tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post7919973173814033657..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: If Everything Is Faith Then Nothing IsDale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger46125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-78354140201789368162008-04-07T14:50:00.000-07:002008-04-07T14:50:00.000-07:00Unless you are also lying to yourselves (because, ...<I>Unless you are also lying to yourselves (because, for example, you're so terrified of dying, of the exactions of social life, of the contingency of actual experience, and so on).</I><BR/><BR/><I>Trying</I> to lie.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-83813085180941937052008-04-07T11:57:00.000-07:002008-04-07T11:57:00.000-07:00By reasonable people I mean persons able to earnes...<I>By reasonable people I mean persons able to earnestly discuss with others without insults and clownish MMM rethorics. I understand that you believe harassing those who disagree with you is a clever debating technique, but believe me, it does not work with 21st century adults.</I><BR/><BR/>People in clown wigs crawling out of clown cars should pout less about the clownishness of those who react to them accordingly. As for my clever techniques "not working" for "21st century adults" (who now live, presumably, in The Future?), you would be enormously displeased to know the extent to which my critique is working fine as is by my lights.<BR/><BR/><I>I told you that I will stop posting comments here as soon as you will ask me to do so. Not before.</I><BR/><BR/>By all means, bloviate and bark away. I love the dot-eyed Robot Cult data-points. <BR/><BR/>My point, though, was that those who pull up their soapbox in the Comments section of blogs that are not their own are probably not best positioned to make credible charges about their opponents loving too much the sound of their own voices (the actual charge by you to which I was responding, in case that soopergenius futurological brain of yours fails to recall the context since a whole twenty-four hours has elapsed since then).Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-11163385910877436522008-04-07T11:46:00.000-07:002008-04-07T11:46:00.000-07:00If it was a lie, it wouldn't work, so nobody who w...<I>If it was a lie, it wouldn't work, so nobody who wants to do this is trying to lie.</I><BR/><BR/>Unless you are also lying to yourselves (because, for example, you're so terrified of dying, of the exactions of social life, of the contingency of actual experience, and so on).Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-72446496018631630232008-04-07T10:43:00.000-07:002008-04-07T10:43:00.000-07:00"Giulio: I tend to take reasonable people more ser..."Giulio: I tend to take reasonable people more seriously than clowns. By "reasonable people" who are not "clown" Giulio means trasnhumanist-identified people like himself".<BR/><BR/>Not necessarily. By reasonable people I mean persons able to earnestly discuss with others without insults and clownish MMM rethorics. I understand that you believe harassing those who disagree with you is a clever debating technique, but believe me, it does not work with 21st century adults.<BR/><BR/>"Giulio, tossing his dull-point darts yet again in the comments section of somebody else's blog"<BR/><BR/>I told you that I will stop posting comments here as soon as you will ask me to do so. Not before.Giulio Priscohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13811681020661409028noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-88052687482175718782008-04-07T09:40:00.000-07:002008-04-07T09:40:00.000-07:00One hopes you will be around in 50 years' timeI pr...<I>One hopes you will be around in 50 years' time</I><BR/><BR/>I probably will.<BR/><BR/><I>to hear techno-utopians repeating this claim word for word, exactly equally earnestly, 50 year horizon and all.</I><BR/><BR/>Will it be the same people?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-21291874883540222942008-04-07T09:36:00.000-07:002008-04-07T09:36:00.000-07:00It's nice to find partisans of the reactionary Nob...<I>It's nice to find partisans of the reactionary Noble Lie</I><BR/><BR/>If it was a lie, it wouldn't work, so nobody who wants to do this is trying to lie.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-79118105770639727782008-04-07T09:35:00.000-07:002008-04-07T09:35:00.000-07:00those who seek to accomplish idiotic and impossibl...<I>those who seek to accomplish idiotic and impossible tasks are out of luck</I><BR/><BR/>You need technical arguments against them (especially molecular nanotechnology, since it isn't immortality or mind-uploading). There are really good technical arguments against them, so you could link to them.<BR/><BR/><I>Perhaps it will even be you yourself making it again, without irony.