Defining God (Panel; Sunday, 1 - 2:15 PM, Room 634)
Moderator: P. C. Hodgell; F. J. Bergmann, Chibi-Evil, Richard S. Russell, Yonatan Zunger
Atheists are often asked, "What would it take to get you to believe in God?" The stock response is "Well, you'd need to start with a good definition, so I’d know what to look for." OK, let's get started. What sort of superpowers does it take to rise to the level of godliness? Would a really smart computer qualify? If you just had a creature who could create a whole universe, but was pathetic in many other respects, wouldn't that still be pretty godlike?
Economics of the Future (Panel; Sunday, 4 - 5:15 PM, Conference 5)
Moderator: Benjamin Rosenbaum; Fred, Christopher Davis, Gayle, Yonatan Zunger
Science fiction has posited a wide range of economic models, from total abundance to mean scarcity, from plutocracy to collectivism. What happens when goods are freely available to all? What happens when long–lasting food rations are worth killing for? Which books actually talk about economics (whether capitalist or socialist or some other sort) without handwaving it all away?
AI's: The Current Reality, the Future Possibilities (Talk; Monday, 10 - 11:15 AM, Room 629)
AIs have the possibility of being very interesting from a narrative perspective because they can be a fundamentally different kind of intelligence that nevertheless shares a world with us. The basic evolutionary pressures that drove our brains to work the way they do are completely different from those that would act on them. And indeed, the AIs that we're starting to see in the real world—from search engines that understand our intentions to cars that drive themselves—look very different from the positronic brains we once imagined. In this talk, Yonatan Zunger will discuss the ways in which AIs are developing today and various possibilities for future directions.
I think this should be a really interesting con; the panels look ripe for spirited, and intelligent, discussion, and the talk should be fun. I guarantee mention of BrainPals and of the religious tendencies of artificial intelligences. Because that's the real future of AI: theologically-minded brain implants.
ETA: Dates, times and rooms are kinda useful information. Added!
May 14 2010, 02:08:07 UTC 5 years ago
As far as commerce cross-species, the only thing I know of in the technical literature is an old paper of Krugman's on interstellar trade. There's endless reams of the stuff in SFnal literature, although I can't think of any which was enormously exciting; a lot of the basic ideas got hashed out in the 50's and 60's.
One of the things I'm especially hoping to spend some time on is interesting near- and mid-future technologies, and how they can affect economics. Things like AI (very different kinds of market actors, as seen already by the way trading algorithms affect exchanges), or even simple things like FedEx which completely changed the economics of small-scale business logistics. SF seems like a great place to experiment with that.
I only know one of the other panelists, Ben Rosenbaum. He's an SF writer, and generally an awesome guy; I would go to this panel just on the basis that he's there, and so the conversation is pretty certain to be interesting.
May 15 2010, 01:34:44 UTC 5 years ago
Hm, that could be very interesting. I remember reading a paper by John Roberts analyzing the impact of complementary technologies on productivity, but it didn't go into specifics. I think you can use SF to relax many of the implicit constraints, such as like you said, FedEx which diminished the costs of transportation. Maybe relax capacity constraints, for example, by allowing for say instantaneous storage/retrieval/transmission of physical objects (I've wished for this a lot whenever I have to order something online and wait forever for it to be delivered u_u). That could be akin to a type of information revolution. You could also look at how time travel would affect trading on the stock market, or indeed, anything involving discounting over time like the classical Rubinstein bargaining result.
Sounds cool, you'll have to send me the highlights/minutes :D (And we really need to meet up at some point, I keep telling people about my physicist friend from Stanford XD; I don't think they believe me)
May 22 2010, 19:55:14 UTC 5 years ago
And yes, we definitely do need to meet. I've been really bad about it, but my overall world sanity level should increase at least somewhat after the WisCon weekend. What kinds of time are you generally around? And do you have transport, or are you mostly confined to the campus area?
May 24 2010, 21:08:24 UTC 5 years ago
Yeah, basically confined to the campus area. I can take the bus to some places off-campus.