Oceans Yet to Burn

We must preserve the US Second Amendment so that the people will be able to buy the near-military-grade augmentations that make them remain a non-trivial threat.

politics transhumanism

discoursedrome

mitigatedchaos

Like, the obvious question is: will the price you’re willing to pay be a price you can pay? The institutions of society (including authoritarian restrictions on reproduction, if any) are going to be designed for the service of the most powerful, and agelessness will considerably widen the gap between the most and least powerful (a stricter immortality such as through hand-waving “backup” technology is actually even worse).

There’s little reason to think that there is a fundamental physical cost that is highly expensive, like with flying cars.

The rules for agelessness cannot openly be designed so that only the wealthy benefit because people have accepted democratic principles. They’ll revolt if that happens. The powerful will have to make concessions whether they like it or not.

and the “being dead is terrible in principle” element is unconvincing to me simply because we’re all still going to die in an ageless world, or even an “immortal” one, and it’s not at all clear that we’d even die later than we would in this world.

Considering that the world is still getting safer overall, I’m not sure how reasonable that projection really is.

Additionally, postponing death by 10 or 50 or 100 years is still a very big deal, and here you’re treating it like “well you’re still going to die eventually, so it’s irrelevant.” Like another 50 years to know your loved ones or fulfill your potential (with things like art) is irrelevant.

and there’s a good chance that the quality of life we’d have in that world would be drastically worse overall, because society is made for the powerful and on average the powerful now live 100 times longer than everybody else and that will have really significant effects on how society, law, and work are structured.

Your argument hinges on this, but I feel it’s overstated and don’t find it compelling.

How hard would people be willing to fight if they knew it meant a lot more than just their ordinary limited lifespan?

And how do the powerful justify and maintain their power?

Political support for things like basic income are growing. If there is a big wave of mass displacement by automation, I think it will even go through, even though it would have been unthinkable ten years ago. The reason people aren’t thinking about these problems in the mainstream is that the technology doesn’t seem plausible yet. The political landscape will change as it does.

In other words, I expect the boring liberal democracies to essentially remain as such, with some set of politically-palatable compromise solutions. Some of the elites will even believe these solutions are good ideas.

Source: testblogdontupvote philo death transhumanism

discoursedrome

mitigatedchaos

Well yes, the economic argument isn’t the strongest one. The strongest argument is that the alternative is becoming weak, helpless, and mad, followed by literal involuntary permanent nonexistence. There are very few arguments that would convince me that we should not develop immortality technology when I have a metaphorical gun to my head that can only be moved farther back by immortality technology.

You don’t find the economic argument compelling, I don’t find “really, death isn’t that bad” plus all the other arguments compelling. The price I am willing to pay for this technology is very high. My enjoyment of the future beyond the end of my lifespan is literally zero or null if it is not developed.

That price includes authoritarian restrictions on reproduction.

Source: testblogdontupvote philo transhumanism death

discoursedrome

testblogdontupvote

I can on conscious level sort of understand that some people aren’t bothered by the fact that they’re gonna die, and can even sort of understand their reasoning (and I do believe in the right of people to make choices that I consider to be shitty), but on the intuitive level this is just incomprehensible for me. But then I remember that there are plenty of women who don’t just totally buy the idea that only young attractive thin women have value and deserve respect, and everyone else must be constantly shamed into “knowing their place,” but also enthusiastically and aggressively perpetuate it. That is despite the fact they’re basically guaranteed to sooner or later enter the category of people they worthless and deserving shame. And presumably the project of stopping appearance-based shaming or at least changing your own beliefs and finding yourself an accepting community is easier than eradicating death. So defending mortality makes at least as much sense - if not more - than defending old-unattractive-shaming, and evidently people can be extremely enthusiastic about the latter.

discoursedrome

I’m definitely in the “death is preferable to no-death” camp, and while I can’t speak for others, I can maybe do a bit to try to explain my own position. The first thing I should emphasize is that “not being bothered by the prospect of your own death" and “in favour of mortality as a thing” are not as tightly coupled as you’re probably supposing. As with many issues, it’s often necessary to separate large-scale social policy from personal interests. It’s also important to distinguish between death by accident, trauma, or illness and death by aging, because they’re very different things. I don’t know anyone who’s against eliminating the former, but a lot of people (including me) are wary of tinkering with senescence. Futurist critics tend to frame this as a kind of superstitious nature worship, a slavish fixation on the moral supremacy of What Is, but I find that dismissal a bit too pat.

