This is relevant because if we have any use at all, there will be some evolutionary pressure to optimize that. Even if there’s no other reason for it than that useful people are sexier.
To differentiate ourselves, I think we would specialize in feeling. That would be the main difference between us and the technology, and feeling would be the reason for all of it to exist—our happiness. If we didn’t need to trade money or time, instead we’d give everything a purpose. I think a lot of people would become artists—and I don’t think technological advancements would make human art worthless to people. Unlike most other things, art is often valued BECAUSE it is hand-made or shows human imperfections. If we make machines that feel, then things get hairy. I predict that I would probably choose to get implants in that future, so that I could still do meaningful, goal-directed work. I think a lot of other people would, too.
Or it may be that the humans who reproduce the most are the ones with the kinds of genes to take the best implants. Who knows what those would be. High intelligence might be a factor, as more intelligent brains may be able to take more input and therefore handle more sophisticated implants.
We would not devolve by accident, and probably not even on purpose:
Also, I imagine we would have the ability to use eugenics or gene therapy to prevent the human gene pool from devolving into primordial ooze. On it’s own, it might do that, but you’ve got to remember, the offspring will be born to humans, who so far, have shown they’re very attached to the human form and who, in this scenario, won’t sacrifice something like eyesight just to save a few calories a day or whatever. I think we’re a heck of a lot more likely to evolve ourselves into an ever-increasing number of new species than into slime. After enough generations had passed that the taboo of being a new species was gone, I see us expressing our imaginations, adding wings, blue hair, sparkles or as yet unimagined alterations. But not slime. Even if someone chose to devolve their offspring (if that were even legal), their offspring may choose to get gene therapy later, and even if they forego that, they may use eugenics on their children, or the children may choose gene therapy, and so on.
Consider sexual desirability, also. Are you more likely to mate with someone who is halfway between you and ooze, or someone nearer to your own abilities? Even if a few genetic lines fall through the cracks, I don’t think the majority of humans would. And we may have some failsafe for that, like free gene therapy for anyone who is disabled to the extent that someone else has to have power of attorney over them because they are not able to make decisions for themselves anymore. We have that already for seriously disabled people, and those people can choose to give their wards medical treatments. Any devolved humans would probably just be given gene therapy.
Outsorcing everything would be boring, so we wouldn’t:
According to the author of “Flow: the psychology of optimal experience”, doing something that gives you a challenge (that is not too hard or too easy) is an important pleasurable experience and an important key to happiness. (He explains this in his TED video). If we outsourced all of our thinking tasks, we would immediately realize that we were bored. I suspect our solution to this will be to play games or do tasks that are still challenging for a human even if considered simple by the standards of the day.
Perhaps what will maximize fitness in the future will be nothing but non-stop high-intensity drudgery, work of a drab and repetitive nature
How could that possibly happen in a world where computers were so much more advanced?
Get rid of enough constraints, and you’ll get the equivalent of a Spiegelman’s monster, no longer even remotely human.
Flying, blue-haired, sparkling rock stars and super-intelligent, goal-directed altruists are not remotely like viruses. I agree, though, that if technology progresses enough, we’ll evolve ourselves into a whole bunch of stuff. Maybe it will even become so easy to evolve that we’ll all try out different forms. This virus interpretation is way off, I think. I think it’s more likely that we’d become a race of shape-shifters than Spiegelman’s monsters.
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
If we are able to make ourselves intelligent enough to correlate the contents of our minds, we’ll be able to make ourselves intelligent enough to process the revelations, or at least, to pace the correlations in such a way that it prevents madness. This is similar to the problem posed by a trait called “low latent inhibition” which means you take in more information and have more ideas. If you can’t process it all, you are likely to develop schizophrenia. But, if your IQ is high enough (Harvard link) it results in creativity. So perhaps Lovecraft made more connections than he could process and was rightly terrified of making any more, but that doesn’t mean the brain designers in the future will get the balance wrong.
