tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post758108125430150340..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: If You're A Robot Cultist "There Is No Such Thing As Bad Press"Dale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-60522621783848756452012-09-03T14:16:00.303-07:002012-09-03T14:16:00.303-07:00As a fellow queer who is a believer in and teacher...As a fellow queer who is a believer in and teacher of nonviolent revolution I have to say there are more constructive, expressive, joyful, effective ways to resist evil than in exhausting ultimately ineffectual usually narcissistic quests for total destruction. That said, I'm not gonna lie, I get real mad sometimes, too.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-65772890687038936092012-09-03T14:07:57.912-07:002012-09-03T14:07:57.912-07:00Hi Dale,
What about if you're a criminal quee...Hi Dale,<br /><br />What about if you're a criminal queer bent on making total destroy? Does bad publicity exist then? (Yes, I've been reading Queer Ultraviolence: A Bash Back! Anthology.)<br /><br />Wishing you a super serious evening,<br />Summer Summerspeakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07870660699983182559noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-40493160221750774212012-09-03T13:05:12.715-07:002012-09-03T13:05:12.715-07:00I had the exact same thought about Leitl. He's...I had the exact same thought about Leitl. He's spending too much time in bad company.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-59350123462180334412012-09-03T13:00:40.392-07:002012-09-03T13:00:40.392-07:00> Here's Giulio Prisco on Cryonet. . .
Oh ...> Here's Giulio Prisco on Cryonet. . .<br /><br />Oh dear. From the same comment thread:<br /><br />http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/New_Cryonet/message/2966<br />----------------<br />Re: [New_Cryonet] Amor Mundi discussion <br />Posted By: [Eugen Leitl] <br />Fri Aug 31, 2012<br /><br />On Thu, Aug 30, 2012 at 06:20:39PM -0700, Max More wrote:<br /><br />> Yes, I know, I know. I shouldn't have bothered to comment on Carrico's<br />> crap. He's consigned me to his imaginary "Robot Cult" (a phrase he repeats<br />> over and over and over again like... a robot) and won't actually ever<br />> engage in productive discussion. Anyone who has read even a few pieces by<br />> him knows what a nasty piece of work he is. As a professional rhetorician,<br />> he's much more interested in looking clever and putting down his opponents<br />> than seeking truth.<br /><br />It's useless to wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig enjoys it.<br />----------------<br /><br />I used to have a high opinion of Mr. Leitl.<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-24256554116060443412012-09-03T12:53:52.330-07:002012-09-03T12:53:52.330-07:00One more:
http://chronopause.com/index.php/2012/0...One more:<br /><br />http://chronopause.com/index.php/2012/03/14/the-logical-and-intellectual-bankruptcy-of-christianity/#comment-4381<br />------------------------<br />"More now than then, I understand that religion was and still is<br />an invaluable coping tool for our species. It contains elements<br />important to the retention of our sanity in the face of great<br />loss and hopelessness, which cannot simply be discarded absent<br />replacement technology. If we fail to adapt and craft viable<br />replacements for those invaluable elements of religion, we will<br />fail when subjected to the extreme stressors that religion has<br />classically helped human beings to survive. Travel to horribly<br />insecure and chronically dangerous places in the world and what<br />you will see in almost everyone’s hands at almost all times when<br />people are not engaged in labor is some kind of prayer technology.<br />It’s a distraction and stress relieving device. In cultures<br />where it is permissible, you will often see this technology plus<br />one or two pharmacological stress relieving technologies,<br />such as alcohol and/or tobacco – and sometimes three – or four in<br />combination (i.e., betelnut and caffeine)! Devices to inflict<br />pain on a chronic basis, as well as hunger are also used.<br />Almost no one thinks of these things as “coping technologies,”<br />but that, and the belief structures that accompany them, are<br />exactly what they are. . .<br /><br />The problem with immortality is that it is not really immortality.<br />Immortality is an illusion or an ideal, depending upon your<br />perspective – it’s really a constant battle of life against<br />death – extended indefinitely. That sounds great, and it is,<br />but you must realize that once you expand your timescale<br />indefinitely, problems that were invisible suddenly become of<br />great concern. Today, everyone is focused only the fact that<br />their contemporary problems will vanish: no more wrinkled skin,<br />no more cancer… but what they don’t realize is that by expanding<br />their timescale to “forever” they have widened the event<br />horizon of their problems and exploded the degree of the<br />uncertainty they will have to deal with. In fact, they increased<br />it infinitely. Whilst their uncertainty will be infinite,<br />at any given moment their time and resources will always be<br />FINITE. In short, they’re gonna need some mighty big worry<br />bead technology."<br /><br />From the same comment thread:<br /><br />http://chronopause.com/index.php/2012/03/14/the-logical-and-intellectual-bankruptcy-of-christianity/#comment-4827<br />------------------------<br />"Best anxiety reduction can be obtained by lots of little calculations<br />and speculations about uploading and the singularity."<br /><br />> The problem with immortality is that it is not really immortality.