(cut bc long)

Keep reading

mitigatedchaos

There’s more to it, but you even if you set aside the fact that not dying is actually very, very valuable, you also have to account for the disadvantages of the current system.

For instance, it is extraordinarily expensive to raise an entire generation of people, during which time they can’t really be part of the workforce without compromising their later effectiveness, have them work for a limited time as their bodies and minds slowly degrade, spend even more money as their bodies start to fall apart all at once, then discard them and bury their bodies.

Then we do it all over again. Only it’s worse, because they have to spend one quarter of their lifespan raising children to keep this going. This not only limits investment in children, but limits time in the workforce.

The stickiness of scientific theories might be related to health degradation and loss of neuroplasticity over time.

As for social change, I’m not sure that more is always better. We’re still wrestling with changes in incentives from the sexual revolution, and while LGBTs are only a small fraction of the population and were never a threat to society to begin with, polygamy has a lot more practical trouble associated with it (like decreases in the psychological health of women and children, and incentives that lead to very early or even child marriage) and is probably next on the Progressive schedule after Transgenderism, even though normalizing polygamy is probably not a good idea. (It’s different when it’s just a few nerds doing it.)

Source: testblogdontupvote philo transhumanism death

theunitofcaring

Anonymous asked:

Where does "we're legitimately afraid for ourselves and our families" fit into the narrative? Do they just not believe us?

theunitofcaring answered:

Actual supporters of Trump correct me if I’m wrong but I think they’d say “you’re afraid because the left has deliberately promoted hysteria and fear; the things you’re afraid of aren’t going to happen”. Like, I think they legitimately do not believe that someone could be scared of Milo because they are scared he’ll say their name on stage and then they’ll be beaten or strangled or deported or murdered over it, I think they model fear of Milo as ‘the left has deliberately self-modified to find anyone who is not cowed by leftist orthodoxy terrifying’.

So yeah, they don’t believe you (or they believe that your being scared has almost nothing to do with their behavior). Unless you or your loved ones are an undocumented immigrant or a refugee, in which case I think they’d say ‘well yes I am endangering your family but I don’t have an obligation to endanger my family to protect your family”.

This is not exactly encouraging but I think it’s roughly a description of the thing.

mitigatedchaos

From the Trump supporters I know, this is reasonably accurate.

politics trump

bambamramfan

everything-narrative

I feel like I’m the most “AFA/classical anarchist/radical socialist/murder the 1%’ers and topple their thrones” of all the tumblr rationalists/lesswrong diaspora…

Everywhere I look are libertarians aka greywashed neo-liberalists. And I appreciate that US is a lot different from Denmark, but I have yet to hear a solid refutation of Medications on Moloch.

ilzolende

Things which aren’t really refutations, but may be relevant: If you think that things, while in many ways bad, are mostly getting better, and most potential bad futures are bad in either apolitical ways (or in the case of nuclear war generic instability ways), you’ll probably think that the current status quo shouldn’t be altered very much. As far as I can tell, the standard rationalist EA position is “things are mostly improving, the obvious improvements look more like ‘make more malaria nets’ than ‘bloody revolution now’, and everyone in a first-world country is baaasically the 1% anyway”.

I’d be willing to discuss this more if you like, but I’m not really sure where to start.

Edit: Also, as far as I can tell, I am not the only person with the vague uncharitable impression that “the left” is mostly “a scary threatening group that is weirdly powerful in all the IRL communities that I tend to end up interacting with”.

everything-narrative

That seems like a good way of characterizing the situation, actually.

