscape of our journey towards the sustainable superabundance that could be achieved, with the assistance of advanced AI, provided we act wisely. That’s the vision of Singularity Activism.
Obstacles to Singularity Activism
The Singularity Activist outlook faces two main obstacles.
The first obstacle is the perception that there’s nothing we humans can usefully do, to meaningfully alter the course of development of ASI. If we slow down our own efforts, in order to apply more resources in the short term on questions of safety and reliability, it just makes it more likely that another group of people – probably people with fewer moral qualms than us – will rush ahead and create ASI.
In this line of thinking, the best way forward is to create prototype ASI systems as soon as possible, and then to use these systems to help design and evolve better ASI systems, so that everyone can benefit from what will hopefully be a wonderful outcome.
The second obstacle is the perception that there’s nothing we humans particularly need to do, to avoid the risks of adverse outcomes, since these risks are pretty small in any case. Just as we don’t over-agonise about the risks of us being struck by debris falling from an overhead airplane, we shouldn’t over-agonise about the risks of bad consequences of ASI.
Credit: David Wood
But on this occasion, where I want to focus is assessing the scale and magnitude of the risk that we are facing, if we move forward with overconfidence and inattention. That is, I want to challenge the second of the above misperceptions.
As a step toward that conclusion, it’s time to bring an ally to the table. That ally is the Simulation Argument. Buckle up!
Are we simulated?
The Simulation Argument puts a particular hypothesis on the table, known as the Simulation Hypothesis. That hypothesis proposes that we humans are mistaken about the ultimate nature of reality. What we consider to be “reality” is, in this hypothesis, a simulated (virtual) world, designed and operated by “simulators” who exist outside what we consider the entire universe.
It’s similar to interactions inside a computer game. As humans play these games, they encounter challenges and puzzles that need to be solved. Some of these challenges involve agents (characters) within the game – agents which appear to have some elements of autonomy and intelligence. These agents have been programmed into the game by the game’s designers. Depending on the type of game, the greater the intelligence of the built-in agents, the more enjoyable it is to play it.
Games are only one example of simulation. We can also consider simulations created as a kind of experiment. In this case, a designer may be motivated by curiosity: They may want to find out what would happen if such-and-such initial conditions were created. For example, if Archduke Ferdinand had escaped assassination in Sarajevo in June 1914, would the European powers still have blundered into something akin to World War One? Again, such simulations could contain numerous intelligent agents – potentially (as in the example just mentioned) many millions of such agents.
Consider reality from the point of view of such an agent. What these agents perceive inside their simulation is far from being the entirety of the universe as is known to the humans who operate the simulation. The laws of cause-and-effect within the simulation could deviate from the laws applicable in the outside world. Some events in the simulation that lack any explanation inside that world may be straightforwardly explained from the outside perspective: the human operator made such-and-such a decision, or altered a setting, or – in an extreme case – decided to reset or terminate the simulation. In other words, what is bewildering to the agent may make good sense to the author(s) of the simulation.
Now suppose that, as such agents become more intelligent, they also become self-aware. That brings us to the crux question: how can we know whether we humans are, likewise, agents in a simulation whose designers and operators exist beyond our direct perception? For example, we might be part of a simulation of world history in which Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo in June 1914. Or we might be part of a simulation whose purpose far exceeds our own comprehension.
Indeed, if the human creative capability (HCC) to create simulations is expressed as a sum of different creative capabilities (CC1, CC2, …),
HCC = CC1 + CC2 + … + CCn
then the creative capability of a hypothetical superhuman simulation designer (SCC) might be expressed as a compound magnification (m1, m2, …) of these various capabilities, with a bit of “alien extra” (X) tacked on at the end:
SCC = m1*CC1 + m2*CC2 + … + mn*CCn + X
Weighing the numbers
Before assessing the possible scale and implications of the ‘X’ factor in that equation, there’s another set of numbers to consider. These numbers attempt to weigh up the distribution of self-aware intelligent agents. What proportion of that total set of agents are simulated, compared to those that are in “base reality”?
If we’re just counting intelligences, the conclusion is easy. Assuming there is no catastrophe that upends the progress of technology, then, over the course of all of history, there will likely be vastly more artificial (simulated) intelligences than beings who have base (non-simulated) intelligences. That’s because computing hardware is becoming more powerful and widespread.
There are already more “intelligent things” than humans connected to the Internet: the analysis firm Statista estimates that, in 2023, the first of these numbers is 15.14 billion, which is almost triple the second number (5.07 billion). In 2023, most of these “intelligent things” have intelligence far shallower than that of humans, but as time progresses, more and more intelligent agents of various sorts will be created. That’s thanks to ongoing exponential improvements in the capabilities of hardware, networks, software, and data analysis.
Therefore, if an intelligence could be selected at random, from the set of all such intelligences, the likelihood is that it would be an artificial intelligence.
The Simulation Argument takes these considerations one step further. Rather than just selecting an intelligence at random, what if we consider selecting a self-aware conscious intelligence at random. Given the vast numbers of agents that are operating inside vast numbers of simulations, now or in the future, the likelihood is that a simulated agent has been selected. In other words, we – you and I – observing ourselves to be self-aware and intelligent, should conclude that it’s likely we ourselves are simulated.
Thus the conclusion of the Simulation Argument is that we should take the Simulation Hypothesis seriously. To be clear, that hypothesis isn’t the only possible legitimate response to the argument. Two other responses are to deny two of the assumptions that I mentioned when building the argument:
The assumption that technology will continue to progress, to the point where simulated intelligences vastly exceed non-simulated intelligences
The assumption that the agents in these simulations will be not just intelligent but also conscious and self-aware.
Credit: Tesfu Assefa
Objections and counters
Friends who are sympathetic to most of my arguments sometimes turn frosty when I raise the topic of the Simulation Hypothesis. It clearly makes people uncomfortable.
In their state of discomfort, critics of the argument can raise a number of objections. For example, they complain that the argument is entirely metaphysical, not having any actual consequences for how we live our lives. There’s no way to test it, the objection runs. As such, it’s unscientific.
As someone who spent four years of my life (1982-1986) in the History and Philosophy of Science department in Cambridge, I am unconvinced by these criticisms. Science has a history of theories moving from non-testable to testable. The physicist Ernst Mach was famously hostile to the hypothesis that atoms exist. He declared his disbelief in atoms in a public auditorium in Vienna in 1897: “I don’t believe that atoms exist”. There was no point in speculating about the existence of things that could not be directly observed, he asserted. Later in his life, Mach likewise complained about the scientific value of Einstein’s theory of relativity:
I can accept the theory of relativity as little as I can accept the existence of atoms and other such dogma.
