The World That Can Be -- If We Allow It
Possible Path to Grounded Rational Future Ethics
Imagine a world where everyone considered their maximal good, there highest rational self interest, as requiring maximizing the positive potential everyone? Here people note they can not be fully maximized in their own potential if others they interact with and live among are not also actualized in their positive potential. Sure they may achieve a much better state and an increasingly better one but not as good a state as would be present if all the mind around them were actualized to their potential. Given time and freedom enough this occurs to more and more minds. Given technological singularity and the attendant super-abundance possibilities the means and resources to do so are at hand. Of course the individuals need to overcome their evolved deep psychological belief in scarcity in order to achieve and fully receive this Abundance and share in it freely. This is one of the essential challenges that must be met by a technological species to reach Fulfillment.
The Radically GOOD NEWS
A few things that are technologically well within the possible by our current understanding of the Laws of Physics, of what is possible in this world seem to escape most people's awareness. Even many an ardent futurist doesn't seem to grasp the magnitude of what is possible.
One of the key enablers of radical abundance is machine phase nanotech. Must of the Abundance is possible without it being in hand. But its development is a the gateway to the rest being not only inevitable but easy given that foundation.
What is left in the dreams of transcendence of humanity that is not within reach technologically?
Of course there is one Big Rub - humanity or enough of it evolved in consciousness such that they can wisely use these capabilities and embrace such Radical Abundance. This is no small step. It is the hardest one of all.
The Good News is the triumph of Mind over Matter or Spirit over Flesh.
Abundant Life
Every disease known to humanity including deterioration associated with aging can be healed and reversed. You can live as long and in perfect health as desired. You can live an indefinitely long healthy life at your ideal age.
Abundance of all life
Living biospheres can be spread throughout first this solar system and then to more and more systems.
Death, where is thy sting?
With machine phase embedded nanotechnology technological reincarnation becomes a real possibility. Continuous brain/being state recording and backups become the norm. On catastrophic destruction of the body a new incarnation as human, ensouled robot, in virtual reality etc is possible. With good enough nanotech mastery one would simply wake up in a body that seemed perfectly identical with perhaps a bad dream of body destruction and death.
Of course the real universe we know only parts of may already have this feature we are not yet aware of. But let us satisfy doubting Thomas and ensure this is so.
Abundant Intelligence
Human intelligence can be enhanced far beyond even that of our greatest geniuses today. Everyone can be as intelligent as they wish. Humans minds augmented with embedded AI at will. With machine phase nanotech there is plenty of room to upgrade the brain by enhancing normal brain cellular functioning, replacing the current structure bit by bit with something faster and more capable but with same functional set of capabilities and seamless integration of embedded computation and AI just as private and personal as ones own brain cells and thoughts today.
Everyone can know and understand anything they wish at far greater depth and integration.
AGI will flourish as well. We are getting closer today. Even such AI as we now have will take years at the normal pace to even begin to exhaust the possibilities of it. Imagine open access fully privacy respecting to everyone of even what we already have. Much less of what is soon to come
Open Access to Knowledge, Computation, Communication
The old scarcity limits on who can access the knowledge and computation and communication melt away in any real justification as Abundance of all the components becomes inescapably clear. The excuses for this not being the case will wear thin. Indeed IP as we understand it become absurd when one is so intelligent that to merely see a thing is to understand how it works and how it can be improved upon. Shall we put up fences in our own minds?
Abundant Resources
Intelligence and the freedom to deploy it is truly the Ultimate Resource. Humanity is not limited to the skin of this one planet of our birth. Just in Near Earth Asteroids there is vastly more of most resources than in and on the skin of the earth. The technology to utilize it has some first step cost that may look large but that make Abundant resources trivially available quickly. The cost is small compared to the costs of our squabbling and resource "scarcity" excuses for miserly dark stratagems today.
Abundant Water
The earth is covered in water. But only 3% is fresh water and a bit over 2% of that is locked in polar ice. However with Abundant Energy desalination and distribution of fresh water to wherever needed is trivial. In space there is a lot of water ice and water in some types of asteroids as well.
Abundant Food
Even the Hunger Project acknowledge long ago that the real problem of Abundant Food to Everyone wasn't our capacity to grow enough food. Conventional growth is a matter of weather, water, soil nutrition.
Abundance of all Material Goods
Of course machine phase nanotech implies Replicator machines. Food is only one of many things that can be produced with minimal energy and feed stocks of elements and catalysts. And such production can be done locally where needed.
Much of the need for mass manufacturing centers and distribution networks disappears.
Abundant Energy
We have more than enough thorium in earth's crust to supply all our energy needs for tens of thousands of years. Long before that fusion will be cracked. Solar as important source of energy in especially the inner solar system as well.
There is also a valid place for various fossil fuels. They can be used wisely and are hard to beat at this stage for highly portable, dependable, dense energy.
Human flourishing is directly dependent on per capita energy availability.
