Freedom andfuture
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The document discusses tensions between freedom and statism in shaping the future of transhumanism and technological progress. It notes conflicting goals among transhumanists and questions around how to fund large projects or ensure economic participation. Both freedom and statism are seen as having pros and cons when it comes to issues like individual rights, coercion, innovation, funding priorities, and positive rights. The document raises questions about economic viability and redistribution in a future with advanced automation and questions what the overarching goals for such a future should be.
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Freedom andfuture
- 1. Freedom and the Future
- 2. The future needs freedom • Transhumanists are a minority • Freedom to transform, enhance, transcend. • Many conflictingtranshumanist goals • Problem of distribution – Especially in light of possible decrease in economic desirability • Mixture of statism and freedom the answer?
- 3. Conflicting H+ Goals and Values – Political • Libertopia • Techno-Progressive • Socialist – Big vs Little Boat • All or None thinking • Idealist? Realist? – Support for various developments • AGI • MNT
- 4. Freedom for H+ goals • To transcend is to go beyond the status quo – Is “majority” in a democracy synonymous? • The outliers and pioneers bring the new – Is demand for all to participate or none allowed contrary? – If the majority have tech means to monitor and control then can innovation and change outside their wishes still occur?
- 5. Freedom Pro • Pro – Individual rights based on self-ownership – No legalized coercion by force – Maximizes local decision making power/flexibility – Voluntary vs compelled interactions – Value creation maximization • Freedom to create values you want to create and trade them for values created by others. • Maximizes production of things of value to others -> maximizing overall value – Produces maximum viable diversity • Where viable means sustainable with all entities free to support what they value enough. • No centralized or majority decision on what is viable
- 6. Freedom Con • Most people are stupid – Make decisions bad for self and others • Laws against actual harm are compatible though – Rest not legitimate business of law? • Large, difficult to grasp important projects unfunded – How is such a project decided on? By an elite? – How does one know which projects are really worth doing outside Freedom based feedback? • No positive rights (rights others are compelled to fulfill) – What happens to poor, disabled, disadvantaged, etc.?
- 7. Statism Pro • Acknowledges elite – Only a minority are bright enough, etc. to understand and guide the rest • Danger to all if not common people coerced by state • Deals with flawed human nature – Humans are naturally too flawed to be left to own devices • Doesn’t that apply to the elite / rulers as well? • Funding of needed but not sufficiently popular projects • Maximization of value – Ensure all can participate by coercion of results – Safety net – Economic planning and control – Subsidize non-market viable things that elite judges as good in longer view • Positive rights – To a good job, housing, education, health care, and anything else that the state decides everyone should have no matter what.
- 8. Statism Con • Positive rights are coercion – To be provided somehow by someone against their will • Concentrates ultimate power in relative few hands – Invites corruption • State power is unanswerable – Except for limited power of vote in democracy • Presumes an elite exist with such abilities • Concentration of data and decision problem – See “Out of Control”. – No central nexus can be as responsive and accurate to changing local conditions • Enshrines policies and procedures beyond usefulness • Destroys more freedom over time inexorably • Unbounded in principle • Inadequate feedback
- 9. Possible Income Conundrum • Job – selling your labor/skills on time basis – Increasing automation and machine takeover • New jobs always result for humans? Maybe not. – Labor market is global • “The World is Flat” – especially for information jobs • Labor rates seek bottom of what equivalent job can be done for • Same rates will not be viable worldwide due to differences in local conditions/costs – Selling labor/time seems to head toward a minimum • What can people do differently? • Can that be taught? • How many can do that? • Do we all ultimately get priced out by AI and automation? – Or will there always be a market enough among humans or for human produced goods/services?
- 10. Goods – More, Cheaper • Better technology • Cheaper labor – Global, human – Machine • Or not – Resource/materials shortage – Energy problem • Higher transportation costs of finished goods • Less energy for factories and/or at higher prices • MNT – Much faster reduction in costs of all kinds – Result depends on kind of MNT tech • May not have Santa machines • Infeasible or outlawed • Would require massive surveillance to outlaw it if possible
- 11. Rising Demand • Billions of Asians aspire to richer lifestyle • Internal Asian markets growing for their production • Wage levels increase over time – workers will not sell their time as cheaply and demand for skills increases – Mobile workforce likely to relocate to places of better income and conditions
- 12. So, Redistribution is Required? • Assumptions – no viable economic niches – no problems producing plentiful goods • In these conditions why not give people [much] something for nothing? – Who or perhaps what owns this something? • How are they compensated? – Given no need to work/produce trade value • What motivates people? Self actualization? • If needs are met regardless of success or failure then what sorts among possible projects? – Simply desire/satisfaction? – What of insufficient resources for all projects so selection among them must occur. On what basis? • Do we end up with a much more or much less vibrant and innovative society? – Of course the AIs and the more massively enhanced may do most innovation • If required how do you avoid the cons of statism? • This reasoning has a big contradiction – If humans become generally unviable economically then decisions of how or whether to distribute goods are not likely to be in human hands.
