.. Brilliant. I just wish I was more competent to understand it at present. xD

One of my own personal catchphrases is "I'm not as smart as I like to think I am." :)

One thing I have learned - rationality is less a matter of innate ability, and more a matter of knowing the right tricks to make the best use of whatever brain you've got. Learn enough of 'em, and you can convince most anybody into thinking you're as smart as the smartest person they can think of... aaand, I'm not sure that's quite how I should have phrased that. ;) But you could do a lot worse with your time than start going through the Sequences and absorbing whatever you can.

I was sort of with you until the "libertarian" label came up. It carries a lot of baggage -- and because of that, I think flaws are more readily apparent.

Not everyone has the same definition of those rights. "Freedom of thought or expression" also includes a "pass" for cyberbullies who have often caused others (particularly children) to commit suicide: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312018,00.html

It also gives a pass to anyone who uses violence when they perceive there's a threat (this would include the mentally ill killing or beating someone as well as racists doing the same because they feel that members of the other race are trying to take over their resources.

It gives a pass to missionaries of all faiths to proselytize others whether or not they wish to be converted. It sort of implies that certain cultural values are going to be forced on others (what if you happen to be a man who likes an "old fashioned" (June Cleaver) woman? I can tell you that they aren't going to be happy if you try to turn their wives into mouthy uppity women.)

That said, I think your ideas work very well for small groups of people. But history has shown that the larger population contains people who interpret language and laws very differently than many others do... and sometimes their view wins.

"Freedom of thought or expression" also includes a "pass" for cyberbullies who have often caused others[QUOTE]

Every guarantee of rights contains downsides as well as upsides. The question is, do the positives outweigh the negatives, or do the negatives outweigh the positives? As far as I can tell, any limitation to freedom of speech is rapidly exploited by people who want to limit other forms of speech as well. The only way I know of to guarantee /my/ freedom of speech is to work to guarantee everyone /else's/ maximum freedom of speech, even speech I disagree with strongly:

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
-- Thomas Paine

If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other.
-- Carl Schurz

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
-- Salman Rushdie

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
-- Thomas Jefferson

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
-- H. L. Mencken



[QUOTE]It gives a pass to missionaries of all faiths to proselytize others whether or not they wish to be converted.

I'm an atheist, as well as a contrarian on a number of popular issues. I've gotten rather used to being inundated with proselytizing. This goes back to the first point, and the conception of a 'marketplace of ideas' as being one of the best ways to make sure that true ideas have a chance to be heard no matter how unpopular they may be.


It also gives a pass to anyone who uses violence when they perceive there's a threat

Not quite; this is why I included the item labelled 3), so that the people involved will take the time and effort to come up with a rational set of guidelines about what behaviour should be considered infringing on their rights and is thus valid to use force to defend against, and what behaviour /isn't/ and thus cannot be such a casus belli.


people who interpret language and laws very differently than many others do

Which is why this Compact isn't a set of laws, but a set of general principles (which, in item 3, include a promise to work out a good set of laws) voluntarily agreed to.

Hihi! Just found this, this evening, and I thought I'd comment on it. Read both of them just now.

One thing that struck me, and strikes me whenever I speak to folks with similar views, is that you only seem to acknowledge the goal of filling the universe with life, and not any other goals that people may have.

If people really cared about living forever, we'd all be doctors. Most people are satisfied with living their lives and enjoying the present; if life is extinguished or grows to encompass the universe, it doesn't really matter. Even if you don't accept the inevetability of death, the importance to you of your personal existance only occurs due to your personality, heritage, and unique brain-chemistry.

Personally I'm often troubled by the thought that people who have children are terrible; because they force another life on this universe. Nobody asks to be born. I carry on because I'm alive, but it's a burden when I could simply not exist. But that's just my perspective; a lot of people LOVE living. You sound like one yourself, given how much you want to prolong the existance of life. Of course, the classic argument reigns; if I didn't exist, I wouldn't be able to complain about existance.

Back to my main point, what troubled me was the expressed feeling that people impeding the expansion of life into the universe are wrong. Though you didn't use the word, and I doubt you would, the feeling expressed reminds me of the concept of 'evil'. Something innately wrong, the other side to the argument that the expansion of life and overall survival is innately good. And that bothers me.

I don't mean to accuse you of anything. I might just be rambling on, but these are thoughts I had and I wanted to share them. Maybe they'll give you something to think about. I just hope you don't think me a villan for being indifferent to the survival of life. I do think it's interesting from a certain point of view, transhumanism and space colonization are some of my favorite ideas. However, I can't get beyond my own immediate wants and needs to seriously consider actively supporting that. I have a hard enough time getting myself to write a letter to my MP to complain about all of the proposed copyright and criminal reform bills.

At any rate I wish you luck with your own goals. ^.^

Hello there; and I'm glad to read any reply to these, whether it involves agreeing or disagreeing with me. :)


the goal of filling the universe with life

That isn't /quite/ the goal I intended to express. Filling the whole universe with life is certainly one /method/ that can be used to achieve my actual goal (avoiding the extinction of sapience), but there are certain potential arguments that can be used against spreading life everywhere which may mean it's not /necessarily/ the best method, and I don't want to try to argue in support of those flaws when it would be better to simply switch to another method while maintaining the same goal.


If people really cared about living forever, we'd all be doctors

Not really - not everyone has the skillset to be a doctor, and in order for doctors to be able to do their jobs as best as possible, they also need the support not only of nurses, administrators, and hospital staff, but their entire society, from farmers to garbagemen. Not to mention the scientists who keep coming up with the treatments doctors can apply.


if life is extinguished or grows to encompass the universe, it doesn't really matter.

That's only true if you don't believe your actions can possibly make a difference between which of those two scenarios really does come to pass.


the importance to you of your personal existance only occurs due to...

Even if those are the reasons why I acquired those desires, don't change the fact that I /do/ have them, and am working to fulfill them to the best of my ability. (It might be worth your while to read about 'desire utilitarianism', such as the descriptions at http://atheistethicist.blogspot.com and http://commonsenseatheism.com .)


a lot of people LOVE living. You sound like one yourself

"Give me immortality or give me death!" >;)


Of course, the classic argument reigns; if I didn't exist, I wouldn't be able to complain about existance.

I've heard an astonishing number of people make similar arguments about my whole idea - that if all sapience dies out, there won't be anyone left to care either way about it, and therefore I might as well not care about it either. There's an obvious logical flaw there, in that even if I'm going to die, I /am/ alive right /now/, and right now I /do/ prefer to work towards a future containing sapience over a future lacking it.


what troubled me was the expressed feeling that people impeding the expansion of life into the universe are wrong. Though you didn't use the word, and I doubt you would, the feeling expressed reminds me of the concept of 'evil'. Something innately wrong, the other side to the argument that the expansion of life and overall survival is innately good. And that bothers me.

Hm... let me start by drawing on a couple of quotes from a story about the "Methods of Rationality":


"... there's this little thing called cognitive dissonance, or in plainer English, sour grapes. If people were hit on the heads with truncheons once a month, and no one could do anything about it, pretty soon there'd be all sorts of philosophers, pretending to be wise as you put it, who found all sorts of amazing benefits to being hit on the head with a truncheon once a month. Like, it makes you tougher, or it makes you happier on the days when you're not getting hit with a truncheon. But if you went up to someone who wasn't getting hit, and you asked them if they wanted to start, in exchange for those amazing benefits, they'd say no. And if you didn't have to die, if you came from somewhere that no one had ever even heard of death, and I suggested to you that it would be an amazing wonderful great idea for people to get wrinkled and old and eventually cease to exist, why, you'd have me hauled right off to a lunatic asylum!"

...

"If you can call death better than life then you can twist your moral compass to point anywhere!"

...

"Pretend ... that you really believed in souls. Pretend that anyone could verify the existence of souls at any time, pretend that nobody cried at funerals because they knew their loved ones were still alive. Now can you imagine destroying a soul? Ripping it to shreds so that nothing remains to go on its next great adventure? Can you imagine what a terrible thing that would be, the worst crime that had ever been committed in the history of the universe, which you would do anything to prevent from happening even once? Because that's what Death really is - the annihilation of a soul!"

...

"There is no justice in the laws of Nature ... no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The universe is neither evil, nor good, it simply does not care. The stars don't care, or the Sun, or the sky. But they don't have to! We care! There is light in the world, and it is us!"

To the above, about the only thing necessary to add to get from the described viewpoint to my own... is the belief that 'all people' (or 'all souls', 'all life', or whichever equivalent you prefer) is at least as important, if not moreso, than 'any one person'.

You may have heard of a classic psychological experiment, where a trolley is hurtling down a track towards some people, and you have the opportunity to press a button to send the trolley to another track with some number of other people. Imagine a different variation, where a trolley is hurtling down a track towards some people, and the subject has the opportunity to press a button to send the trolley to another track with /no/ people in the way; and that subject decides to /not/ push the button. Would you consider such an action to be 'evil'? Now, hyperbolically, imagine that on the first track is /everybody/, every person alive or who could ever be alive; and the subject again decides to not push the button. Would you consider /that/ action to be 'evil'?

That isn't /quite/ the goal I intended to express. Filling the whole universe with life is certainly one /method/ that can be used to achieve my actual goal (avoiding the extinction of sapience), but there are certain potential arguments that can be used against spreading life everywhere which may mean it's not /necessarily/ the best method, and I don't want to try to argue in support of those flaws when it would be better to simply switch to another method while maintaining the same goal.