</I><BR/><BR/>I meant: "I have no idea when mind uploading will be practical (50 years, 5000 years, etc.) except that it won't happen in ten years."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-50778749903753901102008-04-07T09:09:00.000-07:002008-04-07T09:09:00.000-07:00I don't think mind uploading will be practical eve...<I>I don't think mind uploading will be practical even in 50 years, but I do think mind uploading is possible</I><BR/><BR/>One hopes you will be around in 50 years' time to hear techno-utopians repeating this claim word for word, exactly equally earnestly, 50 year horizon and all. Perhaps it will even be you yourself making it again, without irony.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-61168231780834971262008-04-07T09:05:00.000-07:002008-04-07T09:05:00.000-07:00I could call you a crackpot (permaculture)People w...<I>I could call you a crackpot (permaculture)</I><BR/><BR/>People who call permaculture practices "crackpot" idea are crackpots who expose themselves as such in making the charge. Permaculture design principles and practices constitute an appropriate and appropriable technoscientific discourse, consisting of many well-tested techniques (some likely older than recorded history, some arising out of extremely recent experimental science), but also constituting in my view progressive strategies of technodevelopmental social struggle for a safer and more sustainable world, techniques that actually are employed and experimented with in an ongoing way by countless thousands of people more than belong to the foolhardy transhumanist Robot Cult sub(cult)ure, with actual organic crop yields, actual solutions to problems of topsoil erosion, actual alternatives to the catastrophically energy intensive petro-chemical industrial-model agriculture that amounts to an epic-scaled permanent pointless crisis, and one, incidentally, that has racism, imperialism, corporate-greed at its heart, peddled for parochial profit-taking in techno-utopian rhetoric as usual. <BR/><BR/>Just like their reactionary climate-change denialist friends, those who denigrate permaculture practices while the world is in the balance are indulging in a self-marginalizing gesture. So, call my environmentalism crackpot all you want. I think it's good for all the parties to a dispute like this one to make it very clear where their loyalties are.<BR/><BR/><I>but I would need to explain (especially since you aren't).</I><BR/><BR/>Yes, showing why you would call me something I am not and which by your own parenthetic admission even you believe I am not would indeed require an interesting "explanation." If you are a techno-immortalist, daydreaming about nano-Santa, or confuse calculating the Robot God odds with "science" then you should expect to be called a crackpot by those who aren't.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-33550310941050793692008-04-07T08:37:00.000-07:002008-04-07T08:37:00.000-07:00Brave "Anonymous" insists "Warrantedly affirming c...Brave "Anonymous" insists "Warrantedly affirming candidate descriptions for instrumental belief as true" motivates people." However motivated they are, I'm afraid, those who seek to accomplish idiotic and impossible tasks are out of luck. It's nice to find partisans of the reactionary Noble Lie surface among the Robot Cultists, though... one more data point for dot-connection between Neoconservative types and Superlative Technocentric types. Boy, the Transhumanist Brain Trust is out in force this morning.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-12913829376564654362008-04-07T08:35:00.000-07:002008-04-07T08:35:00.000-07:00Yes, the Moravec Transfer is a compelling thought ...<I>Yes, the Moravec Transfer is a compelling thought experiment.<BR/>Yes, if we had (fantasy) nanobots that could snuggle up to<BR/>brain cells and act as radio transmitters to each other<BR/>and to a (fantasy) supercomputer that could learn to simulate each cell in<BR/>sufficient (N.B. -- it's unknown as yet how "sufficient"<BR/>would be "sufficient") detail before the cell was excised and<BR/>flushed down the sink, then yes -- maybe a person's consciousness<BR/>could be transferred seamlessly into a computer, with a (mobile) human<BR/>body and spinal cord still attached by radio to a supercomputer<BR/>in Geneva, or wherever. Sort of like P. Burke in the James Tiptree<BR/>story "The Girl Who Was Plugged In". (The idea of a mobile body<BR/>attached to a sessile brain by radio is nothing new -- Arthur C.<BR/>Clarke talks about it in _Profiles of the Future_).</I><BR/><BR/>That's basically what I think. I don't think mind uploading will be practical even in 50 years, but I do think mind uploading is possible (plausible).