Participating in a discussion is a great way to learn and contribute to ideas for superstructing. When you post a comment, try to provide information that others may not know, and avoid getting into arguments. Winning discussions are all about working together to get smarter.

Please login or register to post


    21st Century Ideas: Creating a world where food is not needed

    A virtual information Noah’s Arc

    Started by: fransgaard Raves:3

    Subscribe » RSS

    I think realistically the world of 2019 will have to scale back. Scale back on technology, scale back on economy, scale back on art, scale back on pleasure etc in order to maintain a basic level of living and to stabilize the situation. Nobody cares about art or going to the moon if they can’t get food on the table. But what if we could create a duplicate of the world in a computer? This ofcourse assumes that computing power is much larger in 2019, but in effect we create a world that “lives on” without the need of basic stuff like food, sleep, shelter, safety etc. This computer system would have to be 100% self sufficient, which is possible if we add introduce people as part of the system, to maintain it. The world in the computer would have the luxury to progress and evolve and in time, as the real world stabilizes, the computer would provide valuable learnings and suggestions helping the real world to much quicker get up to speed again. I wonder if this world could even be sped up so to offer a view into the future for the real world.

    I think with all the crises going on now in 2019, building a world inside a computer is a bit outside our area of expertise. To ramp up computing power to such a state requires us to be doing all that toxic manufacturing that's killing off our environment for the regular meatbodies we've still got wandering around (like me! and you!). That said, I think your notion of scaling back is most important. I'm out on a small farm growing the daily food I need, like the people around me have been doing for hundreds of years. Shipping things in is getting more and more expensive, and I hear a rice-seller got mobbed in the next village a few weeks ago. These villages these, not scaled-back, but never-having-scaled-up places where so many people are trying to get by aren't going to be real happy with uploading themselves into a computer just yet anyway. Not trying to shoot down your idea, but I think it'll be hard to use it to solve the food crises we're facing today.

    How many people have to be alive at any one time on the planet for the maximum to be attained. Is there anything inherently good about allowing the maximum. Anything inherently bad?

    I think our technophilia is part of what's gotten us into this situation. How does this address the hundreds millions that are starving or displaced?

    This is basically the subject for the Superstruct MODE. http://superstructgame.org/SuperstructView/243

    http://www.crnano.org/interview.degaris.htm ..... In say to people who advocate a steady state economy .... you and me live in a mutually exclusive paradigm. Enforcing yours will require you to use force to disallow me to pursue mine. Is that a choice you are willing to make?

    OK, so you're going to upload most people, maybe all people. Someone or something has to maintain all the servers we run on, create the power, etc. etc. If people know they are in a simulation, how will that change their behavior? How will we construct everything? When the environment is completely man-made, How would nay discomfort, any hardship or dislike or anything be dealt with? What is accomplishment in a simulation? Well, I think it's obvious people will play games, putting limits on themselves to challenge themselves and setting goals to reach. But we've got to maintain some connection to the real world, otherwise things that happen there will suddenly effect the simulation unexpectedly, like power shortages or asteriods hitting earth or whatnot. As of right now, computers aren't self-maintaining, so we'd need maintainence people, meat people, to fix them and make them and run them and provide them with power. But WHY would we do that? What advantage is it to us meat people to maintain the comparatively perfect lives of the uploaded for them? It uses resources we could use for ourselves. Those who stay behind need a compelling reason to pay the upkeep on ones and zeros we could easily convince ourselves aren't real people at all.

    what about if this would be used to achieve inmortality, you see it would be used by failing meat-bodies to exist (quite difficult to explain "exist" but lets take it as the concience of the I) in a virtual environment. And everyone else (not failing meat-bodies) exist in the real world and also have the expertise, and all and every relevant human feeling towards those "living" in the virtual environment. The passing to a virtual world is ofcourse by no means obligatory, but, it is also important to consider the cost of its operation for what trascending into it would create yet another industry and would have its cost (for those who can afford it) thus creating value in more than one way.

    "I think with all the crises going on now in 2019, building a world inside a computer is a bit outside our area of expertise." I don't believe that to be true. There will always be a small group of people with enough funds and in that group a tiny minority with a bigger vision.

    "How does this address the hundreds millions that are starving or displaced?" Unfortunatly it doesn't. It asumes that many people will die now and that this will continue and get worse before we reach a sustainable human population. This idea is to try and preserve ideas and even bring new ideas to the table and continue the progression of mankind even if man himself isn't progressing, if that makes sense. It's about preserving and futureproofing I guess

    "what about if this would be used to achieve inmortality, you see it would be used by failing meat-bodies to exist " - that's interesting! I didn't think of the inhabitants of the virtual world as duplication of ourselves and our minds, but maybe you are more on the right track than I am

    thank you fransgaard, and you are pin point on the idea of preserving ideas. It is all about human conciousness, intelligence, reason, and knowledge. If it gets to the worst of scenarios (ultimate human obliteration) the perservation of ideas and the footprint (and/or guideline, depending on what may be still to come in the aftermath of such a devastation), is of the vital importance. dont you think?

    One of my transhumanist fantasies is to achieve photosynthesis. Instead of having to eat, I would sit in the sunshine for an hour or so and nourish myself.

    "One of my transhumanist fantasies is to achieve photosynthesis" - I wonder... it may be feasible if your skin have a layer of nano technology tatoos ... hmmm




    Nominate For A Badge

    Badge:
    More detail on badges



    NOMINATE CANCEL