Sorry, I spoke too generally. I understood that you meant avoiding the extinction of sapience.

Not really - not everyone has the skillset to be a doctor, and in order for doctors to be able to do their jobs as best as possible, they also need the support not only of nurses, administrators, and hospital staff, but their entire society, from farmers to garbagemen. Not to mention the scientists who keep coming up with the treatments doctors can apply.

Again I spoke too generally. Certainly there will always need to be supports; even if we ever make autonomous servants, somebody has to keep an eye on them. As I've been considering lately, you can autonomize any task, but there comes a certain point in the complexity of a task where any machine you build to autonomize the task will be a person.

I digress. When I said everyone would be doctors, I meant in spirit. We would all be working soley towards the goal of prolonging life. But that's not what people are about. Even in nature, a lot of animals die in reproduction. I'm not particularly happy about evolution though; I'd like to see it done away with, which is one of my favorite themes of transhumanism. Moving beyond life into something new. I've written on that quite a bit, though I don't have any handy links at the moment.


[quote]if life is extinguished or grows to encompass the universe, it doesn't really matter.


That's only true if you don't believe your actions can possibly make a difference between which of those two scenarios really does come to pass.[/quote]

I don't think it's a matter of that. It's more of a cosmic thing. You're an atheist, right? There's no divine purpose behind the universe, it's just a bunch of random stuff that happened. One can argue that the way life and intelligence evolved, creating desires, creates its own purposes. But outside of the individual perspective, there's no grand purpose behind existance. Life or not, sapience or not, it doesn't really MATTER, cosmically. Only personally, and only briefly, during your own existance.


Even if those are the reasons why I acquired those desires, don't change the fact that I /do/ have them, and am working to fulfill them to the best of my ability. (It might be worth your while to read about 'desire utilitarianism', such as the descriptions at http://atheistethicist.blogspot.com and http://commonsenseatheism.com .)

You're welcome to follow your own desires and goals of course. My worry was that the way you expressed yourself in these comics came across as combative, in a sort of "My way is the only right way and I'll do bad things to those who disagree!" sense. That was doubly disturbing since it seems to run contrary to what I observe of your personal beliefs of personal liberty. I thought I should bring up the feelings it evoked so you would be aware of that.

To the above, about the only thing necessary to add to get from the described viewpoint to my own... is the belief that 'all people' (or 'all souls', 'all life', or whichever equivalent you prefer) is at least as important, if not moreso, than 'any one person'.

You may have heard of a classic psychological experiment, where a trolley is hurtling down a track towards some people, and you have the opportunity to press a button to send the trolley to another track with some number of other people. Imagine a different variation, where a trolley is hurtling down a track towards some people, and the subject has the opportunity to press a button to send the trolley to another track with /no/ people in the way; and that subject decides to /not/ push the button. Would you consider such an action to be 'evil'? Now, hyperbolically, imagine that on the first track is /everybody/, every person alive or who could ever be alive; and the subject again decides to not push the button. Would you consider /that/ action to be 'evil'?

I would consider that to be very sad, but I'm not sure about evil. I'm not terribly comfortable with the idea of guilt through inaction. If there's a personal responsibility you accepted, that's something different, but it's still not 'evil'. I mean, I don't think it's sensible to give anybody the sole responsibility for acting to save all the people.

Let me make a different example. I think there's a big difference between pushing someone into the path of a bus and not pushing someone out of the path of a bus. For one thing, why are they standing in the path of a bus? Is it because of ignorance of the bus? Is it because they intend to get hit by the bus? Perhaps they intend to step out of the path of the bus, and pushing them would upset their plans. Ultimately, they chose to stand there, and how they live their life is not my choice. I'm not responsible for protecting them. In a real example of this situation, I'm not sure how I would act. I would probably make a snap judgement call based on observable factors. If all of the people in the world were in front of the hypothetical bus, and I could push them or not, I would likely only push a portion. Those I specifically know, and know well enough to judge their views and decisions, and know that they don't want to get hit by a bus. Those ones I feel a personal responsibility to protect because of our social attachment. The rest of the world, if it decided that standing in the path of the bus was the best thing, I would likely leave them there. But, all the people in the world are not a single person. Surely there would be individuals there who requested saving. I would do my best to help them, as well, and likely at risk to my own life because I have so little regard for my own existance. I tend to carry on more because of other people who would be sad at my loss than for my own sake.

So, there's my perspective. Do you think I'm evil for not pushing everyone out of the way of the bus, whether that's their choice or not? I couldn't imagine placing myself so high that I would ignore the collective will of all the people, even if evidence demonstrates that their choice is stupid and will get them killed. Saving someone I don't know from themself seems somehow cruel. I guess I just consider freedom of choice more important than an individual's life.

Of course, everyone has their own individual perspective. You seem more like you're trying to convince people to save themselves, rather than saving them yourself. Would you push everyone out of the way of the bus?

there comes a certain point in the complexity of a task where any machine you build to autonomize the task will be a person.

Or, at the very least, meets the criteria where it's in your own long-term self-interest to treat them /as if/ they were a person. :)


When I said everyone would be doctors, I meant in spirit. We would all be working soley towards the goal of prolonging life.

'All' may be a bit broad - but this does seem to be very much in the spirit of the Enlightenment, and those of us who try to continue and expand on the humanistic principles that were developed therein.


You're an atheist, right?

To put it mildly, yes. :)


There's no divine purpose behind the universe, it's just a bunch of random stuff that happened. One can argue that the way life and intelligence evolved, creating desires, creates its own purposes. But outside of the individual perspective, there's no grand purpose behind existance. Life or not, sapience or not, it doesn't really MATTER, cosmically. Only personally, and only briefly, during your own existance.

You seem to be writing that as if there /could/ be such a thing as something that matters 'cosmically'.

One thing I've learned from Lojban is that many words contain implicit clauses, even if they're not mattered. For example, you can call something "good", but even without mentioning it, you're actually saying that it's "good, according to a particular standard"; if you say something is "beautiful", it's really "beautiful, to persons X Y and Z". And yes, by saying something "matters", you're saying it "matters to somebody". Saying that something 'matters', but not to anybody, is a paradox.


I thought I should bring up the feelings it evoked so you would be aware of that.

And I appreciate that. I'm a lot better at thinking of ideas than I am at communicating those ideas so they're received the way I'd like them to be.


I would consider that to be very sad, but I'm not sure about evil. I'm not terribly comfortable with the idea of guilt through inaction. If there's a personal responsibility you accepted, that's something different, but it's still not 'evil'. I mean, I don't think it's sensible to give anybody the sole responsibility for acting to save all the people.

/Give/ responsibility to someone? Of course that's not necessarily sensible. /Take/ responsibility, especially when it seems that all-too-few other people are going to? That's what I'm trying to do, and to convince other people that they should also do.

It's entirely possible that there /is/ nobody else who's going to step up to the plate and at least make the attempt. In which case, the responsibility really /does/ fall to me to make the choice.

(On a related but lighter note, there's this: http://www.kiwisbybeat.com/minus37.html .)



Let me make a different example. I think there's a big difference between pushing someone into the path of a bus and not pushing someone out of the path of a bus. For one thing, why are they standing in the path of a bus? Is it because of ignorance of the bus? Is it because they intend to get hit by the bus? Perhaps they intend to step out of the path of the bus, and pushing them would upset their plans. Ultimately, they chose to stand there, and how they live their life is not my choice. I'm not responsible for protecting them. In a real example of this situation, I'm not sure how I would act. I would probably make a snap judgement call based on observable factors. If all of the people in the world were in front of the hypothetical bus, and I could push them or not, I would likely only push a portion. Those I specifically know, and know well enough to judge their views and decisions, and know that they don't want to get hit by a bus. Those ones I feel a personal responsibility to protect because of our social attachment. The rest of the world, if it decided that standing in the path of the bus was the best thing, I would likely leave them there. But, all the people in the world are not a single person. Surely there would be individuals there who requested saving. I would do my best to help them, as well, and likely at risk to my own life because I have so little regard for my own existance. I tend to carry on more because of other people who would be sad at my loss than for my own sake.

So, there's my perspective. Do you think I'm evil for not pushing everyone out of the way of the bus, whether that's their choice or not? I couldn't imagine placing myself so high that I would ignore the collective will of all the people, even if evidence demonstrates that their choice is stupid and will get them killed. Saving someone I don't know from themself seems somehow cruel. I guess I just consider freedom of choice more important than an individual's life.

Of course, everyone has their own individual perspective. You seem more like you're trying to convince people to save themselves, rather than saving them yourself. Would you push everyone out of the way of the bus?

Some more from "Methods of Rationality":

"Actually, can you just go ahead and tell me everything you know about how the Dark Lord survived and what it might take to kill him?"

"You are not fooling me, Harry," said the old wizard; his face looked ancient now, and lined by more than years. "I know why you are truly asking that question. No, I do not read your mind, I do not have to, your hesitation gives you away! You seek the secret of the Dark Lord's immortality in order to use it for yourself!"

"Wrong! I want the secret of the Dark Lord's immortality in order to use it for everyone!"

... "his immortality took sacrifice, it took murder -"

"Well obviously I'm not going to popularize a method of immortality that requires killing people! That would defeat the entire point!"

There was a startled pause.

Slowly the old wizard's face relaxed out of its anger, though the worry was still there. "You would use no ritual requiring human sacrifice."

"I don't know what you take me for, ... but let's not forget that I'm the one who wants people to live! The one who wants to save everyone! You're the one who thinks death is awesome and everyone ought to die!"

