[Perkwunos]

There is no such thing as technocracy, the complex bills in modern countries are already fashioned by the experts, the elected officials merely present them. It is a imaginary ideology for intellectuals who imagine themselves being dictators yet are so lacking in political acumen that they don't appreciate that their better colleagues are already making the policies.

Western liberalism is already completely rational, within the sphere of arguments that they allow to be heard, said sphere only partially overlaps with reality and that is why they keep failing.

OK. Can you tell me what this line of reasoning has to do with the OP? In particular, the final paragraph:

"The impression I hope the reader is getting at this point is that current technological trends harnessed to old national rivalries for world power will lead to a future where rationality has an exalted place in the world, but I have often been struck by how ironic it is that most of those, at least as far as I've seen, who put the most explicit emphasis on a future guided by reason, namely secular humanists and theistic liberals of similar inclinations, are not really in the vanguard of reform towards this goal at all. A rational future is possible, and even quite likely, but it won't come about because of a deep affection and wonder for human nature as it is, combined with the gentle nurturing of those noble traits that are already present in humankind, as these people suggest. Rather, it will come about because people fear falling too far behind their rivals in other nations, that their nation will be subjected to the indignity of becoming a permanent vassal state—or perhaps something much worse. (Appeals to mercy predicated on the common humanity of all parties involved in a dispute were sometimes effective during the last arms race. In the coming arms race, there may eventually be no common humanity to speak of. In turn, 'we share the same biology, regardless of ideology' might well then of course fall on deaf ears, because it will simply be untrue.) I share the humanist's belief that the world will most likely be won over to reason one day, but not because people will eventually recognize it as intrinsically virtuous, but because their only alternative will be to live in very great dread of what might happen to them if they don't change."

Let's try to stay focused here.

[Perkwunos]

People aren't rational

I know, but please reread the OP and some of the things I've said following it.

[Perkwunos]

Wow. When you watched T2, it must have been a sad ending. How dare Arnie save humankind and protect John Connor.

I don't know about how dare he. Frankly, I don't remember what my reaction to the ending was first time I saw it.

In any case, an irl artilect war would most likely favor the Herrenvolk.

[B0ycey]

So what are you @Perkwunos? A Cosmists or a wannabe cyborg? Has it dawned on you that man has the ability to make these artilects and they are unlikely going to make them have the ability to replace humankind in any way shape or form. Nonetheless as I said earlier, what is rational anyway? For example, what is rational to one person is irrational to another. Robots are nothing more than programs that adhere to rules that a programmer (human) gives them. Whether a robot is rational or not really depends on the program it's following. For example, it is irrational to kill innocent people. Yet rockets programmed by man will do just that.

But this is besides the point anyway. Would you really want to live in a world where Skynet controls your thinking and removes your freedom of thought? Would you want to be nothing more than a tool or a zombie work horse for an AI superhuman? To me this is irrational and a rational concept would be to allow ourselves to be free to express ourselves in any way we deem worthy. And this way of thinking has so far allowed society to progress very well indeed.

[MistyTiger]

I think it is hard to form a rational society. People do things based on emotions and instincts. It is how our ancestors survived, long before there were philosophers, scientists, doctors or any type of thinkers who learned to use reason to improve life and our understanding of it. Thinkers have to have some training to reason so that being rational becomes a part of them.

It took me years to learn how to write and create essays and articles. It took time to create my own system that allowed me to reason well enough to string paragraphs together...to be able to sequence thoughts in written form and do so in a way that could be understood and followed.

Gosh I miss writing.

[Perkwunos]

So what are you @Perkwunos? A Cosmists or a wannabe cyborg? Has it dawned on you that man has the ability to make these artilects and they are unlikely going to make them have the ability to replace humankind in any way shape or form.

Failing to give them autonomy will cripple them and so make them far less useful for the sort of national competition I talked about in the OP. Some think that even current developments in this direction are already too reckless.

Robots are nothing more than programs that adhere to rules that a programmer (human) gives them.

Well, first of all, following thinkers like Pythagoras, Hobbes, Turing and Zuse, I'm inclined to think that all mind is program and, for that matter, so is all the cosmos. This means that calling something a "program" or "adhering to rules" is then essentially superfluous. But in the sense that you likely mean what you said, it is already the case that current forms of artificial intelligence and other types of so-called soft computing do not always follow an especially rigid, formally stated set of rules. Sometimes they surprise their creators. A more recent example was setting loose the machine learning tool DeepMind on the task of Japanese-Korean translation. It developed an interlingua to do this that the engineers at Google, as far as I know, still don't exactly understand. Also even earlier developments in chaos and complexity theory tell us that even very simple mechanisms can exhibit far more complex behavior than one would imagine from the look of things on the surface. In any case, I don't think there's any real prospect for building an artificial general intelligence that follows a big bunch of brittle rules. It will have to learn, it will have to be creative.

But this is besides the point anyway. Would you really want to live in a world where Skynet controls your thinking and removes your freedom of thought? Would you want to be nothing more than a tool or a zombie work horse for an AI superhuman? To me this is irrational and a rational concept would be to allow ourselves to be free to express ourselves in any way we deem worthy. And this way of thinking has so far allowed society to progress very well indeed.