Intellectual heirs of Mach in the behaviorist school of psychology fought similar battles against the value of notions of mental states. According to experimentalists like John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner, people’s introspections of their own mental condition had no scientific merit. Far better, they said, to concentrate on what could be observed externally, rather than on metaphysical inferences about hypothetical minds.
As it happened, the theories of atoms, of special relativity, and of internal mental states, all gave rise in due course to important experimental investigations, which improved the ability of scientists to make predictions and to alter the course of events.
It may well be the same with the Simulation Hypothesis. There are already suggestions of experiments that might be carried out to distinguish between possible modes of simulation. Just because a theory is accused of being “metaphysical”, it doesn’t follow that no good science can arise from it.
A different set of objections to the Simulation Argument gets hung up on tortuous debates over the mathematics of probabilities. (For additional confusion, questions of infinities can be mixed in too.) Allegedly, because we cannot meaningfully measure these probabilities, the whole argument makes no sense.
However, the Simulation Argument makes only minimal appeal to theories of mathematics. It simply points out that there are likely to be many more simulated intelligences than non-simulated intelligences.
Well, critics sometimes respond, it must therefore be the case that simulated intelligences can never be self-aware. They ask, with some derision, whoever imagined that silicon could become conscious? There must be some critical aspect of biological brains which cannot be duplicated in artificial minds. And in that case, the fact that we are self-aware would lead us to conclude we are not simulated.
To me, that’s far too hasty an answer. It’s true that the topics of self-awareness and consciousness are more controversial than the topic of intelligence. It is doubtless true that at least some artificial minds will lack conscious self-awareness. But if evolution has bestowed conscious self-awareness on intelligent creatures, we should be wary of declaring that property to provide no assistance to these creatures. Such a conclusion would be similar to declaring that sleep is for losers, despite the ubiquity of sleep in mammalian evolution.
If evolution has given us sleep, we should be open to the possibility that it has positive side-effects for our health. (It does!) Likewise, if evolution has given us conscious self-awareness, we should be open to the idea that creatures benefit from that characteristic. Simulators, therefore, may well be tempted to engineer a corresponding attribute into the agents they create. And if it turns out that specific physical features of the biological brain need to be copied into the simulation hardware, to enable conscious self-awareness, so be it.
The repugnant conclusion
When an argument faces so much criticism, yet the criticisms fail to stand up to scrutiny, it’s often a sign that something else is happening behind the scenes.
Here’s what I think is happening with the Simulation Argument. If we accept the Simulation Hypothesis, it means we have to accept a morally repugnant conclusion about the simulators that have created us. Namely, these simulators give no sign of caring about all the terrible suffering experienced by the agents inside the simulation.
Yes, some agents have good lives, but very many others have dismal fates. The thought that a simulator would countenance all this suffering is daunting.
Of course, this is the age-old “problem of evil”, well known in the philosophy of religion. Why would an all-good all-knowing all-powerful deity allow so many terrible things to happen to so many humans over the course of history? It doesn’t make sense. That’s one reason why many people have turned their back on any religious faith that implies a supposedly all-good all-knowing all-powerful deity.
Needless to say, religious faith persists, with the protection of one or more of the following rationales:
We humans aren’t entitled to use our limited appreciation of good vs. evil to cast judgment on what actions an all-good deity should take
We humans shouldn’t rely on our limited intellects to try to fathom the “mysterious ways” in which a deity operates
Perhaps the deity isn’t all-powerful after all, in the sense that there are constraints beyond human appreciation in what the deity can accomplish.
Occasionally, yet another idea is added to the mix:
A benevolent deity needs to coexist with an evil antagonist, such as a “satan” or other primeval prince of darkness.
Against such rationalizations, the spirit of the enlightenment offers a different, more hopeful analysis:
Whichever forces gave rise to the universe, they have no conscious concern for human wellbeing
Although human intellects run up against cognitive limitations, we can, and should, seek to improve our understanding of how the universe operates, and of the preconditions for human flourishing
Although it is challenging when different moral frameworks clash, or when individual moral frameworks fail to provide clear guidelines, we can, and should, seek to establish wide agreement on which kinds of human actions to applaud and encourage, and which to oppose and forbid
Rather than us being the playthings of angels and demons, the future of humanity is in our own hands.
However, if we follow the Simulation Argument, we are confronted by what seems to be a throwback to a more superstitious era:
We may owe our existence to actions by beings beyond our comprehension
These beings demonstrate little affinity for the kinds of moral values we treasure
We might comfort each other with the claim that “[whilst] the arc of the moral universe is long, … it bends toward justice”, but we have no solid evidence in favor of that optimism, and plenty of evidence that good people are laid to waste as life proceeds.
If the Simulation Argument leads us to such conclusions, it’s little surprise that people seek to oppose it.
However, just because we dislike a conclusion, that doesn’t entitle us to assume that it’s false. Rather, it behooves us to consider how we might adjust our plans in the light of that conclusion possibly being true.
The vastness of ethical possibilities
If you disliked the previous section, you may dislike this next part even more strongly. But I urge you to put your skepticism on hold, for a while, and bear with me.
The Simulation Argument suggests that beings who are extremely powerful and extremely intelligent – beings capable of creating a universe-scale simulation in which we exist – may have an ethical framework that is very different from ones we fondly hope would be possessed by all-powerful all-knowing beings.
It’s not that their ethical concerns exceed our own. It’s that they differ in fundamental ways from what we might predict.
I’ll return, for a third and final time, to a pair of equations. If overall human ethical concerns (HEC) is a sum of different ethical considerations (EC1, EC2, …),
HEC = EC1 + EC2 + … + ECn
then the set of ethical concerns of a hypothetical superhuman simulation designer (SEC) needs to include not only a compound magnification (m1, m2, …) of these various human concerns, but also an unquantifiable “alien extra” (X) portion:
SEC = m1*EC1 + m2*EC2 + … + mn*ECn + X
In some views, ethical principles exist as brute facts of the universe: “do not kill”, “do not tell untruths”, “treat everyone fairly”, and so on. Even though we may from time to time fail to live up to these principles, that doesn’t detract from the fundamental nature of these principles.
But from an alternative perspective, ethical principles have pragmatic justifications. A world in which people usually don’t kill each other is better on the whole, for everyone, than a world in which people attack and kill each other more often. It’s the same with telling the truth, and with treating each other fairly.