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-77317066315675133862008-04-07T08:33:00.000-07:002008-04-07T08:33:00.000-07:00Or here.Or <A HREF="http://infeasible.org" REL="nofollow">here</A>.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-90346771053747183432008-04-07T08:32:00.001-07:002008-04-07T08:32:00.001-07:00Giulio: I tend to take reasonable people more seri...Giulio: <I>I tend to take reasonable people more seriously than clowns.</I> By "reasonable people" who are not "clown" Giulio means trasnhumanist-identified people like himself who plan to "upload" their consciousness into a computer network and live forever thereafter lolling about in Second Life or in shiny robot bodies living in treasure caves created for free by nanoscale robots while superintelligent Robot Gods look after them. Just a helpful reminder for the studio audience.<BR/><BR/><I>you are too much in love with the sound of your own voice</I>, says Giulio, tossing his dull-point darts yet again in the comments section of somebody else's blog.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-40203270660664705012008-04-07T08:32:00.000-07:002008-04-07T08:32:00.000-07:00We're talking about the criteria on the basis of w...<I><BR/>We're talking about the criteria on the basis of which we warrantedly affirm candidate descriptions for instrumental belief as true, we are not talking about how motivation enables projects to find their way to fruition where they already conform to the physical and social strictures at hand. Or if that is what you are talking about, that isn't what I was talking about.<BR/><BR/>But, no, clapping louder won't make you immortal. However loud you clap.</I><BR/><BR/>"Warrantedly affirming candidate descriptions for instrumental belief as true" motivates people.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-24844310591290000142008-04-07T08:31:00.000-07:002008-04-07T08:31:00.000-07:00Thank you, James, for expressing a reasoned positi...Thank you, James, for expressing a reasoned position.Nick Tarletonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16226303578512704501noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-74428748882507465182008-04-07T08:29:00.000-07:002008-04-07T08:29:00.000-07:00You keep telling yourself that, baby.You still nee...<I>You keep telling yourself that, baby.</I><BR/><BR/>You still need to show that I am a crackpot.<BR/><BR/>I could call you a crackpot (permaculture), but I would need to explain (especially since you aren't).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-8428870781654007482008-04-07T08:26:00.000-07:002008-04-07T08:26:00.000-07:00I think the "specifics" you guys are looking for a...<I>I think the "specifics" you guys are looking for are to found on the science fiction aisle of your local bookseller.</I><BR/><BR/>I agree.<BR/><BR/>How do <I>you</I> think it would fail? I don't know why exactly you think mind uploading is impossible. If you explained how you think it would fail, I would know why. ("The mind is embodied"--would uploading not appear to work, or would the "uploaded" mind not be the same person anymore?)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-82023170084897551432008-04-07T08:22:00.000-07:002008-04-07T08:22:00.000-07:00Well, it was tried, so how would it fail? Would it...<I>Well, it was tried, so how would it fail? Would it fail, or would the computer behave like the original person (but still be a different person)? You don't really need to explain how something fails, but I think he wants to know what you think is specifically wrong about mind uploading (will the new "mind" be a different person, or will there not be a new "mind" at all)?</I><BR/><BR/>I think the "specifics" you guys are looking for are to found on the science fiction aisle of your local bookseller.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-58595700170548836272008-04-07T08:21:00.000-07:002008-04-07T08:21:00.000-07:00Anonymous wrote:> [H]e wants to know what you thin...Anonymous wrote:<BR/><BR/>> [H]e wants to know what you think is specifically wrong<BR/>> about mind uploading. . .<BR/><BR/>Well, I can't speak for Dale here, but here's my answer.<BR/><BR/>Yes, the Moravec Transfer is a compelling thought experiment.<BR/>Yes, if we had (fantasy) nanobots that could snuggle up to<BR/>brain cells and act as radio transmitters to each other<BR/>and to a (fantasy) supercomputer that could learn to simulate each cell in<BR/>sufficient (N.B. -- it's unknown as yet how "sufficient"<BR/>would be "sufficient") detail before the cell was excised and<BR/>flushed down the sink, then yes -- maybe a person's consciousness<BR/>could be transferred seamlessly into a computer, with a (mobile) human<BR/>body and spinal cord still attached by radio to a supercomputer<BR/>in Geneva, or wherever. Sort of like P. Burke in the James Tiptree<BR/>story "The Girl Who Was Plugged In". (The idea of a mobile body<BR/>attached to a sessile brain by radio is nothing new -- Arthur C.