We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus <https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2023/11/dont-create-the-torment-nexus.html>
In the above Science-fiction author Charlie Stross says that he tells lies for money and reminds us that science fiction is fiction, and it's true that the particular story told is fiction, but if a science-fiction author is good the world in which his story is embedded is physically possible and perhaps even probable. He says that if science fiction authors wish to make a living then their stories had better be enjoyable, and that means there needs to be drama, there needs to be conflict. Michael Crichton would have never been able to sell his novel "Jurassic Park" if everything had gone exactly as the designers originally thought it would and the book was just a tour of an amusement park that operated like a well oiled machine and all the people and animals in it were happy and healthy. Dystopian stories are much more entertaining than utopian stories, and more impactful too; 1984 may be one reason 1984 was not like 1984.The only modern utopian novel I can think of is B F Skinner's "Walden Two".....well... at least Skinner thought it was utopian, I didn't. Stross also informs me of a new acronym I've never heard of before "TESCREAL '', apparently it stands for Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and longtermism. I believe in Transhumanism and Extropianism as originally described by Max More, and It's hard for me to believe that anybody would oppose altruism that is effective or believes that irrationality was preferable to rationality. As for Sngularitarianism, I am as certain as I am certain of anything that we are heading straight for a Singularity, but I am not at all certain it will be good for me personally or good for the human race in general, it's just a fact that we should prepare for it the best we can. I don't know a lot about Cosmism but what I do know doesn't sound too bad, it certainly beats the hell out of Christianity. But I definitely do NOT believe in longtermism, not because I think it's unethical but because it won't work. I used to say that things are changing so fast it's foolish to make plans more than 10 years ahead, it would be like asking the Wright brothers to work on the problem of airport congestion 10 years before they made their first airplane; but now due to the recent huge advances in AI I think even 5 years is problematic. I have difficulty understanding Stross's position, sometimes he seems to be saying that AI will lead to disaster, but then he says anybody who thinks AI is real is a weirdo and is "*hyping the current grifter's fantasy of large language models as 'artificial intelligence*' ". He blasts Ray Kurzweil for thinking AI is not a danger and blasts Eliezer Yudkowsky for thinking it is and says it's weird for him to be so rational and silly for him to terrify himself over AI. In fact Stross names a very large number of people and movements in the article but he doesn't have one good word to say about any of them. He criticizes Nick Bostrom for focusing "*on the philosophical implications of digitizing human brains so we can all be raptured up to live in the great cloud computer in the sky, a very modern riff on the Christian eschatological theory of resurrection*", and it would be foolish of me to deny that there are similarities between uploading and the Christian rapture, but that's not surprising considering the fact that Information is as close as you can get to the traditional concept of the soul and still remain within the scientific method. Consider the similarities: The soul is non material and so is information. It's difficult to pin down a unique physical location for the soul, and the same is true for information. The soul is the essential, must have, part of consciousness, exactly the same situation is true for information. The soul is immortal and so, potentially, is information. But there are also important differences: A soul is unique but information can be duplicated. The soul is and will always remain unfathomable, but information is understandable, in fact information is the ONLY thing that is understandable. Information unambiguously exists, I don't think anyone would deny that, but even if the soul exists it will never be proven scientifically. So do I agree with "TESCREAL"? I don't know, but I do know two things, I don't like acronyms and I don't agree with Charlie Stross. John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> adt -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv1oeDe2eDFJP7cwr6%2B8ZGmmksSTK7Lq3xZZdA5yo6ZS1w%40mail.gmail.com.