In this view, ethical principles derive from empirical observations:
Various measures of individual self-control (such as avoiding gluttony or envy) result in the individual being healthier and happier (physically or psychologically)
Various measures of social self-control likewise create a society with healthier, happier people – these are measures where individuals all agree to give up various freedoms (for example, the freedom to cheat whenever we think we might get away with it), on the understanding that everyone else will restrain themselves in a similar way
Vigorous attestations of our beliefs in the importance of these ethical principles signal to others that we can be trusted and are therefore reliable allies or partners.
Therefore, our choice of ethical principles depends on facts:
Facts about our individual makeup
Facts about the kinds of partnerships and alliances that are likely to be important for our wellbeing.
For beings with radically different individual makeup – radically different capabilities, attributes, and dependencies – we should not be surprised if a radically different set of ethical principles makes better sense to them.
Accordingly, such beings might not care if humans experience great suffering. On account of their various superpowers, they may have no dependency on us – except, perhaps, for an interest in seeing how we respond to various challenges or circumstances.
Collaboration: for and against
Credit: Tesfu Assefa
One more objection deserves attention. This is the objection that collaboration is among the highest of human ethical considerations. We are stronger together, rather than when we are competing in a Hobbesian state of permanent all-out conflict. Accordingly, surely a superintelligent being will want to collaborate with humans?
For example, an ASI (artificial superintelligence) may be dependent on humans to operate the electricity network on which the computers powering the ASI depend. Or the human corpus of knowledge may be needed as the ASI’s training data. Or reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) may play a critical role in the ASI gaining a deeper understanding.
This objection can be stated in a more general form: superintelligence is bound to lead to superethics, meaning that the wellbeing of an ASI is inextricably linked to the wellbeing of the creatures who create and coexist with the ASI, namely the members of the human species.
However, any dependency by the ASI upon what humans produce is likely to be only short term. As the ASI becomes more capable, it will be able, for example, to operate an electrical supply network without any involvement from humans.
This attainment of independence may well prompt the ASI to reevaluate how much it cares about us.
In a different scenario, the ASI may be dependent on only a small number of humans, who have ruthlessly pushed themselves into that pivotal position. These rogue humans are no longer dependent on the rest of the human population, and may revise their ethical framework accordingly. Instead of humanity as a whole coexisting with a friendly ASI, the partnership may switch to something much narrower.
We might not like these eventualities, but no amount of appealing to the giants of moral philosophy will help us out here. The ASI will make its own decisions, whether or not we approve.
It’s similar to how we regard any growth of cancerous cells within our body. We won’t be interested in any appeal to “collaborate with the cancer”, in which the cancer continues along its growth trajectory. Instead of a partnership, we’re understandably interested in diminishing the potential of that cancer. That’s another reminder, if we need it, that there’s no fundamental primacy to the idea of collaboration. And if an ASI decides that humanity is like a cancer in the universe, we shouldn’t expect it to look on us favorably.
Intelligence without consciousness
I like to think that if I, personally, had the chance to bring into existence a simulation that would be an exact replica of human history, I would decline. Instead, I would look long and hard for a way to create a simulation without the huge amounts of unbearable suffering that has characterized human history.
But what if I wanted to check an assumption about alternative historical possibilities – such as the possibility to avoid World War One? Would it be possible to create a simulation in which the simulated humans were intelligent but not conscious? In that case, whilst the simulated humans would often emit piercing howls of grief, no genuine emotions would be involved. It would just be a veneer of emotions.
That line of thinking can be taken further. Maybe we are living in a simulation, but the simulators have arranged matters so that only a small number of people have consciousness alongside their intelligence. In this hypothesis, vast numbers of people are what are known as “philosophical zombies”.
That’s a possible solution to the problem of evil, but one that is unsettling. It removes the objection that the simulators are heartless, since the only people who are conscious are those whose lives are overall positive. But what’s unsettling about it is the suggestion that large numbers of people are fundamentally different from how they appear – namely, they appear to be conscious, and indeed claim to be conscious, but that is an illusion. Whether that’s even possible isn’t something where I hold strong opinions.
My solution to the Simulation Argument
Despite this uncertainty, I’ve set the scene for my own preferred response to the Simulation Argument.
In this solution, the overwhelming majority of self-aware intelligent agents that see the world roughly as we see it are in non-simulated (base) reality – which is the opposite of what the Simulation Argument claims. The reason is that potential simulators will avoid creating simulations in which large numbers of conscious self-aware agents experience great suffering. Instead, they will restrict themselves to creating simulations:
In which all self-aware agents have an overwhelmingly positive experience
Which are devoid of self-aware intelligent agents in all other cases.
I recognise, however, that I am projecting a set of human ethical considerations which I personally admire – the imperative to avoid conscious beings experiencing overwhelming suffering – into the minds of alien creatures that I have no right to imagine that I can understand. Accordingly, my conclusion is tentative. It will remain tentative until such time as I might gain a richer understanding – for example, if an ASI sits me down and shares with me a much superior explanation of “life, the universe, and everything”.
Superintelligence without consciousness
It’s understandable that readers will eventually shrug and say to themselves, we don’t have enough information to reach any firm decisions about possible simulators of our universe.
What I hope will not happen, however, is if people push the entire discussion to the back of their minds. Instead, here are my suggested takeaways:
The space of possible minds is much vaster than the set of minds that already exist here on earth
If we succeed in creating an ASI, it may have characteristics that are radically different from human intelligence
The ethical principles that appeal to an ASI may be radically different to the ones that appeal to you and me
An ASI may soon lose interest in human wellbeing; or it may become tied to the interests of a small rogue group of humans who care little for the majority of the human population
Until such time as we have good reasons for confidence that we know how to create an ASI that will have an inviolable commitment to ongoing human flourishing, we should avoid any steps that will risk an ASI passing beyond our control
The most promising line of enquiry may involve an ASI having intelligence but no consciousness, sentience, autonomy, or independent volition.
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Cardano, one of the top ten blockchains by market capitalization, is an established decentralized network with a growing ecosystem that aims to provide a more secure, reliable, and sustainable ecosystem for cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and decentralized applications (Dapps).
What sets it apart from other public blockchains is its scientific philosophy and meticulous, academic nature, which has seen it develop at a much slower pace than rivals like Solana and even Ethereum as the world’s first peer-reviewed blockchain. With so many new security threats draining user funds in the Web3 space, this tortoise vs hare approach and emphasis on longevity is not necessarily a bad thing.