Abundant Beauty
You can be as handsome or beautiful (or interestingly bizarre for that matter) as you wish. Your own self becomes malleable to your wishes to an extraordinary degree.
Abundant Love
Technological telepathy is enabled by other possibilities outlined here. We can know one another at a far deeper level and communicate far more quickly and richly whenever we wish.
When we have the technology to understand and heal all the neurosis, psychopathologies and criminal ideation why would we put people in mental institutions or in prison cages anymore?
Wouldn't we grow to see with indefinitely long lives and open ended possibilities and ability to heal in depth that judging as unworthy or throwaway on the basis of one's past actions is completely absurd?
Would we not come to see one another as open ended continuous unique unfolding of potential, creativity, mind/spirit dancing into existence?
Abundantly Healthy Biospheres
Radical Abundance for Everyone can be achieved with far less deleterious effects on environment as today. Indeed the technology allows cleaning up past damages. The dark anti-human flourishing environmental religion that humans are "the problem" dissipates like a bad dream.
Implications of Radical Abundance
A bit down the road status becomes harder to come by. Once there is full machine phase nanotechnology status differentiation cannot easily be from what physical objects one owns. With nanotech we can make as many perfect copies of physical objects as desired and given we have the raw material, requisite amount of energy and pattern of the thing to be produced. Everything becomes simple to produce and reproduce.
The same technology applied to our bodies not only rids humanity of all diseases including aging but allow everyone to be as beautiful or handsome as they wish. No status differentiation there.
Applying this technology and AI to our minds everyone can be as intelligent as they wish and learning will be vastly augmented. All the knowledge of humanity will be available to everyone as the true abundance it is and as necessity for maximizing the positive potential of everyone and of the species. No status differentiation on access to human knowledge.
What is left? One's own creativity and interactions with others will remain unique. In and Abundant world there is no fear of lack if one explores deeply one's own interest and creative development.
There is the question of what happens to people that don't want this Abundant World and aren't ready for it in their own development. This is a good an important question. Since freedom is a requirement for the actualizing of the unique potential of each mind there must be freedom to live as if Scarcity is predominant or some to not partake of some enhancements. There must be a place for people at levels in their development where this possible world doesn't work for them.
Indeed a problem now is that not all humans have the same ideals or beliefs about what is "good" or how it is to be achieved. Just trying to run over them with what we or anyone wants is more initiation of force and feeds the control-resistance-fear cycle. So how do we make room for the actual diversity of minds and development levels that are present and the even more diverse mixture that is to come?
In the face of Abundance including much more advanced AI and nanotechnology there are many possibilities. Completely realistic indistinguishable continuous virtual worlds are one. One can live and interact with others that want that particular sort of reality as long as one wants in one or more such. Mind uploading is a variant of this. Real arbitrarily large space colonies are another. Terra-formed or sufficiently tamed planets and/or large moons are another.
Perhaps those that are ready for next highly enhanced level of development will simply leave Earth to those not as ready with always help available to those who are ready to move on. I rather suspect many an AGI will choose space and its vast resources as more suitable than being stuck down Earth's gravity well and dealing with the fear structures of humans anyway.
Of course some of this is a wild ride and evokes much fear due to being unknown and hard to picture and grasp. A large question is how to move step by step forward. The mark of the best Teachers is to see where each one is and offer that which is most skillfully useful for that one to advance/further unfold from where they are. This is needful at the level of human organizations, nations and the species as well. No coercion allowed but only nurturing toward Fulfillment and protecting the very possibility of movement toward Fulfillment.
The Dark Alternative
If the species cannot overcome its Assumption of Scarcity then the very technological acceleration that enables Fulfillment will instead doom it to destruction or at least deep near-inescapable stagnation.
With continued assumption of Scarcity even the real and present Abundances born out of technological advancement will be artificially limited by laws and regulations backed by force. Scarcity will be created where it does not actually exist. Some forms of Intellectual Property are one familiar way this is done.
For example all of us with some type of smartphone have a device on our person or near at hand that can enable us to have photographic memories for Everything we see or hear. With the right software deep near instantaneous access to this information trove useful to our current needs is at our fingertips. Think what a huge boon this would be for everyone and for the advancement of the species! But, due to deep belief in scarcity and not enough (ever) instead knowledge itself is job up and doled out for rent in small pieces less too much (of actual abundance that increases with more minds involved!) is "given away for free". Real Abundance tends toward free in price because scarcity is not present! Abundance is "more than enough for all that want it" by definition. The closer something sought is to pure mind stuff the more it is by nature truly abundant and not diminished by more and more minds accessing, using, creating form and enhancing it. A technologically accelerating world is increasingly a world where "mind-stuff" is the real wealth and riches and enables everything else.
