tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post2751147159182604041..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: Among the Sooper Brains (Updated)Dale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-44908243355107897832014-11-02T12:28:41.905-08:002014-11-02T12:28:41.905-08:00So, "advancedathiest" is Mark "Plus...So, "advancedathiest" is Mark "Plus" is Mark Potts... Makes me wonder how much the Moot amounts to an echo chamber for real. It's as if Bertrand Russell sent himself the famous fan letter from the solipsist.<br /><br />To turn to substance, such as it is, once again you find Robot Cultists misrecognizing critique for hate speech. I highlight the misconstrual of wishful/faithful assertions as warranted fact as well as the citation of religious/ mythological tropes in techno-transcendental discourse because they can be shown to be happening, not because I think it allows for juicy name-calling as a partisan of a different tribe (presumably Mr. Plus thinks I'm in the pinko commie tribe) than theirs. Quite apart from the fact that the incessant declaration that my critiques lack all content provides a pretty damning record of what bad readers they are and threatens to expose them as kinda sorta more dumb than sooper-brained -- since the arguments and citations are palpably <i>there</i> even if they dislike them -- it is also curious how close they skirt to admitting their views merely to be subcultural signalling rather than pristine logic or warranted science in such responses.<br /><br />I notice that even the contrarians who admit me to be at any rate a useful idiot seem to insist on my value getting at an "emotional" and "motivational" level, no doubt subordinate to the hard steel peen of less wrong logical method. Sometimes I can't help but wonder -- can they all really deny the legitimate, substantial rhetorical force of Cicero and Twain, Wilde and Dorothy Parker, Mencken and Hunter Thompson, just because their discourse was "negative" rather than "positive" -- whatever finally that is supposed to mean -- and was playful with language rather than fetishistically plainspoken?<br /><br />Obviously, I am not a member of that august company, but it isn't exactly hard to grasp the generic kinship of my caustic and aphoristic critical mode to their school.<br /><br />As you say, for the moment at least, one of them thinks I'm funny. If the Robot God punishes me for my blasphemies by uploading me to the Less Wrong deck in Holodeck Hell I guess I'll look for that dude at the restaurant at the end of the universe.<br /><br />What dull boys so many of the singularitarians are revealed to be (yet again) in dismissing the whole body of undeniably significant satiric and jeremiac wit and rhetoric. To return to the title of the post, Some Sooper Brains, eh?Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-34561647455076514702014-11-02T05:22:15.571-08:002014-11-02T05:22:15.571-08:00It turns out that none other than Mark Potts (Mark...It turns out that none other than Mark Potts (Mark "Plus"),<br />a.k.a. "advancedatheist", is the LW pot-stirrer who linked<br />to Amor Mundi. He then went on to say:<br /><br />------------<br />advancedatheist<br />28 October 2014<br /><br />Dale's blog apparently doesn't have many readers, judging by how few<br />comments his posts have. But I find it interesting because he has<br />uncritically bought into the Enlightenment's wishful thinking about<br />democracy, equality, human fungibility and so forth, while he dismisses<br />"robot cultism" as a competitive utopianism based on other people's<br />fantasies he doesn't share.<br />====<br /><br />"Plus" did link to a post which, as it happens, has no comments<br />(not even my usual additions from the peanut gallery), though<br />other recent posts on Amor Mundi on the same subject have<br />plenty of comments (at least from me ;-> ).<br /><br />But all is not lost! It turns out that one LWer (though for<br />how much longer, I wouldn't want to bet on) is a fan of this<br />blog (or at least of the posts containing "robot cult" criticism):<br /><br />------------<br />CellBioGuy<br />28 October 2014<br /><br />I, for one, love that guy's blog.<br /><br />++++<br /><br />knb<br />29 October 2014<br /><br />Because you're a connoisseur of insipid name-calling and delirious<br />political grandstanding on non-political issues?<br /><br />++++<br /><br />CellBioGuy<br />30 October 2014<br /><br />More because I think his assessment of the effects and motivations<br />of libertarianism-in-practice and the ideological and mythological<br />underpinnings of singulatarianism are more often than not spot on,<br />and the name calling based on that is just funny. Other posts on the<br />blog I tend not to notice.<br />====<br /><br />Another commenter points out that Amor Mundi robot cult criticism contains<br />little "factual" content but is useful in reminding LWers<br />that not everyone in the world shares their "emotional" biases,<br />and is also an indicator of how much (PR?) work there is left to do:<br /><br />------------<br />Sysice<br />28 October 2014<br /><br />I find it very useful to have posts like these as an emotional<br />counter to the echo chamber effect. Obviously this has little or<br />no effect on the average LW reader's factual standpoint, but reminds<br />us both of the heuristical absurdity of our ideas, and how much<br />we have left to accomplish.<br />====<br /><br />And "XiXiDu" (Alexander Kruel), one of LW's own resident gadflies<br />(he must have some kind of protected status as token contrarian,<br />because he's gotten pretty close to the bone with criticism<br />on his own Web site) chimes in:<br /><br />------------<br />XiXiDu<br />28 October 2014<br /><br />Would I, epistemically speaking, be better off adopting the beliefs<br />held by all those who have recently voiced their worries about AI risks?<br />If I did that then I would end up believing that I was living in a simulation,<br />in a mathematical universe, and that within my lifetime, thanks to<br />radical life extension, I could hope to rent an apartment on a seastead<br />on the high seas of a terraformed Mars. Or something along these lines...<br /><br />The common ground between those people seems to be that they all hold<br />weird beliefs, beliefs that someone who has not been<br />indoctrinated...cough...educated by the sequences [i.e., Eliezer Yudkowsky's<br />tutorial for the non-soopergenius on how to think] has a hard time<br />to take seriously.<br />====<br /><br />So it goes.jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.com