I’ll be there! At least the downtown part. :) Also, I got a new job just in time for the shake up, and it has an erratic schedule, but I’ll make it to all the ones I can. Cheers!
TheStevenator
Karma: 33
In 10 years, I’ll be 32 as well. My main reason for trying to put off procrastinating is because I know I’d be kicking myself (metaphorically) if I died when I was 31 due to some stupid accident.
I’m in the process now of trying to figure out how to spend my first few decades in a way that will be most conducive to making the future an even better place to live.
For me, I really can’t see the downside to signing up. Life insurance is something most people sign up for anyway and the additional ~120 bucks for cryonics is pocket change. I mean, common people; That’s like the cost of Netflix!
Life rocks and I want to go on living for as long as I want. If I get bored in 2 million years, I’ll reserve the option to check myself out. Or, more likely, I’ll just change what I’m doing.
As far as I’m concerned, if it only costs twice as much as an X-Box live subscription and it might (with varying degrees of hopefulness—I’m at the high end) procure my immortality, worst case scenario it’s money well wasted.
I don’t think it takes an degree in nano-tech or cutting edge medicine to be more confident in the power of future technology than in the power of praying for souls. Even if it is granted that there aren’t great reasons for supposing cryonic preservation is viable, it is a huge and unwarranted leap to say that is as intellectually vacuous as the ideas of prayers affecting souls.
Sounds great! I’m looking for a new job now anyway. Depending on what I find, Wednesday nights might open up for me. :)
I live in Fort Collins and have to work during the biweekly meetup here. This showed up on twitter like 15 minutes ago and I missed it. :-/
Good post and a good lesson. Paying attention to your feelings and reasons for them is an indespensible ingredient to good mental health.
Good point. I was thinking the same thing. It became a false dilemma right after the coma.
Also, nice name. :)
Still very much enjoying the story! Love the background of the Confessor!
Loving this fic so far! It’s really stretched my space of imagined possible alien minds. I attended a conference this summer called TAM 9 and several of the talks were on possible alien life, but none of them had this kind of imagination.
The best solution I could think of (and yes, I did sit and think about it for a few minutes) would be to modify the baby eaters so that the children want to be eaten and/or don’t suffer their end at the hands of their parents. Haven’t thought about the current conundrum yet.
I think the point of this post is that people are already doing what they want and, lo and behold, people are behaving morally (for the most part) with or without the permission of moral philosophers. To me, and I’m pretty sure all of you, would still act morally. I would still abstain from murdering people and I’d still tip delivery drivers. We already know (at least the gist) of what morality is.
I think the other point of this post is that even if the relativists were right, we’d still act the same.
(Although, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that I have heard religious people outright say that they would kill and steal if they learned god didn’t exist. This is the only silver lining that I am willing to concede to those who say that religion has indespensible social utility; that it keeps leashes on these psychopaths.)
Ahh… So this is why Harry and Draco meet at night wearing hooded masks instead of just studying in the library behind a quietus charm. :)
This was a fun post. While I enjoy the public access and general lack of rock climbing ablilities associated with learning science, it is a fun thing to contemplate. Maybe there is a way to implement this sort of thing in elementary school classrooms. Maybe kids would think science is more fun if you offered to teach them the amazing secrets if and only if they were able to give you a non-password answer for what hypotheses and theories are.
I love this proposal!
As long as the newspapers are at it, they should use ‘Amazing Breakthrough Day’ as an excuse to change the Atrology section to the ‘Astronomy’ section.
Great post!
I think the greatest test of self honesty (maybe it ties with honestly imagining the world you wish weren’t real) would be admitting to yourself that the world looks an awful lot like the hypotheticl world you just vividly imagined. I think if anyone who believes in god or homeopathy or what-have-you honestly imagined what the world would look like if their belief was wrong, and they had enough courage, they’d admit to themselves that the world looks a lot like that already.
I’d like to make it, but I work weekday nights for the foreseeable future. I’ll try to make it to one at some point.
And here is the response to that Sam Harris wrote to some critiques of his postion on how science can answer moral questions: http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/a/
Just to clarify: the website is 3quarksdaily.com. :)
I just noticed this! I live in Fort Collins! See you there!
This is rather unnerving. I shamefully admit that the idea that I might accidentally do harm is something I hadn’t seriously considered. People come to me for advice all the time and I always qualify it by saying things like “Here is what I would do, but every situation is different” and “consider that there is probably a lot more to be said on this topic” but it never occurred to me that I could accidentally do serious harm to someone by offering a little advice.
Between this and the inferential difference, is there much hope at all for trying to educate and help people?
Another great post. Much of the philosophical discussion I have with people consists of them ‘pretending to be wise’. Whenever I am giving a fragmentary repitition of someone else’s conclusion (usually when talking about something complex in science that I know only a little about) I’m at least up front with them. I’ll say something thing like “I don’t understand this nearly as well as [insert some experts or a specific field], but here is the little bit I do know.
Oh my various gods! That was possibly one of the best articles here. Granted, it was a bit far afield from usual, but it brought the concepts that this site discusses home in a relatable story. +5, if I could. Though I should be clear, every article I have read on here has taught me something. This one didn’t really have a specific lesson to teach, but it was thought provoking and made me laugh a lot more than many of the other articles.
Though I doubt it, if there is anyone here who hasn’t heard of the fanfic Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (you will probably recognize the name of the author) I cannot reccommend it more highly. It is positively brimming with story-told knowledge and wisdom like this.
Just to be clear, are we still meeting up in spite of the parade?