Robin, it’s not clear to me what further kind of argument you think I should offer. I didn’t just flatly state “the problem with the Culture is the Minds”, I described what my problem was, and offered Narnia as a simplified case where the problem is especially stark.
It’s not clear to me what constitutes an “argument” beyond sharing the mental images that invoke your preferences, in this matter of terminal values. What other sort of answer could I give to “Why don’t you think that’s fun?” Would you care to briefly state a contrary view you have, and what you would see as a different sort of argument in favor of it?
Again, my purpose in all this is twofold: To retain people who now turn away from transhumanism, cryonics, or life itself because they can’t imagine any future in which they would be happy; and to deliver a further general argument against religions by showing that the present world isn’t optimized for eudaimonia, including moral responsibility or self-reliance.
To me this whole article looks like a confusion of all possible goals being terminal goals. We want responsibility for our terminal goals, but when the faucet breaks, we call a plumber instead of contemplating our self-reliance. Ok, I contemplate my failure at self-reliance, but that’s a psychological mess-up I don’t endorse for a second.
Robin, it’s not clear to me what further kind of argument you think I should offer. I didn’t just flatly state “the problem with the Culture is the Minds”, I described what my problem was, and offered Narnia as a simplified case where the problem is especially stark.
It’s not clear to me what constitutes an “argument” beyond sharing the mental images that invoke your preferences, in this matter of terminal values. What other sort of answer could I give to “Why don’t you think that’s fun?” Would you care to briefly state a contrary view you have, and what you would see as a different sort of argument in favor of it?
Again, my purpose in all this is twofold: To retain people who now turn away from transhumanism, cryonics, or life itself because they can’t imagine any future in which they would be happy; and to deliver a further general argument against religions by showing that the present world isn’t optimized for eudaimonia, including moral responsibility or self-reliance.
To me this whole article looks like a confusion of all possible goals being terminal goals. We want responsibility for our terminal goals, but when the faucet breaks, we call a plumber instead of contemplating our self-reliance. Ok, I contemplate my failure at self-reliance, but that’s a psychological mess-up I don’t endorse for a second.