Tell me again: you advise a person to spend on their personal cryonic preservation before they donate to SI?
(Cryopreservation has very low expected payoff till after the singularity, does it not?)
I perceive a fundamental tension between personal goals and goals that transcend the personal. I.e. until ~400 years ago civilization advanced mainly as a side effect of people’s advancing their personal interests, but the more a person’s environment diverges from the EEA, the more important it is for the person to choose to advance civilization directly, as an end in itself. I believe it is an error to regard civilization as the servant of the individual. Ultimately, it is the other way around though in the short term it is hazardous as political doctrine to regard the individual as the servant of the state, the nation or the race.
The transhumanist program of holding out to everyone immortality and the end of suffering works against progress by causing the people with the most potential to contribute to civilization to invest in personal goals.
One might ask, since billions of people already believe (false) narratives about Everlasting Life, what harm inspiring smaller numbers with (true) narratives of immortality? It harms because the small fraction of the population with most of the potential to contribute to civilization is immune to the narrative about Everlasting Life but susceptible to the narrative of the cryonicist, the life-extensionist and the transhumanist. I realize I am giving offense by asserting that the vast majority of the potential to contribute to the world is concentrated in a small fraction of the human population. I do not do so gratuitously; this analysis happens to depend on that fact.
There are still many important ways to advance civilization without being a singularitarian. Transhumanism strikes me as a bad influence on those prospective contributors (by distracting them with new personal aspirations). I grant that transhumanism will create more singularitarians than would be created were it not for transhumanism, but I doubt that the singularity benefits from those people. Most people will detract from the singularity by becoming singularitarians. The goal IMO should not be to recruit as many singularitarians as possible but rather to encourage the right people to join while trying to discourage or not attract the attention of the wrong people. Here I am giving offense by contradicting the deeply-held belief that including more stakeholders in a decision will improve the quality of the decision. Sorry for the heterodoxy! I doubt a person who needs a personal motive to contribute to the singularity will prove a positive influence on the singularity.
Anyway, that is why I am a singularitarian but not a cryonicist, life-extensionist or transhumanist.
Tell me again: you advise a person to spend on their personal cryonic preservation before they donate to SI?
(Cryopreservation has very low expected payoff till after the singularity, does it not?)
I perceive a fundamental tension between personal goals and goals that transcend the personal. I.e. until ~400 years ago civilization advanced mainly as a side effect of people’s advancing their personal interests, but the more a person’s environment diverges from the EEA, the more important it is for the person to choose to advance civilization directly, as an end in itself. I believe it is an error to regard civilization as the servant of the individual. Ultimately, it is the other way around though in the short term it is hazardous as political doctrine to regard the individual as the servant of the state, the nation or the race.
The transhumanist program of holding out to everyone immortality and the end of suffering works against progress by causing the people with the most potential to contribute to civilization to invest in personal goals.
One might ask, since billions of people already believe (false) narratives about Everlasting Life, what harm inspiring smaller numbers with (true) narratives of immortality? It harms because the small fraction of the population with most of the potential to contribute to civilization is immune to the narrative about Everlasting Life but susceptible to the narrative of the cryonicist, the life-extensionist and the transhumanist. I realize I am giving offense by asserting that the vast majority of the potential to contribute to the world is concentrated in a small fraction of the human population. I do not do so gratuitously; this analysis happens to depend on that fact.
There are still many important ways to advance civilization without being a singularitarian. Transhumanism strikes me as a bad influence on those prospective contributors (by distracting them with new personal aspirations). I grant that transhumanism will create more singularitarians than would be created were it not for transhumanism, but I doubt that the singularity benefits from those people. Most people will detract from the singularity by becoming singularitarians. The goal IMO should not be to recruit as many singularitarians as possible but rather to encourage the right people to join while trying to discourage or not attract the attention of the wrong people. Here I am giving offense by contradicting the deeply-held belief that including more stakeholders in a decision will improve the quality of the decision. Sorry for the heterodoxy! I doubt a person who needs a personal motive to contribute to the singularity will prove a positive influence on the singularity.
Anyway, that is why I am a singularitarian but not a cryonicist, life-extensionist or transhumanist.