"I am at a loss ... I know not what to say. ... Only that I am greatly misunderstood by you... I don't want everyone to die, Harry!"

"You just don't want anyone to be immortal," Harry said with considerable irony. It seemed that elementary logical tautologies like All x: Die(x) = Not Exist x: Not Die(x) were beyond the reasoning abilities of the world's most powerful wizard.

And:

(He) thought of the stars ... Only this time, (he) added the missing ingredient, he'd never truly seen it but he'd seen the pictures and the video. The Earth, blazing blue and white with reflected sunlight as it hung in space, amid the black void and the brilliant points of light. It belonged there, within that image, because it was what gave everything else its meaning. The Earth was what made the stars significant, made them more than uncontrolled fusion reactions, because it was Earth that would someday colonize the galaxy, and fulfill the promise of the night sky.

Would they still be plagued by (X), the children's children's children, the distant descendants of humankind as they strode from star to star? No. Of course not. The (X)s were only little nuisances, paling into nothingness in the light of that promise; not unkillable, not invincible, not even close. You had to put up with little nuisances, if you were one of the lucky and unlucky few to be born on Earth; on Ancient Earth, as it would be remembered someday. That too was part of what it meant to be alive, if you were one of the tiny handful of sentient beings born into the beginning of all things, before intelligent life had come fully into its power. That the much vaster future depended on what you did here, now, in the earliest days of dawn, when there was still so much darkness to be fought, and temporary nuisances like (X)s.

...

Death is not something I will ever embrace.

It is only a childish thing, that the human species has not yet outgrown.

And someday...

We'll get over it...

And people won't have to say goodbye any more...


...

And someday when the descendants of humanity have spread from star to star, they won't tell the children about the history of Ancient Earth until they're old enough to bear it; and when they learn they'll weep to hear that such a thing as Death had ever once existed!

...

You are not invincible, and someday the human species will end you.

I will end you if I can, by the power of mind and magic and science.

I won't cower in fear of Death, not while I have a chance of winning.

I won't let Death touch me, I won't let Death touch the ones I love.

And even if you do end me before I end you,

Another will take my place, and another,

Until the wound in the world is healed at last...

To answer your question: "Yes, I would, if I could."

Oops, it looks like, I replied to the picture, not to this reply. Sorry about that.

Or, at the very least, meets the criteria where it's in your own long-term self-interest to treat them /as if/ they were a person. :)

Heh, that's an interesting way to define personhood, actually. That's been one of my greatest challenges in thought experiments, trying to define personhood. When does a machine become a person? When does a fetus become a person? When does a person stop being a person?

'All' may be a bit broad - but this does seem to be very much in the spirit of the Enlightenment, and those of us who try to continue and expand on the humanistic principles that were developed therein.

The point is that most people don't, they live in the short-term, not the long-term. Even some who are aware of the long-term, choose the short-term.

You seem to be writing that as if there /could/ be such a thing as something that matters 'cosmically'.

One thing I've learned from Lojban is that many words contain implicit clauses, even if they're not mattered. For example, you can call something "good", but even without mentioning it, you're actually saying that it's "good, according to a particular standard"; if you say something is "beautiful", it's really "beautiful, to persons X Y and Z". And yes, by saying something "matters", you're saying it "matters to somebody". Saying that something 'matters', but not to anybody, is a paradox.

It comes from a personal problem in finding purpose. For a lot of people, it seems like they have a perspective with an obvious 'right', but to me there isn't one. The whole universe seems completely pointless. It frustrates me that there's no reason to do anything save for animalistic urges. A life goal that is chosen feels empty to me. My own behavior confuses me though, since even though I feel this way I keep doing things.

I suppose one day someone like you will unlock that tech from SMAC; Ethical Calculus. Then we'll be able to mathematically define right and wrong and I won't have to worry about it anymore. ^.^;;


And I appreciate that. I'm a lot better at thinking of ideas than I am at communicating those ideas so they're received the way I'd like them to be.

I think perhaps the comic format itself seems combative. If anything you seem angry. Personally I like the essay format, but that tends to get a little tl;dr for the modern era. I've been considering doing video essays in the style of the Extra Credits essay cartoon series. You might find that to be effective as well.

/Give/ responsibility to someone? Of course that's not necessarily sensible. /Take/ responsibility, especially when it seems that all-too-few other people are going to? That's what I'm trying to do, and to convince other people that they should also do.

It's entirely possible that there /is/ nobody else who's going to step up to the plate and at least make the attempt. In which case, the responsibility really /does/ fall to me to make the choice.

(On a related but lighter note, there's this: http://www.kiwisbybeat.com/minus37.html .)

I tend to worry too much about existential quandries and ignore the simpler and obvious fact that you'll do what you feel is right.

It's true I'd feel bad about enforcing my will on the world, but the reason I don't do it is because I don't care about the fate of the world. I do care about individuals, but not the whole. Well, not much. I do try to live by the motto "Life isn't fair; that's our responsibility." but I also try not to overreach myself. I fight unfairness that I encounter; I don't go looking for it.

I've seen that comic before; it's nice. ^.^


To answer your question: "Yes, I would, if I could."

Well, I hope you don't hate me for my different choice. Though, you've been too polite for me to believe at this stage that you would fill up with hate and fury. It would be a shock, at least.


Life and Death are two other things I have difficulty with, along with personhood. When is a thing alive? When is it dead? What is the difference between two individual lives? When a person loses their memory, are they a new and different person? Is a machine alive? Does it die when you turn it off?

Humans are just organic machines. It's inevetable that we'll be able to create them wholesale, and other things, and improve on them. From what I know of cellular biology and nanotechnology (not a lot) the cell is an incredibly inefficient machine. We will eventually replace them. That idea is what sprouted into my Adorabillians; the current version are transhumanist cyborgs. They're a creative expression, a fetishistic object, and a thought experiment, all rolled into one.

One thing that's become clear is that a person is more than just their brain and memories. The body and mind are two parts of the whole. It's not just a CPU plugged into a random vessel, your other organs influence your mind and your mood. If you removed your brain and put it into a machine alone, you'd be different than in your original body. If you merely copied the memories, different still. Would you be the same person? A new person? Would you change beyond the point someone could recognize you? I'm not sure of any of that.


We are able to judge what is and isn't a person because of some biological mechanism I don't personally understand. I don't think neurology has advanced to the point of explaining it yet, and computer science is only just managing to make machines that can recognize a living thing from an inanimate object.

A person is not just a thing, it's a process. We're constantly changing, but we're still able to recognize one individual from another, and track them through their growth. Even if we're apart long enough to change dramatically, you can still recognize and care about the person. What's the difference between one person dying and another being born, and someone losing their memories? The difference is tragedy. It's not the person who suffers from their death but their fellows. From what I've seen, death is irrelevant to the individual; when you're dead you don't care about being dead. But everyone else cares.

The most straightforward form of eternal life would be to prevent the body from decaying and dying. I wonder if we would still have the tragedy of loss though?

I suppose the details don't matter. I don't want anybody to die, even in those times I loath my own existance.

Another question comes to mind. I think I know your answer, but I won't do you the injustice of assumption.

Eventually we're going to figure out eternal life; to move beyond life as I say, and cause individuals to change to suit changing situations, instead of evolving new generations better suited to changing situations. When people nolonger die, population will become an extreme concern. Resources are limited. If we keep having immortal babies, there won't be enough resources to maintain those bodies. The problem that I have is that it will ultimately be neccesary to restrict the creation of new life. Right now it's simple enough to do for most people; you just have sex. Things can get complicated, but it usually works out. How can you restrict a mother from carrying out her natural urge to reproduce?

I think ultimately we'll have to become something other than human, but forcing that on people seems wrong. But worse, if we move past the limit, what do we do? Punish the mother all you want, there's one more baby in the world forever. Creating a new immortal is a crime that can't be undone. What would you do about that?

Heh, that's an interesting way to define personhood, actually. That's been one of my greatest challenges in thought experiments, trying to define personhood. When does a machine become a person? When does a fetus become a person? When does a person stop being a person?

Some time ago, I came up with what I was planning on being a temporary definition of personhood until I came up with something better... except I never have. I call it the "Trader's Definition" - if a given entity is able to make a choice whether to exchange a banana for a backrub, or some programming for some playtime, then in order to get such entities to be willing to make trades that are positive for me, it's in my own self-interest to support a legal system in which they're treated as having the rights of persons.

(It's really quite astonishing how much 'moral rules-of-thumb' turn out to be reasonably close to 'long-term rational self-interested behaviour patterns'.)


The point is that most people don't, they live in the short-term, not the long-term. Even some who are aware of the long-term, choose the short-term.

Most people also enjoy watching reality TV; that doesn't mean I should take their opinions seriously.


The whole universe seems completely pointless. It frustrates me that there's no reason to do anything save for animalistic urges. A life goal that is chosen feels empty to me. My own behavior confuses me though, since even though I feel this way I keep doing things.

One of the better responses I've seen to that; https://www.xkcd.com/167/ . :)


I suppose one day someone like you will unlock that tech from SMAC; Ethical Calculus. Then we'll be able to mathematically define right and wrong and I won't have to worry about it anymore. ^.^;;

Well, we're working on it, anyway. :) Here's one of the building-blocks: http://singinst.org/upload/TDT-v01o.pdf . Here's another: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes

Heinlein has a pre-transhumanist view that still seems to have some definite applicability to this problem:

I now define "moral behavior" as "behavior that tends toward survival." I won't argue with philosophers or theologians who choose to use the word "moral" to mean something else, but I do not think anyone can define "behavior that tends toward extinction" as being "moral" without stretching the word "moral" all out of shape.

