“Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon,”
Of late, during my discussions with others about rational politics and eudaimonia, I’ve been experiencing a strangely significant proportion of people (particularly the religious) asking me—with no irony—“What would you even DO with immortality?” My favored response: “Anything. And everything. In that order.” LessWrong and HP:MoR has played no small part in that answer, and much of the further discussion that generally ensues.
So… thanks, everyone!
There’s a fun (or at least “fun”) exercise in which I regularly engage at my heavily right-wing, ex-military workplace: I try to agree with the guys who are in knee-jerk agreement with Fox News. I find this helps immensely with mental flexibility, as it forces me to try to actually reason from a foreign point of view. For example: when my coworkers are vociferously agreeing that a wall should be built of the border with Canada, I try to enter the discussion from the Rationalist perspective, looking for any objective benefits a Canadian border wall might have.
This has the double benefit of developing mental flexibility AND making me seem to be a potential political/philosophical ally to the coworkers in question. That way, when I keep developing the Rationalist perspective into the deep, blatant flaws in such a measure, my inputs are actually considered instead of being immediately shouted down.
Occasionally, a coworker even abandons their support for the measure in question.… which leads me to believe I’m on the right path.