Why do so many computer scientists throng the ranks of superlative futurology?
I'll grant -- as many do not -- that at least some of "computer science" really is a science, rather than always only just engineering practices or art practices (although an enormous amount of "computer science" is indeed better described that way), say, a science struggling to understand principles underlying material forms of information processing or something like that.
As I said, I'll grant that at least some computer scientists really are scientists. Of course, many of the Robot Cultists don't even have degrees in computer science, however loosely construed, and indeed many of them, I daresay probably most of them, are little more than serfs robotically coding in the veal fattening pens that pimple corporate America but sell themselves in techno-utopian chatrooms (and possibly also, sadly, to themselves) as the equivalent of plasma physicists.
It makes a certain sense at least that one would find code-jockey handwavers of the "cybernetic totalist" school of non-thought among the singularitarian Robot God branch of superlative futurology and among the "Mind Uploading" enthusiasts. But why do computer coders throng the nanofactory crowd, and the cryonics crowd, and the negligible senescence longevity medicine crowd as well -- communities of futurological faithfulness preoccupied with scientific questions about which they endlessly declare their consummate superiority to scientific consensus but which depend most of all on biology?
Just yesterday I was reading polling statistics showing that engineers are disproportionately represented in the throngs of creationists. (Of the educated who buy into creationism at all, something like 60%+ were engineers). Speculation says it's because they see design all day and assume all complexity must be the result of design.
ReplyDeleteI feel like there's some sort of analogy here. (My own partner is a computer scientist, and ironically - since I do work in AI - he tells me he used to believe AI itself was totally possible until he started hearing my talks and reading my papers. Which has never been my goal, but c'est la vie.)
I wonder if being surrounded by "if-then" statements all day means you forget the conditional isn't guaranteed to ever occur!
I wonder if being surrounded by "if-then" statements all day means you forget the conditional isn't guaranteed to ever occur!
ReplyDeleteI think there is some connection as well to the basic mechanism of all superlativity, through which political freedom is first instrumentalized in a way that impoverishes it into incomparably less than freedom and then conmpensated for by a hyperbolization of that instrumentality into an "emancipation" substitute via brute force amplification. The mistaken faith that is the "guarantee," is the substitute for the freedom lost -- both the loss and the compensatory faith are a function of the instrumentalization, the reduction of the field to always-only if-then in the first place. Or something like that.
(Of the educated who buy into creationism at all, something like 60%+ were engineers). Speculation says it's because they see design all day and assume all complexity must be the result of design.
ReplyDeleteI think it is because one can be quite clever without ever actually thinking critically.
Too much of the "I" in "AI" discourse is about precisely the confusion of this sort of cleverness with thinking.
Dale asked:
ReplyDelete> But why do computer coders throng the nanofactory crowd, and the cryonics crowd,
> and the negligible senescence longevity medicine crowd as well. . .
Welll. . . I realize that I might be stepping on toes by mentioning this,
but people have commented for years now about the correlations among
the Autistic Spectrum and mathematics, computer programming, engineering,
science fiction fandom, libertarianism, and. . . "transhumanism".
http://www.well.com/~jerod23/bp/AspergersSyndrome.htm (use the Wayback Machine)
-----------------------------------------------
-- We just can't accept criticism or correction.
-- Yet when we offer criticism it invariably comes across as harsh and pedantic.
-- We just don't get the unwritten social rules, subtext and the unspoken communication
such as stance, posture and facial expressions.
-- We often fail to distinguish between private and public personal care habits: e.g.
nose picking, teeth picking, ear canal cleaning.
-- We often have a naïve trust in others.
-- We're painfully shy.
-- We have constant anxiety about performance and acceptance, despite frequent recognition
and commendation.
-- We're brutally honest.
-- We're blunt in emotional expression.
-- We have the infamous flat affect.
-- We have either no apparent sense of humor or a bizarre sense of humor that
stems from complex references that would be far too annoying to explain.
-- We have great difficulty with reciprocal displays of pleasantries, greetings
and small talk.
-- We have a lot of problems expressing empathy, such as condolence or congratulations.
-- We can't obscure real feelings, moods, and reactions. It's either nothing or overwhelming,
there is no emotional middle ground.
-- We will abruptly and strongly express our likes and dislikes.
-- In an attempt to deal with all that small talk, empathy, jokes and the like we will
adopt rigid adherence to rules and social conventions per Miss Manners. Ooops.
-- We'll often fixate on and excessively talk about one, or a limited number of interests.
-- We have a flash temper & occasional tantrums.
-- We have incredible difficulty forming friendships and intimate relationships. Yet being desperate
for emotional intimacy we have problems in distinguishing between acquaintance and friendship. We suffer
from "one real friend at a time" syndrome, but can't really tell if the other person is reciprocating,
and don't understand why they don't feel the same way.
-- We're socially isolated and often have an intense concern for privacy, despite not being able
to understand "personal space" all that well.
-- We have limited clothing preference and will wear the same clothes for days at a time. We'll
cut off all the tags on the inside of clothes and cannot wear certain fabrics.
-- Which goes along with various sensory sensitivities. Certain sensations, such as particular
sounds, colors, tastes, smells, will just set us off.
-- We are the uberklutzen. We are clumsy. We have problems with balance and judging distances,
height and depth. We have gross or fine motor coordination problems. And we frequently have an
unusual gait, stance, and/or posture.