I said that "Patriotism" is a way of saying "Women and children first." And that no one can force a man to feel this way. Instead he must embrace it freely. I want to tell about one such man. He wore no uniform and no one knows his name, or where he came from; all we know is what he did.
In my home town sixty years ago when I was a child, my mother and father used to take me and my brothers and sisters out to Swope Park on Sunday afternoons. It was a wonderful place for kids, with picnic grounds and lakes and a zoo. But a railroad line cut straight through it.
One Sunday afternoon a young married couple were crossing these tracks. She apparently did not watch her step, for she managed to catch her foot in the frog of a switch to a siding and could not pull it free. Her husband stopped to help her.
But try as they might they could not get her foot loose. While they were working at it, a tramp showed up, walking the ties. He joined the husband in trying to pull the young woman's foot loose. No luck -
Out of sight around the curve a train whistled. Perhaps there would have been time to run and flag it down, perhaps not. In any case both men went right ahead trying to pull her free ... and the train hit them.
The wife was killed, the husband was mortally injured and died later, the tramp was killed - and testimony showed that neither man made the slightest effort to save himself.
The husband's behavior was heroic ... but what we expect of a husband toward his wife: his right, and his proud privilege, to die for his woman. But what of this nameless stranger? Up to the very last second he could have jumped clear. He did not. He was still trying to save this woman he had never seen before in his life, right up to the very instant the train killed him. And that's all we'll ever know about him.
This is how a man dies.
This is how a man ... lives!

.


^-- (On Metafilter, a post containing a period is the equivalent of taking a moment of silence in respect.)



I've been considering doing video essays in the style of the Extra Credits essay cartoon series. You might find that to be effective as well.

I'm not familiar with that one; do you have a reference that's a good intro to it?


It's true I'd feel bad about enforcing my will on the world, but the reason I don't do it is because I don't care about the fate of the world. I do care about individuals, but not the whole. Well, not much. I do try to live by the motto "Life isn't fair; that's our responsibility." but I also try not to overreach myself. I fight unfairness that I encounter; I don't go looking for it.

Since I happen to have my quotefile opened up:

Not to oppose error is to approve of it, and not to defend truth is to suppress it, and, indeed, to neglect to confound evil men, when we can do it, is not less a sin than to encourage them.
-- Pope Felix III

If a man takes no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand.
-- Confucius

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
-- Thomas Paine

Liberty is not a cruise ship full of pampered passengers. Liberty is a man-of-war, and we are all crew.
-- Kenneth W. Royce

If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other.
-- Carl Schurz

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
-- Thomas Jefferson

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
-- H. L. Mencken


Well, I hope you don't hate me for my different choice. Though, you've been too polite for me to believe at this stage that you would fill up with hate and fury. It would be a shock, at least.

I may disagree with you about a great many things - but the very fact that we're having this conversation means that there are a great many more that we /do/ agree on, and I would be foolish in the extreme to toss a fellow traveler such as yourself over the side because we're not in lockstep on everything.


Life and Death are two other things I have difficulty with, along with personhood. When is a thing alive? When is it dead? What is the difference between two individual lives? When a person loses their memory, are they a new and different person? Is a machine alive? Does it die when you turn it off?

Humans are just organic machines. It's inevetable that we'll be able to create them wholesale, and other things, and improve on them. From what I know of cellular biology and nanotechnology (not a lot) the cell is an incredibly inefficient machine. We will eventually replace them. That idea is what sprouted into my Adorabillians; the current version are transhumanist cyborgs. They're a creative expression, a fetishistic object, and a thought experiment, all rolled into one.

I haven't had a chance to read your story yet - but I do have it on my in-pile.

Another thought from my quotefile (goodness, but it's fun being able to use so many relevant thoughts therefrom :) ):

"But I am not an object. I am not a noun, I am an adjective. I am the way matter behaves when it is organized in a John K Clark-ish way. At the present time only one chunk of matter in the universe behaves that way; someday that could change."
-- John K Clark


I wrote a similar creation/experiment, coming up with what were eventually called '_____' Spores for the Orion's Arm universe, and which can be read about at http://orionsarm.com/eg-article/4ba1012793821 .


One thing that's become clear is that a person is more than just their brain and memories. The body and mind are two parts of the whole. It's not just a CPU plugged into a random vessel, your other organs influence your mind and your mood. If you removed your brain and put it into a machine alone, you'd be different than in your original body.

I've explored a similar perspective - and then I combined it with an idea from Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics", that our sense-of-self can extend not only to our own body, but also to our tools. Having a limb amputated causes changes to one's thought processes in many ways; in at least a few similar ways, changing, say, one from OS to another also causes such changes. When two cars collide, we wouldn't be surprised by one of the drivers saying "He hit me!", instead of "He hit my car!" (or even "His car hit my car!").

I am not the same person I was in the past; my future self will be different still. But we're similar /enough/ that my having a pattern of behaviour in which I act to benefit my future-self even at the expense of my present-self leads to a chain of future-selves who are happier than they would otherwise be, and that expectation of future happiness is sufficient for present-me to do all sorts of unpleasant things, from wasting good reading time brushing my teeth, to avoiding maxing out my credit card on candy, to generally avoiding turning into a hedonistic puddle of flesh.


The most straightforward form of eternal life would be to prevent the body from decaying and dying. I wonder if we would still have the tragedy of loss though?

If you don't object to reading stories containing erotic content, then you might find it worth your while to read Elf Sternberg's "Journal Entries" series, which can be found at http://www.pendorwright.com/journals/ .


I suppose the details don't matter. I don't want anybody to die, even in those times I loath my own existance.

Since I seem to have your attention, here's a quick rule-of-thumb that you might find useful in a future moment: If you ever come to a point in your life in which you can't think of a reason to continue it... then, at least for a while, try setting your life's goal as reading comics - and doing whatever's required in your life to allow you to buy, store, and read them. It may not sound like /much/ of a purpose, but it can be enough to get a person through seemingly pointless day-to-day drudgery, and also happens to expose you to lots of ideas which can eventually spark an inspiration for setting something else as your life's goal. I hope you never get into a situation in your life in which this idea is useful - but in case it is, I hope you're able to remember it.


Another question comes to mind. I think I know your answer, but I won't do you the injustice of assumption.

Eventually we're going to figure out eternal life; to move beyond life as I say, and cause individuals to change to suit changing situations, instead of evolving new generations better suited to changing situations. When people nolonger die, population will become an extreme concern. Resources are limited. If we keep having immortal babies, there won't be enough resources to maintain those bodies. The problem that I have is that it will ultimately be neccesary to restrict the creation of new life. Right now it's simple enough to do for most people; you just have sex. Things can get complicated, but it usually works out. How can you restrict a mother from carrying out her natural urge to reproduce?

I think ultimately we'll have to become something other than human, but forcing that on people seems wrong. But worse, if we move past the limit, what do we do? Punish the mother all you want, there's one more baby in the world forever. Creating a new immortal is a crime that can't be undone. What would you do about that?

Such Malthusian problems do place certain limits on humanity and could potentially twist us in all sorts of unpleasant directions...

... as long as we limit our thinking about available resources to Earth.

It's at least reasonably feasible that a person's life-support needs could be reduced to, say, 100 Watts... and our sun blasts out a near-unimaginable 4^26 Watts. Even if every individual used a full megawatt, the Sun would still provide enough power to support the needs of 400 quintillion people - that's 50 billion people for every individual now alive on Earth.

And that's just our /own/ star.

As it happens, we already have some plans on the books which will allow us to reasonably economically jump-start some off-Earth industrial infrastructure and habitats, by building solar-power satellites out of lunar resources; in fact, the numbers are astonishingly close to those of nuclear power plants, with the bonus of no chance of meltdown. All that's needed to get started is the public will to do so - which could as easily come from the "pollution-free energy source" left as the "reduce the military logistical tail of overseas forces" right. (I've pasted some of the pictures from the 1970's studies at http://www.datapacrat.com/SPS/ , for inspirational purposes.)

Not only did I reply to the picture instead of your reply again, but this time I pushed post before I was finished replying. XD

Sorry about all that. I'll continue the reply from before, here!


Since I happen to have my quotefile opened up:

Not to oppose error is to approve of it, and not to defend truth is to suppress it, and, indeed, to neglect to confound evil men, when we can do it, is not less a sin than to encourage them.
-- Pope Felix III

If a man takes no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand.
-- Confucius

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
-- Thomas Paine

Liberty is not a cruise ship full of pampered passengers. Liberty is a man-of-war, and we are all crew.
-- Kenneth W. Royce

If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other.
-- Carl Schurz

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
-- Thomas Jefferson

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
-- H. L. Mencken


You might have noticed, but I'm something of a socialist. I tend to put the collective will above my own, but act on my own will in the immediate situation. I'll stand up and say "NO!" but if nobody else stands up and says no, I won't press the issue. The ideal is that I'll stand up and say "No!" and others WILL join me, which is why I live out my own values. It hasn't come up a lot in real life though so I'm not sure how things would really turn out.

One thing that's clear is that I don't like society as it is, but my ideal society is not the ideal society of the majority of people. So, I long for a kind of escape. You seem to as well, though I might have misread you. The hope for a space colony where we can have our own seperate culture, instead of having to fight over which culture we'll have.

