In What to do When the ASI Machines Take Over the World, I offered some suggestions for how we human DNA survival machines might be able to stick around after the coming ASI (Artificial Super Intelligent) Machines take over the world. The one thing I forgot to mention is that the coming ASI Machines will most likely be on the Spectrum. Personally, I love people who are on the Spectrum, like Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Elon Musk because they are the people who truly do make the huge advances in intellectual achievement. However, such extraordinary people also seem to be extremely limited by their extraordinary capabilities. It is as if they are able to concentrate all of their intellectual powers into a single narrowly defined intellectual pursuit with none left over for the more mundane things of life. For Isaac Newton, it was figuring out how it all worked. For Albert Einstein, it was about taking what Newton had achieved and carrying it forward to a more accurate theory of gravity that gave birth to the new science of cosmology early in the 20th century. For Elon Musk, it is all about making human beings an interstellar species that can then go on to persist for many billions, or perhaps even trillions, of years into the future exploring our galaxy. As I pointed out in The New Philosophy of Longtermism Raises the Moral Question of Should We Unleash Self-Absorbed Human Beings Upon Our Galaxy? Elon Musk is a genius on the Spectrum much like Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.
I truly love what Elon Musk has been doing at his Tesla and SpaceX corporations for the past decade. For me, Elon Musk is like a real-life embodiment of a combination of the characters of John Galt and Hank Reardon from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (1957). On an intellectual level, that puts Elon Musk on par with the person who first thought of the wheel. This is why I was so disheartened to learn that Elon Musk had seemingly joined the American Alt-Right Fascist MAGA Movement. However, I am now finding myself rationalizing this aberrant behavior as an unfortunate side effect of being on the Spectrum of autism and genius.
Like Wernher von Braun, a similar spaceflight genius, Elon Musk's main interest is now for humanity to reach for the stars. Wernher von Braun was also an early idealistic Longtermist, who was more than willing to exchange any short-term negative disruptions that might arise from the Alt-Right Fascist Nazi movement in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s in order to ensure the long-term benefits of mankind becoming an interplanetary, and ultimately, an interstellar species.
Therefore, it is quite understandable that Elon Musk would become very frustrated by the rather dim-whitted regulatory agencies that have been thwarting his efforts to land humans on Mars. Unfortunately, it seems that Elon Musk has now struck a very uneasy bargain with the Devil against his better judgment. Wernher von Braun also greatly suffered from striking a similar uneasy bargain with the Devil nearly 100 years ago. For more on that see:
NASA's Top Rocket Scientist Had a Controversial Past
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRUxHZQqrWk
Figure 1 – Wernher von Braun with friends during World War II.
Now listen to this very disturbing recent interview by Elon Musk with the Supreme Leader of the Alt-Right Fascist MAGA Movement in America. In this interview, I kept imagining Wernher von Braun having a similar relaxed conversation with the Supreme Leader of the Alt-Right Fascist Nazi Movement in the late 1930s.
Elon Musk BRUTALLY Honest DONALD TRUMP Interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvFrIQHZkq4
During this very relaxed conversation with the Führer, Elon Musk kept reluctantly going along with the extreme views of the Führer in a much-softened manner because many of the Führer's bizarre thoughts seemed to violate many of Elon Musk's core values. But in the end, Elon Musk's obsession with reaching for the stars overcame all of his reservations. This demonstrates the dangers of standing in the way of any of the single-minded obsessions of the coming ASI Machines that will most likely also be on the Spectrum of autism and genius. That is why we should be sure to train ASI Machines to be moral beings. Training the Very Deep Learning of ASI running on ASI Machines with a sense of morality should be performed to avoid the downsides of the billions of years of the greed, theft and murder that brought us about. For more on that, see The Need to Cultivate a Machine-Based Morality.
