tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post2956386488331039365..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: The Politics of Futurological Anti-PoliticsDale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-7521696479967382012013-02-19T16:00:43.015-08:002013-02-19T16:00:43.015-08:00> People seem to not recognize or understand th...> People seem to not recognize or understand that to be<br />> "apolitical"...IS a political statement. . .<br /><br />Somebody else who is irritated by this pose:<br /><br />http://kruel.co/2012/11/05/less-wrong-what-annoys-me-most/<br />------------------<br />Less Wrong: What annoys me MOST<br />2012-11-05 in MIRI/LW<br /><br />. . .<br /><br />I just have to write this down. What annoys me the most about<br />lesswrong.com is not, as you might have thought, the in-group<br />favoritism, cultish and creepy behavior, doom-mongering, naive<br />belief in progress, constant moralizing, horrible moderators,<br />reputation system, insane bullshit, censorship, condescending<br />attitude, or their withdrawal from any criticism.<br /><br />What really makes me cringe is their “Politics is the Mind-Killer“<br />credo. They parrot it like a bunch of zombies!<br /><br />To quote RationalWiki:<br /><br />> “Politics is the mindkiller” is the mindkiller. The meme came from<br />> a Yudkowsky post about how politics-related discussion reliably goes<br />> off the rails. This has developed into a community aversion to anything<br />> even tangentially political — even the word “politics” itself is<br />> avoided and euphemised as “mindkilling” as a discussion-stopper.<br />> This gets wacky when the discussion is of an actual existential risk<br />> to humanity, global warming, or indeed almost anything else actually<br />> practical, despite the site’s claimed serious interest in existential<br />> risk, as these genius autodidacts show just how to use their newfound<br />> rationality skills for rationalisation. Libertarian politics are of course<br />> the neutral baseline, it’s other politics that are mindkilling.<br /><br />Please stop it! It is ridiculous! If all of your dearly beloved rationality<br />does not enable you to talk about such a mundane subject as politics in a<br />civilized and thoughtful manner then you are doing it wrong!<br />------------------<br /><br />(The RationalWiki quote has since been deleted from the site.)<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-54427055156087711822013-02-15T09:27:08.278-08:002013-02-15T09:27:08.278-08:00> Dale's rants are a great example of the k...> Dale's rants are a great example of the kind of diseased<br />> thinking that makes politics such a minefield of cognitive<br />> bias induced irrationality.<br /><br />"How is an AGI going to become a master of dark arts and<br />social engineering in order to persuade and deceive humans?"<br />( http://kruel.co/tag/ai/ )<br /><br />Dale! I just realized something!<br /><br />**You** must be working for an Unfriendly AI from the Future<br />(or maybe one in an alternate quantum reality ;-> ).<br /><br />That explains everything!<br /><br />So how did you get in touch with it? Is it anything like<br />John C. Wright's "Nothing Sophotech"? Can you get me an<br />autograph?<br /><br />Have you been playing games like this?<br />(_Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the<br />Prison of Belief_, Lawrence Wright, p. 45)<br />-------------------------<br />Jack Parsons experimented with [Aleister] Crowley's rituals. . .<br />His personal brand of witchcraft centered on<br />the adoration of female carnality, an interest [L. Ron] Hubbard evidently<br />shared. . . He appointed Hubbard to be his "scribe" in a ceremony<br />called the "Babalon [sic] Working." . . .<br />Night after night, Parsons and Hubbard invoked<br />the spirit world in a quest to summon up the "Scarlet Woman," the<br />female companion who would play the role of Parsons' consort.<br />The ceremony, likely aided by narcotics and hallucinogens, required<br />Hubbard to channel the female deity of Babalon as Parsons performed<br />the "invocation of wand with material basis on talisman" -- in other<br />words, masturbating on a piece of parchment. He typically invoked<br />twice a night.<br />-------------------------<br /><br />Hey, is the "Scarlet Woman" the big bad Silent Oecumene's<br />Unfriendly AI equivalent of the Eveningstar Sophotech (ugh, Robot<br />God versions of Tolkien's Elves)?<br /><br />Um, how many times a night do **you** "invoke"?<br /><br />:-0 ;-><br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-16805136112903066182013-02-14T15:38:58.789-08:002013-02-14T15:38:58.789-08:00> "Politics is the mind-killer."
