Book: The Age Of EM

Subtitled "Work, Love, and Life When Robots Rule the Earth," (2016) this is a work of speculative science prediction by a non-scientist.  In fact, the author Robin Hanson is an Oxford economist.

That partially explains the huge gaps in his understanding.

For instance:

• Hanson envisions mankind -- or our "brain emulations" (ems) downloaded to computers -- lasting millions or billions or trillions of years.  History argues otherwise
  
• These "ems" will inhabit robot bodies, counterintuitively
  
• Hanson claims England was the source of modern industrial society, when clearly the Dutch preceded the English by a few hundred years (or possibly the poorly-understood Vikings or Mayans even before them)
  
• Hanson claims cities were created by agriculture, whereas most historians agree cities created the need for agriculture and animal husbandry
  
• Hanson divides human history into three eras: foraging, farming and industrial.  He ascribes wide-ranging moralities to each one -- based on today's subsistence farmers
  
• Hanson claims that as an economist he understands past eras better than scientists, and is thus able to project his findings into more accurate predictions than any scientist.  Serendipity apparently is not in his vocabulary
  
• The author envisions interstellar travel being commonplace, colonization of other planets/solar systems/galaxies
  
• The author seems to expect contact with extraterrestrial intelligences
  

The author is also fond of the "lazy author organization" which drives me nuts, where he says "In chapter 18 we will see that..." and "From chapter 7 we know that..."

Fuck, no.  "We" do not know anything, Bucky... and YOU should not be so fucking arrogant as to assume that your arguments are accepted before you have even presented them.  If you have any plan at all to convince the reader of your premise, you must lay out your case, brick by brick, in some kind of logical, building, order.  You lazy fucking asshole!

The author is a moron.

One of the sources frequently cited is nanotech fantasist Eric Drexler, who I happen to think is batshit crazy.  Derivations from work include such howlers as this one:

Quote :

Nanotech-based factories need not be much bigger than the products they make.

I give up.  I'm less than halfway through and can't even bring myself to SKIM the remainder.

The straw that broke the camel's back was a discussion of how faster EMs may come to view slower EMs as "ghosts."

Life's too short to read bad books. The author *is* a moron.