At any rate, I often wonder if there's a middle ground between violence and passivity; if entreating diplomatically with your oppressors will really work. It's like that occupy movement. That seems terribly stupid to me. If they don't like the system, they should overturn it. Instead they're just out there camping and begging their oppressors to please stop oppressing us. But at the same time, armed revolution would cause tremendous pain, suffering, and death. The other alternative I've considered is revolution in a different way. To stake out their own independant agrarian state inside of an already-existing country like the U.S.; let the U.S. army fire the first shots, if they dare. But either way, I'm not out there fighting. I'm being diplomatic myself, complaining to members of parliament and the local government. Here in Canada, and down in the U.S., they're developing a new form of slavery, and what am I doing? I'm watching it happen. We all are. I don't know if violence is really the answer though.


"Well, I hope you don't hate me for my different choice. Though, you've been too polite for me to believe at this stage that you would fill up with hate and fury. It would be a shock, at least."


I may disagree with you about a great many things - but the very fact that we're having this conversation means that there are a great many more that we /do/ agree on, and I would be foolish in the extreme to toss a fellow traveler such as yourself over the side because we're not in lockstep on everything.

I appreciate that. And yeah, it's nice to be able to have an intelligent, peaceful discussion about these things. Most people I know with perspectives similar to yours are rather rabid in their beliefs. Perhaps that's why I felt emotionally threatened by your comic. They grab onto beliefs like yours because it's counter-cultural, fighting 'the man' and often as not less rational boogey-men. I don't entirely disagree with them, but when I try to have a rational discussion they get emotionally involved and start to flip out. You've been perfectly polite and thoughtful and I appreciate it greatly.


I wrote a similar creation/experiment, coming up with what were eventually called '_____' Spores for the Orion's Arm universe, and which can be read about at http://orionsarm.com/eg-article/4ba1012793821 .

I will have to investigate them. I'm too busy to read the whole article; if I hadn't accidentally sent half of my reply already I would postpone this another couple hours, but I want to get it done now. <3


If you don't object to reading stories containing erotic content, then you might find it worth your while to read Elf Sternberg's "Journal Entries" series, which can be found at http://www.pendorwright.com/journals/ .


We haven't known eachother long enough for it to become obvious, but I'm one of those furries who gives all the other furries a "Bad Name", being into all sorts of crazy perverted things and being completely open about it. I have no problem with reading erotic content. It's a little harder to write erotic content; many of my perversions are so perverse that they go right around the end and seem perfectly innocent again.


Since I seem to have your attention, here's a quick rule-of-thumb that you might find useful in a future moment: If you ever come to a point in your life in which you can't think of a reason to continue it... then, at least for a while, try setting your life's goal as reading comics - and doing whatever's required in your life to allow you to buy, store, and read them. It may not sound like /much/ of a purpose, but it can be enough to get a person through seemingly pointless day-to-day drudgery, and also happens to expose you to lots of ideas which can eventually spark an inspiration for setting something else as your life's goal. I hope you never get into a situation in your life in which this idea is useful - but in case it is, I hope you're able to remember it.

I suffer from depression. When I get depressed, it's not for any particular reason, it's just my brain failing. I'm not sure if it's just lacking the chemicals to make me happy when it wants to, or if there's some crossed wires, or what. But it doesn't work very well. I carry on for various reasons. If I could be said to have a life goal, I want to create worlds. I keep working on my independant video game development and doing that. But sometimes I just can't rationalize my own existance. Even if I had a purpose, there doesn't seem to be a purpose behind having a purpose. My brain has its perks but it has it's downfalls too. Depression and Anxiety. Sometimes you feel that way because you're supposed to. Sometimes you feel that way when you're not. For me, more often the latter than the former.



Such Malthusian problems do place certain limits on humanity and could potentially twist us in all sorts of unpleasant directions...

... as long as we limit our thinking about available resources to Earth.

It's at least reasonably feasible that a person's life-support needs could be reduced to, say, 100 Watts... and our sun blasts out a near-unimaginable 4^26 Watts. Even if every individual used a full megawatt, the Sun would still provide enough power to support the needs of 400 quintillion people - that's 50 billion people for every individual now alive on Earth.

And that's just our /own/ star.

Well, that's a point. There's probably not enough matter in the solar system to make enough people that the sun wouldn't provide enough energy to keep them alive in some state. But the sun won't last forever, and it's really cold in interstellar space. We can use the sun when we're close up like this, but if we want to go to other stars we need to have a long term power supply. Maybe just a big bottle of hydrogen, maybe something nuclear. But something that makes a lot of energy for a long time.

I tend to take a long view of things. When I originally created the Adorabillians and the "Nanocell" idea of practical nanotechnology they're based on, it was because I wanted to figure out a way to survive interstellar flight over a long period; when we're immortal, a hundred years of spaceflight isn't so unreasonable anymore. Though, it'll probably be a long time before somebody has a reason besides wanderlust to go to another star anyways. The solar system is fricking enormous.


As it happens, we already have some plans on the books which will allow us to reasonably economically jump-start some off-Earth industrial infrastructure and habitats, by building solar-power satellites out of lunar resources; in fact, the numbers are astonishingly close to those of nuclear power plants, with the bonus of no chance of meltdown. All that's needed to get started is the public will to do so - which could as easily come from the "pollution-free energy source" left as the "reduce the military logistical tail of overseas forces" right. (I've pasted some of the pictures from the 1970's studies at http://www.datapacrat.com/SPS/ , for inspirational purposes.)


It's probably not a good idea, but you could always point out the possibility and practicality of a solar deathray to the military right. ^.^;;

There's still a couple big problems for colonizing space. The first is that it's bloody expensive to get stuff up there. If the Japanese manage to build their space elevator, that would be trancendentally awesome. There are independant businesses trying to find cheap ways to get up there too, but they're not done. Then once you're up there, so far as I know we've still yet to create a stable independant biosphere. So, any space colonies would be dependant on the earth for some resources. Mind you, if we had a colony that was dependant on earth for some resources, that would probably encourage the development of stable independant biospheres. But, I'm just saying "Don't get your hopes up."

Don't get your hopes down either. It won't happen if we don't keep working at it.

Some time ago, I came up with what I was planning on being a temporary definition of personhood until I came up with something better... except I never have. I call it the "Trader's Definition" - if a given entity is able to make a choice whether to exchange a banana for a backrub, or some programming for some playtime, then in order to get such entities to be willing to make trades that are positive for me, it's in my own self-interest to support a legal system in which they're treated as having the rights of persons.

(It's really quite astonishing how much 'moral rules-of-thumb' turn out to be reasonably close to 'long-term rational self-interested behaviour patterns'.)


Yeah, the ultimate ethical dillemna is when is it okay to use a thing. When is it okay to eat it. Where is the boundary between tool and slave. Different people have different answers. Some folks are okay killing and eating anything. Some only eat things that have been raised 'without cruelty', some only eat fish and veg, thinking fish aren't smart enough to be 'people' like cows, chickens and pigs are, while others try very hard to live on veg alone. I'm not even sure if vegetables are beyond the realm of 'personhood', at least they're defined as being alive. My vegetarian friends always make the argument, though, that to raise a meat bearing critter for eating, more plants would be killed than if you just ate the plants. It's a very complicated argument.

Slavery is the other side. Some folks in history didn't consider the blacks to be people, or women. On the other hand, some slave-having cultures considered slaves to be people, but less than 'citizens' and even less than 'peasants' so there's even disagreement THERE.

For my own sake I let other people make the decision, and only deal with it personally when it enters my sphere of attention. Even my own feelings are complicated. I still feel guilty for killing a grasshopper on a hike over a decade ago and yet I eat meat, even meat whose face I've seen, without feeling any guilt. Logic and emotion are fair-weather friends, surely. ^.^;;


One of the better responses I've seen to that; https://www.xkcd.com/167/ . :)

I'm both of those people simultaneously. That's how I endure my own existance. ^.^;;


"I suppose one day someone like you will unlock that tech from SMAC; Ethical Calculus. Then we'll be able to mathematically define right and wrong and I won't have to worry about it anymore. ^.^;;"


Well, we're working on it, anyway. :) Here's one of the building-blocks: http://singinst.org/upload/TDT-v01o.pdf . Here's another: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes

I looked at the Bayes link when I saw it in your profile, before I wrote the first message; I didn't read the whole way through. It was a bit confusing, since it tried to define it without explaining what it was for. I might to back to it eventually, out of curiosity, but I'm preoccupied with other things.


Heinlein has a pre-transhumanist view that still seems to have some definite applicability to this problem:

"I now define "moral behavior" as "behavior that tends toward survival." I won't argue with philosophers or theologians who choose to use the word "moral" to mean something else, but I do not think anyone can define "behavior that tends toward extinction" as being "moral" without stretching the word "moral" all out of shape."

I often use fiction to explore ethical concepts. In fiction I've found that acts imposing order on the universe tend to be good, while acts imposing chaos on the universe tend to be bad. It's a common generalization, order/chaos, good/evil, creation/destruction, that sort of thing. But you can't create somethiing without destroying something else. So ultimately it's a matter of sacrifices. It tends to get even simpler, becoming a balance of addition vs. subtraction. Positive is good, negative is bad. Adding structured things to the universe is good, removing them is bad. Of course, if all the material is constant, everything is equal, so you have to define things as either ordered or chaotic. Ultimately I suppose it moves onto a matter of choice. Are you sacrificing other people, or are they sacrificing themselves for your sake? Who is saying "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." the many, or the few? If it's the many, are they sacrificing needlessly? If it's the few, and they chose not to sacrifice themselves, are they doing something bad?

