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westland committed Dec 15, 2023
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Expand Up @@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ In the 1950's [I. J. Good](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singulari

Where will this lead? It doesn't sound bad -- a world where everything that we don't like doing is done by machines, and everything we like is facilitated by pleasure-enhancing technologies. We will increasingly be 'pets' that are cared for by machinery. We already are.

There will be agonizing over 'free will' but when you are already mindlessly led around by media and religion, who cares? Brian Hare argues that we've already sealed our Faustian bargain, [self-domesticating](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/10/31/928764215/how-humans-domesticated-themselves) through a process that's left us more cooperative than our now extinct human cousins, the Neanderthals and Denisovans. His hypothesis was inspired by [Belyaev's foxes](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/domesticated-foxes-genetically-fascinating-terrible-pets), which underwent artificial evolution through breeding. [Darwin](https://www.jstor.org/stable/4331218) observed that domesticates sport floppier ears and curlier tails, are smaller, and have recessed jaws and little teeth. Domestication also shrinks the amygdala, the brain's fear center, leading to a reduction in aggressive, fearful reactions. Human self-domestication has been good for us, as our more agreeable demeanor is responsible for our success and propagation across the planet.
There will be agonizing over 'free will' but if you are mindlessly led around by media and religion, who cares? Brian Hare argues that we've already sealed our Faustian bargain, [self-domesticating](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/10/31/928764215/how-humans-domesticated-themselves) through a process that's left us more cooperative than our now extinct human cousins, the Neanderthals and Denisovans. His hypothesis was inspired by [Belyaev's foxes](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/domesticated-foxes-genetically-fascinating-terrible-pets), which underwent artificial evolution through breeding. [Darwin](https://www.jstor.org/stable/4331218) observed that domesticates sport floppier ears and curlier tails, are smaller, and have recessed jaws and little teeth. Domestication also shrinks the amygdala, the brain's fear center, leading to a reduction in aggressive, fearful reactions. Human self-domestication has been good for us, as our more agreeable demeanor is responsible for our success and propagation across the planet.

The future will _not_ be a Star-Trekkian space opera that reenacts seafaring discovery mythologies from the 19th century. Space is not the ocean; it's devoid of life; we can not swim in space; distances are limited by the speed of light, with no Warp Drive in sight. Space travel is boring and dangerous to boot. In a realistic future, human insecurity and war will play reduced roles, and creativity and self-expression expanded roles. Humans with their machines will become Gods, creating and ruling their mini-worlds. The ultimate science will be art, and artists will rule. Plastic surgery and tattoos are the crude shadows of future self-improvement; we will innovate on ourselves with gene editing, 3D biological printing, machine learning, and numerous other technologies that we can't even imagine.

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