What I feel that I guess most others don’t, is the fact that we’re playing 1930′s musical fascism chairs again. Denmark, as you might know, was under Nazi occupation from 1941 to 1945, and it is still very much a facet of our cultural identity.

While it is true that things are mostly going forwards, I feel that shrugging and focusing on malaria nets commits what I like to call the “Karkat Vantas’ predeterminism fallacy:”

CCG: EVERYBODY, DID YOU HEAR THAT?? SUPERFUTURE VRISKA HAS AN IMPORTANT LIFE LESSON FOR US ALL.
CCG: WE DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT OUR PRESENT RESPONSIBILIES AND OBLIGATIONS!
CCG: BECAUSE AS IT TURNS OUT, IN THE FUTURE ALL THAT STUFF ALREADY HAPPENED. WE’RE OFF THE FUCKING HOOK!

Basically, the reason why it is getting better is that people are fighting!

And one of the things to fight for, is civil rights and liberties, and welfare, and protection of the weak, and your right to party.

So, yeah. You can save a lot of lives right now by donating to fight malaria; but if you play the apolitical game and hope for the best, Plato already schooled you on what is going to happen:

The price good men pay for indifference in public affairs, is to be ruled by tyrants.

That is, roughly, my position.

PS. Notice how “things are mostly improving, the obvious improvements look more like … than …” is one of those dangerous snow-clone type sentences. I could use that argument against malaria as well, urging people to invest in… Greenpeace campaigns against animal abuse, to name a particularly nasty example.

bambamramfan

I appreciate your attempt at synthesis, but as a factual matter I do not think things are getting better primarily because of the efforts of activists we are sympathetic to. Whatever improvement there is in the human condition, is coming from many disparate sources.

However, I do think you hit upon the very important question that a lot of reformist vs radical discussions can reduce to: do you think things are getting better?

I can admit there are some compelling reasons to feel things are getting better. Whig History says they’ve been getting better for hundreds of years, and this should continue. We have more technology to aid us than ever before. As an aggregate matter, lives over the entire world are in a better material position than ever before. If you think the current (liberal capitalist) system is stable, then there’s a lot of reason to go with the Alexandrian stance of improve, iterate, and don’t fuck things up. The radicals are just wrong then.

… The issue is that the radicals don’t think things are getting better. As you point out we may be on the verge of a fascist takeover (perhaps leading to World War), which is probably a result of decades of neoliberal inequality heightening. I’m not sure the immediate political situation of the rise of far-right parties is the only problem, but it’s suggestive of the many problems that out of control inequality will continue to throw out until everything collapses.

And of course, if you’re willing to look outside “post Renaissance Western Europe” there are many times in human history when civilizations took prolonged steps backwards, both in terms of technology and respect for human rights. “Ever forward” is not guaranteed in the human condition.

Zizek lays out the main theme of his book dealing with the response needed to “postmodern” capitalism: “The underlying premise of the present book is a simple one: the global capitalist system is approaching an apocalyptic zero-point. Its ‘four riders of the apocalypse’ are comprised by the ecological crisis, the consequences of the biogenetic revolution, imbalances within the system itself (problems with intellectual property; forthcoming struggles over raw materials, food and water), and the explosive growth of social divisions and exclusions.”

Maybe you think that’s nonsense, but it’s a belief structure people can attach to. And under that logic, changing the fundamental rules of our society (not being certain what will replace them) is entirely reasonable.

mitigatedchaos

One need only look at previous Leftist revolutions without adequately-tested plans for society afterwards, as well as prior predictions of total system collapse by Leftists to see that this probably isn’t the greatest idea. One can even see that the Capitalists did better on the environment than the Communists, even despite their systemic design towards resource consumption. So while radicals may think this is a good viewpoint, I think it’s pretty easy to conclude that without an adequately planned and tested system already prepared for after The Revolution, a revolution will just kill a whole bunch of people and significantly damage the economy without improving governance at all or helping the environment very much. Also a revolution is not going to install mere social democracy, since it has to be sufficiently radical just to be effectively carried out.