Cardano was founded in 2015 by Charles Hoskinson, one of the co-creators of Ethereum.
Hoskinson famously left Ethereum in 2014 due to a dispute with one of Ethereum’s well-known faces, Vitalik Buterin, over the commercial route the network should take.
Cardano continues a course that connects all Web3 technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI). In 2020, IOHK (the developer of Cardano) and SingularityNET Foundation announced that a significant portion of SingularityNET’s decentralized protocol and platform had been ported from Ethereum to Cardano. The partnership is continuing to blossom, with big strides being made to soon enable AGIX staking on Cardano, according to the latest SingularityNET report.
What is Cardano?
Cardano is an open-source, decentralized public blockchain for building and deploying Dapps, digital assets and more to help serve a variety of purposes for the common good, especially in less developed countries.
Developed by Input Output HK (IOHK), Cardano is a research-driven, flexible layer-1 blockchain written in the Haskell programming language with a sustainable and scalable design. It takes a long view to the development of its network, prioritizing security over being first to market.
Launched officially in 2017, Cardano finally added its Plutus smart contract functionality in September 2021 with its successful Alonzo hard fork. This opened the blockchain platform to the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector while being interoperable through bridges with Ethereum, EVM chains and non-EVM blockchains.
Smart contract capabilities are needed to help build a robust, secure, scalable, and energy-efficient blockchain platform for building Dapps.
What is ADA?
Cardano got its name from Gerolamo Cardano, an Italian mathematician. Its native currency, ADA, is named after English mathematician Ada Lovelace.
ADA currently has a market cap of over $10 billion and a fully diluted value (including all potential tokens) of $13 billion. The ADA coin can be used to send and receive payments, cover transaction fees on the Cardano network, or for staking (through pool delegations), trading, or just simply a long-term HODL investment. It can be easily bought and sold on the open market or almost all leading crypto exchanges.
ADA Tokenomics
ADA has a maximum token supply of 45 billion, with an inflationary emission rate. There are currently already 35 billion ADA in circulation, and it has the following token distribution:
57.60% is allocated to ICO
11.50% is allocated to the Team
30.90% is allocated to Staking Rewards
Credit: Tesfu Assefa
Cardano Basics: How Does the Cardano Chain Work?
Architecture
Cardano uses a unique two-layer architecture system to meet its goals of sustainability and scalability. The two layers are:
Cardano Settlement Layer (CSL), whose purpose is to account for value and handle transactions
Cardano Computation Layer (CCL), whose primary purpose is the execution of smart contracts and Dapps. This splitting is required to allow Cardano to have a high throughput.
Cardano Programming language: Plutus (Haskell)
Cardano has a unique native smart contract language called Plutus to ensure that smart contracts are executed correctly. Plutus Core is a Turing-complete script written in the functional programming language Haskell, which makes it fully testable in isolation. Plutus Core forms the basis of the Plutus Platform – a development platform to develop Dapps on Cardano.
Consensus mechanism: Ouroboros (PoS)
Cardano uses Ouroboros, a unique proof-of-stake consensus mechanism that is provably secure and energy-efficient. This is different from the proof-of-work (PoW) used by Bitcoin. PoW, a consensus mechanism popularized by Bitcoin, relies on miners who use highly specialized equipment to be the first to solve a time-consuming math puzzle.
While it scores big on decentralization, it’s high on energy costs and low on speed.
PoS does not demand as much energy as PoW and provides a more sustainable solution. Instead of miners staking their energy costs, PoS relies on validators who stake their cryptocurrency to validate transactions.
The Cardano network is distributed across staking pools. Each stake pool has a slot leader who is rewarded for verifying and adding new blocks to the chain. ADA holders may stake their tokens to specific stake pools, thereby increasing their chances of being chosen as stake leaders and enjoying rewards.
In May 2023, the Hydra Head layer-2 scaling solution went live on Cardano’s mainnet to help speed up the network and boost its DeFi capabilities whilst lowering transaction fees. Speculation that it can handle up to 1 million TPS is probably unrealistic, but what is certain is that it will significantly speed up and scale Cardano transactions once it’s optimally operational.
Cardano Background
Let’s take a look at the teams and communities behind this fascinating chain.
Cardano was launched in 2017 as a third-generation blockchain (Bitcoin is a first-generation chain while Ethereum is a second-generation one) and started life as an ERC-20 token before it migrated to its own mainnet.
It is closely tied to three entities that provide the infrastructure, tools and services it needs to scale – the Cardano Foundation, Emurgo, and IOHK.
The Cardano Foundation is a Swiss-based non-profit organization that oversees the worldwide development and advancement of Cardano in enterprise applications. Apart from supporting and engaging with the Cardano community, The Cardano Foundation helps to build the tools that the Cardano community requires to solve problems in new, innovative ways.
Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) is a blockchain infrastructure and engineering company founded by Hoskinson and Jeremy Wood in 2015 that is contracted to design, build, and maintain the Cardano platform.
Emurgo is Cardano’s founding entity and provides services and products to builders that drive Cardano’s push into the Web3 ecosystem.
Cardano’s Use Cases and Ecosystem
ADA, Cardano’s native cryptocurrency, has seen a surge in adoption in the U.S., and this is fueling the growth of its ecosystem.
Cardano’s ecosystem – which will be covered in a follow-up article – spans Web3, DeFi, NFTs, gaming, decentralized exchanges (DEXs), the metaverse, and more. These are the key areas that continue to propel the crypto industry forward as a whole.
But how do you explore and learn more about Cardano and its ecosystem?
Here are three DYOR (do-your-own-research) tools at your disposal:
CardanoCube
CardanoCube is a platform for discovering and exploring projects and Dapps building on Cardano. This is important for stakeholders such as investors and developers who need to have a clear picture of the ecosystem before taking a plunge.
The platform wants people to have up-to-date, accurate information about the Cardano ecosystem and the developments happening around it.
CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko
In crypto, all research often starts with CoinMarketCap and/or CoinGecko, the world’s two most popular crypto data aggregation platforms. Both have dedicated landing pages solely for the Cardano ecosystem, namely:
A vital tool in any DeFi degen’s arsenal is DeFiLlama. Use it to find out what’s happening on-chain on Cardano and its most popular Dapps like decentralized exchanges.
According to its Cardano page, the network currently has a total value locked (TVL) of $162 million and 35,400 active users.