-- We have great difficulty in recognizing others’ faces (prosopagnosia) and the emotional expressions
that play across your faces.
-- We have difficulty initiating or maintaining eye contact.
-- During periods of stress and frustration we'll raise our voices all right. But it won't be
yelling. Call it "yelling" and you'll hear yelling. Then you'll know the difference.
-- We have some strong and unusual food preferences and aversions, and equally unusual and rigid
eating behaviors.
-- Our personal hygiene is sometimes odd or leaves much to be desired.
-- We will just shutdown in response to conflicting demands or high stress.
-- We have a low understanding of the reciprocal rules of conversation. From person-to-person,
day-to-day or conversation-to-conversation you'll find us interrupting and dominating, or not
participating at all. We often have difficulty with shifting topics and will keep trying to steer
things back on subject. It's just painful that we don't know how or when to start or stop a conversation.
-- We take literalism to new frontiers.
-- Our rage, tantrum, shutdown, and self-isolating reactions may appear "out of nowhere" but
they really do have meaningful triggers. First there's a lot of self-anger, anger towards others
and the world in general, and basic resentment. But where normal people are picking up non-verbal cues,
we're picking up precise meanings and shades of meanings of the words that were chosen and how they
relate to what may have been said months or years ago. Some clever turn of phrase may carry a lot of
personal meaning that you just couldn't possibly understand.
-- We have extreme reaction to changes in routine, surroundings and people. This, like some of
the others, is a general autistic trait. It's summed up by the autistic credo, "All change is bad."
-- Our conversational style is pedantic, as if we learned to speak English from watching
Masterpiece Theatre. Which, in a way, a lot of us did.
-- Needless to say, we don't play well with others. To quote the Aspies' TV role model, Daria Morgendorfer,
"The team is the last refuge of the mediocre individual."
-- We're often perceived as "being in our own world."
Jerod Poore
-----------------------------------------------
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=MPG.16b93cafec85cfe8989a9c%40news.earthlink.net
-----------------------------------------------
From: Ulrika O'Brien (uaobrien@earthlink.net)
Subject: Fewmet du jour
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.fandom
Date: 2002-01-23 21:32:38 PST
I wonder if there's a correlation between a high score on the
Asperger's test and Libertarian tendencies. Which is to say I
wonder if discomfort with social discourse and non-enjoyment of
civic life might not predispose one to like a political slant that
is, pretty fundamentally, antisocial in its approach. Why not deny
the existence and importance of the communal, if the communal makes
you uncomfortable? In particular, I see both tendencies in my
reverend parents. And I was wholly unsurprised to find that Mark
deprecates the importance of the public aspects of architecture, and
the value of beauty in buildings and cities, in favor of purely
anti-social cocooning values in buildings. That which is held in
common may be unpleasant, because it is unimportant and undesirable
anyway.
-----------------------------------------------
From: Ulrika O'Brien (uaobrien@earthlink.net)
Subject: Re: Fewmet du jour
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.fandom
Date: 2002-01-27 12:14:40 PST
In article [a31jpd$1un$1@panix2.panix.com], kfl@KeithLynch.net
says...
> Ulrika O'Brien [uaobrien@earthlink.net] wrote:
> > One datapoint does not a correlation make, or break. I also scored
> > fairly low -- 12 -- but find that the anti-social aspects of
> > libertarianism are among the ones that make me most uncomfortable
> > as time goes on.
>
> *What* anti-social aspects of libertarianism?
The tendency to attract primarily social maladapts, for one. The
central conception of liberty as a freedom from expectations of and
obligations to other people, except for those spelled out in
explicit contract (and that strikes me as a very Aspergian trope
right there -- the insistence that obligations don't exist except
when they are made verbally explicit and agreed to explicitly seems
very much like a coping mechanism ideally suited for folks who do
not otherwise easily read social signals) and the not unrelated
tendency to pretend away any social evils that market forces do not
naturally rectify by various species of victim-blaming.
> The ones made up by our enemies?
Enemies like me, perhaps, a libertarian of 25 years standing?
"Making up" these aspects by observation of fellow libertarians?
Your observations may differ, but I think it doesn't speak well of
libertarians that you are assuming that this sort of criticism must
necessarily be external and invented. Then again, self-criticism,
or rather the lack of it, is another of my disappointments with the
run-of-the-month strain of libertarian thinking.
> It's precisely because I care about other people that I'm a
> libertarian.
Caring about other people doesn't, per se, address the issue of
being social or anti-social, however. It's a non-sequitur. It's
perfectly possible to be a gregarious misanthrope. I sometimes
suspect that I am one, myself, though it's hard to say how much of
that is naturally misanthropic tendencies and how much is a social
fabric that promotes alienation and misanthropy.
> I could probably thrive under almost any political
> system except for the very worst.
Again, I'm not sure that speaks to the issue I'm raising. Your
being able to thrive under any system doesn't really say anything
about whether the structure and approach and princilples of
libertarianism are more attractive to a certain socially
handicapped personality type than they are to people in the more
normal ranges of socialization. I'm not suggesting that all
libertarians have Aspergers, or that all persons with Apergers will
end up as libertarians, but merely that the limited rule set,
explicit contracts only, no-tacit-social-contract, liberty-means-
people-leaving-me-the-fuck-alone-to-do-what-I-want belief set that
comes with libertarianism seems likely to be particularly appealing
to those with Aspergers tendencies already in place.
