You Robot Cultists really are so funny.
The moment anybody points out your eager affiliation in a self-described "Movement," with an archipelago of actually-existing membership organizations, helmed by a fairly static cast of marginal characters most of whom are the most patent cranks and wannabe gurus imaginable suddenly you retreat and protest you are a nebulous cloud without a material trace in the world!
The moment anybody skeptical or sensible about the curious number of demonstrably existing, usually loudly self-proclaiming market fundamentalists, eugenicists, reductionists, self-appointed soopergenius elites, white boys playing with imaginary toys, enthusiasts for and True Believers in not just one, but one after another after another marginal and pseudoscientific position and techno-transcendentalizing wish-fulfillment fantasy, from good old fashioned AI dead-enders, to cryonics scam artists, to Drextopian nano-cornucopiasts, to incoherent "mind"-uploading immortalists, to straightforward self-esteem huckters and phony nutritional supplement salesmen, suddenly you retreat from your own declared identity, affiliation, sub(cult)ure and protest that none of you actually have anything to do with one another.
Honestly, it's all too facile and absurd for words.
Friday, October 15, 2010
The First Rule of Robot Cult Is You Don't Talk About Robot Cult
Upgraded and adapted from the Moot, this is my response to Ben Goertzel's protestations about my derisive use of the term "Robot Cultist" to describe a certain, er, apparently "loose network" of scarcely affiliated loners who just happen to belong to membership organizations who publicly fancy themselves the avant garde of a techno-transcendental ideological movement that will sweep and utterly transform the world, among whom he is quite obviously, and insistently, one himself:
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9 comments:
a fairly static cast of marginal characters most of whom are the most patent cranks and wannabe gurus imaginable
Hmm... you're calling me me part of a "static cast of ... patent cranks" ;-p ...
But I'm really not a "crank" according to the ordinary definition of the term. I've got some strange ideas, but have also done plenty of work that has been well-accepted by academia, government and business.
Actually, IMO you're basically engaging in "crank sociology" in this post.
My dad teaches Social Movements as part of his job as a sociology prof at Rutgers U, and I've studied that area a bit myself.
Transhumanism is indeed a social movement, with many beliefs and a few practices that are marginal relative to mainstream society.
Studying transhumanism as a social movement could be interesting, if done in a serious-minded and intelligent way.
However, a cult is a special kind of social movement, and a serious sociological study of transhumanism, using standard terminology, would conclude that (in its present form) it's not usefully describable as a "cult."
To sensibly broaden the concept of "cult" enough to make it encompass transhumanism, one would have to stretch it far beyond its current typical meaning in the sociology field.
A transhumanist cult would be a possible thing, certainly, but I don't know of any at the moment. If you do, I'd be curious to find out about them.
Oh, Madge, you're soaking in it.
A relevant comment from our exchange elsewhere:
Do you actually hear yourself? So, you're not a perfect instantiation of some dictionary's definition of a cult, but only, you know, saliently culty. Whatever get's you through the night, guy. If I had a dime for every fracking defensive True Believer online who bores everybody for hours lecturing them on how they're not technically in a cult so we should find some other word to describe their cult-likeness I could pay off my student loans. I wish you Robot Cultists were equally scrupulous in your deployment of terms like "intelligence" and "longevity" and "nanotechnology" fer cryinoutloud. In future, whenever you hear me derisively refer to the marvelously transhumanistically-oriented people of your peer-group just treat that as a convenient short-hand for "techno-transcendentalizing-organized-subculture-and-self-appointed-presumably-history-ending-world-sweeping-avant-garde-membership-movement-that-isn't-a-cult-so-stop-saying-that!" I don't see how that makes things better for you particularly, but, hey, I'm feeling generous.
Also, there's probably no polite way to say this, but if you think you may be coding a history-ending Robot God, if you think you may live thousands of years or more in your SENS-refurbished tookus, in a replacement Robot Body, or as an informorph in the cyberspatial sprawl, or if you think ubicomp or slavebots or nanobotic swarms may overcome the impasse of stakeholder politics by delivering us superabundance on the cheap, then, well, what can I say, yes, I think you're a crank.
hey, what can I say...
You have it your way, and I'll have it the right way ;-)
Are you coming on to me?
Are you coming on to me?
That will happen right after the Singularity.
Part of the "Rapture of the Nerds" and all that ;-)
Please try to be patient...
You're right. We must both be strong. Until then, for me, do please stop with the winking.
> I'm really not a "crank" according to the ordinary definition
> of the term. I've got some strange ideas. . .
As did, e.g., Christopher McKinstry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_McKinstry
http://www.robotwisdom.com/ai/mckinstry.html
I'm afraid that public-sphere AI "experts", whether they've
published books or not, have inherited such unsavory associations
that the public at large is probably justified in considering
them cranks unless proven otherwise.
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