79 replies to this topic

[Kalepha]

Richard, from my previous two posts, you need not think that I would prefer to delay benevolent, greater-than-human intelligence if non-Transhumanists deny sharing a rigorous foundation in the above, arguably universal terms. That's their problem and, perhaps to a lesser extent (that word "perhaps" should connote neutrality, not an underlying bias), Transhumanists' problem if non-Transhumanists thoughtfully recognize that constructive discourse could begin from clarifying those issues together with Transhumanists.

"The game will continue in [the absence of their ignorance [perhaps unfortunately [because being sufficiently challenged, regardless whether it's an internal or external challenge, induces improvement]]]." As I could've continued accelerating a benevolent future without having to make all this lucid. )

[Richard Leis]

Today, I asked John Bruce the following:

I do not yet understand the problem with Glenn Reynolds writing about the Technological Singularity in widely read media. It is a widely discussed topic that requires both proponents and critics for intelligent discourse. I can understand your criticism of the Technological Singuarlity; I cannot understand your apparent vendetta against Glenn Reynolds.

And he responded with:

I think he's an overrated narcissist who's trying to get attention by becoming an apologist for the truly creepy head-freezing variant of libertarianism. Where's the problem?

I guess that is the answer.

[Live Forever]

The guy is seriously starting to get on my nerves. I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt in the beginning that he was uninfomed, but after several recent comments (by, I suspect members from here or other people who support cryonics and transhumanists) that he has either skirted around, or otherwise BSed his way around true logical arguments of the raised points, he is starting to annoy me.

This is my annoyed face:
[angry]

[Richard Leis]

I don't find it annoying at all. Aren't I special?

I understand, but do not support his view. He appears to be the type of person that feels people and their activities should be regulated, for the greater good. It is a nice sentiment, but I don't plan to let any of that stop me from doing what I feel is important. I have no use for the laws of people who regulate out of fear and ignorance.

[Kalepha]

Just to be clear, "non-Transhumanist" wasn't intended to denote John Bruce.

[Kalepha]

Rather, "thinking non-Transhumanist" was not.

[Kalepha]

Nate, it's a waste of energy to find people like John Bruce annoying, just like it's a waste of energy to find me annoying. [tung]

[Live Forever]

Nate, it's a waste of energy to find people like John Bruce annoying, just like it's a waste of energy to find me annoying. [tung]

Haha, I suppose you are right [lol] I give you the benefit of the doubt though cause of your first name. [sfty]

[Kalepha]

I'm glad my name is all it takes!

[kevin]

He appears to be the type of person that feels people and their activities should be regulated, for the greater good.

The desire to impose one's perception of order on an unruly reality will forever be a losing proposition. I wonder if he will feel the same when things really start to fall apart. I don't think anyone will be watching to make sure he 'goes gently into that good night' but I suspect that the people who care about him, and likely himself, will wish that he obtain the best care and latest advances in technology possible.

[Kalepha]

He appears to be the type of person that feels people and their activities should be regulated, for the greater good.

The desire to impose one's perception of order on an unruly reality will forever be a losing proposition. I wonder if he will feel the same when things really start to fall apart. I don't think anyone will be watching to make sure he 'goes gently into that good night' but I suspect that the people who care about him, and likely himself, will wish that he obtain the best care and latest advances in technology possible.

Reality probably isn't completely unruly, if that's what you mean, if you expect there to be advanced technology. And whose desire is it to impose one's perception, if you expect he will wish to obtain the best available care? I point this out only to defend the proposition that rational discourse is possible between Transhumanists and non-Transhumanists under reasonable conditions that arguably shouldn't be construed as imposing perceptions.

[kevin]

I think by definition reality is unruly. It is its compositions that wish to impose structure on it, present company included. Some are just more willing (and/or able) to recognize the patterns in the winds of change and can set their sails accordingly instead of being bashed against the rocks.

I agree completely there is definitely room for rational discourse between those who hold true to the basic desire for improvement, no matter that one wishes to push farther than the other. At least there is some common ground.

The key word here is of course 'rational', and I would maintain that calling people insane who advocate the use of technology for improving previously unapproachable problems, when pretty much entire industries are springing up among us demonstrating the viability of that presumption, is *not* 'rational', nor does it indicate that there is an overlap of motivation from which such discourse might be grounded.