-----------------------------------------------
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/32170.html
------------------------
Meet the 'transhumanists' behind the Pentagon terror casino
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 05/08/2003 at 11:01 GMT
Yo! Hey! Meet the Extropians
"I am a 6 foot, 185 pound, 40 year-old, well-educated, married
white male American, with two children. I have a wife Peggy, and sons
Tommy and Andy," announces [economist Robin] Hanson on his
personal home page. All well and good so far, although you might be
wondering why we needed to know his exact weight. Or that he's white.
Both those details, and the fact that he's "well-educated" are pretty
superfluous in Extropian circles, where the disciples are uniformly
white and well educated. We're not sure if they all weigh 185 pounds,
but they're certainly very, very rich.
How did it start?
A few years ago a bunch of extremely wealthy Californians met,
liked the look of each other a lot, and formed a group called Extropians.
Revealed to the world in a Wired article in 1994 as "a philosophy of
boundless expansion, of upward - and outwardness, of fantastic
superabundance," their greeting was described in some quite painful
detail, for us, thus:
"Right hand out in front of you, fingers spread and pointing at the
sky. Grasp the other person's right hand, intertwine fingers, and close.
Then shoot both hands upward, straight up, all the way up, letting
go at the top, whooping 'Yo!' or 'Hey!'"
Extropianism, we were told, expoused "extremely advanced
technology" and displayed "dedicated, immovable optimism".
The hated gubberment got it particularly hard from these wealthy
uberkinder, for whom the State was "regarded as one of the
major restrictive forces in the Milky Way galaxy."
Employees of the government were mockingly described as "entropians".
They felt entitled to mock the poor or stupid, and amongst this
self-selecting circle this amounted to almost everyone else,
because they were confident they themselves would write the
history books.
But the most interesting thing about this ersatz cult was the amount
of energy that its members devoted to wanting to live forever. To
flee the surly bonds of mortality, once and for all, the Extropians
devoted much of their disposable income (of which, there was
much to dispose) to cryogenic research - deciding how to freeze
themselves for eternal life, and deciding who amongst them Shall Be First.
Time will tell if any of this elite will succeed and have themselves
cryogenically reborn in a future time, but that's what they're
hoping for. But give them a plaudit for their imagination. While
the eugenicists of the thirties had a simple solution, which was to
sterlize or isolate the poor or the ugly, or the lumpenproletariat
who didn't share their happy thoughts, the Extropians have found
a clean and politically-acceptable solution, one as we will see,
that is endorsed by today's hygienic punditocracy.
--------------------
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/35/32802.html
--------------------
'I Married an Extropian' - reader
By Andrew Orlowski in Amsterdam
Posted: 12/09/2003 at 12:46 GMT
Letters
Admiral Poindexter reappeared to defend the
Pentagon's Terror Casino (PAM) this week. Our coverage
provoked a few letters, and some corrections. Extropians
aren't rich.
A small footnote to history - the more famous of the
two founders of Extropianism is from Britain; he is a
friend of mine from university, and we tend to have a
flurry of exchanging emails once or twice a year. . .
The 'ideas futures' idea was one they seemed very
keen on back in the late 80s. I was not surprised to see
one of this group being behind it, but I was too lazy
to research it, so thanks for your article.
I have personally long felt that Libertarianism and
related beliefs have something to do with poor potty training.
Most people come rapidly to the conclusion that governments
are, as with all human endeavours, the product of flawed humans,
rather than a body of selfless people working tirelessly in
the public interest, they then move on and get on with their
lives ignoring the government when appropriate, trying to
intervene when appropriate etc.. Libertarians, however,
seem to get caught at this 'ohmigod it's not
fair' stage and continue to bang on about it ad nauseum.
I am probably preaching to the choir here, but to
me it seems that the main reason the computer / software /
whatever you want to call it industry punches well below
its weight vs. e.g. the entertainment industry /
the military-snooping complex / Fortune 500 companies
outsourcing everything to the developing world, is the
fondness for the libertarian 'stick fingers in the ears
and repeat 'it's not fair, you're interfering with the market,
let the market decide' trope.
Clearly there is research to be done here on the geek /
libertarian / Aspergers / potty training nexus, but I feel
sure that research dollars would be more than well
spent if they lead to a cure.
-- John Styles
--------------------
----------------------------
from _The Prodigy_ by Amy Wallace (1986),
a biography of the ill-fated William James Sidis.
There's a review (of sorts) of this book at
http://hiqnews.megafoundation.org/William_Sidis.htm
pp. 41 - 42:
"Billy's most ambitious project. . . [at age 7] was the
invention of a new language, Vendergood. . .
[W]ritten in the manner of a school text, the forty-
page _Book of Vendergood_ outlines the basic rules,
structure, and pronunciation of a language that is
Latin-based but draws on German, French (of which Billy
was particularly fond), and several other Romance
languages. Reading it creates the same strange
effect of Billy's other books: this marvelous,
sophisticated achievement is tinged throughout with
a childish fascination with form and pomposity;
the adult reader feels constantly bounced between
the work of a genius and that of a little boy.
Billy's fascination with order went to such extremes
that he actually made up new elements of grammar,
as if the topic weren't difficult enough. For example:
'There are 8 Modes, the indicative, potential,
imperative absolute, strongeable, subjunctive,
optative, imperative & infinitive." Chapters
bear such intimidating titles as 'Imperfect and
Future Indicative Active' -- hardly layman's
lingo. One painfully difficult page contains a
breakdown of the word 'the' into an off-putting
array of gender and inflection variations. He
has made a simple article more complex than a
Japanese verb, in the interest of exactitude
of expression.
Other parts of Vendergood are refreshingly clear
and simple, such as the explanation of the
origin of Roman numerals. This, along with several
pages of hard mathematics, is injected into
the _Book of Vendergood_ in the interest of
promoting a mass move to base twelve, instead
of base ten. . ."
pp. 73 - 78:
"[At age 11], Billy was writing a serious political
document, a constitution for a utopian society dubbed
'Hesperia.' Fifty densely-typed pages, consisting
of 'eight articles, fifty-nine sections, and five
hundred and eighty-four provisions,' are written in
a legalese so ponderous one would think only a certified
lawyer could have produced it. . .
Structurally, Billy's paper utopia is reminiscent
of the United States Constitution. Philosophically,
it is a complete departure from the vision of the
founding fathers. Billy's best of all possible
worlds emerges as rigidly totalitarian, though he
never uses that term. . .
After. . . [a] rather ordinary start, the eccentricity
developed in true Sidis style. The Constitution,
we are told, was completed 'on this twenty-ninth
of November in this year of the solar calendar
one thousand nine hundred and fifty-eight, at thirty
minutes after twenty-two o'clock.' Next is the legal
definition of a day in Hesperia. . . Hesperian
weeks are not so conventional. Instead of seven-day
slices, Hesperia has five-day 'quintads,' its
days being named Primo, Altro, Trito, Quarto,
and Quinto. Considerable space is devoted to
the laws governing the proper construction of
calendars and to naming the legal holidays --
two of Billy's childhood obsessions that persisted
into adolescence.
After these basics are set forth, an Orwellian tone
begins to tinge the laws. Each inhabitant of
Hesperia is designated a 'name-number,' odd for
men and even for women. . .
It was not easy to become a citizen of Hesperia --
naturalization policies were severe. A visitor who
violated even a single law was ineligible for
citizenship. Nor was being law-abiding enough --
an aspirant to Hesperian citizenship had to
pass an intelligence test. . . Billy wrote:
'The term "intelligence test" shall denote any
means whatever for finding out the amount of
particular specified kinds of information or
of reasoning ability, or both, possessed by a
person.'
In order to vote one took an expanded test, which
required knowledge of still more laws. Any
citizen who couldn't pass the voting intelligence
test was called a minor. Along with minors,
'idiots and insane persons' were barred from
voting. . .
Throughout the Constitution Billy vents his
spleen at his favorite peeve, religion. Having
long ago decided upon atheism, he remained as
irascible as his father on the subject. 'Religious
beliefs,' he asserted, 'are defined as beliefs,
opinions, or creeds, which are in any way dogmatic
or otherwise authoritative or which are in any
way to be taken on faith or otherwise without
criticism.' . . .
Here and there, in the midst of the dense field
of provisions, articles, and bylaws, the occasional
peculiar Sidisism pops up: The legislature is
empowered to make laws 'to prevent explosions of
any unreasonable noise or disagreeable smell.' . . .
And there is the irresistibly odd Article 3 of
Section IV, which states simply, 'No person
shall be compelled by law to do impossibilities.'
By far the strangest articles in the Constitution
of Hesperia are those pertaining to sex, marriage,
and the family. In William Sidis's utopia,
marriage is forbidden. No legal contracts between
couples are binding, there is no community
property, polygamy is completely legal. . .
Not surprisingly, Billy's laws concerning sex
crimes are eccentric. For example, 'Any person
who forces a man and a woman to cohabit . . .
shall be punished by imprisonment for six years.'
If a man rapes a woman, the punishment is the
same. On the other hand, 'Any woman who cohabits
or attempts to cohabit with a man without his
consent shall be punished by imprisonment for
three years, and in the case of a birth resulting
therefrom, shall be deprived of the right to draw
the regular disability insurance or birth
payment . . . the child shall not be deprived
of any money or other privileges.'
So strong are Billy's feelings on the subject of
marriage that he cannot resist a parting salvo
in his Constitution, an adamant, officious
summing-up to protect future generations from
the horrors of the nuclear family. From the height
of his eleven-year-old soapbox, he pronounces:
7. No amendments shall be passed before the year
of the solar calendar two thousand one hundred which
shall in any way or manner make valid any agreements
for cohabitation of a man with a woman, or which
shall in any way or manner affect, change, or alter
the fifth clause of Section VIII of the third
Article of this Constitution, or which shall in
any way regulate or restrict or authorize the
regulation or restriction of cohabitation of a man
with a woman except as mentioned in clauses 19,
20, and 21 of Section VII of the second Article
and in clause 13 of Section VII of the third
Article of this Constitution."
And in an account written by a reporter (_Prodigy_, p. 27):
"At a hotel in the mountains, it was the custom
of the infant prodigy to read the menu with infinite
care, looking about the room to see if all the
dishes mentioned were represented on the tables
and to inquire anxiously for those he did not
see. Once he chanced to be brought in early
to breakfast, namely, at 7:45, when upon
consulting the menu he found that breakfast was
served from 8 to 9. He was seized by perfect
panic when the waiter brought in the breakfast
ahead of time; he required that it be taken
back at once, and finally was borne shrieking
from the room, calling out like an irate
Hebrew prophet: 'It is from 8 to 9. It has
been written.'"
From an article by cryonicist Mike Darwin entitled "The Lone Wolf"
ReplyDeletehttp://www.geocities.com/longevityrpt/lr75.htm
Someone so dehumanized by the cruelty of this world that he calls himself
"Driven From the Pack" wrote the following on Cryonet and deserves a response:
> Mike, I am one of those people who inspire dislike in others. In case my email
> address doesn't give away my thesis, here it is: I am not a pack animal.
> I am an atheist, and a contrarian. Humans are animals, and those whom they sense
> are not "of the pack," are driven away. Those outsiders ARE treated cruelly,
> just as the animal whose smell is wrong is savagely bitten and forced away,
> so too do we cryonicists feel the cruel slings and arrows of humanity.
. . .
Human outsiders will often band together, and will work to "tame" or "channel"
the struggle for dominance and social acceptance with great success. This means
that they do not inspire in each other the desire to be hateful and cruel. They
usually externalize it, instead. . .
[However, c]ryonicists, as a group, disproportionately treat each other with
more interpersonal savagery than any other group of outsiders I've been a part of.
It reminds [me] a little of the old movie about homosexual life before Stonewall called
"The Boys in the Band". It is not pretty, and it knows no equilibrium, and no end.
To be admired, or even worshipped, is not to be loved personally. Dogs do that well,
and some people do it well. If you find it, hang onto it.
> Just because we do not belong does not make us wrong in wanting to live.
No. And I never said it did. But self-destructive savagery and irrational acts
of cruelty and denial of reality can make you **undeserving of living**.
---------------------------------------
http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=12599
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999
From: Mike Darwin
Subject: Those Likeable Cryonicists
Appropos the debate over whether cryonicists are "nice" or "likeable"
people, I find, much to my utter amazement, that I am compelled to offer
the following observations:
1) Many of the rank and file are wonderful and kind people who a broad
cross-section of the American population would be at ease with, or, in
other words, view as "normal."
2) While a few amongst the leadership/activist contingent have been kind
and nice people, they have had peculiarities which would probably alienate
or cause discomfort in ~50% of the population. An example would be being
gay or lesbian, deeply into S&M, "lite" street drug users (pot, Ecstasy,
etc.), or at best, socially very naive.
3) As for the rest, I finally ran across a description so perfect and
compelling that I felt I must post it to the "information ether" so that it
is not lost to posterity. It summarizes *exactly* how I feel, and I would
include myself in this description. It is adapted slightly from a recent
movie review by the critic Roger Ebert:
"The real problem with many cryonicists is not simply that they are
"unpopular" -- they are creepy and not very nice. They are the kind of
people who inspire in you the inexplicable desire to be hurtful and cruel.
You don't meet people like that very often, but when you met them, you know
who they are. And you want to get awy from them before you do something
that would undermine your self-image as a nice person."
--with thanks to Roger Ebert
---------------------------------------
http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=12503
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999
From: Charles Platt
Subject: Normal Cryonicists
I'm glad I returned to sample CryoNet just for the entertainment value of
this statement by Robert Ettinger:
> There are really far fewer unbalanced people in cryonics than you might
> expect in a movement as revolutionary as ours. If you attend meetings of
> any of the organizations--highly recommended--you will find, with
> inevitable exceptions, that most are very solid citizens with a very
> conventional range of views on most topics.
As the saying goes: ROTFL. As a journalist I have visited many
subcultures, from Mensa to hardcore militia movements; and I have found
more socially dysfunctional, pig-headed, and sometimes downright
sociopathic misfits in cryonics than anywhere else. Of course, this is
part of their charm, and provides endless material for good anecdotes. But
there is a serious side effect. Several years ago I discovered that it was
pointless to hold meetings to recruit new members of the Alcor chapter of
New York, because some of the long-term existing members were so _odd,_
they scared off more-normal newcomers. The meetings actually served as an
anti-promotional tool and insured that in this chapter, at least, cryonics
would retain its stigma.
Quite possibly, CI is different. I haven't been to any of their meetings.
CI members could be as "normal" as a meeting of the local chapter of the
Lions or the Elks, for all I know. But based on my experience of every
other subset of cryonicists during the past ten years, I'm skeptical.
> They also tend to be much
> better educated and better informed than average.
I would rephrase this as, "They THINK they are much better educated and
better informed than average."
PS. For the record, personally I'm well aware that I am nowhere near the
center of any imaginable bell curve.
---------------------------------------
http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=12509
From: Daniel Ust
Subject: Re: Normal Cryonicists
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999
. . .
> > They also tend to be much better educated and better informed than average.
>
> I would rephrase this as, "They THINK they are much better educated and
> better informed than average."
I agree here. Each group I've been exposed to - libertarians, Objectivists,
cryonicists, Extropians, transhumanists - tends to think it has some special
insight into reality and that its members got this because they are smarter
than average. I don't really think this matters much - except that by being
smug, they might tend to overlook intelligence in and ideas from people
outside or critical of their group's ideas.
---------------------------------------
http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=0036
MANY ARE COLD BUT FEW ARE FROZEN
A Physician Considers Cryonics
(c) 1994 Steven B. Harris, M.D.
. . .
Humanism is ultimately a socialistic belief. Many humanists
find their sense of meaning in service to the community.
Humanists, noting that cemeteries cover more land area than
public parks in Maryland, will have themselves cremated in order
to give the living a bit more room. Humanists request donations
to the National Cancer Institute in lieu of flowers at funerals.
Humanists are organ donors. A humanist is likely to see the act
of getting one's corpse frozen at great expense as the ultimate
egotism; as a selfishness beyond social redemption.
Cryonicists in contrast, do not mind being selfish. An
astonishing number of them are libertarians or even believers in
the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Above all else, cryonicists want to
_live_, and regard demands of self-sacrifice by society as a sort
of perversion. As a rule, liberal guilt bothers them not at all.
I dunno -- the "autistic spectrum" often seems to me to cast so wide a net as to verge on uselessness, or simply to provide a pretext for indulging prejudices against certain kinds of shyness and contrariness.
ReplyDeleteThat isn't to deny that there are surely some diagnosable conditions associated with the term, but it seems to me to risk pathologizing perfectly flourishing wanted lifeways that happen to be marginal. You know, rather in the way that once a upon a time a person we might call an alcoholic might instead have been called a person who likes a drink -- and while some benefit from the arrival of that pathologization others very likely have not.
I mean, I'll make it personal -- I'm certainly a very shy, cranky, contrarian, hyper-analytic person, exhausted rather than energized by crowds, and so on. I have also, on a separate note, been known to prefer misanthropic writers like Dorothy Parker over generous ones like Helen Keller, and have been myself a careless clumsily mean-spirited person in plenty of circumstances. Come to think of it, most of the people I get along with at all are highly cranky contrarians and acerbic shits when they're out of sorts. People with "positive attitudes" tend to strike me as brainless bullying santimonious assholes endlessly trying to sell crap.
Neither my introspective analytic proximity to the autism spectrum nor my cantankerous proximity to the sociopathy apectrum, if there is such a thing, has made any kind of idiotic cryonics enthusiast out of me or any other kind of futurological stooge. Look what a troubling data-point I make! Or don't I?
I guess I know better than to assume that an argumentative position that would constitute the exhibition of a sociopathic personality were it somehow exhaustively or predominately to characterize its author, since such utterances are usually offering us the merest glimpse of the actual person who authored it, who has who knows what depths, generosities, kindnesses to kittens, contradictions and so on in them that find little registration in one's argumentative writings.
I do call out stupidity, foolishness, and ugly nonsense here, endlessly -- it's my irritation with that sort of thing that impels me into blogging in the first place most of the time, drawing me into a state of mind very different than the one that draws me into a lecture hall or into a conversation with my partner about some enthusiasm or other -- and if I call authors of such nonsense to task for what they say and what they facilitate in saying it, I labor under no abiding illusions that I actually know anybody I'm talking about personally, you know?
So, too, it seems to me that when we point to the ways in which discourses facilitate confusions or insensitivities, or benefit incumbents or anti-democratic authoritarians or faith-based perspectives or what have you as a more or less structural matter -- you have to take care not to be too quick to impute conscious intentions to what amount to structural entailments (those who find themselves on the wrong end of such analyses should also take care not to hear personal accusations in what are structural analyses), that is to say, one has to be careful not to treat structurally discernible associations as diagnoses at the case level, and so on.
It's not that I don't hear where you're coming from, actually, but I do think it's tricky to pitch these sorts of insights in a way that does more good than harm. This is something I am working on myself, believe me.
Dale wrote:
ReplyDelete> [T]he "autistic spectrum" often seems to me to cast so wide a net as
> to verge on uselessness, or simply to provide a pretext for indulging
> prejudices against certain kinds of shyness and contrariness. . .
>
> It's not that I don't hear where you're coming from, actually, but I
> do think it's tricky to pitch these sorts of insights in a way that
> does more good than harm.
Well, what can I say? YMMV, of course. I am not Simon Baron-Cohen.
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.tourette/msg/7b784e149796ed67
Jane Meyerding
Aug 18 1999
On 14 Aug 1999 anon-23...@anon.twwells.com wrote:
RE: http://www.udel.edu/bkirby/asperger/putnampaper.html
> Somehow, this article left a bad taste in my mouth. I'm not disagreeing
> that people's personalities, strengths and deficits, etc., are caused in
> part by different ways of informational processing, biological
> neurochemistry, etc. But why pathologize "nerds" in this manner? Why
> not talk about jock disorder or cheerleader syndrome? (Although one
> could use similar stereotyping to argue that Narcissistic and Histrionic
> Personality Disorders fit the bill. But don't get me started on my
> opinion on the diagnoses of Personality Disorders.) The bottom line is,
> why can't we just accept people for who they are, strengths, weaknesses,
> and eccentricities, and appreciate the wide variety of humanity that God
> has created? It's intolerance of non-conformity, cruelty to those who
> are different, and the condoning of Social Darwinism that makes the
> lives of "nerds" - or people with Tourette's - unbearable, not the
> conditions themselves. Maybe that's what we should seek a cure for.
>
> Alex
> Who was both a nerd and a cheerleader in high school
In an ideal world, yes, indeed. But that's not where we live. Your
argument applies to all differences. Why diagnose (or recognize) T[ourette's]
S[yndrome] as a category, for example? Or to put it another way, why are many
people so *relieved* when they are diagnosed with TS? Because they finally know
it's not "their fault," not simply a personal flaw. What's more, the
diagnosis makes it possible for them to find "community" with people in
venues like this.
AS (Asperger's syndrome, which many "experts" believe is indistinguishable
from "High-Functioning Autism" except according to the individual
diagnosticians' personal prejudices) exists because a certain number of
people's lives can be understood so much better when AS is used as a
"map." Same with TS. There is no "TS gene," as far as anyone knows. But
people who talk together about what it feels like to be someone who
experiences the world with a tourettic brain come to accept the TS
category as useful. Similarly, people who experience the world from inside
an AS brain have come to recognize the pattern of differences (from those
with "normal" brains) and similiarities (with one another) that can
usefully be referred to as AS.
There are studies of dead brains that show physically differences, if
that's what you're interested in. For me, it's the experience that counts.
Some of the professional experts make a living out of nitpicking the
categories. We shouldn't let their opinions overrule what we know from our
own lives.
Jane Meyerding (AS and TS)
P.S. If anyone is interested in reading about how I came to recognize AS
in myself, you can find the story at http://www.ani.ac/jane.html
Some day I should insert an addendum in which I cop to having my
self-diagnosis verified by a paid expert. [sigh] I don't always live up to
my own standards.
----------------------------------------
Diagonally parked in a parallel universe
Jane Meyerding
http://ani.autistics.org/jane.html
I've been calling myself . . ."non-aligned. . . " for decades now, in
an attempt to express both my attachment to. . . and my inability
to be or feel part of any formal or informal group. . . (The tag-line
"diagonally parked in a parallel universe" comes to mind at this point.)
. . .
Imagine my surprise, then, when I realized I was able to feel "aligned"
with this disparate group of individuals joined together by neurological
differences. . .
As lots and lots of people are finding out, the internet gives us
access to a vast pool of resources: the experiences of individual
human beings. Some of them are off the wall, and some of them
are playing games, but I remain amazed at the way we are able
to make of certain cyberspace neighborhoods a place where we
are peers learning from one another. The anarchistic potential of
the internet has been noted often before. What's especially clear
in the groups where I have been hanging out is how the internet
can empower individuals--that is, how individuals coming together
through the internet can increase each individual's power--by sheer
access to information. And it's real information, not theory. There
is no medical practitioner on the planet who has access to more
information on AS than I do, because I am an active participant in daily
explorations of what it's like to be AS, explorations illuminated by
hundreds of years of hands-on experience. (I refer, of course, to the
accumulated, thought-over lives of all the adults in these groups, plus
all the histories of all the AS children whose parents have turned to
the internet for answers/knowledge not forthcoming from the experts.)
. . .
Nevertheless, I am bothered by the fact that one element
keeping me (and lots of others) from "coming out" universally
about our place on the autism spectrum is the way society
withholds legitimacy from experiences that are not officially
reviewed. It's hard enough for people to grasp the distinction
between psychology and neurology (hence the continued existence
of the "blame the mother" school of thought about autism). If
you want someone to make that shift in their thinking, you'd
better have some "proof" to offer. Why should they expend the
energy if it's all just a bunch of hot air? Without the "legitimacy" of
an officially bestowed diagnosis, I pretty much just have to suck
it up when people mis-read me and my life. I can't give (or expect
them to have time for) an explanation based on "nothing but" my
own experience, research, and exploration with others.
Or can I? Maybe this is a way to work towards another
kind of shift: of notions about expertise. With the pooling
of experiences and information on the internet, maybe we
can begin to develop a new set of expectations about who
knows what, and how much different kinds of knowledge
are worth. Instead of top-down expertise, we can exercise
bottom-up expertise. Sounds good to me, from my point of view.
Dale wrote: I dunno -- the "autistic spectrum" often seems to me to cast so wide a net as to verge on uselessness, or simply to provide a pretext for indulging prejudices against certain kinds of shyness and contrariness.
ReplyDeleteThe thing that irritates me is the very idea that "autistic" necessarily implies "pathology". Having autistic neurology may indeed be a factor in problematic interactions with one's environment, but oftentimes the difficulty emerges from certain sorts of communicative difficulty on both ends.
(I figure you know this, but I picked up a bit of an inkling of "some people saying they're autistic are just shy" there, which even if you didn't mean that, is something which bears noting as it has itself been used to marginalize the views and statements of autistic people. Nowhere does any definition of autism say "incapable of any form of useful communication, ever", and yet there are people who figure that any autistic person capable of self-advocacy must be 'not autistic enough' to have anything to say on the matter).
Mind you, I think comments theorizing about an autistic extropian subculture are perhaps casting too wide of a proverbial net, and it bugs the heck out of me to come across references to things like "autistic economics". So there are contexts in which I do perhaps agree that the term is "diluted".
Also if you haven't read it yet, I wrote something last year called Conceptualizing Autism that explains what, at least, I mean when I describe myself or someone else as "autistic".
Your point's well taken Anne -- mine was just that the term "autism" seems to have become a center of figurative gravity taking up and pseudo-explaining all sorts of disparate phenomena (it's funny you mentioned the "non-autistic economics" folks, since I had that very group in mind among other things). I am definitely not of the people you mention "who figure that any autistic person capable of self-advocacy must be 'not autistic enough' to have anything to say on the matter," but my learning curve on sensitivity to the issues involved is definitely obviously still high enough that it hadn't occurred to me then as it does now that I might have triggered that alarm bell.
ReplyDeleteDale wrote: the term "autism" seems to have become a center of figurative gravity taking up and pseudo-explaining all sorts of disparate phenomena
ReplyDeleteOh yes definitely. I *figured* this was probably what you meant, but I wanted to make sure and also just let you know about the alarm-bell angle I mentioned with regard to self-advocacy just for edification purposes.
Also, regarding Jim's comments and references re. libertarianism and autism: I think any connection here, if it exists, may have more to do with privilege than anything else. You sort of have to be at a certain economic stratum to get diagnosed as autistic in the first place; poor kids with similar characteristics more often get written off as "disturbed" or "retarded" regardless of what is actually going on in their heads. And back before I knew how privilege worked, I "tried on" a libertarian mantle but it didn't last long, as it seemed to be proposing things about reality and human nature that simply didn't hold up to any sort of reasoned analysis (which, I learned, *must* account for things like power imbalances).
And, just anecdotally, autistic people I've known and met run the entirety of the political spectrum; I certainly easily have encountered as many socialist-leaning auties as libertarian-leaning ones...
I "tried on" a libertarian mantle but it didn't last long, as it seemed to be proposing things about reality and human nature that simply didn't hold up to any sort of reasoned analysis
ReplyDeleteFunny. The same thing happened to me fresh out of high school -- and my partner Eric reports having had the very same episode himself briefly, too.
Jim's comments really give my scroll wheel a workout.
ReplyDeleteThe yellow face it burns us!
ReplyDelete> It makes a certain sense at least that one would find code-jockey
ReplyDelete> handwavers of the "cybernetic totalist" school of non-thought among
> the singularitarian Robot God branch of superlative futurology and
> among the "Mind Uploading" enthusiasts. But why do computer coders
> throng the the nanofactory crowd, and the cryonics crowd, and the
> negligible senescence longevity medicine crowd as well -- communities
> of futurological faithfulness preoccupied with scientific questions
> about which they endlessly declare their consummate superiority
> to scientific consensus but which depend most of all on biology?
Siempre Viva! Live forever!
(as Isabella Rossellini as "Lisle von Rhoman" exclaims to
Meryl Streep as "Madeline Ashton" in Robert Zemeckis' 1992
_Death Becomes Her_)
http://eugen.leitl.org/tt/msg10827.html
CryoNet Message #18953
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002
From: Scott Badger
Subject: Timing is Everything
> 2) on the Kurzweil-More estimated time of Singularity
> as being circa 2040-2060 A.D., and 3) assuming that the
> Singularity will necessarily precede the development
> of mind uploading.
>
> Of course, your mileage may vary.
>
> Regards,
> Michael LaTorra
Actually, and I quote Ray K.:
"The conclusions that I draw from these analyses are
as follows. Even with the "conservative" assumptions,
we find that nonbiological intelligence crosses the
threshold of matching and then very quickly exceeds
biological intelligence (both hardware and software)
prior to 2030."
Max M. was more conservative suggesting it would be no
sooner than 2020 and no later than 2100 with 2050
[as the likeliest target?].
http://kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?m=1
I'm rooting for Ray!
It's so utterly amazing to me that I (and so many like
me) find myself living this great adventure; actually
being here at this point in history. It's like I'm in
this foot race and radical life extension technologies
along with the promise of an indefinite life span are
either waiting just on this side ... or just on the
other side of the finish line.
It's really no different than having 3 months to live
from some cancer, and knowing that a cure will be
found in "about" 3 months. The drama may seem more
pronounced in the latter case, but that's an illusion.
Our situation is every bit as dramatic though we are
almost blind to it now. Wait until around 2025 and
everyone starts "getting" the fact that virtual
immortality is just around the bend.
This will be a game of inches for me and many of you.
If I can extend my life by even one year through
exercise and nutritional habits, my chances for
survival may increase dramatically. An extra five
years may make all the difference. So why can't I
develop healthier habits? Aaargh!
Vita perpetua,
Scott Badger
Anne Corwin wrote:
ReplyDelete> Dale wrote:
>
> > I dunno -- the "autistic spectrum" often seems to me to
> > cast so wide a net as to verge on uselessness, or simply to provide
> > a pretext for indulging prejudices against certain kinds of shyness
> > and contrariness.
>
> . . .
>
> I picked up a bit of an inkling of "some people saying they're autistic
> are just shy" there, which even if you didn't mean that, is something which
> bears noting as it has itself been used to marginalize the views and
> statements of autistic people.
"The S[hy] Word (and Why I Hate It)"
by Jane Meyerding (September 2002)
http://mjane.zolaweb.com/shy.html