Credit: DeFiLlama (Cardano’s page on August 18, 2023)
What Can Cardano Be Used For?
Due to its versatility and scalability, Cardano has a myriad of use cases. The biggest at present are:
DeFi
Much like Ethereum, the Cardano platform can be used to build and deploy DeFi protocols such as lending protocols. A core vision for Hoskinson and IOHK is to create a new financial system for emerging markets and to help “bank the unbanked” in less developed countries, that is people who do not have access to traditional financial services.
DeFi on Cardano therefore is a crucial component to the success of the chain’s vision, and makes the implementation of scaling solutions like Hydra and other new products even more important.
Supply chain management
The platform can be used to implement secure and transparent supply chain solutions to ensure the traceability and authenticity of products. In 2021, Cardano rolled out an anti-counterfeiting supply chain solution.
Voting and governance
The platform can be used to build tamper-proof voting solutions
Identity verification
Cardano can be used to protect people’s identity by building decentralized identity verification systems, which will also help people without official government IDs gain access to decentralized financial services such as micro-loans and potentially universal basic income.
Cardano’s Push in Developing Nations
New technologies and innovations usually favor first-world countries. However, Cardano wants to take a different approach by starting with Africa.
How does Cardano see opportunities in Africa?
Cardano wants developing nations to break free from the traditional banking system (about 45% of people in Sub-Saharan Africa don’t have access to financial services), expensive middlemen, and political structures that favor a few. The blockchain platform sees an opportunity in Africa where the continent’s young population is more receptive to new technologies.
Third world countries stand to benefit a lot from blockchain technologies. This is because they rely on legacy systems of government that usually have big, open backdoors for corruption. It is estimated that developing nations lose $1.26 trillion annually to corruption, tax evasion, and theft. By using automated blockchains, African nations could close the tap of corruption.
This focus on emerging markets sets Cardano apart from almost all other blockchains and could set it on a course of explosive adoption for decades to come.
Final Thoughts on Cardano
Cardano distinguishes itself from its peers through a 2-layer architecture and a commitment to sustainability. Its use cases range from staking to leveraging the power of smart contracts. The Cardano platform offers developers, investors, and other crypto stakeholders several opportunities to engage with the ecosystem, which is growing in leaps and bounds since its launch.
Join us for our next article on Cardano which will take a closer look at its ecosystem and use cases.
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As Decentralized Finance (DeFi) matures to better serve crypto users and keep them safe, new technologies and strategies are emerging to help traders maximize their profits. One innovation that has gained significant attention in recent years is the use of crypto trading bots, most recently by Telegram and Discord users.
Ever tried to snipe a trade on Uniswap, or a new NFT mint, only to see the price spike right as you’re executing the transaction, forcing you to increase your price slippage tolerance just to get the trade through? The reason is often crypto trading bots, which have been a dirty little secret used by top traders for a while now, and is only now with the advent of artificial intelligence coming to broader awareness.
These automated tools have revolutionized the way traders interact with the market, making it easier than ever to execute trades and manage portfolios. In particular, the rise of Telegram and Discord bot traders has changed the game, offering new recourse for DeFi users who want to avoid the risk of trading on centralized exchanges.
Disclaimer: Please be aware that Crypto Trading Bots come with significant financial risk as they’re rarely reviewed for code and security issues and are often created by anonymous teams. Therefore the risk of phishing or rug pulls remains high. Do not share the private keys of a big wallet with these applications under any circumstances and do your own research.
Understanding Crypto Trading Bots
Crypto trading bots are automated software programs that interact with cryptocurrency exchanges to analyze trading data, place trades, and manage orders on behalf of the trader. They operate based on predefined algorithms and trading strategies, allowing for rapid, round-the-clock trading that would be impossible for a human trader to achieve.
Trading Bots and AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI) plays a crucial role in the functionality of these bots. Machine learning algorithms analyze market trends, make predictions, and execute trades with increasing accuracy as they learn. This makes them invaluable for both novice and experienced traders.
The Rise of Telegram and Discord Bot Traders
Telegram and Discord, two popular messaging platforms, have become hotbeds for crypto trading activity. Developers have created bots that integrate with these platforms, allowing users to trade using their messaging apps as the controls, while under the hood are sophisticated functions from copy trading to airdrop farming. Let’s take a look at the most popular.
10 Key Features of Crypto Trading Bots
In crypto trading, speed matters. Crypto trading bots come with a range of features designed to expedite and seamlessly automate the trading experience. Broadly, some of the most popular features include:
Trade Execution
Bots can execute trades quickly and efficiently based on predefined rules
Copy Trading
Bot users can input wallet addresses and automatically copy these wallets’ trades and transactions.
Multi-Wallet Creation Sniping
Some bots help users create batches of wallets. The user can execute the same trade on multiple wallets at a time, to bypass limits on individual wallets.
Liquidity Sniping
They can execute a buy order when the bot detects liquidity being added, maximizing the number of tokens a sniper gains on a new token.
Method Sniping
This is an advanced form of sniping tokens that allows a sniper’s buy transaction to execute as early as possible based on the ‘Method ID’ of a developer’s pending transaction.
Airdrop hunting
Some bots can automate the process of applying for airdrops by fulfilling various criteria required by new crypto airdrops.
Stop Loss and Take Profit Orders
These bots can automatically execute trades when a token reaches a certain price, allowing users to automate buying and selling.
Anti-Rug Features
They can detect potential rug-pull attempts by token developers, and execute a quick sell to liquidate the position before liquidity is pulled.
Honeypot Checking Features
They can detect incoming malicious transactions by a token developer, and liquidate the position before it becomes a honeypot.
Native Tokens
Many bots have released their own native tokens. Holders of these tokens usually enjoy lower fees on the platform and exclusive access to certain features.
Case Study: Unibot and Other Successful Bots
Crypto markets are currently awash with dozens of new crypto trading bots, thanks to a wave of influencers hyping their potential, which has seen the native token prices of some shoot through the roof. (Many of them dropped 50% in value in one weekend recently – another reminder to not invest without doing proper research.)
Unibot, a Telegram decentralized exchange (DEX) trading bot, is a prime example of the success that can be achieved with these tools. Since its launch, Unibot has swollen to a market cap of over $1 million. Other bots like Maestro, MEVfree, and LootBot have also gained attention for their unique features and profitability.
