Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!nanotech From: Daniel.Mocsny@uc.edu (daniel mocsny) Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Subject: Re: The Cryonic Nation Message-ID: Date: 12 Sep 89 21:06:55 GMT Sender: nanotech@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Univ. of Cincinnati, College of Engg. Lines: 78 Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu In article , Daniel.Mocsny@uc.edu (daniel mocsny) writes: > Knowing how to fiddle with desires leads to a philosophical abyss, > however. For example, if you can change your desires, then on what > basis do you change them? Your pre-existing desires? Stanislaw Lem has > toyed with these ideas in his fiction. He said, essentially, that if > you can be anyone and have any convictions, then you are no one and > you have no convictions. > > [Quite an anthropocentric, albeit very common, point of view. > What does it matter in the long run whether you "are someone"? It may not matter, but I haven't another way to think about "myself" just yet. > Those convictions (memes) which are successful will spread, and > after a while the laws of evolution will determine the shape > of people's convictions. This is nothing new with nanotechnology, > although the process may be accelerated a bit. > --JoSH] The "abyss" I refer to may have a bottom, but I still hesitate at its edge. I will adopt JoSH's evolutionary premise. Let us assume that convictions represent successful evolutionary strategies (at least local optima). (In fact, I have a somewhat difficult time with this assumption, given the seeming irrationality and bad consequences of so many convictions, but for the discussion we'll allow it.) Then changing environmental conditions should lead in time to new populations of convictions. OK, here's one problem I'll toss out. I submit that nanotechnology may well be just a little more than "nothing new." The key concept here is "rate of change." Whether or not our convictions are the result of evolutionary pressures, they change over time scales on the order of human generations, or possibly much slower. Since bad convictions may be immensely destructive, this guards (albeit imperfectly) against "time bombs," i.e., convictions with destructive power that have a certain latency period. Now nanotechnology promises to let us not only speed up the rate of change of convictions, but also to open up vast new options for what we will think, believe, and desire. This will happen on a time scale probably much shorter than any in previous evolutionary change. Simply put, we're heading for uncharted territory, and *fast*. Our knowledge of complex systems might suggest that great instability will be possible, if not likely. I don't say this to argue against nanotechnology or scientific advance in general. On the contrary, I think we have no choice but to surge forward. However, when we talk about pulling the rug out from under something so fundamental and previously beyond our reach as what we *want*, well, I'm just not sure how to think about that. Indeed, how can I? What if person X wants to become person Y, and having done so, decides that person X was really best after all. This is person Y's opinion now, but after changing back to person X, Y looks just as attractive as before, because person X believes so and that is that. The progression need not be cyclic, it could merely be infinite in any direction. The point is that we may desire to be something else, but upon becoming that we may then desire something just now entirely unthinkable, if not appalling. I suppose that is what has been going on all along, though we don't live long enough to see our descendents carrying on the string. It is still something interesting to think about, and it removes some of the meaning from the notion of "wanting" to do something. What will motivate us to change our wants? Meta-wants? Where does it end, if all wants are pliable? Then we really are non-entities. That's OK, I'm not altogether in love with the notion of "self," but it has been quite a convincing illusion thus far, and I shall need some time to mourn its loss. Dan Mocsny dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu