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Wrong with Less Wrong part 2
I'm one of those hobnobs who frequently bitches about how broken our society is, criticizing aspects of it and the people in it as though they were not responsible for my entire ability and freedom to recognize these problems I think I see and condemn them. (See also, David Brin's discussion of the concept of being a 'rebel' in America, in 'The ( Read more... ) -
Interlude: Why I won't be joining your movement
A lot of the elements of something like homesteading holds a lot of appeal to me. I am an inveterate believer that society is insane, and severely doubt anyone's ability to choose consistently wisely in its midst. I think it is possible but difficult, and unlikely to happen: we barely even have the ability to be consistently aware of the changes ( Read more... ) -
Wrong with Less Wrong part 1
I've been following the Less Wrong blog for several years, and last year I moved to an actual place that had actual people and a LW meetup. I've been attending the meetups and been a part of the social group for over a year now, and I was very excited about it at first. In a lot of ways, the people in LW have been a relief. There are many basic ( Read more... ) -
On not following through with things
Indestructible self healing circuits
Implementation of a Self-Replicating Universal Turing MachineLivejournal thoughtfully saves your partially finished drafts, so that when you next go to start writing, you have the option to start off with whatever you were last working on. This is particularly handy if you go many, many months between (failed) ( Read more... ) -
Any and all upgrade kits left on my doorstep will be accepted and implemented, no questions asked
I find that I have put sentience into a special, sacred realm, where I consider it to be inherently valuable. This value is intimately linked in my mind to something like autonomy, and the value I place on these two features seems to support certain of my transhumanist desires, but also makes me a little bit picky about which possible scenarios ( Read more... ) -
I read this because the paper version was sitting in front of me
I accidentally read this article on why handwritten notes mean more than electronic ones, coincidentally not hours after I had been discussing the woeful disappearance of actual paper letters. I find the author's case entirely unconvincing, however. The main problem lies in his continued use of phrases like "...feel that someone you knew had, for ( Read more... ) -
dragged, kicking and screaming
I listened to this lecture* about brains and the internet, or more specifically, how the internet is a brain, on certain definitions of brain. Yes, right, but at the end was a question spurred, if I recall correctly, by the whole implanted-electrodes-control-robot-arms/allow-for-thought-reading thing, leading in the long run potentially to the ( Read more... ) -
random perturbations aside, that is
Came across a reminder about that problem people have where they think some external change in their lives will make them happier (or sadder) - the proverbial winning the lottery or losing a leg, but in the end you're just as happy or sad as ever. The idea is that you put too much weight on that one aspect of your life, but really most of the time ( Read more... ) -
When did I get so serious?
So I'm into this whole rationality thing, exemplified by the Less Wrong community. I like to think of it in a fairly casual way, to guard against adhering myself too strongly to a whole body of beliefs (which by my calculations is actually pretty much toeing the party line). Mostly it just seems like a good idea to try to find out the way things ( Read more... ) -
last one, and then we return to our regularly scheduled non-fiction blathering
A woman sits alone, artificial light shining on her face. She is scanning images and texts on the screen in front of her, rearranging. She pauses to think a moment, then manipulates the interface with a few quick strokes, and the images rearrange themselves again. She examines this new graph closely, then stands up and moves across the room to ( Read more... )