I think the specific concerns in this blog post, although they broach a topic that’s really interesting to think about, will ultimately be irrelevant.
I don’t think these will be problems.
We would still have a use:
This is relevant because if we have any use at all, there will be some evolutionary pressure to optimize that. Even if there’s no other reason for it than that useful people are sexier.
To differentiate ourselves, I think we would specialize in feeling. That would be the main difference between us and the technology, and feeling would be the reason for all of it to exist—our happiness. If we didn’t need to trade money or time, instead we’d give everything a purpose. I think a lot of people would become artists—and I don’t think technological advancements would make human art worthless to people. Unlike most other things, art is often valued BECAUSE it is hand-made or shows human imperfections. If we make machines that feel, then things get hairy. I predict that I would probably choose to get implants in that future, so that I could still do meaningful, goal-directed work. I think a lot of other people would, too.
Or it may be that the humans who reproduce the most are the ones with the kinds of genes to take the best implants. Who knows what those would be. High intelligence might be a factor, as more intelligent brains may be able to take more input and therefore handle more sophisticated implants.
We would not devolve by accident, and probably not even on purpose:
Also, I imagine we would have the ability to use eugenics or gene therapy to prevent the human gene pool from devolving into primordial ooze. On it’s own, it might do that, but you’ve got to remember, the offspring will be born to humans, who so far, have shown they’re very attached to the human form and who, in this scenario, won’t sacrifice something like eyesight just to save a few calories a day or whatever. I think we’re a heck of a lot more likely to evolve ourselves into an ever-increasing number of new species than into slime. After enough generations had passed that the taboo of being a new species was gone, I see us expressing our imaginations, adding wings, blue hair, sparkles or as yet unimagined alterations. But not slime. Even if someone chose to devolve their offspring (if that were even legal), their offspring may choose to get gene therapy later, and even if they forego that, they may use eugenics on their children, or the children may choose gene therapy, and so on.
Consider sexual desirability, also. Are you more likely to mate with someone who is halfway between you and ooze, or someone nearer to your own abilities? Even if a few genetic lines fall through the cracks, I don’t think the majority of humans would. And we may have some failsafe for that, like free gene therapy for anyone who is disabled to the extent that someone else has to have power of attorney over them because they are not able to make decisions for themselves anymore. We have that already for seriously disabled people, and those people can choose to give their wards medical treatments. Any devolved humans would probably just be given gene therapy.
Outsorcing everything would be boring, so we wouldn’t:
According to the author of “Flow: the psychology of optimal experience”, doing something that gives you a challenge (that is not too hard or too easy) is an important pleasurable experience and an important key to happiness. (He explains this in his TED video). If we outsourced all of our thinking tasks, we would immediately realize that we were bored. I suspect our solution to this will be to play games or do tasks that are still challenging for a human even if considered simple by the standards of the day.
How could that possibly happen in a world where computers were so much more advanced?
Flying, blue-haired, sparkling rock stars and super-intelligent, goal-directed altruists are not remotely like viruses. I agree, though, that if technology progresses enough, we’ll evolve ourselves into a whole bunch of stuff. Maybe it will even become so easy to evolve that we’ll all try out different forms. This virus interpretation is way off, I think. I think it’s more likely that we’d become a race of shape-shifters than Spiegelman’s monsters.
If we are able to make ourselves intelligent enough to correlate the contents of our minds, we’ll be able to make ourselves intelligent enough to process the revelations, or at least, to pace the correlations in such a way that it prevents madness. This is similar to the problem posed by a trait called “low latent inhibition” which means you take in more information and have more ideas. If you can’t process it all, you are likely to develop schizophrenia. But, if your IQ is high enough (Harvard link) it results in creativity. So perhaps Lovecraft made more connections than he could process and was rightly terrified of making any more, but that doesn’t mean the brain designers in the future will get the balance wrong.
I think the specific concerns in this blog post, although they broach a topic that’s really interesting to think about, will ultimately be irrelevant.