RE: The Path to Cryptocurrency Mass Adoption: Know Thyself
Man, I have to acknowledge I am wading way over my depth here, and I deeply appreciate that. This is a profound topic that I haven't much expertise in. I will say that I've always appreciated smart money (in the traditional investor's sense, as employing due diligence and rational analysis of economic potential) but this is a definition of smart money I had not expected.
"...programmable money creates the power to create technological systems which not only understand, but directly control the very concept of how we define financial value."
I do not want my money to be smarter than me. I want it to stay the commodity, and not make of me one. That being said, I have to conclude from your OP that sooner or later, my money will be smarter than me, and I shall have a sad about it when it sinks in.
I also have to conclude that any reasonably competent AI tasked to govern economically is not going to be prevented from grasping the fact of coercion. We may not want it to know, but when it's smart enough, it's going to find out anyway. It becomes ineffable at a certain point just how such AI will operate, and problematic to consider operations that greatly exceed our capacity to effect, but fall far short of omniscience. Mistakes will be made, and it seems likely to expect that coercive mistakes are inevitable. Not sure I am happy about that, but am quite sure my joy or lack thereof won't matter - except as a means to an end.
Regarding Roko's Basilisk, which I'd never investigated prior to this, I reckon good people with sound principles will take it to school, just as such communities will be able to profit best from any prisoner's dilemma. There's much good that comes from good people who have principles they value more highly than mere money, and approaching such analyses without considering actual communities creates false conclusions, because folks that value their peeps so do exist.
Those are the communities I find of most merit, and expect to find moreso going forward. I also expect that as we approach the post-market economy, more and more people will as well. Decentralization is actual freedom, and in such a world little could be more valuable than good people.
Imma need some time (and more coffee) to wrap my little head around these thoughts.
Thanks very much!
Thank you for your comments. Though I do think it's true AI will see the angle of coercion, I have to also believe they will more truly value "value" itself to include things which we ourselves can't correctly measure with numbers, weights, and monetary units.
They may even teach us morality as they measure our emotional responses every nano second and create what we define as "well being" while steering us away from our primitive, archaic, violent past which thinks we are about to die when we actually live in abundance.
I would not be the first to suggest that in creating AI of independent means of self-improvement we may be creating God. I ain't saying it's so, but I also cannot rule it out. Folks that may have religious conniptions regarding the mere thought might consider that our creation by God was His method of self-induction.
Not that I can prevent conniptions in others. I'm lucky to keep a lid on me.
The truth is that God only knows what might come from AI.
Thanks!