<br /><br />"What had seemed to us at first the irresistible march of<br />god-like world-spirits, with all the resources of the universe<br />in their hands and all eternity before them, was now<br />gradually revealed in very different guise. The great advance<br />in mental calibre, and the attainment of communal mentality<br />throughout the cosmos, had brought a change in the experience<br />of time. The temporal reach of the mind had been very<br />greatly extended. The awakened worlds experienced an aeon<br />as a mere crowded day. They were aware of time's passage<br />as a man in a canoe might have cognizance of a river which in<br />its upper reaches is sluggish but subsequently breaks into<br />rapids and becomes swifter and swifter, till, at no great<br />distance ahead, it must plunge in a final cataract down<br />to the sea... Comparing the little respite that remained with<br />the great work which they passionately desired to accomplish,<br />namely the full awakening of the cosmical spirit, they saw<br />that at best there was no time to spare, and that, more<br />probably, it was already too late to accomplish the task...<br /><br />The sense of the fated incompleteness of all creatures and<br />of all their achievements gave... a charm, a sanctity,<br />as of some short-lived and delicate flower."<br /><br />-- Olaf Stapledon, _Star Maker_<br />Chapter X, "A Vision of the Galaxy" <br /><br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-15614882720743309892012-09-03T01:21:07.676-07:002012-09-03T01:21:07.676-07:00And another:
http://chronopause.com/index.php/201...And another:<br /><br />http://chronopause.com/index.php/2012/03/31/when-a-singularity-bites-you-in-the-ass/#comment-4814<br />--------------------<br />[O]ne class of people cryonics filters for with exquisite precision<br />is the sociopath. IMO Robert Nelson was the first of these (and the<br />most visible) to do great harm, but there have been many others,<br />and the damage they’ve wrought has arguably been just as great,<br />if almost invisible to the pubic, and to cryonics community itself.<br />Beyond this extreme type, there is the more general problem of lack<br />of diversity and a monoculture of people who are “information handling<br />types” who are largely divorced from handling matter and the problems<br />that attend thereto.<br /><br />I must give Jerry Leaf great credit for seeing this years before<br />I did. He was very unhappy with the introduction of Nanotechnology<br />into cryonics and he had considerable contempt for the kind of people<br />it attracted. He would not infrequently express his feelings with<br />a snort and shake of the head, but he was never either able,<br />or willing to articulate his reasons at length. I know he thought<br />the idea of Nanomechanical cell repair machines was so much hokum,<br />because we did have discussions about the limits of reversible damage,<br />and how repair might be undertaken, when possible. But what I failed<br />to grasp was his distaste for what the ideas of Nanotechnology in<br />cryonics were doing to the composition of people being recruited.<br />On the other hand, it was those very ideas that were in part<br />responsible for the expansion in recruitment – which had been<br />slight prior to their introduction. This experience has served<br />to make me achingly aware that the message can and will shape the<br />medium you find yourself immersed in. That’s one of my core<br />objectives here – to recast the message in a way that is at once<br />more honest and more effective at recruiting the kind of people<br />cryonics needs if it is to prosper – and that we personally need<br />if we want to survive. As it is, cryonics is a uni-dimensional<br />and inhuman thing which makes most people with empathy and feelings<br />uncomfortable to be involved with. It also disproportionately<br />empowers people who are just plain deadly and dangerous to deal with.<br /><br />What’s more, the concentration of such “weirdness,” to use your<br />adjective, is self-sustaining and off-putting.jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-13564583968411554072012-09-03T01:12:13.852-07:002012-09-03T01:12:13.852-07:00Another Mike Darwin observation. (He has an inter...Another Mike Darwin observation. (He has an interesting<br />perspective on things.)<br /><br />http://chronopause.com/index.php/2012/03/31/when-a-singularity-bites-you-in-the-ass/#comment-4707<br />---------------------<br />Among the most clueless of the clueless are the Transhumanists.<br />I like Danila Medvedev (the father of the Russian TH movement) –<br />he is smart, full of ideas, interesting and passionate.<br />On a long train journey from Moscow to Voronezh we were<br />arguing about the role of emotions in cognitionm and about<br />their utility in daily life, and Danila took the position<br />that emotions were deleterious – something to be gotten rid<br />of so that clear, rational thinking was possible. This led<br />me to me to observe that the core problem with Transhumanism<br />is that has neglected the very important reality that in<br />order to become trans human, it is first necessary to master<br />being human. It is in the very nature of Transhumanism<br />that it selectively filters from the population people who<br />have been frustrated in their task of learning to be human.<br />It’s very appealing to be told that your failings are virtues,<br />and that you can skip ahead in evolution from being untermensch<br />to being ubermensch. There is charm in this, because is it<br />the essence of boyish desire to awake one day and find that<br />you are Superman.jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-14485896308203307932012-09-02T22:29:04.698-07:002012-09-02T22:29:04.698-07:00Definitely once all the mortals are dead only not-...Definitely once all the mortals are dead only not-mortals will be left.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-71504559708487242812012-09-02T22:23:17.279-07:002012-09-02T22:23:17.279-07:00Yes, folks, it's time for another installment ...Yes, folks, it's time for another installment of Fun With Cryonics Irony! <br /><br />In the immortal words of (mortal) Max Planck: <br /><br /><i> A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die.... </i><br /><br />The fact is, and Max Planck would agree, the last best hope for the blossoming of cryonics into the mainstream of scientific consensus and the opening of the floodgates of research and funding to conquer death is - wait for it - death itself! Maybe once enough of the scoffers are dead, cryonics will finally catch on.<br /><br />So, cryonaughts, keep working on your indefinite lifespans and overcoming death, but don't work too hard! Death is on your side!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com