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FWIW, his fairly religious* father gives every impression of being on good terms with him.
*I haven't specifically asked about beliefs but he keeps Kosher and observes the Sabbath. For example, he talked about how nice it was to have the book in paper form as he can't read the electronic form on the Sabbath. So I am guessing but I think they are reasonable guesses.
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quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: I don't actually think his statement is that bad in its original context. (Though subsequent statements in the comment section of that article are pretty bad)
from the literal closing paragraph of the article, which I posted about the time KoM was spergin' out about one sigma neurotypicals:
quote: If you can afford kids at all, you can afford to sign up your kids for cryonics, and if you don't, you are a lousy parent. I'm just back from an event where the normal parents signed their normal kids up for cryonics, and that is the way things are supposed to be and should be, and whatever excuses you're using or thinking of right now, I don't believe in them any more, you're just a lousy parent.
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I did read the article before posting. I dunno, in the context of the post it really didn't seem offensive to me. People can disagree and be wrong about how to parent, and I think you (Samp) have said things approximately as brusque about parenting that I disagreed with.
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quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: What would you say if you really, *really* wanted to make parents invest in cryonics for their children?
Assume you have the same goal as Yudkowsky in so convincing parents. Is there a more effective *and* more socially acceptable method of convincing parents towards the same goal?
This is an honest question, because if anything I'm probably even worse at social interaction than Yudkowsky is.
Telling people "If you don't do 'X' for your child, you're a bad parent", is probably the best possible way to get them to find every possible reason not to do 'X'. Pretty much any alternative would be more effective than this.
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quote:Telling people "If you don't do 'X' for your child, you're a bad parent", is probably the best possible way to get them to find every possible reason not to do 'X'. Pretty much any alternative would be more effective than this.
I do agree with this, although I'm not sure what his motivation for writing that piece was in the first place. (It reads more like "I'm feeling a bunch of intense emotion about this conference and want to express it" rather than "I'm trying to convince people to sign up for cryonics as effectively as possible", although at the time he may have thought he was doing both).
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I think, at the end of the day, he is highly irrational -- even delusional -- in his personal fear of death, and is positively religious about scientific pursuits of eternity. This makes him a bit wacky on those subjects.
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I just started reading this, curious what all the fuss is about. God dammit--I should not have done this until after finals week (and grading).
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quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: I did read the article before posting. I dunno, in the context of the post it really didn't seem offensive to me. People can disagree and be wrong about how to parent, and I think you (Samp) have said things approximately as brusque about parenting that I disagreed with.
Different medium.
I was being brusque and straightforward in internet posts on an internet forum to a person whose first six or so posts to me were to 'go kick rocks' — if I were writing an article that I intended to be a public, reasoned essay about why you should not hit your kids because it is ultimately ineffective parenting which does not provide enough of a justification for intentionally inflicting pain on (and modeling violence to) children, you can bet real easy money the tone is going to differ. Greatly.
The issue though is less about which individual components of his delusional cryonics fantasy do what, it's the overall analysis of tone. I read that, I compared it next to his flamingly obvious mary sue, and realized that this dude HAS to be insufferable in person. It was so obvious, I laughed. He's very obviously that kind of character.
All the same though I do wish him luck in expanding the congregation of the First Church of Our Lord the Technological Singularity (peace be upon It)
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Do you think your contemptuous tone right now shows any less arrogance?
Thanks for mocking *everyone* who believes there's a technological singularity may be coming. Since you didn't use reasoned arguments, just mockery, it's not as if there can be any rebuttal.
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quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: Do you think your contemptuous tone right now shows any less arrogance?
No! I am usually pretty arrogant in tone here. In this case, what I am really arrogant about is that ..
damnit tom went and summed it up better.
quote:I think, at the end of the day, he is highly irrational -- even delusional -- in his personal fear of death, and is positively religious about scientific pursuits of eternity.
the Singularity movement is often extremely strange and extremely unrealistic. Transhumanism ranges from technofetishry to an unwittingly obvious psychological compensation for fear of death. That debate is best left for people like Stephen Pinker. Or possibly the Economist.Posts: 12293 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Transhumanism is the idea that we shouldn't want to be letting people die at age 80 or 100 or 150 any more than we want to let them die at age 50 or 30.
And, well we *don't*. I don't know of any society that cuts off medical care to the elderly, or doesn't seek to prolong their lives as much as possible. And if it became feasible to prolong my parents' health to the year 120 or 200 or 500, of course I would want to -- most everyone would.
The only difference between transhumanism and everyday average normal plain humanism is that transhumanists like to imagine the future, and most average people just think of it as the present day prolonged.
As for "fear of death" as much as fear of death necessitates every life-saving medical procedure nowadays.
And as for the Singularity, I don't expect it to happen in my lifetime. But I don't see any reason why it won't inevitably happen *eventually*, either within the century or at the very latest in the following. I don't think anyone who seriously considers the subject can imagine we'll reach e.g. the year 2200 without having been able to create electronics intelligences higher in intelligence in *all respects* than the human mind.
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Look, keep in mind that when I am talking about the First Church of Our Lord the Technological Singularity (peace be upon It) I am not talking about all proposals or interest in the Singularity. I am talking about the often bizarre subgroup of people who have essentially made it the thought analogue of religion in their lives. They're way too common. I have watched some .. uh, ... AMUSING arguments based on this faction of The Singularity Is Coming types.
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quote: I have watched some .. uh, ... AMUSING arguments based on this faction of The Singularity Is Coming types.
The most bizarre arguments/positions I've seen at LessWrong don't really have much to do with the Singularity at all, but arise from ideas related to the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis by Max Tegmark. If reality is a mathematical object, then philosophical issues arise about how e.g. "constructing" a mathematical model of a person may be indistinguishable from constructing a person, and whether identity is linked to computation or causality or whatever, etc, etc....
That thing in turn *does* lead to discussions about whether advanced AIs could simulate people and the repercussions of *that* -- but it's really not dependent on any Singularity.
Anyway I understand you want to connect it to "religion" because religion is low-status enough in our days that calling something a religion ridicules it by default.
But IMO a much better analogy would be the sort of bizarre arguments that Ancient Greek philosophers used to get into - most of them ended up sounding silly or moot from our modern perspective in *hindsight*, but there still were enough points of brilliance occasionally (e.g. check out some of Epicurus) to more-than-justify the silliness of some of the rest...
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It would be a mistake to assert that Epicurus was not religious. In fact, most of the most bizarre arguments the Greek philosophers used to get into were rooted entirely in religious belief.
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