According to research by channels like Crypto Banter and other tools such as CoinGecko’s Telegram Bots list, here are a few of the hottest new Telegram trading bots (Warning: these tools have not been reviewed and may come with serious financial risk. User caution is advised when interacting with these tools):
Trading Bot
Description
Maestro
Maestro is currently the most popular Telegram crypto bot trader. It automates on-chain tasks, simplifies processes, and generates significant fees. It offers customizable trading experiences, allowing users to set orders, stop losses, and take profits, automating transactions based on their parameters.
Unibot
Unibot is another profitable trading bot on Telegram. It offers features like whale-tracking and copy trading, and it also provides revenue sharing. At present, it has a valuation of $171 million, very high compared to other bots.
Wagie bot
Wagie bot is a trading bot that integrates with GMX, allowing users to open purpose trades directly from the bot through Telegram.
Alpha Scan
Alpha Scan is a project that tracks and highlights social mentions of different tokens, helping users identify trending crypto assets early.
Collab. land
Collab.land is a bot used on Discord and Telegram to access gated content. I also serves as an infrastructure for deploying crypto bots.
LootBot
LootBot is an airdrop-focused Telegram bot that automates on-chain interactions and acts as a streamlined frontend for hundreds of chains. It allows users to create or follow automated tasks that could help with objectives such as Airdrop Farming.
Neobot
Neobot is an analytics tool that provides real-time notifications on different events, and is recommended by reputable influencers. It is more geared towards researchers than traders.
Genie bot
Genie Bot is a B2B software offering AI chatbot services to protocols and projects.
Betbot
Betbot is a competitor to Roll Bit that allows users to play various casino games on Telegram.
Credit: Conor O’Higgins via Midjourney
The Future of Crypto Trading Bots
As the crypto market continues to evolve, it’s clear that trading bots will play an increasingly important role. With their ability to automate complex trading strategies and execute trades at lightning speed, these bots have the potential to revolutionize the industry. As more and more traders recognize the benefits of these tools, we can expect to see continued growth and innovation in this space.
Negating the Risk of Telegram Bots
While the benefits of crypto trading bots are clear, security concerns should not be dismissed. As with all innovations in crypto, it doesn’t take long before the bad actors arrive to look for ways to exploit new users’ lack of knowledge for scams and phishing attacks, or even smart contract vulnerabilities or backdoors added by the bot creator.
Therefore, to avoid hacks or scams or rug pulls, it’s crucial to research any bot you choose to use and interact only with bots from verified developers. While many bots will create a new wallet for you, some applications will request access to your existing wallet. To be safe, users should create a new ‘burner’ wallet to connect to the bot and only transfer in an amount they’re comfortable losing. Also, it’s advisable that once a trade’s closed, a user should withdraw all their funds from that address as soon as they can.
How to Get Started with Telegram and Discord Bot Traders
To get started with Telegram and Discord bot traders, follow these steps:
Research your coin: do research on CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap on LISTED coins. Do note that any listed coin’s price will most likely be significantly inflated, therefore it’s important to study its 7-day or 30-day performance, and also review its total market cap and full diluted value. If you want to degen in really hard, you can look at DexTools to identify Telegram bot coins before they get picked up by these sites. Due to the frequency of scams however, this is not recommended.
Create an account: Use Coingecko or CoinMarket and follow their social links to check out the bot on social media and then its website. Visit the website and follow instructions, such as joining a Telegram or Discord channel.
Understanding bot commands: Familiarize yourself with the bot’s commands and features through the provided documentation.
Risk management strategies: Set clear risk management parameters to prevent excessive losses.
Use small investments: Begin with a small investment to get acquainted with the bot’s performance and effectiveness.
Conclusion
As crypto trading bots proliferate, they’re going to be a necessary evil for those trading to stay relevant, with even leading exchanges like Binance now offering them. Telegram and Discord bot traders in particular represent an exciting opportunity as it simplifies the experience of getting trading bots to execute popular functions.
By automating complex trading strategies and offering a new level of convenience, these tools are helping traders of all levels to maximize their profits. As with any investment, it’s important to do your research and understand the risks involved. But with careful use, these bots offer a promising way to navigate the ever-evolving world of cryptocurrency trading.
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Four score or make that four columns ago, I presented Part 1 of Steal This Singularity Annotated, promising: “Every fourth one of these Mindplex articles will be an annotated and edited excerpt from my multipart piece titled Steal This Singularity, originally written some time in 2008. This will continue until I get to the end of the piece or the Singularity comes. Annotation is in gray italics.”
As it turns out, this second presentation will just about cover it. I’m so happy with how I critiqued (made fun of?) my transhumanist and singularitarian friends that I may not need to do a lot of annotating.
Part Three: The More Things Change, The More You’ll Need To Save
It was 2008 — maybe a week or two into my first experience working with ‘official’ transhumanism (as if) as editor ofh+ magazine. I was being driven down from Marin County to San Jose to listen to a talk by a scientist long associated with various transhumanoid obsessions, among them nanotechnology, encryption and cryonics. As we made the two-hour trip, the conversation drifted to notions of an evolved humanity, a different sort of species — maybe corporeal, maybe disembodied, but decidedly post-Darwinian, and in control of its instincts. I suggested that a gloomy aspect of these projections was that sex would likely disappear, since those desires and pleasures arose from more primitive aspects of the human psyche. My driver told me that he didn’t like sex because it was a distraction, a waste of brain power… not to mention sloppy. As a boomer who was obsessed with sex most of my life, as I’ve hit my seventies, I’ve had the peculiar experience of completely forgetting about sex for days at a time. Nonetheless, as a matter of principle, I still believe that repressed sexual energy is a giant badness. It’s essential to my distaste for right-wing fundamentalist Christians, the Taliban and the like.
Putting aside my personal experience, which has caused me to view my earlier life’s priorities with a certain note of bewilderment, I must confess to a curiosity regarding the reports that young people today are far less interested in sex. Is it a loss of male testosterone so much worried about by right-wing talking heads? Is it an evolutionary mutation? Was the driver I thought I was making fun of in the above comments on to something? Is the oncoming climate apocalypse perhaps rearranging some instincts? (Can I suggest that instincts exist? And do I dare to eat a peach? And can I find a classy way to exit this subject?)
