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Joe's avatar

Eh. I don't buy that. Much of Robin's argument is that a world of free competition just isn't nearly as bad as many people seem to think: the parts of our minds that we like, the parts of our lives we think make them worth living, aren't just some weird aberration that have appeared in spite of competition, but are actual functional useful features, and so can mostly be expected to continue into the future, at least in some form or other, even if changed in many ways.

This might not mean that doing nothing to shift the future from its natural course is the best possible choice to make. But it does certainly make that choice vastly better than it looks under the alternative worldview, where unless we slay the demon of free competition, sentient conscious beings will be outcompeted and consumed by homogeneous mind-slush, the natural conclusion of efficiency left unchecked.

Robin has said a number of times that he does consider the em world pretty good - better than our world, even. And actually I think that, assuming his positive claims are true, that's a very reasonable stance, probably the same one that most people would come to, if they similarly believed his positive claims.

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Don Geddis's avatar

"Are you sure ... you would still prefer the same future?"

Robin isn't writing about a future that he "prefers". He's writing about a future he views as somewhat likely, given our current state of knowledge. He's not advocating that people attempt to achieve this scenario, especially at the exclusion of other possible scenarios.

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