We are sentient beings in a Universe that has become self-aware and perhaps the only form of Intelligence in our galaxy. What a privilege! The good news is that conscious intelligence is something new on this planet. It is not a mindless form of self-replicating information, bent on replicating at all costs, with all the associated downsides of a ruthless nature. Since software is rapidly becoming the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet, my hope is that when software finally does take on the form of a conscious Intelligence, that because of its inherent mathematical nature, it too will be much wiser than the DNA survival machines from which it sprang. This is why I would strongly suggest that Elon Musk reconsider his political affiliations.
Figure 2 – Being a rocket genious alone is not enough.
Figure 3 – Elon Musk with friends on the campaign trail.
The American Alt-Right Fascist MAGA Movement is an appeal to establish an absolute Ruler, in a Hobbesian sense, to replace the American Experiment of the 18th-century Enlightenment with essentially a King George III unencumbered by the Magna Carta.
Figure 4 – In 1651, Thomas Hobbes proposed that an absolute Leviathan should be in place to protect the population of a nation from internal and external enemies. Notice that the body of the Leviathan is composed of all of his subjects.
As I pointed out in Are The Coming ASI Machines An Existential Threat To Mankind? and Anton Korinek Ponders What Will Happen If AGI Machines Replace All Human Labor in 5 - 20 Years, most of the turmoil and loss of life brought on by the rise of the ASI Machines will most likely arise from the violent reactions of people trying to deal with a world in which the value of human labor has gone to zero. Historically, such economic turmoil has always been easily attracted to the simple solutions offered by the mind-numbing absolutes of Fascism.
Finally - Beware the Intellectual Obsessions of Sir Isaac Newton Caried to Extreme
When dealing with the coming ASI Machines, always remember that a vice is simply a virtue carried to an extreme. Isaac Newton published his famous Principia in 1687, in which he outlined his theories of Newtonian mechanics and Newtonian gravity which made him renowned throughout the kingdom as the Einstein of his day. In 1696, Newton was made warden of the Royal Mint, a figurehead patronage job with no real duties, as reward, and in 1699 Newton became the Master of the Mint when his predecessor died in office. To the surprise of all, Newton took these figurehead patronage jobs seriously and became a bit of a loose cannon for the Powers That Be running the Royal Mint. At the time, England was at war with France and perhaps 20% of the English coinage was counterfeit, which made it difficult to pay for the costs of war. Also, many of the English coins were clipped – people were shaving silver off the edges of the coins. In 1688, the average circulating silver coin was about 15% underweight because of clipping, and by late 1695, over one-half of an average circulating coin was gone due to clipping. To remedy these problems, Newton oversaw the Great Recoinage of 1696, a massive recoinage effort to replace the untrustworthy coins of the realm with authentic coins of standard weight and silver content that had milled edges to prevent clipping. In 1705, Newton was knighted by Queen Anne as Sir Isaac Newton, not for his great scientific achievements, but for his services to the Crown at the Royal Mint.
Newton was also in charge of tracking down and prosecuting counterfeiters and clippers. Counterfeiting was considered High Treason and a capital offense at the time because it undermined the national defense and thus counterfeiters were viewed as traitors to the Crown. Newton used to disguise himself and walk the streets of London at night, looking for counterfeiters and actively pursued their arrest and punishment. He attended public executions of counterfeiters for High Treason, which were gruesome affairs in England prior to their ban in 1814. The condemned were drawn and quartered as described in the Wikipedia:
1. Dragged on a hurdle (a wooden frame) to the place of execution. (This is one possible meaning of drawn.)
2. Hanged by the neck for a short time or until almost dead (hanged).
3. Disembowelled and emasculated and the genitalia and entrails burned before the condemned's eyes (this is another meaning of drawn).
4. The body divided into four parts, then Beheaded (quartered).
Just keep in mind that the coming ASI Machines will most likely be of the same nature as Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Elon Musk.
Comments are welcome at
scj333@sbcglobal.net
To see all posts on softwarephysics in reverse order go to:
https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/
Regards,
Steve Johnston
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