-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 4
/
shocklevels.html
134 lines (126 loc) · 7.4 KB
/
shocklevels.html
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
<!DOCTYPE doctype PUBLIC "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<meta name="Author" content="Eliezer S. Yudkowsky">
<meta name="GENERATOR"
content="Mozilla/4.76 [en] (Win98; U) [Netscape]">
<title>Future Shock Levels</title>
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff" link="#0000ff" vlink="#551a8b"
alink="#0000ff">
<center>
<h2> Future Shock Levels</h2>
</center>
<center>©1999 by Eliezer S. Yudkowsky. <br>
Written 06/10/99. <br>
Revised 05/14/01.</center>
<h4> Summary:</h4>
A Shock Level measures the high-tech concepts you can contemplate without
being impressed, frightened, blindly enthusiastic - without exhibiting future
shock. Shock Level Zero or SL0, for example, is modern technology and
the modern-day world, SL1 is virtual reality or an ecommerce-based economy,
SL2 is interstellar travel, medical immortality or genetic engineering, SL3
is nanotech or human-equivalent AI, and SL4 is the Singularity.
<p>The classification is useful because it helps measure what your audience
is ready for; for example, going two Shock Levels higher will cause people
to be shocked, but being seriously frightened takes three Shock Levels.
Obviously this is just a loose rule of thumb! Also, I find that I often
want to refer to groups by shock level; for example, "This argument works
best between SL1 and SL2". (This does <i>not</i> mean that people with
different Shock Levels are necessarily divided into opposing social factions.
It's not an "Us and Them" thing.) </p>
<p> </p>
<hr width="100%">
<ul>
<li> <a name="0"></a>SL0: The legendary average person is comfortable
with modern technology - not so much the frontiers of modern technology, but
the technology used in everyday life. Most people, TV anchors, journalists,
politicians.</li>
<li> <a name="1"></a>SL1: Virtual reality, living to be a hundred,
"The Road Ahead", "To Renew America", "Future Shock", the frontiers of modern
technology as seen by <a href="http://www.wired.com">Wired</a> magazine.
Scientists, novelty-seekers, early-adopters, programmers, technophiles.</li>
<li> <a name="2"></a>SL2: Medical immortality, interplanetary exploration,
major genetic engineering, and new ("alien") cultures. The average SF
fan.</li>
<li> <a name="3"></a>SL3: Nanotechnology, human-equivalent AI, minor
intelligence enhancement, uploading, total body revision, intergalactic exploration.
<a href="http://www.idiom.com/%7Earkuat/extr/extropy.html">Extropians</a>
and <a
href="http://www.transhuman.com/mirrors/www.aleph.se/Trans/index.html">transhumanists</a>.</li>
<li> <a name="4"></a>SL4: The <a
href="http://sysopmind.com/singularity.html">Singularity</a>, <a
href="http://www.transhuman.com/mirrors/www.aleph.se/Trans/Words/j.html#JUPITER_BRAIN">Jupiter
Brains</a>, Powers, complete mental revision, ultraintelligence, posthumanity,
Alpha-Point computing, <a
href="http://sysopmind.com/sing/principles.html#apotheosis">Apotheosis</a>,
the total evaporation of "life as we know it." Singularitarians and
not much else.</li>
</ul>
If there's a Shock Level Five, I'm not sure I want to know about it!
<p>The use of this measure is that it's hard to introduce anyone to an idea
more than one Shock Level above - and Shock Levels measure what you accept
calmly, not what you know about. There are very few SL4s, and I was
<i>not</i> one of them (too enthusiastic) when I wrote "Staring Into the
Singularity" 1.0. If somebody is still worried about virtual reality
(low end of SL1), you can safely try explaining medical immortality (low-end
SL2), but not nanotechnology (SL3) or uploading (high SL3). They might
believe you, but they will be frightened - shocked. </p>
<p>That's not to say you can't do it. In fact, you can take advantage
of the future shock to carry the idea. You just have to be careful.
</p>
<p>By a similar token, a Singularitarian can shock a science-fiction fan,
but not an Extropian - the Extropian will be interested, perhaps enthusiastic,
but not shocked. (Of course, if the person was <i>already</i> enthusiastic
about transhumanism, they might be <i>wildly</i> enthusiastic about the Singularity.)
An Extropian can shock your average Wired reader, but should be careful about
trying this with the "person on the street" - they may be frightened.
And so on. In general, one shock level gets you enthusiasm, two gets
you a strong reaction - wild enthusiasm or disbelief, three gets you frightened
- not necessarily hostile, but frightened, and four can get you burned at
the stake. </p>
<p>Of course, sometimes you can't stick to the gradualism rules. If
somebody asks you a question where the actual answer is SL4, and there's no
interesting SL3 version, then it's time to put up or shut up. If I
get lynched, I was wrong about this. </p>
<h4>
<hr width="100%"></h4>
<h4> Acclimatization:</h4>
Your Shock Level is generally one level below the highest Shock Level you've
heard of. In fact, one of the most effective ways to "graduate" someone
from, say, SL1 to SL2 is to make them familiar with SL3 technology.
In other words, knowing about the possibility of nanotechnology will tend
to make you considerably more comfortable, more prosaic, about the possibility
of medical immortality. Likewise, simple intelligence enhancement is
only impressive if you haven't heard of the Singularity. I offer this
as an excuse for taking three years to go from SL3 to SL4... there's no SL5,
and the only way to be prosaic about the Singularity was by living with it
for years. I've never seen anyone top it; that's the problem.
<p>The interesting thing about Shock Levels is that what takes the time isn't
<i>believing</i> in a Shock Level's technology, it's feeling <i>comfortable</i>
with it. When I first ran across the idea of the Singularity I knew
immediately that Vernor Vinge was perfectly right; I felt my entire ethical
system restructuring over the course of about five seconds - a very peculiar
feeling, let me tell you. Five seconds to believe. Three years
to acceptance. The only way to speed up the process of acclimatization
to one Shock Level is to trump it with a higher Shock Level. </p>
<h4> The Fixed-Point Theorem:</h4>
Shock Levels are interesting because they seem to define a fixed-point theorem
for novelty-seekers. Some people enjoy, more strongly than average,
learning new things and seeking out new ideas and playing with advanced technologies;
they become technophiles, programmers, and so on. Then there are people
who were raised as technophiles, and also have that novelty-seeking quirk;
<i>they</i> become science-fiction fans. People raised as science-fiction
fans become Extropians; I'm not aware of any children raised as Extropians,
but my personal experience demonstrates that children who find out about
transhumanism in childhood can become Singularitarians as adults. As
yet, I don't know of any data on what happens to novelty-seeking children
raised as Singularitarians. Frankly, I'm a little afraid to find out.
<p>On the other hand, there are probably also people who jump three or four
shock levels in their lifespan. The idea above is a hypothesis for
how Shock Levels arise in a culture. </p>
<br>
</body>
</html>