All of this makes me think of rocketry, you know? There's something terribly sad about having to throw something out the back end in order to move forward. Space flight is always sad like that. At least we can say, "It's only hydrogen." but it still feels sad to me.


"One thing that's become clear is that a person is more than just their brain and memories. The body and mind are two parts of the whole. It's not just a CPU plugged into a random vessel, your other organs influence your mind and your mood. If you removed your brain and put it into a machine alone, you'd be different than in your original body."


I've explored a similar perspective - and then I combined it with an idea from Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics", that our sense-of-self can extend not only to our own body, but also to our tools. Having a limb amputated causes changes to one's thought processes in many ways; in at least a few similar ways, changing, say, one from OS to another also causes such changes. When two cars collide, we wouldn't be surprised by one of the drivers saying "He hit me!", instead of "He hit my car!" (or even "His car hit my car!").

I am not the same person I was in the past; my future self will be different still. But we're similar /enough/ that my having a pattern of behaviour in which I act to benefit my future-self even at the expense of my present-self leads to a chain of future-selves who are happier than they would otherwise be, and that expectation of future happiness is sufficient for present-me to do all sorts of unpleasant things, from wasting good reading time brushing my teeth, to avoiding maxing out my credit card on candy, to generally avoiding turning into a hedonistic puddle of flesh.


Yeah that's about what I figure too. It's not so much about being a specific definable state so much as a recognizable person. The trouble is the transitions. One person I know proposed a sort of 'candle lighting' method for transitioning from your regular brain to a mechanical one, where there's a period where you're thinking with both, and then when your organic brain dies, the mechanical one carries on the same pattern. But then I started worrying about the effect the rest of your body has on you besides just your brain. My Adorabillians make people immortal by doing a hot swap of every cell in their body with an artificial one. Once that's done, you can modify yourself freely and still arguably be 'yourself'.

Of course, the hedonism problem still exists. It's a problem I've had with the concept of newly created AIs, and for posthumans. We already have things like Opium, which basically press the 'Win' button in your brain and hold it down, removing your desires. One day it'll be easy for anybody to press a literal win button, or happy button, and just stay like that. As living creatures, our goals and desires grow organically out of biological pre-programmed needs. The bottom brain gives us base needs to feed and reproduce and avoid pain in random quantities, the middle brain gives us emotions, which produce complex behaviors based on various stimulus, and our top brain gives us the capability of rational thought, to understand the structure of reality and predict the future instead of merely reacting to events. If we live purely for happiness, then the simplest means is to just push the happiness button. If we live for happiness over time, then survival becomes an issue as well, but you're still just pushing that happy button.

We have to do complex things for happiness because we have complex minds, but they're still based on animal urges. When we're immortal, we'll have to deal with the problem of needing to reproduce and being largely unable to sate that need. If we remove the need, will we still choose to reproduce? Given the option to reorganize your desires, would you? What would you choose to desire? The fact that we have these organically grown desires gives us the option of chosing new desires, or just keeping them, but what about artificially created beings?

What does a robot want? Why does a robot do what it does? There could be simple, basic programming. Maybe it's just a tool. But what can grow from that? I think it would be cruel to make a robot that doesn't want to be a servant, but it's inevetably going to happen, and eventually the difference between people who emerged from organic life and people who were created is going to blur to the point of being indistinct, but still, the core differences will remain in the original desires.

I keep intending to write the story of a cleaning robot that becomes a person, whose original desires grow organically into a desire to clean and organize everything. Basic needs that define who they are emotionally and logically. Instead of the need to survive and reproduce, the need to clean and organize. But I haven't gotten around to writing it yet.


"I've been considering doing video essays in the style of the Extra Credits essay cartoon series. You might find that to be effective as well."


I'm not familiar with that one; do you have a reference that's a good intro to it?


A good intro. Hmm... Truth is, I haven't even watched all of them. I should explain what it is though first. I'm an independant games developer, and I'm big into video game culture. Extra Credits is a series of video-essay cartoons examining complex, 'adult' issues with video games and video game culture. They used to be hosted by The Escapist, but they had some business issues with them and now they're hosted by Penny Arcade. http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/sh...../extra-credits

One which I HAVE watched and you might find interesting is "The Myth of the Gun", which examines the cultural reasons behind first-person shooter games being common in the west and rare in the east.

Another series of animated essays I enjoy is available on YouTube, The RSA Animate series. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo

Yeah, the ultimate ethical dillemna is when is it okay to use a thing. When is it okay to eat it. Where is the boundary between tool and slave. Different people have different answers. Some folks are okay killing and eating anything. Some only eat things that have been raised 'without cruelty', some only eat fish and veg, thinking fish aren't smart enough to be 'people' like cows, chickens and pigs are, while others try very hard to live on veg alone. I'm not even sure if vegetables are beyond the realm of 'personhood', at least they're defined as being alive. My vegetarian friends always make the argument, though, that to raise a meat bearing critter for eating, more plants would be killed than if you just ate the plants. It's a very complicated argument.

Slavery is the other side. Some folks in history didn't consider the blacks to be people, or women. On the other hand, some slave-having cultures considered slaves to be people, but less than 'citizens' and even less than 'peasants' so there's even disagreement THERE.

For my own sake I let other people make the decision, and only deal with it personally when it enters my sphere of attention. Even my own feelings are complicated. I still feel guilty for killing a grasshopper on a hike over a decade ago and yet I eat meat, even meat whose face I've seen, without feeling any guilt. Logic and emotion are fair-weather friends, surely. ^.^;;

Some of those questions can be answered fairly easily - by simply going into more detail as to /why/ it's in one's own long-term self-interest to treat certain other entities as being persons. On the simplest level, in one-to-one interactions, if someone I'm interacting with can make a decision about whether or not to respect my rights - in the extreme, whether or not to try to kill me - then they're much more likely to not want to infringe my rights if I don't infringe theirs. This also gives a rationale for deciding what sort of entities it's not worthwhile to treat as having sapient rights: those which are unable to make any such decision about whether or not to respect my rights, and those whose actions won't be affected by my choice about whether to respect theirs.

For example, right now, a cat is stretched out on my lap. We've come to a mutual understanding, in which she doesn't chomp me and I don't wrap her up in a blanket, as long as we keep playing nice with each other. But that's about the limit of what she understands - she doesn't really have any conception of property, or the trading I need to do to get food for us, or the importance of free speech to maintain the political system underlying the economic system that lets me keep buying our food. So as much as I may enjoy petting her, and as much as she enjoys pretending to be a seatbelt, I have no reason to treat her as if she were a full-fledged person.



[QUOTE][QUOTE]"I suppose one day someone like you will unlock that tech from SMAC; Ethical Calculus. Then we'll be able to mathematically define right and wrong and I won't have to worry about it anymore. ^.^;;"

Well, we're working on it, anyway. :) Here's one of the building-blocks: http://singinst.org/upload/TDT-v01o.pdf . Here's another: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes [/QUOTE]

I looked at the Bayes link when I saw it in your profile, before I wrote the first message; I didn't read the whole way through. It was a bit confusing, since it tried to define it without explaining what it was for. I might to back to it eventually, out of curiosity, but I'm preoccupied with other things.[/QUOTE]

A quickie explanation: The question Bayesianism tries to answer is "Given this bunch of evidence related to proposition X, how confident should I be that X is actually true?". It turns out that for any such question, there is, in fact, an answer, and one that is precisely quantifiable. Yudkowsky has another essay, that's rather more accessible, "Twelve Virtues of Rationality" at http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues , in which he writes:

The Way is a precise Art. Do not walk to the truth, but dance. On each and every step of that dance your foot comes down in exactly the right spot. Each piece of evidence shifts your beliefs by exactly the right amount, neither more nor less. What is exactly the right amount? To calculate this you must study probability theory. Even if you cannot do the math, knowing that the math exists tells you that the dance step is precise and has no room in it for your whims.

(I may not agree with everything Yudkowsky writes, but simply getting to the point where I understand his position well enough to be able to intelligently disagree with any part of it has helped me develop my powers of rationality in ways I didn't even know they could be developed, before I started. Simply knowing that there /are/ better ways to think than the ones I'd learned as a healthy SF-loving nerdy skeptical geek, and that it's possible to teach oneself those ways (as opposed to them being a level of ability you're born with, such as, say, ability with math), has opened up whole new vistas to me.)


I often use fiction to explore ethical concepts. In fiction I've found that acts imposing order on the universe tend to be good, while acts imposing chaos on the universe tend to be bad. It's a common generalization, order/chaos, good/evil, creation/destruction, that sort of thing. But you can't create somethiing without destroying something else. So ultimately it's a matter of sacrifices. It tends to get even simpler, becoming a balance of addition vs. subtraction. Positive is good, negative is bad. Adding structured things to the universe is good, removing them is bad. Of course, if all the material is constant, everything is equal, so you have to define things as either ordered or chaotic. Ultimately I suppose it moves onto a matter of choice. Are you sacrificing other people, or are they sacrificing themselves for your sake? Who is saying "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." the many, or the few? If it's the many, are they sacrificing needlessly? If it's the few, and they chose not to sacrifice themselves, are they doing something bad?

Order is generally good - within certain limits; if an ordered system is to be able to survive, there needs to be enough slack in it so that it can adapt to changing circumstances. In classical fantasy, such as Ultima VII Part II, this is described as the conflict between Order and Chaos being resolved into a Balance; in modern and futuristic terms, we use terms like 'Complexity Theory' and 'Information Entropy'.