I'm certain that there are many individuals who even though they do not share the same optimism that some holding to transhumanist philolsophy demonstrate, they do agree that much of what transhumanists are saying is not outside the realm of possibility. What it seems we have in this particular blogger however doesn't have much to do with transhumanism itself. It seems this is more a strange vendetta against Glen Reynolds, with transhumanism merely being the club he wishes to beat him with. Either that or he's just trying to grab a bit of attention for himself by making people pissed off a him.. which given the blatant self promotion lifted from his site below, I think is more likely.

The Buzz
". . .a blogger I'd never heard of has been reading my . . . postings and thinks they're 'vapid and cloyingly precious', not to mention 'lower middlebrow'." -- Terry Teachout
"He doesn’t get irony so he won’t see the humor in this whole situation." -- John Holbo

"Rest assured, Mr. Bruce, that I will give your opinion of my writing exactly the level of consideration it deserves." -- John Scalzi

"Seriously, who is John Bruce? I never heard of him. . ." -- Mr. Farlops

Edited by Kevin Perrott, 13 April 2006 - 04:44 AM.

[Kalepha]

I'm not interested in what John Bruce thinks and, without allusion to John Bruce and in agreement with cosmos, I think sufficient intellectual challenges induce improvement. Those are my only main points. Their elaborations were mostly intended as responses to cosmos' thought, which I didn't expect were going to be thoroughly misconstrued. Perhaps they haven't been.

[Kalepha]

Some are just more willing (and/or able) to recognize the patterns in the winds of change and can set their sails accordingly instead of being bashed against the rocks.

I like this sentence, BTW.

[kevin]

I care about JB's opinion inasmuch as his influence on other's thinking but as we all know, our effect on others opinions is quite minimal so I'm not too worried about his impact on those who alreday have one. However naieve individuals don't have the luxury of prejuidice and may be swayed to believing that what he is spouting makes sense, and that is something that need to be resisted. Happily, there are many more capable than I of pointing out the shallowness of his position.

Re: the sentence.. easy to relate to I'm sure..

[Kalepha]

Perhaps we may draw some inferences about John Bruce, to better understand some of his peculiar, observable behavior.

(1) From his first blog entry in his blog In the Shadow of Mt. Hollywood he writes

I'm also interested in the challenges facing the Christian religion (and my particular branch of the tree, Anglicanism) …

Thus, John Bruce is probably Anglican.

(2) The Wikipedia entry on Anglicanism, in the Doctrine section, states

Anglicans look for authority (in the formula of Richard Hooker) in the experience of Scripture, Reason, and Tradition (the practices and writings of the historical church). While it is often taught that these three are of equal value (using an image of a three-legged stool), the Anglican formularies have always pointed out that:

"Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation." (Article VI, The Anglican Thirty-nine Articles of Religion).

Thus, we understand a little bit about Anglicanism, enough to proceed.

(3) From today's entry, in his blog, entitled "John Bruce Gets, If Not Results, At Least Humorous And Unintended Consequences," with its first sentence stating

It's amusing that this blog, which gets traffic near the bottom of the blog totem pole (though still above some on Instapundit's blogroll, which gives you an idea of what that's worth) does sometimes create tiny, tiny disturbances in the Force.

I comment

One might appreciate John Bruce humble at the core, encoded in the title of this entry and its first sentence.

I have only a recommendation for this blog, if its intended audience is generally critically thinking. Its entries should be categorized. For instance, one should be able quickly to find and decode your philosophy of mind or your operating personhood theory on which your derivative conceptions about what is possible and desirable might be based.

and this lad replies

I tried running that last bit through Babelfish, but couldn't get anywhere.

Babelfish is a language translation service, and with all the language translation services out there, Babelfish just so happens to be the most appealing to John Bruce. Why?

(4) Given this lad's (1) religious propensity (a somewhat effective but obsolete way of facing existential angst), it's plausible that Babel fish is appealing because of what the name might signify other than as a label function for a service. Its Wikipedia entry states

The fish's name refers to the Tower of Babel, a Biblical story, which describes events in Abrahamic theology which led to God confusing the languages of Man in order to prevent the Tower's construction, among other things.