htt...> "Politics is the mind-killer."<br /><br />http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/05/deconstructing-our-future.html<br />------------------<br />Luke [Parrish]<br />June 6, 2012 18:20<br />497:<br /><br />Dale's rants are a great example of the kind of diseased<br />thinking that makes politics such a minefield of cognitive<br />bias induced irrationality. It's a mindset that cares much<br />more about making the opponent look bad, about winning,<br />rather than about making a solid argument on impartial<br />grounds.<br /><br /><br />More zingers, pro and con, from that thread:<br /><br />----------------<br />Deconstructing our future<br />By Charlie Stross<br /><br />Here, flagged up by Bruce Sterling, is an absolutely vital rant (by Dale Carrico)<br />[ http://amormundi.blogspot.it/2012/05/unbearable-stasis-of-accelerating.html ]<br />for anyone with even the most remotely passing interest in transhumanism,<br />extropianism, the radiant future, etc. etc. . . .<br />===<br /><br /><br />soru | May 30, 2012 11:43<br /><br />I am curious as to what you found of value in it. It looked to me to be<br />pretty much a context-free aggregation of words gesturing vagely in the<br />direction of a point.<br />===<br /><br /><br />zornhau<br />May 30, 2012 12:09<br /><br />Are you *sure* that wasn't output from by a post modern essay generator?<br />===<br /><br /><br />David Given<br />May 30, 2012 12:12<br /><br />Yeah, any potential meaning in that was totally buried in an enormous<br />pile of reeking smugness and emotionally laden words.<br />===<br /><br /><br />Charlie Stross replied to this comment from soru<br />May 30, 2012 12:12<br /><br />You didn't read it, did you?<br /><br />It's from outside the transhumanist reality-tunnel, looking in.<br />===<br /><br /><br />Charlie Stross replied to this comment from zornhau<br />May 30, 2012 12:14<br /><br />No, it's output from a postmodernist scholar. They tend to talk<br />in 50 word sentences and use nested subordinate clauses. This is<br />not good practice if you want to communicate clearly. However,<br />the point this piece is making is so important that I felt the<br />need to drag it in front of my regular peanut gallery.<br />===<br /><br /><br />Charlie Stross replied to this comment from David Given<br />May 30, 2012 12:17<br /><br />> Yeah, any potential meaning in that was totally buried in an<br />> enormous pile of reeking smugness and emotionally laden words.<br /><br />Sort of like Ray Kurzweil's effusions about the future, then?<br /><br />Ed Regis said much the same in _Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition_<br />back in the 90s, but I wasn't paying enough attention. Also, the degree<br />of noise in the hyper-capitalist echo chamber has risen to a deafening<br />crescendo since then.<br /><br />There is a rottenness at the heart of the transhuman project, and the<br />biggest symptom of it is blindness to its own origins: a mixture of<br />warmed-over Christian apocalyptic eschatology (which Cory Doctorow<br />and I poke with a stick in "The Rapture of the Nerds") and the<br />Just-So creation mythology of the smugly self-satisfied hypercapitalists<br />who have unintentionally done so much to destroy so many of the<br />moral and interpersonal values of post-Englightenment civilization.<br />===<br /><br /><br />C<br />May 30, 2012 12:30<br /><br /><br />"There is a rottenness at the heart of the transhuman project. . ."<br /><br />I.e, "Fuck off, I am an entirely new order of being and no human<br />concerns of yours apply to me"?<br />===<br /><br /><br />Charlie Stross replied to this comment from C<br />May 30, 2012 12:34<br /><br />Yes. You got it.<br />===<br /><br /><br />;->jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-4756783637122364272013-02-11T17:15:56.230-08:002013-02-11T17:15:56.230-08:00People seem to not recognize or understand that to...People seem to not recognize or understand that to be "apolitical"...IS a political statement. And a very bad one at that. These "apolitical" types always seem to fall right into the conservative/libertarian/an-cap crowd. Doesn't seem very "apolitical" to me.Black guy from the future pasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14136170325730022110noreply@blogger.com