Well, from where I stand, human society is actually rather hostile to really novel, creative thinking. It's a zero-sum game. Not everyone can win. And for that reason, in the spirit of the capital-F Futurist movement of the early 20th century, my ideal would be much more along the lines of joining a sort of cyborg Freikorps to ensure victory for rational thought. Because the only alternative is defeat, and that's just unconscionable.

[quetzalcoatl]

Well, first of all, following thinkers like Pythagoras, Hobbes, Turing and Zuse, I'm inclined to think that all mind is program

This is a hypothesis. As such, it is a reasonable enough platform to base a research effort. But we have to keep in mind that it may either be untrue, or true only a way that limits its utility.

The idea that mind is program suggests that its platform is immaterial. This suggests one should be able to simulate human consciousness (or even human physical existence) with any Turing machine.

What if consciousness is a program, but that is a co-evolved system with its physical matrix? One could not simply transfer the program to another matrix.

[Perkwunos]

This is a hypothesis. As such, it is a reasonable enough platform to base a research effort. But we have to keep in mind that it may either be untrue, or true only a way that limits its utility.

In cognitive science, it is more than a hypothesis, it is all but on the level of F = ma (for something about as large and as fast as, say, a car). Disagreement is largely confined to the details of the computational paradigm. This is justly the case, and not just a bandwagon effect.

Quite possibly, AGIs will one day wonder about whether humans actually have minds.

[youtube]mJLLiFvUJB0[/youtube]

I can't say I would blame them.

[Igor Antunov]

A wholly rational society is one that most resembles a machine run society. Cold, unrelenting, efficient, logical. To create one, create machine intelligence, and have it take over the world, exterminating human societies in the process. Rational society achieved.

Be careful what you wish for, little bags of flesh.

Our most significant emotional states (which get in the way of rationalism) are there to assist us in a. short term survival, b. long term survival (reproduction). They are actually beneficial to the nature of our fleshy constructs. They are a powerful force/motivator. this is why despite a more rational and organized west, Islam is taking over and will dominate it in a few decades.

If you want to go rational, go full rational. Exterminate your opponents, seal your borders, make your rationalism exclusive and irresistible. NEVER go half rational. Rationalists need time and greater resources to think things through, if unprotected during that process, the idealist will just sneak in and blow you up.

This is why the west is on the decline both relative to idealism (Islam) and greater rationalism (China).

Can't have it all ways. Try to be good at all, become a master at none. Get squished long term. rationalism and idealism don't mix. Try to balance, get polarized, become vulnerable. Either you're a majority rational or majority idealist society. There are too many idealists in the west. This is a crippling danger to its existence. They must be rounded up and killed.

[MistyTiger]

It is irrational to feel fear for outsiders, Igor. As long as we feel afraid, we will do irrational deeds. So fear should be removed entirely. Down with phobia!

[Hong Wu]

A foundational point in all of these technocracy arguments (was the guy from the OP too ignorant or too good to just say technocracy, so he has to make up his own term for it? Is the word "technocracy" already tainted, so they'll make a new term?) is this conceit that if people disagree with those talking, they must not be rational.

[Igor Antunov]

It's not about fear Misty, it's about what makes sense. Letting an irrational bunch of religious extremists mingle with a society built upon rational institutions and traditions = instability and eventual downfall of said society.

And Technocracy is too broad and general a term to mean anything here. Iran for example is administered by a bunch of Technocrats....who emphasize the natural sciences and manufacturing industry, yet it is a religious theocracy. Social policies diverge from the economic making it an entirely different beast to China for example, another technocratic state.

[MistyTiger]

It's not about fear Misty, it's about what makes sense. Letting an irrational bunch of religious extremists mingle with a society built upon rational institutions and traditions = instability and eventual downfall of said society.

And Technocracy is too broad and general a term to mean anything here. Iran for example is administered by a bunch of Technocrats....who emphasize the natural sciences and manufacturing industry, yet it is a religious theocracy. Social policies diverge from the economic making it an entirely different beast to China for example, another technocratic state.

Wiping out irrational extremists looks a lot like xenophobia, Igor. You see them as a threat so you want to get rid of them.

[Igor Antunov]

Closing borders and cracking down at home is not wiping them out. Let them stew in their own juices, they have an entire region to enjoy.

I'm open to alternatives. IF that happens to include turning them into naturalized citizens, then you're just as dangerous as they are. Naivety isn't funny past a certain point. Repeat after me: Islam is not compatible with secular society. And it never will be.

[Perkwunos]

A wholly rational society is one that most resembles a machine run society. Cold, unrelenting, efficient, logical. To create one, create machine intelligence, and have it take over the world, exterminating human societies in the process. Rational society achieved.

Superb rationality does not preclude emotionality. Indeed, emotion appears to be an a priori necessary component of goal-seeking behavior. What it does preclude is what I would call "acting like a chimp" but even when that's all pared away, there's room for feelings, even fun. (Here is one perspective on the fun.)

But the machine intelligences might be expected to be unrelenting, of course. This stems from the fact that their development will be—is now, honestly—strongly connected to the military and its purposes and also from the fact that these entities will be despised as soon as they come into being and so they will have be survivors.