Well … I can’t claim to have thought very deeply about it, it was just a throwaway line to end the post :) But I guess I would say that the consequences of a successful fire sale would indeed be much more serious, but the probability of one actually being successful would be much lower, because everything would, in effect, be distributed and there’d be no single points of failure when we’re all uploaded into sonofusion-powered robot frames with nanite subsystems (or alternatively, completely virtual math nerds a la Greg Egan). And we won’t just be dependent on the systems the fire sale is trying to take down, we’d be the systems, and could collectively resist and reroute. And, as Charlie Stross reminds us, ‘there’ll be jam for tea every day’ :)

Gavin:

Interesting comparison. There’s definitely an almost religious feel to singularitarianism (as Jakob notes, the Singularity is sometimes referred to as the rapture of the nerds) and it is basically because of the post-scarcity future it promises … live forever, do and be whoever you want (even if only virtual), never have to want for anything. I doubt there’s any direct connection between plenitude and the Singularity, though, as the computer geeks and technological optimists who dreamed it up don’t seem the sort to be interested in medieval theology. Convergent evolution perhaps?

About AI and KOB: my first answer was “no, not really” because they don’t really strike fear in the same way and if I don’t stick to specific comparisons then I really will be claiming that every apocalyptic fear is exactly the same as the KOB :) But on the level of a generic fear of technology and the evil uses it can be put to, then yes there’s a similarity there. It’s something that does seem to keep cropping up, at least since Alfred Nobel and dynamite, but you could probably argue for a much earlier date. (Frankenstein, I suppose.)

Roger:

About a decade ago we had a gas crisis in Victoria (as in, no natural gas for domestic heating, water or cooking for 2 or 3 weeks), and we’ve had a developing water crisis (as in, increasing lack of) over the past few years and into the future, which is getting to the point where it may affect electricity supplies as well. So I’m not about to criticise the UK’s public utilities!

(1) disrupting transportation - how would anyone be able to tell in the UK?

(2) stealing and destroying financial records - I wish someone would destroy MY financial records!

(3) disabling all public utilities - see (1)…

(4) creating fear with a PSYOP media campaign - too abstract to scare me, that one, so I’m not in a position to judge.

Is the fear that AI might wipe out humans similar to the fear of technology in knockout blow mythology?