All of this makes me think of rocketry, you know? There's something terribly sad about having to throw something out the back end in order to move forward. Space flight is always sad like that. At least we can say, "It's only hydrogen." but it still feels sad to me.

Hunh; I've had similar thoughts, though somewhat more along the idea that such spent propellent mass is no longer usable for anything... which means that, on the very long scale, of tens of thousands to millions of years, it's a form of non-renewable resource.


Of course, the hedonism problem still exists. It's a problem I've had with the concept of newly created AIs, and for posthumans. We already have things like Opium, which basically press the 'Win' button in your brain and hold it down, removing your desires. One day it'll be easy for anybody to press a literal win button, or happy button, and just stay like that. As living creatures, our goals and desires grow organically out of biological pre-programmed needs. The bottom brain gives us base needs to feed and reproduce and avoid pain in random quantities, the middle brain gives us emotions, which produce complex behaviors based on various stimulus, and our top brain gives us the capability of rational thought, to understand the structure of reality and predict the future instead of merely reacting to events. If we live purely for happiness, then the simplest means is to just push the happiness button. If we live for happiness over time, then survival becomes an issue as well, but you're still just pushing that happy button.

We have to do complex things for happiness because we have complex minds, but they're still based on animal urges. When we're immortal, we'll have to deal with the problem of needing to reproduce and being largely unable to sate that need. If we remove the need, will we still choose to reproduce? Given the option to reorganize your desires, would you? What would you choose to desire? The fact that we have these organically grown desires gives us the option of chosing new desires, or just keeping them, but what about artificially created beings?

One way to look at this issue, is that wireheading technology (or whatever other form of being able to push the 'Win' button applies) simply places a new form of evolutionary selection pressure on that group. Those individuals, and those societies, which are able to adapt in ways that allow them to continue doing stuff even with such a temptation available, will continue to exist, thrive, and multiply, while those which can't resist the temptation will fade away into extinction. (It's almost the mirror image of developing immortality (or close approximation thereof) technology: those people who take advantage of it will continue to live, while those who don't, won't. Unless there turns out to be some truly great selective advantage a group of reproducing non-immortals has over immortals, it's likely that at some point, everyone still alive will be an immortal.)


What does a robot want? Why does a robot do what it does? There could be simple, basic programming. Maybe it's just a tool. But what can grow from that? I think it would be cruel to make a robot that doesn't want to be a servant, but it's inevetably going to happen, and eventually the difference between people who emerged from organic life and people who were created is going to blur to the point of being indistinct, but still, the core differences will remain in the original desires.

I keep intending to write the story of a cleaning robot that becomes a person, whose original desires grow organically into a desire to clean and organize everything. Basic needs that define who they are emotionally and logically. Instead of the need to survive and reproduce, the need to clean and organize. But I haven't gotten around to writing it yet.

I look forward to seeing what you write about that, if-and-when you do. :)

(I recall a subset of Elf Sternberg's "Journal Entries" in a roughly similar vein, about a sexbot and her basic drives and personhood; I believe they're the ones set between 892 and 897. I might be getting it wrong - it's been a few years since I read them.)


now they're hosted by Penny Arcade. http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/sh...../extra-credits

One which I HAVE watched and you might find interesting is "The Myth of the Gun", which examines the cultural reasons behind first-person shooter games being common in the west and rare in the east.

Another series of animated essays I enjoy is available on YouTube, The RSA Animate series. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo

Consider them bookmarked for near-term viewing. :)




Not only did I reply to the picture instead of your reply again, but this time I pushed post before I was finished replying. XD

Sorry about all that. I'll continue the reply from before, here!

No worries; whether you reply to one of my comments or to the picture, I get a notice either way. :)


You might have noticed, but I'm something of a socialist. I tend to put the collective will above my own, but act on my own will in the immediate situation. I'll stand up and say "NO!" but if nobody else stands up and says no, I won't press the issue. The ideal is that I'll stand up and say "No!" and others WILL join me, which is why I live out my own values. It hasn't come up a lot in real life though so I'm not sure how things would really turn out.

One thing that's clear is that I don't like society as it is, but my ideal society is not the ideal society of the majority of people. So, I long for a kind of escape. You seem to as well, though I might have misread you. The hope for a space colony where we can have our own seperate culture, instead of having to fight over which culture we'll have.

At any rate, I often wonder if there's a middle ground between violence and passivity; if entreating diplomatically with your oppressors will really work. It's like that occupy movement. That seems terribly stupid to me. If they don't like the system, they should overturn it. Instead they're just out there camping and begging their oppressors to please stop oppressing us. But at the same time, armed revolution would cause tremendous pain, suffering, and death. The other alternative I've considered is revolution in a different way. To stake out their own independant agrarian state inside of an already-existing country like the U.S.; let the U.S. army fire the first shots, if they dare. But either way, I'm not out there fighting. I'm being diplomatic myself, complaining to members of parliament and the local government. Here in Canada, and down in the U.S., they're developing a new form of slavery, and what am I doing? I'm watching it happen. We all are. I don't know if violence is really the answer though.

The Occupy people are doing somewhat more than that - they're not just protesting, they're experimenting with alternative forms of social organization, such as the "One man, one veto" General Assemblies. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/20.....n-occupy/all/1 offers some further worthwhile reading on what's going on. Whether you agree or disagree with their politics, it's still possible to learn a great many useful things from the tactics they use to maintain their basic necessities against the various problems they face; and which of the tactics they use turn out not to work, even for a group of people who are at least generally the same views and all have a shared interest in making things work.


For another perspective on such matters, here's another hit from my quotefile:

"The simple fact is that non-violent means do not work against Evil. Gandhi's non-violent resistance against the British occupiers had some effect because Britain was wrong, but not Evil. The same is true of the success of non-violent civil rights resistance against de jure racism. Most people, including those in power, knew that what was being done was wrong. But Evil is an entirely different beast. Gandhi would have gone to the ovens had he attempted non-violent resistance against the Nazis. When one encounters Evil, the only solution is violence, actual or threatened. That's all Evil understands."
-- Robert Bruce Thompson



Most people I know with perspectives similar to yours are rather rabid in their beliefs. Perhaps that's why I felt emotionally threatened by your comic. They grab onto beliefs like yours because it's counter-cultural, fighting 'the man' and often as not less rational boogey-men. I don't entirely disagree with them, but when I try to have a rational discussion they get emotionally involved and start to flip out. You've been perfectly polite and thoughtful and I appreciate it greatly.

You're quite welcome - it's been a pleasure discussing these things with you, as well.

Also, don't praise me /too/ much for being calm:
"If we are fervently passionate about the idea that fire is hot, we are more rational than the man who calmly and quietly says fire is cold."
-- Tom McCabe

:)



[QUOTE]If you don't object to reading stories containing erotic content, then you might find it worth your while to read Elf Sternberg's "Journal Entries" series, which can be found at http://www.pendorwright.com/journals/ .

We haven't known eachother long enough for it to become obvious, but I'm one of those furries who gives all the other furries a "Bad Name", being into all sorts of crazy perverted things and being completely open about it. I have no problem with reading erotic content. It's a little harder to write erotic content; many of my perversions are so perverse that they go right around the end and seem perfectly innocent again.[/QUOTE]

(checks FChan's /ah/ board to see if anyone's come up with a fetish I've neither heard of nor invented myself yet)
(re-reads a 'snuffie' tale about cute little critters in a virtual environment who experience no real pain or permanent harm cheerfully dismembering and happily blowing up each other)
(whistles innocently)
( :) )


I suffer from depression. When I get depressed, it's not for any particular reason, it's just my brain failing. I'm not sure if it's just lacking the chemicals to make me happy when it wants to, or if there's some crossed wires, or what. But it doesn't work very well. I carry on for various reasons. If I could be said to have a life goal, I want to create worlds. I keep working on my independant video game development and doing that. But sometimes I just can't rationalize my own existance. Even if I had a purpose, there doesn't seem to be a purpose behind having a purpose. My brain has its perks but it has it's downfalls too. Depression and Anxiety. Sometimes you feel that way because you're supposed to. Sometimes you feel that way when you're not. For me, more often the latter than the former.

One phrase that's tossed around the LessWrong.com community is that everyone is "running on corrupted hardware" - but that, knowing at least a bit about which wires in our heads /are/ crossed, and in what ways, we can at least partially compensate for them.

(In case you're curious - my own major wire-crossing seems to have the label "Schizoid, languid sub-type". Which basically means that I'm happiest as a hermit.)


Well, that's a point. There's probably not enough matter in the solar system to make enough people that the sun wouldn't provide enough energy to keep them alive in some state. But the sun won't last forever, and it's really cold in interstellar space. We can use the sun when we're close up like this, but if we want to go to other stars we need to have a long term power supply. Maybe just a big bottle of hydrogen, maybe something nuclear. But something that makes a lot of energy for a long time.

I tend to take a long view of things. When I originally created the Adorabillians and the "Nanocell" idea of practical nanotechnology they're based on, it was because I wanted to figure out a way to survive interstellar flight over a long period; when we're immortal, a hundred years of spaceflight isn't so unreasonable anymore. Though, it'll probably be a long time before somebody has a reason besides wanderlust to go to another star anyways. The solar system is fricking enormous.

