psychoceramics: Re: Hans Moravec

[Peter Hipwell <petehip @ cogsci.ed.ac.uk>]

> 
> My understanding is that his new book _The Age of Mind_ will indeed
> be coming out this year or the next, but was delayed owing to problems
> with the publisher. As Eugene hinted, I think he now believes some
> variation on the "dust theory" from Greg Egan's _Permutation City_
> (aka "Platonic materialism") which leads him to disdain transhumanist
> life-extension projects like cryonics and mind-uploading as irrelevant,
> since there's always a pattern of ones and zeroes scattered somehow
> through the universe which would correspond to the continuation of
> your existence. Or something along those lines. (This was reported
> by Max More on the extropians list.)
> 
 
That would fit with stuff he was saying about rocks being
conscious and uncontactable beings living in the core of the sun. I
thought he was just doing it to make some rhetorical point about "what
is the nature of information and computation"... but there you go. I
drool in anticipation of Moravec's new offering, and so do all my
other cosmically-spread bit-patterns, except the bolshie one spewed
across Lyra. 

Cheers,
Pete.