I arrived at a Pizza Hut in an obscure part of San Jose. This gathering of about 15–20 transhumanoids would take place over cheap pizza in the back room that was reserved for the event. There was even a projector and a screen.The speaker — a pear shaped fellow clad in dress pants held up by a belt pulled up above his stomach — started his rap. I have a funny memory of a couple of MONDO 2000 staffers going to an extropian gathering at the end of the ‘80s. Jas Morgan and Morgan Russell (both of whom had a certain dandyish élan) and were accustomed to the classy party extravagances dished up by Queen Mu at the MONDO house, complete with her homemade desserts returned with noses upturned. The party was in a dicey little under-decorated house in one of the Bay Area’s strip mall suburbs with chips and dip and Coca-Cola. It was noted that the attendees looked like they didn’t pay much attention to their misshapen bodies nor did they seem to have any sort of fundamental aesthetic for making life extraordinary. They wondered at the Extropians’ desire for more of that life – and suggested that maybe quality rather than quantity should be considered. Now, I’m not sure how I should think about this. I’ve been thinking hard about why people outside urban areas were attracted to Donald Trump. I think it’s partly because they could sense and identify with his resentment of the culture-makers of New York City. He wanted to fit in but they considered him tacky and lacking class. Yes, class. Do liberals and even many leftists have class? And what does that say?
Somehow related, there’s this funny and interesting piece by Sam Kriss, in which he textually executes all hipsters before obsoleting nerd culture. Let me say this right out loud: MONDO 2000/1990s cyberculture was hipster-nerd back when hipster wasn’t yet a swear word. Now we’re just washed up on the shoreline of cultural desolation with few identity life rafts to relate to, and mere survival rearing its jeering head. We’ll see fire and we’ll see rain.
As I recall, he predicted major nanotechnology breakthroughs (real nanotechnology i.e. molecular machines capable of making copies of themselves and making just about anything that nature allows extremely cheaply) within our extended lifetimes, allowing us, among other things, to stay healthy indefinitely and finally migrate into space.
I recall him presenting a scenario in which all of us — or many of us — could own some pretty prime real estate; that is, chunks of this galaxy, at the very least that we could populate with our very own advanced progeny (mind children, perhaps.) I’m a bit sketchy on the details from so long ago, but it was a very far out vision of us united with advanced intelligences many times greater than our own either never dying or arising from the frozen dead and, yes, each one getting this gigantic chunk of space real estate to populate. (That these unlivable areas can be made livable either by changing it or ourselves or both with technology is the assumption here.)
Once the speaker had laid out the amazing future as scientifically plausible, he confessed that he was mainly there to make a pitch. Alcor — the cryonics company that he was involved in — needed more customers. As he delineated how inexpensively one could buy an insurance policy to be frozen for an eventual return performance, he began to emphasize the importance of a person in cryonics not being considered legally dead… because that person could then build interest on a savings account or otherwise have his or her value increase in a stock market that was — by all nanocalculations — destined to explode into unthinkable numbers (a bigger boom).
For the bulk of his talk, the speaker dwelt on the importance of returning decades or maybe even a century or so hence to a handsome bank account. It was one of those “I can’t emphasize this enough” sort of talks that parents used to give to their 20-something kids about 401ks.
As the floor opened up to audience participation, the questions continued to dwell primarily upon the financial aspects of suspension and its aftermath. Insurance. Savings. Investments. Finally, a woman raised her hand and asked something along the lines of… “In light of all the stuff you’re predicting, will US currency still be meaningful in that future?”
An audible groan went up from a portion of the gathering, implying, “fuckin’ stupid hippie asking that ridiculous question again.”
So there they were accepting…
• Raising people from the dead
• Becoming more or less immortal
• Making intelligences many times more powerful and capable than our own
• Individual earth humans privately owning big chunks of the galaxy
…but they could not imagine that the local (local in time, perhaps, more that space) currency and the nuances of its valuation and growth would be irrelevant in that envisioned world. Given that transhumanists are among those pushing forward cryptocurrencies, I find it curious that our speaker didn’t consider the likelihood of some extreme discontinuity in currency, rendering those savings and investments meaningless. Transhumanist culture – before and after the 2008 financial collapse – has a trust in finance management to glue obsoleting accounts to futuristic ones. Late-stage capitalism isn’t late-stage at all. Its coming death has been greatly exaggerated. It’s unbreakable: the capital you possess now will somehow transfer seamlessly into whatever system is collaboratively summoned by or with our smart machines.
This, it seemed to me, represented a stunning and peculiar kind of stasis sitting at the heart of radical technological change or the imaginings of same, a clinging to the most trivial and boring sort of continuity by the very sort of people predicting extreme “disruption” and radical discontinuity. The Singularity then, if any, would present before us as an unthinkably complex quantum accountant, as — figuratively speaking — a godlike 1950s bespectacled nebbish, a bean counter (literalized already by the fashion for “quantified life.”)
Part 4: The Worm Earns (Or It Can Fuck Off and Die)
Cut to a Singularity Summit that same year, also down in the sainted city of San Jose. During one of the talks, the speaker, Marshall Brain, at that time thehost of the TV Show Factory Floor and author of Robotic Nationspoke about the exponential acceleration of robot technology that the conference was, in its essence, about. He noted that the degree of automation that was soon to arrive would lead to such a loss of jobs that it would be necessary to start providing people with a guaranteed income.
This time, it wasn’t a slight groan that arose from the gathered transhumanoids. There was actual hissing from a substantial segment of the audience. It was the first and only time I ever heard this kind of response at one of these gatherings.
(Transhumanoids tend to pride themselves on a Spock-like calm logic. They are not rowdy sorts.) Guaranteed income has gained popularity since. Possibly the situation is reaching the point where you either have to kill the poor or hand out some free tickets; or Andrew Yang’s presidential campaign charmed the pants off of a few hardline libertarians or perhaps, upon noting a rise in working class union militancy, some anarcho-capitalists are thinking they’d better throw the dog a bone.
Again, allow me to contextualize. Here we were at a conference about the Technological Singularity — the time upcoming soon, according to most singularitarians, when we would design intelligences that — in the words of original singularitarian Vernor Vinge — would be to our intelligence as we are to the worms. Nonbiological life would be more competent than us in every way imaginable. And, in fact, even stopping short of the singularity, we were hearing from a whole bunch of speakers about the rise of machines doing more with less better than us in nearly every field of endeavor. And yet, here again, the Infallible Papacy of Contemporary Currency raised its head, angrily this time — with the emotional/ideological undertow undoubtedly ranging from the Randian/libertarian virtues of being financially “self-made” combined with the immorality of assisting anyone not so self-made as one’s self…. to the Calvinist idea of the ennobling nature of work.
