tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post9032355296913378166..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: Gennady Stolyarov You Are Going To DieDale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-84516451656264513982014-03-04T10:49:51.059-08:002014-03-04T10:49:51.059-08:00Sign the Petition!
https://www.fightaging.org/arc...Sign the Petition!<br /><br />https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2014/03/killed-by-bad-philosophy.php<br />----------------<br />Killed By Bad Philosophy<br />by Reason<br />04 Mar 2014<br /><br />. . .<br /><br />If we die due to aging, it will be because we collectively chose<br />not to make a serious effort to build rejuvenation treatments. . .<br /><br />> In one hundred years they will ask in disbelief,<br />> "Our grandparents had the technology to preserve the precise<br />> neural circuitry of their brains for long‐term storage.<br />> The best science of our grandparent's era stated unequivocally<br />> that this unique patterning of neural circuitry was the seat<br />> of the self; in it was written all memories, skills, and personality.<br />> Our grandparents seemed to grasp the quickening pace of<br />> technology, and understood that full brain scanning and<br />> simulation was around the corner. Why then did grandpa and<br />> the rest of his generation reject brain preservation and mind<br />> uploading as a means of overcoming death? . . .<br />><br />> By the year 2110 such mind uploading will probably be as<br />> common place as laser eye surgery is today. . .<br />><br />> It is notoriously difficult to get people to clearly articulate<br />> the reasoning behind their rejection of mind uploading - it is<br />> often stated as simply an intuition that it will not work.<br />> However, it is important to clearly articulate the reasoning<br />> behind this intuition so that it can be evaluated in light of<br />> the available scientific facts. . .<br />====<br /><br />Save the date.<br /><br />> Stolyarov seems a bit ambivalent about those of his fellow<br />> faithful who think a picture of you can be the same you. . .<br />> if the picture is a "scan" that can then be "uploaded" as a<br />> cyberangel avatar in Holodeck Heaven, since he seems to count on<br />> sooper-medical longevity and eventual "upgrading" into a nano-magickal<br />> shiny robot body because that is ever so much more reasonable. . .<br /><br />Well, I guess Stolyarov just isn't as Reason-able as he thinks<br />he is:<br /><br />----------------<br />[Killed By Bad Philosophy]<br /><br />> It is notoriously difficult to get people to clearly articulate<br />> the reasoning behind their rejection of mind uploading - it is<br />> often stated as simply an intuition that it will not work.<br />> However, it is important to clearly articulate the reasoning<br />> behind this intuition so that it can be evaluated in light of<br />> the available scientific facts. . .<br />====<br /><br />"The best science. . . stated unequivocally. . .<br />. . .in light of the available scientific facts. . ."<br /><br />YMMV.<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-16756091825196259172014-03-03T08:43:53.642-08:002014-03-03T08:43:53.642-08:00> I cannot say that the superlative futurists&#...> I cannot say that the superlative futurists' curious<br />> amplification of consumer fandoms into faith-based initiatives<br />> presumably promising techno-transcendence of all error,<br />> mortality, and scarcity is really even still recognizably<br />> a form of "optimism" given the zany fever of its pitch. . .<br />><br />> Robot Cultists seek in fact to distract public attention<br />> away from real science into pseudo-science, away from real<br />> research and organizing into marginal concerns, away<br />> from shared problems into wish-fulfillment fantasies, and<br />> in so doing actually make it more likely that more people<br />> will suffer and die needlessly in the name of "ending death."<br /><br />Also from yesterday's New York Times, a squib about the<br />dark side of "optimism":<br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/02/business/rose-colored-words-but-gray-outcomes.html<br />----------------<br />Th[e] bad news for unbridled optimism was laid out in a<br />paper published in Psychological Science online in February.<br />The study looked at the relationship between economic<br />malaise and language in newspaper articles and presidential<br />addresses. The finding was stark: Optimistic language was<br />a predictor of poor performance.<br /><br />“A cultural climate of positive thinking about the future,<br />may have contributed to low economic achievement,” the<br />article concludes.<br /><br />The paper, by scholars from New York University and the<br />University of Hamburg, speculates that widespread optimism<br />could cause people to discount the risk of trouble ahead,<br />make unwise investments. . .<br /><br />The finding is a correlation, not causation, meaning it doesn’t<br />show that optimistic language causes downturns. . .<br /><br />But, broadly, a body of research supports the study’s hypotheses.