Source: everything-narrative politics communism

sinesalvatorem

Anonymous asked:

It's not how white you are on the outside that counts, but how white you are, in your heart.

sinesalvatorem answered:

Leukemia is not actually a good thing, anon. If your blood is over-saturated with white cells then please seek medical assistance.

mitigatedchaos

I just saw an article last week suggesting that using identity politics in the US was a bad plan because the majority can practice identity politics, too, and the definition of “white” has expanded in the past.

I’m pretty hyped. What exciting new races or ethnic groups will be considered “white” in the future? Could Asian-Latin fusion cuisine become the next official white people food? When will they be issued their official White Man™ polo shirts?

race politics politics maybe a shtpost

remedialaction

Anonymous asked:

I think it's sort of a mistake to try to come up with a "real" definition of private property. It's not a physical truth about the universe we can discover if we only try hard enough; it's an agreement we can make amongst ourselves. I mean, there are better and worse ways of defining it, but the goal should be "useful" (like, for social/legal purposes, such that it's fairly clear to everyone what IS considered theirs) rather than "philosophically airtight".

argumate answered:

Yes. Even if you do come up with a definitive proof of something you still have the problem of some geezer with a shotgun ignoring all of your logic.

mitigatedchaos

I mean, I think this is a bit of a drift from the core, and that we’re dropping some element speaks a bit to the weakness of the counter arguments. I’m really curious still how the potential dangerous AI has anything to do with the ideology, that one still sort of boggles me, but alright.

No, it is the core, or very close to it. The core of your ideology is about this (or very close to it), and most of the chains of logic I consider absurd spread from there. Arguments about the desirable amount of Capitalism are different from whether Capitalism, in a radical sense, is the fundamental morality.

Keep reading

Source: argumate philo

To my followers,

I apologize for that recent rash of dash-clogging posts arguing on that AnCap thread.

remedialaction

Anonymous asked:

argumate answered:

Yes. Even if you do come up with a definitive proof of something you still have the problem of some geezer with a shotgun ignoring all of your logic.

mitigatedchaos

4. Except that it does, and is, based on the simple fact of the material universe, that only you can occupy the given physical space at a time, and only you can control you. You are not your central nervous system and that was never the claim. The existence of outside property necessarily follows.

This part is the core part so I’m dropping the rest of it. In fact, this was what the lost post was about. You can go look up industrial disasters under Capitalism and the like on your own.

Except that it does, and is, based on the simple fact of the material universe, that only you can occupy the given physical space at a time

Actually, given the extreme slowness of the cycle frequency of the human brain, some kind of weird neural multiplexing could probably be devised in some distant era.

and only you can control you. You are not your central nervous system and that was never the claim.

If this were true, both drugs and brain damage could not alter the statistical distribution of human behavior. Instead, all evidence strongly suggests that influence on the brain brings about influence on the mind. That holds even if you define “you” in a holistic manner where it’s a combination of hardware+software+other things, or define “you” as some extra-physical phenomenon/entity that interacts with the brain.

Given the available evidence, it should even be possible, with the right technology and interfaces, to insert thoughts into peoples’ minds.

only you can control you.

Even if this were true, and brains were unhackable and beyond the realm of the physical, that would only prove “only you can control you”. It would not make property exist. It does not logically follow that only you should control you, only that you can.

If that world existed, and some entity arose that could violate that rule and modify people according to its desires, why should it not?

The existence of outside property necessarily follows.

It does not. It doesn’t even imply the existence of internal property as a morally-binding rule. What is the chain of logic from “only you can control you” to “outside property exists and is morally binding”?

With that in mind, let’s get your definition of “property”, seeing as “property” as it exists in the real world exists only insomuch as it is enforced, and is violated constantly.

Source: argumate philo

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.