Abundance, real abundance, terrifies elites who are wealthy relative to others of their species as long as those elites belief in scarcity. There differential enhanced position among others of their species was built on assumption of scarcity as are all species institution as long as evolved psychology scarcity assumption holds sway. They advanced in part by using and in some cases creating and extending those scarcity based institutions and expectations. Many of them are also the creators and discriminators of deep innovation that advances the species beyond any real scarcity in one or more ways. Yet few of them see past scarcity itself.
Others who believe they should rule, that they see further, and that others should obey them also are deeply mired in scarcity. They even reify it into deep fundamental truth as some Malthusian pseudo-religion. Limits to Growth, Club of Rome, WEF that grew from those, and much of political goals nationally and internationally on this planet are from reified Scarcity. The reification claims that not only is there "Not Enough" but seeking and creating "Enough" will destroy this planet and Humanity! It is a very dark religion and mimetic structure. It has deeply infected many minds. There is no Joy, no Fulfillment, if you really believe that most humans cannot and should not be fulfilled. Especially if you take it to the extreme of believing human beings is a "disease" and that human flourishing is the last thing a sane caring human should want!?
Accelerating Technology also accelerates the destructive potential inherent in using technology for destruction on purpose. Disaffected or oppressed groups and those that see themselves so have more tools and methods to strike back in acts of terrorism or desperation or focused attacks on those seen rightly or wrongly as the oppressor. This provides more excuse to use technology to highly surveil everyone and to use the information obtained to control and coerce everyone.
The rulers fear that they will lose power as technological acceleration liberates communication and increase the potential value creation of everyone and provides means to exchange value (markets) without requiring their permission, outside their control, and without giving them a substantial cut. This incentives them to act against the Abundance providing technologies and technological tools and limit their effectiveness. They move toward restricting communication and what can be communicated. They move toward locking down the internet with KYC identity proof being required to use it. They move toward removing privacy with outright attacks on and end runs against encryption. They act against freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of action.
Yet actualizing of positive potential of each mind requires freedom of thought and of sharing and critiquing ideas with others and of freedom to act on one's opinions and beliefs and reap the positive or negative reality (not created by authority) consequences in order to learn and grow toward fulfillment of potential. This is true across all levels from individual to organization to society to the entire species.
Does increasing surveillance and control is extreme danger to the species making it to and through a species positive Singularity.
If the forces of surveillance and control are strong enough they close off all avenues of effective resistance or freedom. If this state is reached there is very little way to escape it beyond the System destroying itself. There is much afoot today and well advanced toward this state becoming reality. The Dark Vision is winning and many minds do not believe much different is possible. Many minds have given up.
The attempt at mass control of course engenders much push-back, anger, reaction and work to escape it. Some of the push-back is violent and gives the would be controllers and their supporters more grounds to deepen control. A self-feeding dark spiral ensues.
Bringing Light in the face of Growing Darkness
To break out of this people need a Vision of Light, of Fulfillment desperately. They need to reshape their thinking and the action that springs from it. They need to see with fresh eyes and from a deeply optimistic place what they can do and expect in the world. This vision needs to transform not only individuals but institutions.
Radical Hope and Radical Abundance must replace Helplessness, Deep Fear, Species Self-condemnation and Scarcity. Seeking the fulfillment of the positive potential of self and others must replace simply hoping that you can somehow "get yours" even while believing there is not enough for everyone.
The threat of terrorism and striking out by the oppressed and deeply disaffected slowly dissolves as it becomes more obvious that optimizing each person's positive potential is the tantamount goal of more and more individuals, institutions and actual activity. Without this growing practice and belief there is no joy in the achievements and breakthroughs of some as the assumption is there is Scarcity and not enough for all. Without this the potential increase in intelligence via AI and AGI and AI enhancement of some humans is seen as eliminating any place or possibility for oneself by many people. Then they will war against the very transcendent possibilities before us.
Overcoming Scarcity programming is absolutely essential.
If the elites mired in scarcity assumption themselves grow beyond that to truly understand Abundance and embrace it then they can expect a world where they and everyone else has vastly more than the elites do today or can even dream of. Of course another facet of our evolved psychology is Status seeking. It is based at root on assumption of scarcity. Only if my status is high enough relative to others can I expect the mate, or house, or income or whatever that I want. After all there is not enough to go around (scarcity). Status is a deep drive in humans.
I have watched the Dark Alternative form and deepen for many years since the Vision. Sometimes I am morose that I didn't share the Vision enough. Maybe it would have helped slow down or even stop and reverse the Dark Alternative that is much more advanced and widely disseminated today that when I had this Vision.
I believe that God/Creator/Helper Minds waste nothing. Everything that has or will happen is grist for the Great Mill of ever expanding Life, Creation, Intelligence, Love, Joy. Even when a species fails to get past the Great Filter the minds within it are not lost and get other tries incarnated otherwise than their past species at grasping the Golden Ring. Some, whether their original species succeeded or failed, volunteer to be implanted in species entering the challenge of the Great Filter full of limitless possibility but also great peril. They are there to get that species to and though a species positive Singularity. Anyone that wishes may volunteer at any time to take on this mission.