I would explain the concepts of the craziest, most non-obvious ideally moral ideas I’ve ever had [such as the idea that Nick Bostrom’s Interstellar Opportunity Cost paper completely changes the nature of the pro-life debate, such that it no longer is sensible to freeze all fetuses instead of aborting them, instead, if we’re serious about being pro-life we should crop humanity down to only what is needed to spread human life to other stars, and that there are economic considerations to freedom but that they are subtle and complex]. Something that is so …off the wall might not go through directly, but it might come through as something equally out there [that the greeks should dedicate all their energies and efforts to seafaring and trade]
And in fact the further in the future I would be aiming to talk about the better. What matters about 2,000 paltry years when we’re talking about post-singularity or near-singularity times? The differences between us will be minor in comparison, and not be ‘smudged’ by the chronophone.
The cultural differences—the object-level information that Aristotle is lacking—are significant. This is true even if you are talking about things that differ from both of you by more than your difference to Aristotle.
Clearly. But whatever they are, they should still be represented, and there may be similarly wild things in the outlying areas of their worldview—and if I can help them reach it I will. In my experience it’s the ideas in the hinterlands that are the way out of the problems of our time, regardless what our time is—merely seeing that our worldview has outliers, and the overton window is limiting us in one area is usually enough to see that we’re limited elsewhere, too.
I would explain the concepts of the craziest, most non-obvious ideally moral ideas I’ve ever had [such as the idea that Nick Bostrom’s Interstellar Opportunity Cost paper completely changes the nature of the pro-life debate, such that it no longer is sensible to freeze all fetuses instead of aborting them, instead, if we’re serious about being pro-life we should crop humanity down to only what is needed to spread human life to other stars, and that there are economic considerations to freedom but that they are subtle and complex]. Something that is so …off the wall might not go through directly, but it might come through as something equally out there [that the greeks should dedicate all their energies and efforts to seafaring and trade]
And in fact the further in the future I would be aiming to talk about the better. What matters about 2,000 paltry years when we’re talking about post-singularity or near-singularity times? The differences between us will be minor in comparison, and not be ‘smudged’ by the chronophone.
The cultural differences—the object-level information that Aristotle is lacking—are significant. This is true even if you are talking about things that differ from both of you by more than your difference to Aristotle.
Clearly. But whatever they are, they should still be represented, and there may be similarly wild things in the outlying areas of their worldview—and if I can help them reach it I will. In my experience it’s the ideas in the hinterlands that are the way out of the problems of our time, regardless what our time is—merely seeing that our worldview has outliers, and the overton window is limiting us in one area is usually enough to see that we’re limited elsewhere, too.