Singularity Summit 2010: No Place For Human Values In A 'Posthuman' Future?

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Aug 16, 2010, 5:19:39 PM8/16/10

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Singularity Summit 2010: No Place For Human Values In A 'Posthuman' Future?
The next evolutionary stop for humanity is a planetary superorganism, and it’s not a new idea, said Scott. He showed images of 8-foot mounds created by “termite super organisms.” If you look at humans through this perspective, we too have processes for orchestrating internal behaviors, and exhibit robustness, brutal internal competition, and need for a “membrane”, meaning, by way of example, you can travel from your home to a foreign country and always be under a cover. The reason for this transition is that we progressed from simple biology plus simple non biology to complex biology plus complex non biology. According to the biophysicist, it’s important to note the nature of this transition to understand, at least slightly, where it may lead: * When new materials arrive they don’t replace but they supplement * You get new levels of complexity that subsume old ones * You get homeostatic localized environments * Component parts get completely refashioned (mitochondria, which have a bacterial ancestry, doesn’t exist alone) Back to the big question. Where will humans remain? According to Scott, the singularity is underway, but no one really knows what it means. “We give ourselves a lot more credit that we should. We don’t know the future. It is going to get really weird, really quickly.”