Thus, one might infer that Babel fish is an appealing concept to whomever is willfully ignorant for the purpose of maximizing noise for the purpose of inhibiting intelligent organization for the purpose of justifying a crybabiness mode in coping with existential angst. Perhaps more or slightly different inferences may be drawn.

[MichaelAnissimov]

The fun thing about John Bruce is that he seems to be paying attention to whoever comments on his blog (almost only transhumanists now). So there is a lot of mutual feedback.

Whoops, I called JB Episcopalian before. I must have misread.

JB recently predicted a "scandal" breaking out due to Reynold's transhumanist leanings. Maybe he does not realize that there are multitudes of transhumanist sympathizers in media, business, research, and the government. Has he ever read WIRED magazine?

[Live Forever]

The fun thing about John Bruce is that he seems to be paying attention to whoever comments on his blog (almost only transhumanists now).  So there is a lot of mutual feedback. 

Yeah, I think it is funny that the biggest audience for an "anti-transhumanist", "anti-cryonicist", etc. blogger are the very transhumanists, cryonicists, etc. that he rails against. He evidently (looking at his posts) is keeping an eye on this thread.

[DJS]

He evidently (looking at his posts) is keeping an eye on this thread.

In which case....

Hey JB, I have a quote you can add to your buzz list. )

Never try and teach a pig to sing: it's a waste of time, and it annoys the pig.
--Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love

[Richard Leis]

John Bruce's nearly daily criticism provides nice fodder for practicing your response, for those times when real critics attack. After that initial spike of frustration and indignation you can only chuckle at the insignificance of most of the commentary in the blogosphere.

[Richard Leis]

My previous statement was condescending. I don't know if I am fighting down in the trenches or sipping tea with someone who enjoys arguing. Maybe the forum members who suggest we should get to work instead of posting comments all day have a point

[Kalepha]

Undoubtedly, the blogsophere helps to shape values. Then it's probably a question of, in the long-run, whether the value-set is as internally antagonistic as it seems to be to a few rampant egos living in the moment. John Bruce, for instance, calls himself a neo-Luddite, but I wonder about the nature of neo-neo-Luddites, etc., as Kevin indicates. Even many neo-Luddites seem to appreciate the conveniences and minor pleasures that modern-day computing provides.

While it probably isn't immediately obvious to John Bruce, his apparently antagonistic predictions are as deep as Transhumanists' and, therefore, perhaps equally speculative. Furthermore, neo-Luddites, along with some Transhumanists even, seem to miss the point. Whether castigating or glorifying theoretical technology, this shall prove largely inconsequential beside what appropriately navigates us through the minefield of the future, the general influences of negligibly biased future analysts (e.g., Future of Humanity Institute) and of the careful actions to create benevolent, greater-than-human intelligence (e.g., Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence).

(The links, of course, are intended for new audiences, just in case.)

[Edit: "indifferent" to "negligibly biased," which is probably less ambiguous and more accurate.]

Edited by Nate Barna, 14 April 2006 - 07:45 PM.

[Kalepha]

It could be added to the last sentence of the second paragraph that there isn't, unfortunately, an infinite range of pleasant minds equilibria available to us, regardless how much anyone might hate nature for it. (I'll need to argue for this conjecture some other time, but I expect it shouldn't be controversial.) This is along the lines, again, of Kevin's thought earlier: "Some are just more willing (and/or able) to recognize the patterns in the winds of change and can set their sails accordingly instead of being bashed against the rocks."

[Edit: "mind" to "minds."]

Edited by Nate Barna, 14 April 2006 - 08:58 PM.

[Kalepha]

Whoops, I called JB Episcopalian before. I must have misread.

What's funny about that is that JB's blog title, "In the Shadow of Mt. Hollywood," bears a striking resemblance to the title of one of Marilyn Manson's albums, "Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)," and Marilyn Manson (Brian Hugh Warner) was raised as an Episcopalian.

[MichaelAnissimov]

Funny bit about Marilyn Manson. Holy Wood is one of the only MM albums I can listen to without being irritated.

