Mike, > I certainly would like to see discussion of how species generally may be > artificially altered, (including how brains and therefore intelligence may > be altered) - and I'm disappointed, more particularly, that Natasha and any > other transhumanists haven't put forward some half-way reasonable > possibilities here. But perhaps Samantha & others would regard such matters > as offlimits?
I know Samantha well enough to know she would NOT consider this kind of topic "off limits" ;-) ... nor would hardly anyone on this list... My attitude (and I suspect Samantha shares the same general attitude) is that, while genetic engineering and other aspects of biotech are extremely interesting, AGI has a lot more potential to radically transform life and mind. Yes, genetic engineering is a big deal relative to ordinary life today. But compared to transhuman AGI, it's small potatoes... The main difference you have with this attitude seems to be that you feel AGI is a remote, implausible notion, whereas we feel it is almost an inevitability in the medium term, and a possibility even in the short term > It's a pity though because I do think that Venter has changed everything > today - including the paradigms that govern both science and AI. > Lets not overblow things -- please note that Venter's team has not yet synthesized an artificial organism. Also, they didn't really design the organism, from scratch, they're just regenerating a (slightly modified) existing design... Theirs is great work though, and I don't doubt that it will advance further in the next years... But, there is nothing particularly surprising about what Venter's team has done, it's stuff that we have known to be possible for a while ... he just managed to cut through some of the practical irritations of that sort of work and make more rapid progress than others... ben ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604&id_secret=90312741-593a7b