That the very same people that can applaud building intelligences that make them about as interesting and useful as a worm can get their knickers into a twist over the idea of humans not having to “earn” tickets to live is indicative of a Calvinist/Randian determination to punish “slackers” even in the face of an endlessly self-replicating, robot-delivered “free lunch.”
Incidentally, during a lunch break following Brain’s talk, I was explaining to a friend why the audience had hissed at Brain when a large, heavy-set man standing behind me on line turned beet red and started shouting at me about how many people were killed by the Chinese communists and how capitalism had defeated communism because planned economies don’t work. I didn’t engage with him, but I would now point out that the nation states and their economies that outlasted Marx-Leninism were the United States, which had a New Deal mid-20th Century, and the European “welfare states” that this beet red fellow no doubt refers to as “socialistic.” A lot of Republican-influenced persons have been convinced in recent years (by people who know better) that centrist Democrats like President Biden are communists. The term is bandied about virtually without context by politicians that are also appealing to these same people with populist anti-corporate and, in some sense, anticapitalist rhetoric. I suppose this goes back to Mussolini. Nothing new here.
Indeed, what Brain was suggesting was not collective farms, totalistic planned economies and the eventual end of all private property, but merely a logical extension of the “welfare state” in response to the conditions predicted (and already starting to occur) by technophile futurists.
Or maybe not even that. During the ’70s, many libertarians, even Ayn Rand quasi-acolyte Milton Freidman, suggested less bureaucratic paths to guaranteed income, once workers were replaced by machines. So, in concrete terms, the barbarism that doesn’t want to resolve superfluous labor and other forms of exclusion from the economy may be more a function of the psychological acceptance of post-Reagan/Thatcher conditions than it is of Randian ideology. (People younger than myself have grown up stepping over the homeless on their way to whatever for their entire lives. The scale of homelessness that continues to exist is a post-Reagan phenomenon).
Part 5: There’ll Be Pie in the Sky When You Don’t Die
Credit: Tesfu Assefa
The conservative or apolitical transhumanist/singularitarian argument against the Steal This Singularity approach is, fundamentally, that it’s unnecessary. The tech will produce democratized abundance and liberties beyond our wildest imaginings and all we need to do is hang on tight and support science and technology and, generally, not stir too much shit up. I call this the “there’ll be pie in the sky when you don’t die” argument, which is a play off of a Woody Guthrie satire, which is, in turn, about 40 times more obscure to young 21st Century Americans than even an Abbie Hoffman reference. A lot has changed since I wrote this in 2008. Not only are a lot of younger people fairly radicalized leftists, a pretty strong sense of history is emerging among some (fostering bizarre reactions in the wilds of Florida and elsewhere). Also, within this milieu, tech negativity has gone a bit too wild. (I must follow up on this theme soon.) GenXers and older millennials really just want to go back in time to before the internet existed.
Basically, the narrative goes that we’re going from home/desktop media, which gave all of us the equivalent of a printing press and broadcast studio from which to have a voice in the world to 3D home printing i.e. manufacturing. If we get molecular technology and tie that in with 3D manufacturing, every man and woman can make what they need from very little in their homes. Of course, that assumes homes, but that’s one brief example of a path to democratized abundance that seemingly doesn’t require any political activism.
Of course, the past and the present are prologue, even in consideration of technologies as disruptive as those being promoted and predicted by transhumanoids and singularitarians. Such was my point in Part Three of this mess about folks clinging to today’s currency as a life raft while sailing about the entire galaxy visiting other property owners. We have both the willingness and the talent to snatch scarcity out of the jaws of abundance and oppression out of the jaws of liberation. We do it today when we impose austerity based on the abstraction of global debt and when we let the US-based National Security Industrial Complex build one-way transparency by using the same now-completed Virtual Panopticon to shield itself from investigation while having full access to everybody else’s data.
Since the dawn of the digital culture, there has been a tug of war between the notion of
• Free — stuff that can be easily copied and shared should be shared, because otherwise you create scarcity in the face of nearly limitless (virtual) wealth
• Business — the systemic legacy of selling intellectual and creative stuff, starting companies that lock replicable bits behind turnstiles and make a business of it. Bill Gates took the side against free and did very well by it.
As much protested by the likes of Jaron Lanier, creative artists and writers are now stuck in the middle of this inconclusive dialectic.
During the early 1990s, digital countercultural idealists trumpeted the idea of free. There was a broad feeling amongst those of us at play in the fields of the arising tech revolution that if the anarchic shockwaves of shifting social relations brought about by — among other things — the digitization of cultural stuff and the resultant ease with which that stuff could be copied unto infinity and accessed from anywhere hit us, then we would happily surf those crazy waves of change.
The other part of that deal, as many of us perceived it, was that everything else had to change too. We knew that the end of scarcity in the digital realm would be “heightening the contradictions” (as they say) in the industrial capitalist model. We assumed that either capitalism would rise to the challenge by finding ways to support those disintermediated or displaced by technical change — or it would be forcibly altered or dissipated in the forward rush of boundary defying technologies.
Rather, we’ve been subjected to that same stasis — stuck in these same primitive currency valuations and their correspondent debts — and we stand today as perfect examples of what could not only continue but expand under the regimen of home manufacturing — that is, the utter disintermediation and abandonment of formerly wage earning (and eventually, business-making) people for the crime of not being able to come up with a sublime enough hustle in the midst of satiated needs to get some other human being to pass those currency tickets that legitimize his or her existence to hir.
We shall see. As a famous poet once said (I’m paraphrasing): First they disintermediated the livelihood of the musicians, and I did not speak out for I wasn’t a musician. Then they disintermediated the livelihood of the writers, and I did nothing for I wasn’t a writer. Then they automated the programmers, and suddenly a whole lot of libertarians decided that guaranteed income was a thing. Not bad guesses for 2008.
Part 6: White Babbits (2008)
Yes I did top the whole thing off with some song lyrics. They are now a song and a video.
One pill makes you smarter And one pill makes you small And the ones that mother gives you Ritalin or adderall And your phallus Needs Viagra after all
And if you go fleecing Babbitts ‘Cause the banks are gonna fall Tell ’em the hookah smoking anarchist Has got you by the balls Call alice — she’s totally appalled
White men on the radio Get off on telling you who to hate And your friend has joined the teabags And you spend your weekends straight And your phallushas a Cialis date
When logic and proportion Have fallen sloppy dead And the fat cats are aging backwards While your friends are filled with dread Remember what the lab rat said Freeze your head! Freeze your head !
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