Link to originalWe can put and end to darwinian evolution. An end to randomness, suffering and brutality.
Enable health for all but allow diversity for everything else. Adapt humanity to new climates, planets and bring an end to evolution as we know it.
– Transforming biomedical research through AI | Manolis Kellis | TEDxMIT
Link to originalWhen you, as a giant collective of cells, go spend a day boxing, you will come home and say “this was great – I achieved a bunch of social goals, I achieved some personal development goals, excellent”.
Nobody asked your cells and tissues whether they wanted to be killed by mechanical damage and then cleared out by the immune system in bruises. That is how collectives work. You gain capabilities at the collective level but no one may be watching for the welfare of the individual parts. We as humans, who have a huge degree of agency in the individual, may or may not want to adopt some of these policies. Certainly in the political arena that’s been tried a number of times in history, and it always works the same way – disaster. So, I think that we need to be looking for optimal policies for scaling collective intelligence, but not necessarily copying what biology does because I don’t think biology is tracking all of the values that we should hold sacred.
It’s a war against nature.
Link to originalAn alternative to military conscription | War against nature, not people | What work could look like as technology advances
the-moral-equivalent-of-war — conscript youth into hard civilian labor (mines, construction, fishing fleets) instead of military service. “Army enlisted against nature.” Preserve discipline and collective purpose without the killing.
James frames this as character-building for soft rich kids. But really he’s just pitchign communism: Universal labor obligation, fair distribution of socially necessary work, dignity through contribution to the collective.
Temporary rotation through the coal mines, then back to normal life (which under communism is increasingly “just” “leisure” 1).
He just doesn’t touch property relations or the free market, which makes this whole idea utopian.Everyone does periods2 of necessary work. Then you’re fully covered (house, health, education, food, …). Periods might be a few months in the year. Might be every few years… might be like conscription (e.g. after this necessary work doesn’t really exist anymore, but we do the conscription thingy for the social benefits – or maybe some “unpleasant” 3 jobs that humans have to do will never fully go away (care work).
The amount naturally shrinks as automation covers more.
Pair it with a revolution in our education system: learning and working should not be separate life phases