I don’t disagree I was grasping at straws for some of the more outlandish suggestions, but this was deliberate—to try and explore the full boundaries of the strategy space. So I take most of your criticism in the constructive spirit in which it was intended, but I do think maybe you are a bit confused about ‘philosophical preservation’ (no doubt I explained it very badly to avoid using the word ‘religion’). My point is not that you convince yourself, “I will live forever because all life is meaningless and hence death is the same as life”, it is that you find some philosophical argument that indicates a plausible strategy and then do that strategy. A simple example would be that you discover an argument which really genuinely proves Christianity offers salvation and then get baptised, or prove to your satisfaction that the soul is real and then pay a medium to continue contacting you after you die. Again, I agree this is outlandish but there must be something appealing about the approach because it is unquestionably the most popular strategy on the list in a worldwide sense.
I don’t disagree I was grasping at straws for some of the more outlandish suggestions, but this was deliberate—to try and explore the full boundaries of the strategy space. So I take most of your criticism in the constructive spirit in which it was intended, but I do think maybe you are a bit confused about ‘philosophical preservation’ (no doubt I explained it very badly to avoid using the word ‘religion’). My point is not that you convince yourself, “I will live forever because all life is meaningless and hence death is the same as life”, it is that you find some philosophical argument that indicates a plausible strategy and then do that strategy. A simple example would be that you discover an argument which really genuinely proves Christianity offers salvation and then get baptised, or prove to your satisfaction that the soul is real and then pay a medium to continue contacting you after you die. Again, I agree this is outlandish but there must be something appealing about the approach because it is unquestionably the most popular strategy on the list in a worldwide sense.