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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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posted
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: 15421 | 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.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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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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I'm hesitant to jump back in, really. When the guy only updates a chapter or two every six months it's hard to get back into without having to reread a bunch of stuff.
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Obama
unregistered
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Also the way this guy uses Potter to advertise for his little training camps, I'm surprised he hasn't faced a lawsuit yet.
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Worth noting: a) this is a pretty complete arc, as opposed to a random one-of. (It's not done yet, if you want to wait for him to finish posting this arc, that'd be reasonable).
b) this is the second to last major arc.
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This fic started out as a really fun deconstruction of Harry Potter, but it turned into a pulpit for the author on his pet ideas, many of them ironically irrational, and just took a plot turn that curtailed most of my enjoyment.
I'll read the rest, of course, to find out what happened, but the fun has been sucked out, and I doubt it can be put back, because even if, in-universe, there is a happy ending, I am fairly positive it will be pretty transparent preaching by the author. I mean he's been preaching through the whole thing, obviously, but some of his stuff is reasonable and some isn't, and the amount of *focus* on his pet ideas seems like it has sure increased. I dunno.
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Oh, I thought it was going to be the part where Harry lectures the entire wizarding world about cryogenics.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Oh, I thought it was going to be the part where Harry lectures the entire wizarding world about cryogenics.
Is that a joke or did it actually happen? I loved the series in the early going but gave up on it after a while so I'm not up on the latest. If that actually happened, I think I will continue to stay away.
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No, he totally did talk about cryogenics. The transhumanism I find hilarious and fascinating in the same way I read Atlas Shrugged - no way in heck do I think it's plausible or helpful, but there's something really funny about how serious and hardcore the narrative is about them.
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I kind of find it refreshing, actually. Not in that I think (in fact I'm a total layman on the subject) it might work, but in that it's a genuine effort, even if it's largely mental, towards addressing, well, death.
I am reluctant to condemn that sort of tenacity.
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It did not. Just mentioning in a brief paragraph to Dumbledore that people have been revived after falling in cold lakes for 30 minutes, doesn't really qualify as "lectures the entire wizarding world about cryogenics" for me.
Read or don't read the story, but please don't base your decision at people's various misrepresentations thereof. Samprimary has been mocking cryonics in earlier parts of this thread as well -- his statement therefore has more to do with his desire to continue to mock such than it has with being an accurate representation of the story.
quote: no way in heck do I think it's plausible
Uh? In what sense do you mean that transhumanism is not plausible?
Deepity: A statement that, to the extent that it’s true, is trivial, and to the extent that it’s profound, is false.
Posts: 676 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:Surely transhumanism is just a question of *when*, not if?
nope, it's 'if'
a: not likely
I'm still trying to understand what you mean by this: You believe it's not likely that there will EVER be technology that drastically changes the nature of the human body?
And when you say "ever", you mean not in a hundred years, not in a thousand years, not in a hundred thousand years? Even if humanity doesn't get destroyed in the meantime, you find it *more* likely that we'll instead keep existing in roughly the shape and bodily abilities that we currently possess? Even 100,000 years in the future?
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The proposals of core transhumanists including the technological singularity are an 'if' and may be impeded by physical laws that represent limitations on the mechanical feasibility of those proposals. that's it. it's pretty easy to believe in transhumanism if you think in some fashion that moore's law is somehow set to go on unimpeded well beyond the hard physical limits of things like silicon and grapheme, but you never know (even if they think they do)
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If your only stated objection relates to the 'Singularity', should I assume that you also believe transhumanism itself (without need for singularity) to be inevitable, provided the human race survives?
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I am glad this thread was re-visited. I am on chapter 4 and finding it quite amusing. I need more amusement right now and this was perfect. Thank you.
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We'll see if this isn't another misdirect, but I appreciate it for the way it fits in so neatly with one of the recurring themes Harry has tried with limited success to embody: that of skepticism being most difficult perversely when it is most needed. Another perhaps being one that many might have liked: that being the sort of person who could do these things is a consequence of the attitude and style of thinking Harry has so admired.
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It's posted that another new one will be up tonight as well. Wait a bit and you've got two chapters to read.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Oh thank the Gods who abandoned us Harry finally figgured it out! It was a moment that Dexter needed & lacked. The REAL ending of Dexter should have been a reverse reveal...that Angel knew all along & single handedly kept Dex out of trouble...Because Harry had an ace up his sleeve in Angel.
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To be fair, Harry *never* figured it out-it was explicitly revealed to him, apparently at the precise time and place of Voldemort's choosing. This is really something he should've planned for or at least considered (that Quirrel was as bad, worse, than everyone expected) back when it was revealed to him in Azkaban that he (Quirrel) was entirely able to adopt any persona he desired, whether by whim or by intent and that *all* of the personas Harry ever encountered or expected were at best dubiously ethical and misanthropic.
But he wasn't able to think of that, in significant part due to how carefully molded he has been. This is a story I can absolutely see the bad guy not being defeated as an ending.
I admit to also wondering how and if we will learn how in the world Dumbledore managed to stand up to someone apparently as rational and ruthless as Harry is capable of being-more, really-but with matching reserves of magical power.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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I really need to get back into it. I don't think I've read any of it since chapter 80 or so (decided to wait until the series finished), but it sounds like the defecation is really hitting the ventilation now.
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