Post-singularity world peace (through technology!)
March 4th, 2010The human brain has evolved to hold a network of a certain maximum size. Past 150 people or so, we stop being able to meaningfully integrate individuals into our mind. (reference: http://www.schneier.com/essay-275.html)
I would argue that community has benefits. Knowing people makes us more likely to treat them fairly. It lets us build trust. It lets us apply social pressure.
It seems unlikely that humans will ever get to live in such “tribal village” communities in the future. But, if we can’t shrink our villages, maybe we can grow our brains.
The Singularity is, by definition, the point beyond which we can’t really conceive of how the world works. Humans will have evolved into something more. Or AI will have taken over. Or whatever.
Imagine having a brain big enough to include *everybody* in your community. Well, maybe you can’t imagine it. But you can envision the qualities of your relationship with, say, your family, and extending those qualities to cover the planet. You’d know not only every person, but the interaction that each person had with all the other people. It is, of course, a ludicrous amount of information. But it’s the sort of thing that a sufficiently advanced AI could handle, or perhaps a sufficiently computer-aided human.