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Perhaps humans wont end up being inferior instead we will just end up being part of the system that creates the next level of life. When I was a kid, and learn
by mgolawala 7y ago
Perhaps humans wont end up being inferior instead we will just end up being part of the system that creates the next level of life.
When I was a kid, and learned about the billions of cells and bacteria making up my body, and how they communicated with molecules and worked together in immensely complex ways. Specializing and signaling and coming into existence and dying, and so on... I wondered if they were aware that they were part of a huge complex organism, or if they were just "doing their thing" oblivious to my existence.
Ofcourse, cells aren't conscious so they aren't aware of anything, but wouldn't it be interesting, if we humans end up acting like these cells and bacteria, completely unaware of the next level of life we were creating. We could just be "doing our thing" building our networks, and computers and machines, and going through our lives and such.. meanwhile it is all to sustain a level of life that we, like our own cells, do not realize we are a part of.
- leppr 7y agoSmart contracts, and distributed value networks in general are the gateway to this vision. It will be attained once one of these contracts/DAO/AI/whatever becomes self-sustaining. The DAO will "employ" people in exchange for cryptocurrency, interact with other DAOs, and influence the lives of millions of humans. All the while most individual participants will have no agency against the Dao. We're already used to this with the government-citizen relationship so the transition shouldn't be too painful. The crucial difference will be that, for trust purposes, no human will have absolute control over the DAO. Some humans will be incentivized to accomplish primary tasks for the DAOs, other humans will keep watch and make sure the reported results are correct (oracles).
- inventtheday 7y agoit's worth noting that today we already have self sustaining business machines called corporations.
- MichaelZuo 7y agoI would question the self sustaining part depending on the company and the timescale. For the infinite timescale I doubt any currently existing companies, or groups of, can self sustain indefinitely.
- leppr 7y agoYes, what I'm talking about is definitely an evolution of corporations. But corporations are more easily influenced, taken down, and are bound by laws. Bitcoin can't be forcibly shutdown.
- wahern 7y agoThis is, I believe, similar to what Richard Dawkins had in mind when he coined the term, meme, in The Selfish Gene (1976). Now meme has taken on a more degenerate meaning. I read it 10 years ago, and Dawkins' book remains modern even today. Genetic evolutionary science hasn't surpassed it, we've just developed a richer understanding of the chemistry.
- mirimir 7y agoTo paraphrase TFA's title, "human beings are the sex organs of the human genome". To borrow the terminology used for plants and algae, we are the diploid sporophyte phase. And our gonads are the haploid gametophyte phase, which trigger development of sex organs. That is, flowers.
- ultimape 7y agoPlants use external sex organs (bees, ants, crickets, wasps, bats) to mate. https://blogs.cornell.edu/moreaulab/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Nelsen_et_al._PNAS_2018.pdf https://blogs.cornell.edu/moreaulab/wp-content/uploads/2018/... I'm about to go fondle some flowers to ensure they pollinate correctly.
- mirimir 7y ago> we will just end up being part of the system that creates the next level of life That does seem likely. I'd rather say next level of something like consciousness, awareness and/or intelligence. Maybe we'll evolve into it. But from what little I know about AI, what works will likely not be much like we work.