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Home -> Community -> Mailing Lists -> Oracle-L -> OT: more naughty / RE: hmmm.....
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http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,39864,00.html
Bill Joy Hopes Reason Prevails
by Patrick McGee
10:10 a.m. Oct. 30, 2000 PST
CAMDEN, Maine -- Bill Joy believes there=92s still time to put the genie back in the bottle, to minimize the potential dangers posed by robotics, nanotechnology and genetics.
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http://www.poptech.org/billjoybio.htm
The 21st-century technologies - genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR) - are so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents and abuses. Most dangerously, for the first time, these accidents and abuses are widely within the reach of individuals or small groups. They will not require large facilities or rare raw materials. Knowledge alone will enable the use of them.
Thus we have the possibility not just of weapons of mass destruction but of knowledge-enabled mass destruction (KMD), this destructiveness hugely amplified by the power of self-replication.
I think it is no exaggeration to say we are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states, on to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals.
From Bill Joy's article, "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us,"
Wired, 4/2000
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html
another exerpt:
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THE NEW LUDDITE CHALLENGE First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary.
Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.
If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can't make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control.
People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.
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now that everybody's awake... :)
According to quite a bit of work done in the field of "conciousness studies" (yea I know, sounds like left coast psychobabble) there is no inherent reason that oppositional mentalities and "dominator hierarchies" need to define discussions about Science&Religion.
While there is still considerable controversy (eg, intelligent design theory, etc.), most of the major *constructive* progress in understanding issues in Science&Religion studies has been made by scientists who have crossed over to study theology and theologians who have crossed over study science. While a lot of what is published in english relates to issues in the Judeo-Christian tradition, there are some exceptions, like the pop-Zen stuff from Ken Wilber at the (Buddhist) Naropa Institute in Colorado.
A summary:
http://www.aaas.org/spp/dspp/dbsr/Resource/PETERS.htm
Theology and Science: Where Are We?
TED PETERS REPUBLISHED WITH KIND PERMISSION FROM BLACKWELL PUBLISHERS, ZYGON: JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE, AND DR. PETERS: PETERS, TED. "THEOLOGY AND SCIENCE: WHERE ARE WE?," ZYGON, VOL. 31, NO. 2 (JUNE 1996), PP. 323-343. Abstract. Revolutionary developments in both science and theology are moving the relation between the two far beyond the nineteenth-century "warfare" model. Both scientists and theologians are engaged in a common search for shared understanding. Eight models of interaction are outlined:
[] scientism, [] scientific imperialism, [] ecclesiastical authoritarianism, [] scientific creationism, [] the two-language theory, [] hypothetical consonance, [] ethical overlap, [] and New Age spirituality.
Developments in hypothetical consonance are explored in the work of various scholars, including Ian Barbour, Philip Clayton, Paul Davies, Willem Drees, Langdon Gilkey, Philip Hefner, Nancey Murphy, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Arthur Peacocke, John Polkinghorne, Robert John Russell, Thomas Torrence and Wenzel van Huyssteen.
Keywords: consonance; cosmology; created co-creator,; creation; critical realism; ecology; eschatology; evolution; falsification; fruitfulness; holism; New Age spirituality; postmodernism; scientific creationism; scientism; warfare between science and theology.
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One of the interesting things that my sociologist, culture historian and theologian friends have pointed out is that virtually *ALL* of the major reforms of american politics &society have been premised on ideas and theories that originated in religion. Don't expect people trained outside the humanities (or even many liberals inside) to have any freakin' clue about the positive historical role that religion has played in public life when democratic reform movements were active. This phenomena has been very thinly represented in the supposedly great academic literature. Now there are a few researchers that are beginning to debunk the orthodox frame of reference that has sought to ignore and obscure the nature of the influences that spirituality and religious thought had on the writers of the constitution, etc.
Science tell us little or nothing about inspiration, redemption, mercy, justice, atonement, etc., and *those* are the kinds of things that people have to be aware of for social and political reform to be successful & justifiable. ( http://www.virtuesproject.com )
Can anyone imagine what the Civil Rights movement would have been without great thinkers like Ghandi (Hindu), Malcolm X (muslim) or the REVEREND Martin Luther King, Jr. or RABBI Abraham Joshua Heschel?
This is a significant issue that demonstrates problems with the cultural biases and myopia inherent in the "liberal" anti-religion orientation about public school politics. When allowed to fester in the body politic long enough, it creates a materialistic cultural wasteland, and a society deprived of some of the most powerful, dynamic forces that drive human creativity and civilization (spirituality and mysticism).
The technoscientific model that currently dominates is incapable of inspiring people to commit to the healing and transformation processes that plague a world full of pain, inequalities and injustices.
On the other hand, (religious) fundamentalism is the (reversed) mirror image of the dead-end that atheistic liberalism represents.
You should find a considerable number of references to books and articles about recent breakthroughs in Science&Religon studies at the Templeton Foundation (Zygon & a larger peace prize than the Nobel), the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences websites, etc.:
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http://www.templetonprize.org/
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http://stream.realimpact.net/rihurl.ram?file=3Drealimpact/templeton/genera= l_video/templ_dyson-2k-winner.rm
and
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Dialogue on Science, Ethics & Religion:
http://www.aaas.org/spp/dspp/dbsr/
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http://www.aaas.org/spp/dspp/dbsr/resource/cole.htm
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(Scientific, Historical, Philosophical, and Theological Perspectives on Evolution):
http://www.aaas.org/spp/dspp/dbsr/evolut/pubs/edorder.htm
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(additional resources):
http://www.aaas.org/spp/dser/evolution/default.htm
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other Science & Religion sites:
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http://www.bu.edu/STH/BTI/progs/ras/ras.htm
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http://www.usao.edu/~facshaferi/CCRS.HTML
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http://www.utsva.edu/carlhowie/
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http://alpha.redeemer.on.ca/pascal/
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http://www.science-spirit.org/
(a skeptic: http://www.ase.tufts.edu/cogstud , http://www.science-spirit.org/articles/articledetail.cfm?article_id=3D200 = )
regards,
ep
On 1 Nov 2000, at 5:50, Jay Hostetter wrote:
Date sent: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 05:50:30 -0800 To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.co= m> From: "Jay Hostetter" <jhostetter_at_decommunications.com> Subject: RE: hmmm..... > I fail to see how the students would suffer by not learning> about evolutionary hypothesis. If you teach kids that they are > descended from animals, then you should expect them to act like Received on Wed Nov 01 2000 - 15:20:05 CST
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