<br />Previous research has found that people with elaborate fantasies<br />not tempered by a realistic assessment of challenges are<br />less likely to get results than are people with more modest<br />visions. . .<br /><br />Gabriele Oettingen, a psychology professor at N.Y.U. and<br />a co-author of the paper in Psychological Science, said that<br />when people have a fantasy, they tend to imagine that<br />fulfilling it will be easy, and are thus unprepared to work.<br />She also said their fantasies become a satisfying distraction,<br />a warm feeling that takes the place of reaching the goal.<br /><br />“The proposition in self-help literature is: Dream it and then<br />you’ll do it,” she said. The research doesn’t support that idea.<br />Rather, to succeed, “you need to have a dream, but at the same<br />time you need to understand what is it in you that stands<br />in the way of fulfilling that dream.”<br />====<br /><br />Dream along with me.<br />I'm on my way to a star!<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-19673872819988313052014-03-03T08:40:17.704-08:002014-03-03T08:40:17.704-08:00> Of course, the fear of death is sadly quite c...> Of course, the fear of death is sadly quite commonplace,<br />> and frankly foolish behavior indulged in the denial of it<br />> is no less commonplace. . .<br /><br />From yesterday's New York Times, a review of a Kurzweilian<br />"thriller", from the son of Paul Theroux:<br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/02/books/review/strange-bodies-by-marcel-theroux.html<br />----------------<br />Sunday Book Review<br />Sparks of Life<br />‘Strange Bodies,’ by Marcel Theroux<br />By STEVE ALMONDFEB. 28, 2014<br /><br />. . .<br /><br />The academic who narrates Theroux’s new book, “Strange Bodies,” . . .<br />is — well, perhaps we should let him speak for himself:<br /><br />“My name is Nicholas Patrick Slopen. I was born in Singapore City<br />on April 10, 1970. I died on Sept. 28, 2009, crushed in the wheel<br />arch of a lorry outside Oval tube station. . . . I will have to<br />commit myself to some details with a certain, and perhaps wearisome,<br />degree of exactitude in order to provide evidence to support<br />the contention contained in the first paragraph of this testimony:<br />that I am Nicholas Slopen, and that my consciousness has survived<br />my bodily death.”<br /><br />That, folks, is a hook of Frankensteinian proportions.<br /><br />Our collective fear of death, and the hovering possibility of resurrection,<br />tug the reader through this ingenious if sometimes vexing novel far<br />more than the protagonist’s personality. . .<br /><br />[T]he explanation of the Malevin Procedure, when it finally arrives,<br />is slapdash. We are asked to believe that scientists can map “every nuance”<br />of consciousness by a “judicious and sophisticated” examination<br />of someone’s linguistic patterns. (They create a proxy version of<br />Samuel Johnson, in fact, because he committed so much of his life<br />to paper.)<br /><br />But we never get a coherent accounting of the physiological<br />exactitudes of this operation. What portions of the brain, exactly,<br />are removed from the host body and what is implanted? Instead,<br />we see a mosh of images (“the redness of everything, that bucket<br />with its unspeakable contents . . .”). It remains murky, as well,<br />how this magic linguistic code might transfer actual memories<br />from the donor to the recipient — a crucial question given that<br />our memories are the essential building block of our identities. . .<br />=====<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-89646934823500031052014-03-02T17:18:46.122-08:002014-03-02T17:18:46.122-08:00Be that as it may, that the techniques on which St...Be that as it may, that the techniques on which Stolyarov presumably bases his expectations/fantasies are bullshit matters more still.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-59641905870441304772014-03-02T17:12:12.224-08:002014-03-02T17:12:12.224-08:00I have to question Stolyarov's competence as a...I have to question Stolyarov's competence as an actuary, his stated day job. He must know that if you have a population where the individuals have a constant probability of death per year regardless of age, instead of ones where the probability increases monotonically per year past the age of ten or so, the individuals could have a "half life" from an actuarial extrapolation of a few centuries, at most.<br /><br />Specifically, if you stopped your mortality rate at age 25 and had a constant probability of dying every year from then on, you would have odds of 1 out of 2 of surviving 500 years - an interesting advance on current life expectancies, but hardly "immortality." Though that sort of calculation doesn't mean anything empirically unless a whole lot of people could survive at least that long. Mark Plushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03859046131830902921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-47475585097407147352014-03-02T15:14:11.484-08:002014-03-02T15:14:11.484-08:00I must say the North Suburban Math League trophy i...I must say the North Suburban Math League trophy inspires confidence.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.com