John Bruce seems to have changed his tone slightly - instead of dissing his transhumanist readers, he seems to be welcoming them to comment on his posts! We should all be polite to John Bruce so he sees transhumanists as civil people willing to tolerate criticism. (As we should be.)

Even though the title of this thread, and the image posted by DonSpanton suggest otherwise... cmon guys, let's try *especially hard* to be tolerant towards the people that want us to die. They don't want us to die because they're mean, but because they think that life and death are part of the natural cycle of things.

[Kalepha]

I would think that working to create a future also requires some rational prospection. If you (whoever) understand that you want to do more and more with less and less, that you want to conceive all the non-trivially possible, that you want to have an expanding choice set quantified over the expanding conceivable quantified over the possible, that you want to eliminate the foolish use of precious resources directed toward the not possible or the ridiculously trivial and arbitrary, that you need to optimize, then it should be only a few minor steps away to begin working a little less suicidally to create a future.

[DJS]

MA

John Bruce seems to have changed his tone slightly - instead of dissing his transhumanist readers, he seems to be welcoming them to comment on his posts!

Yeeahh, yeah for me.

You guys really need to take yourselves less seriously sometimes.

Even though the title of this thread, and the image posted by DonSpanton suggest otherwise... cmon guys, let's try *especially hard* to be tolerant towards the people that want us to die.  They don't want us to die because they're mean, but because they think that life and death are part of the natural cycle of things.

Michael, perhaps if I had calculated a positive opportunity cost in restraining my slapstick I would have done so. But, from my perspective at least, the fate of the world isn't even marginally affected by my fulfilling the desire to amuse myself. Everyone may now carry on with their....i*********** c***** j***. (fil in the blanks, and don't be insulted, I may wind up joining in later) [lol]

Oh, and just to avoid the appearance of being totally vacuous, a sample of my recent focus:

Charlatanism: a Technical Argument - Nassim Taleb

I will now phrase a more technical version of the arguments discussed during the interview. At an econometric level the problem of VAR is whether the (properly integrated) processes we observe are (weakly) stationary. If they are weakly stationary, then ergodic theory states that we can estimate parameters with a confidence level in some proportion to the sample size. Assuming stationarity, for higher dimensional processes like a vector of uncorrelated securities returns, and for Markov switching distributions with strong asymmetry, we may need centuries, sometimes hundreds of centuries of data. Some people compute a monstrous covariance matrix with limited data points, and make up additional data using a poor application of the bootstrap technique or the Geman & Geman Gibbs sampler. Clearly no amount of quantitative sophistication will expand your information set - by a similar argument no amount of mathematical knowledge will help me estimate someone's phone number.

At a more philosophical level, the casual quantitative inference in current use is too incomplete a method. Rule 1 conjectures that there is no "canned" standard way to explore stressful events: they never look alike since humans adjust. It is indeed hard to conciliate standard naive inference (based on past frequencies) and the dialectic of historical events (people adjust). The crash of 1987 caused a sharp rally in the bonds. This became a trap during the mini-crash of 1989 ( I was caught myself ). The problem with the adjustments to VAR by "fattening the tails" as an after-the-fact adaptation to stressful events that happened is dangerously naive. Thus the VAR is like a Maginot line. In other words there is a tautological link between the harm of the events and their unpredictability, since harm comes from surprise. As rule-of-thumb 2 conjectures (see Box), nothing predictable can be truly harmful and nothing truly harmful can be predictable. We may be endowed with enough rationality to heed past events (people rationally remember events that hurt them).

Furthermore, the simplified mean-variance paradigm was designed as a tool to understand the world, not to quantify risk. This explains its survival in financial economics as a pedagogical tool for MBA students. It is therefore too idealized for risk management, which requires higher moment analysis. It also ignores the forays made by market microstructure theory. As a market maker, the fact of having something in your portfolio can be more potent information than all of its past statistical properties: securities do not randomly land in portfolios . A bank's position increase in a Mexican security signifies an increase in the probability of devaluation . The position might originate from the niece of an informed government official trading with a local bank. For having been picked on routinely traders (who survived the sitting duck stage) adjust for these asymmetric information biases better than the "scientific" engineer.

[Kalepha]

Everyone may now carry on with their....i*********** c***** j***

Don, intellectual circus joys?