<BR/>Clarke talks about it in _Profiles of the Future_).<BR/><BR/>Makes for entertaining SF in the hands of a good author -- this<BR/>sort of thing is old hat in the Culture, after all.<BR/><BR/>This is all a red herring, though. None of the required<BR/>technologies are **remotely** close to realization. It's not<BR/>even known whether the required technologies are **realizable**.<BR/><BR/>Performing philosophical thought experiments about personal<BR/>identity using this platform is fine, as long as you realize that<BR/>the "maguffin" involved is only slightly more plausible than<BR/>a Star Trek "transporter".<BR/><BR/>And please don't explain to me how mehums don't have to be<BR/>able to figure out how to do it, because we're going to have<BR/>Minsky-esque GOFAIs doing the heavy lifting.jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-50397075356117362442008-04-07T08:20:00.000-07:002008-04-07T08:20:00.000-07:00You still need to show that I am a crackpot.You ke...<I>You still need to show that I am a crackpot.</I><BR/><BR/>You keep telling yourself that, baby.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-70110072129540142532008-04-07T07:35:00.000-07:002008-04-07T07:35:00.000-07:00What would happen? The not happening would happen,...<I>What would happen? The not happening would happen, Nick.</I><BR/><BR/>Well, it was tried, so how would it fail? Would it fail, or would the computer behave like the original person (but still be a different person)? You don't really need to explain how something fails, but I think he wants to know what you think is specifically wrong about mind uploading (will the new "mind" be a different person, or will there not be a new "mind" at all)?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-69959274417952843702008-04-07T07:29:00.000-07:002008-04-07T07:29:00.000-07:00Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!You still need to show that ...<I>Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!</I><BR/><BR/>You still need to show that I am a crackpot.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-16021715190804031572008-04-07T06:13:00.000-07:002008-04-07T06:13:00.000-07:00In light of the original topic of this blog post, ...In light of the original topic of this blog post, I was wondering what both Dale Carrico and Lincoln Cannon think of the <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerging_church" REL="nofollow">emerging church movement</A>.VDThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01496647346219341625noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-7107050071019077492008-04-07T06:08:00.000-07:002008-04-07T06:08:00.000-07:00Giulio said:What I find even more interesting is c...Giulio said:<BR/><BR/><I>What I find even more interesting is comparing Lincoln's calm and reasonable attitude with Dale's clownish histrionics, hysterical witch-hunting, personal attacks and name calling.</I><BR/><BR/>Hysterical witch-hunting? The term "witch-hunt" is often used to refer to panic-induced searches for perceived wrong-doers other than witches. The best known example is probably the McCarthyist search for communists during the Cold War. A "witch-hunt" is often characterized by an aggressive investigation which leads victims to suffer damaged reputation, loss of employment, destruction of their careers, and even imprisonment or exile.<BR/><BR/>To describe as a "witch-hunt" Dale Carrico's critique of people who promote belief in weird things including pseudoscience, superstition and other confusions of our times is intellectually dishonest and awkwardly similar to your old accusation of "thought-policing".<BR/><BR/>Some people never change. Even people who claim to want to radically improve themselves. ;)VDThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01496647346219341625noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-80438154485255886452008-04-07T00:58:00.000-07:002008-04-07T00:58:00.000-07:00I find Lincoln's ideas on resurrection interesting...I find Lincoln's ideas on resurrection interesting.<BR/><BR/>What I find even more interesting is comparing Lincoln's calm and reasonable attitude with Dale's clownish histrionics, hysterical witch-hunting, personal attacks and name calling.<BR/><BR/>Of course personal attitudes do not make a scientific statement more or less plausible, but I tend to take reasonable people more seriously than clowns.<BR/><BR/>"I would very likely simply be ignoring you at this point, on this topic at any rate"<BR/><BR/>You know you will never do that - you are too much in love with the sound of your own voice.Giulio Priscohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13811681020661409028noreply@blogger.com