- 13. Redistribution and Terrorism • Despairing, frightened people are more likely to breed violence and terrorism – Possible damage increases as tech increases – Stopping such requires either • Making majority feel more safe and secure in face of rapid tech acceleration • Surveillance and control of most of population • This looks like a call for some statism or • A call for a freedom based approach that is understood to be more hopeful. – Is surveillance and control of violence/terrorism compatible with freedom? – Statism breeds many conditions (empire building, state sabotage, war) that lead to more despair, frightened people, worsening conditions.
- 14. What is the Goal? • Is it that the maximum number of humans survive and thrive regardless of viability? • Is it that the most interesting and vibrant future happens regardless of number of humans that can partake? • Are these compatible? Does the second actually require the first? – Is it “Both/And”? – Neither of the above? – Irrelevant?
Editor's Notes
- Today we examine place of and need for Freedom to arrive at the kind of future we desire. To be more balanced we will look at Freedom vsStatism along the way and do so relative to some likely coming challenges.
- What is freedom? Freedom is basically the right to do anything one wishes that does not violate the rights of others. This is principally a prohibition against the intiation of force in any form.Today democracy is considered our best guarantee of a viable future. But consider that transhumanists are a minority. What happens when the majority seeks to close down many avenues that we wish to develop? Freedom to pursue one's values is the heart of freedom to transform, enhance, transcend. What is its proper balance against safety and security concerns and the wishes of the majority? What is the place of the state?Even among transhumanists there are goals and ideas of what sort of future we wish to create and how quickly and by what methods and buy in. Can we sort them out by argument or voting or simply try all that the interested parties can raise resources to pursue? Perhaps we can for the technical issues but the political issues are something else again. Do we need room to vote with one’s feet and pick a political regime most in agreement? If so this argues against a more homogenized world government as some dream of creating.
- H+ folks disagree on politics. Views range from what some label “libertopia”, basically a libertarian pro maximal freedom stance through various forms of socialism and techno-progessive thought. The primary disagreements may be seen as disagreements about the role of the state and of the state’s coercive power in achieving a maximally viable future. Thus this talk will explore differences between freedom and various kinds of statism.Another large difference is around whether to proceed with achieving various parts of transhumanist dreams regardless of whether we can guarantee their availability to all or only the relative few in the beginning. Some transhumanist disagree about whether AGI should be developed and if it is under what rigorous constraints. Most do not disagree about developing MNT but have a variety of views about the environment and desired consequences for that introduction. Many have disagreements about singularity and what it does or does not mean. These range from the *yawn, no big dear* to utterly apocalyptic in the full range from utter utopia to complete destruction of humanity.
- We have seen states prohibit stem cell research and development, prohibit cloning and move to restrict various technologies or subject them to deep state control and lack of privacy.What happens when the majority do no understand or are fearful and the very technologies that could bring radical improvement in the human condition are prohibited? Do the pioneers become outlaws?Is the all or none accessibility demand contrary to the very nature of innovation and the outliers pioneering the new? Is there reason to fear all such innovation so much we do not advance?Since technology enables a level of monitoring and control that is much more thorough than every before can the necessary acting on disagreement occur?
- Individual rights based in self ownership are the heart of pro-freedom stances. These are arguably essential to the maximum viability of intelligent beings.A society respecting freedom has no place for legalized coercion by force except to prevent or respond to the initiation of force.Freedom of decision / action at all levels maximizes flexible problem solving at the point where most information is available vs more centralized planning and control.Value creation is maximized. You are free to create any values you wish and trade the for the values created by others. This naturally self-regulates choices toward maximal value.Values created are viable when they are seen as of more value than the values that were spent creating them. Viable values are self-sustaining.In a free society there is no central or majority decision on or dictation of what values to pursue or forcing of particular values whether viable or not.
- The notion of freedom is seen as contrary to most people not being that bright, informed or honest. What if they make bad decisions harming not only themselves but others or fail to make needed decisions?Perhaps because of this large, difficult to grasp but very important projects will not be funded or developed. Is such decided by an elite? How do we know which are and are not valid projects of this kind?Perhaps people should be compelled to not do some things they want to or to do other things that we (some elite) think would lead to a better world.Freedom supports no positive rights – rights compelling others to fulfill them. Examples: guaranteed income, free health care. What happens to the poor, disadvantaged, etc.?
- Jobs suck. You are effectively selling your time, the one resource that you can’t (this side of immortality) make more of, at a fixed rate. You can raise the rate but your earnings are pretty strictly limited.The labor market is increasingly global. Anyplace a good or service can be produced or offered as cheap or more cheaply is the competition. This is especially so for information based goods and services.Selling your time gets minimized across all workers everywhere that can do the same quality work. Can we all become micro-entrepreneurs? On the fly project teams? Something else?
- Better technology offers cheaper goods through automation, better processes, improved quality control, increased machine decision making at higher speed, new materials, etc.The labor inputs to goods and services are more global for human labor and increasingly are done by machines and computers. Labor costs become cheaper.However the resource shortages and the looming energy crisis push against this a bit. In particular transportation and energy use costs can limit how cheaply goods can be made and delivered.Of course with MNT we can get much more done with less resources, energy, time. Although that level of MNT is likely a good 3 decades off.Even when it arrives it may not be Santa machines or your kitchen table. It may be much more limited out of necessity or social/political/economic engineering.But if Santa machines can be made and replicated they will be eventually short of total surveillance and control. That however has little to do with now or next few decades.