Yudkowsky's Scale of Future Shock Levels

• 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.

• SL1: Virtual reality, living to be a hundred, "The Road Ahead", "To Renew America", "Future Shock", the frontiers of modern technology as seen by Wired magazine. Scientists, novelty-seekers, early-adopters, programmers, technophiles.

• SL2: Medical immortality, interplanetary exploration, major genetic engineering, and new ("alien") cultures. The average SF fan.

• SL3: Nanotechnology, human-equivalent AI, minor intelligence enhancement, uploading, total body revision, intergalactic exploration. Extropians and transhumanists.

• SL4: The Singularity, Jupiter Brains, Powers, complete mental revision, ultraintelligence, posthumanity, Alpha-Point computing, Apotheosis, the total evaporation of "life as we know it." Singularitarians and not much else.

To determine your level, consider the ideas presented in each group. If they seem inevitable, and give you no real worries about their development, then you've accepted that level. When you start considering the topics, and run into a strong, almost blind excitement, or strong "I don't want that to happen" fear, then that's above your current threshold.

Interplanetary exploration is the same level as major genetic engineering? We were walking on other planetoids in the 60s, and exploring other planets in the '70s. And if he's talking about planets outside our solar system, my own bet is that we'd need to be extropian before we'd be able to make the voyage. Maybe I'm just being too pragmatic.

Then again, this is a comfort scale rather than a timeline. Maybe we will soon see the 'futsie's of the Judge Dredd comic books: people who have been driven to a nervous breakdown by their amazement at the incredible technologies of their own time.