I figure that I'm not really going to worry about any physical limitations on life in the universe more than a billion years out, at least until our knowledge of physics has been stable for, oh, a thousand years or so with no significant evidence waiting on the horizon to upset the paradigm. :)


[QUOTE]As it happens, we already have some plans on the books which will allow us to reasonably economically jump-start some off-Earth industrial infrastructure and habitats, by building solar-power satellites out of lunar resources; in fact, the numbers are astonishingly close to those of nuclear power plants, with the bonus of no chance of meltdown. All that's needed to get started is the public will to do so - which could as easily come from the "pollution-free energy source" left as the "reduce the military logistical tail of overseas forces" right. (I've pasted some of the pictures from the 1970's studies at http://www.datapacrat.com/SPS/ , for inspirational purposes.)


It's probably not a good idea, but you could always point out the possibility and practicality of a solar deathray to the military right. ^.^;;[/QUOTE]

Actually, due to some rather clever design, involving a 'pilot beam' that adjusts the phase of the microwaves beamed down from space to ensure they stay on target, the solar power satellites themselves aren't really useful as a weapon... and once you're up /in/ space in enough force to build the things, it's a lot easier to just drop a rock on any Earthly target you find offensive than to worry about rayguns. ;)


There's still a couple big problems for colonizing space. The first is that it's bloody expensive to get stuff up there. If the Japanese manage to build their space elevator, that would be trancendentally awesome. There are independant businesses trying to find cheap ways to get up there too, but they're not done. Then once you're up there, so far as I know we've still yet to create a stable independant biosphere. So, any space colonies would be dependant on the earth for some resources. Mind you, if we had a colony that was dependant on earth for some resources, that would probably encourage the development of stable independant biospheres. But, I'm just saying "Don't get your hopes up."

Don't get your hopes down either. It won't happen if we don't keep working at it.

Here's a couple of links to add to your reading-list in-pile:
http://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/75Su.....Contents1.html
http://www.nss.org/settlement/Colon.....ace/index.html
. I've owned the hardcover versions of these for years - and figuring out how to deal with launch-costs, artificial biospheres, and such are part and parcel of what was studied therein. :)


Welp - there's probably more I could say, but since this post seems long enough already, I'll let it stand as is. :)

Some of those questions can be answered fairly easily - by simply going into more detail as to /why/ it's in one's own long-term self-interest to treat certain other entities as being persons. On the simplest level, in one-to-one interactions, if someone I'm interacting with can make a decision about whether or not to respect my rights - in the extreme, whether or not to try to kill me - then they're much more likely to not want to infringe my rights if I don't infringe theirs. This also gives a rationale for deciding what sort of entities it's not worthwhile to treat as having sapient rights: those which are unable to make any such decision about whether or not to respect my rights, and those whose actions won't be affected by my choice about whether to respect theirs.

For example, right now, a cat is stretched out on my lap. We've come to a mutual understanding, in which she doesn't chomp me and I don't wrap her up in a blanket, as long as we keep playing nice with each other. But that's about the limit of what she understands - she doesn't really have any conception of property, or the trading I need to do to get food for us, or the importance of free speech to maintain the political system underlying the economic system that lets me keep buying our food. So as much as I may enjoy petting her, and as much as she enjoys pretending to be a seatbelt, I have no reason to treat her as if she were a full-fledged person.


Well, that's definately a way to do it. I suppose my concern is mostly about people who disagree. I might not consider this or that a person, but if another person does they might take exception to my actions. But it's not really about fear of retribution, it's more of an ethical concern. That old 'right vs. wrong' thing. It's frustrating that there IS no right and wrong apart from what we define, and we have different definitions, so people will hate me for eating meat but society as a whole will still keep the meat industry going. Though, given the option I'd rather have tank grown meat, if it was economical. ^.^

On the other hand it might help with a different ethical problem I sometimes think about. In game development, I am a big fan of a-life and simulating ecologies. My biggest goal is to create AI NPCs that the player can have an emotional relationship with. It's a worry of mine that I'll create a living being and kill it. It seems a foregone conclusion that one day, the bad guys in games will be effectively people, instantiated and killed off like nothing. But even now, is a virtual pet a living creature? If you kill it, is that a tragedy?

Given your system, it's unlikely that any AI I create will be able to interact with the real world in a meaningful way, so I don't need to worry about it ever having power over me or anyone else.


A quickie explanation: The question Bayesianism tries to answer is "Given this bunch of evidence related to proposition X, how confident should I be that X is actually true?". Why in the heck didn't they just say that? With that one sentence, the whole thing coalesced and made sense. That article you link on your profile, and linked before, it seems like it assumes you already know that. It should be the first thing it says.

Anyways that's a good idea; I don't know how good the bayesian method is but I definately understand the need for something like that in the information age, when it becomes exceedingly important to individuals what's true or not, and how trustworthy a source is.


Order is generally good - within certain limits; if an ordered system is to be able to survive, there needs to be enough slack in it so that it can adapt to changing circumstances. In classical fantasy, such as Ultima VII Part II, this is described as the conflict between Order and Chaos being resolved into a Balance; in modern and futuristic terms, we use terms like 'Complexity Theory' and 'Information Entropy'.

Ahh that's better, I was starting to worry you weren't any kind of a gamer! XD

Love Ultima VII and Serpent Isle. <3

Balance is important. Too much order stagnates, too much chaos is indistinguishable from nothing. But from a fictional standpoint I find it useful to be able to sympathize with both extremes.


"All of this makes me think of rocketry, you know? There's something terribly sad about having to throw something out the back end in order to move forward. Space flight is always sad like that. At least we can say, "It's only hydrogen." but it still feels sad to me."

Hunh; I've had similar thoughts, though somewhat more along the idea that such spent propellent mass is no longer usable for anything... which means that, on the very long scale, of tens of thousands to millions of years, it's a form of non-renewable resource.

Well, I wouldn't say that. I mean, it's no different from what happens when stars die. The matter gets spread out, but it coalesces again. We're on the third generation of stars now, or so I'm told. The propellant will eventually fall into a gravity well or get nommed up by a ram scoop.


One way to look at this issue, is that wireheading technology (or whatever other form of being able to push the 'Win' button applies) simply places a new form of evolutionary selection pressure on that group. Those individuals, and those societies, which are able to adapt in ways that allow them to continue doing stuff even with such a temptation available, will continue to exist, thrive, and multiply, while those which can't resist the temptation will fade away into extinction. (It's almost the mirror image of developing immortality (or close approximation thereof) technology: those people who take advantage of it will continue to live, while those who don't, won't. Unless there turns out to be some truly great selective advantage a group of reproducing non-immortals has over immortals, it's likely that at some point, everyone still alive will be an immortal.)


That's one way to think about it. Sad though. Watching people die of happiness overload.

I'm not sure I agree with the everyone will be immortal thing. I think there's enough room for luddites and people who embrace that sort of thing as a culture. I mean, even now we have suicide cults, so survival isn't an issue for everyone. I like to imagine them as "Space Amish", what that OA setting called Baseline humans who just live on in generational ships. Though, it's tough to say. Someone like you might force immortality on them. But then, you can't stop someone from destroying themself without changing their mind.


"The simple fact is that non-violent means do not work against Evil. Gandhi's non-violent resistance against the British occupiers had some effect because Britain was wrong, but not Evil. The same is true of the success of non-violent civil rights resistance against de jure racism. Most people, including those in power, knew that what was being done was wrong. But Evil is an entirely different beast. Gandhi would have gone to the ovens had he attempted non-violent resistance against the Nazis. When one encounters Evil, the only solution is violence, actual or threatened. That's all Evil understands."
-- Robert Bruce Thompson

For all my talk about violent insurrection, I don't think I could kill someone even in self defense. I might beat the everliving crap out of someone in self defense, but I don't think I could shoot them or use a blade. It's just not in my nature. Of course, I make the world a better place, so other people whose nature it is get to do the killing on my behalf, because they don't want me going anywhere.


(checks FChan's /ah/ board to see if anyone's come up with a fetish I've neither heard of nor invented myself yet)
(re-reads a 'snuffie' tale about cute little critters in a virtual environment who experience no real pain or permanent harm cheerfully dismembering and happily blowing up each other)
(whistles innocently)
( :) )

Yeah, Alex Reynard is one of my best buds. He's the one who invented snuffie. ^.^

Given that you like that, maybe you'd like this pseudo-RP thing we did together years back. http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1651290/

It was all in replies to a picture he had on FA. ^.^

I'm kind of surprised we haven't run into eachother before, but I'm also surprised I've never heard of that Orion's Arm thing before either. Most of the postfurries I know are tied up in that Transliminal Station commune in Seattle, and I worry that if you're not friends then maybe you're the opposite. ^.^;;


One phrase that's tossed around the LessWrong.com community is that everyone is "running on corrupted hardware" - but that, knowing at least a bit about which wires in our heads /are/ crossed, and in what ways, we can at least partially compensate for them.

(In case you're curious - my own major wire-crossing seems to have the label "Schizoid, languid sub-type". Which basically means that I'm happiest as a hermit.)

I've had psychiatrists and psychologists accuse me of all sorts of things, many of which are opposites. My official diagnosis, which reluctantly gets me disability cheques every month, is Asperger's Syndrome. I find the depression and anxiety to be more severe, though it was the Asperger's Syndrome that cost me my first job out of college and most of my confidence, which I've been building up over the last five years. Of course, applying for disability was pretty damn hard for someone like me. The shame of it almost killed me. I'm still trying to find regular work though. Doing amateur web development for minimum wage right now... That's my job, though I still prefer to call myself an Independant Game Developer. One day I'll make money at it, surely.


I figure that I'm not really going to worry about any physical limitations on life in the universe more than a billion years out, at least until our knowledge of physics has been stable for, oh, a thousand years or so with no significant evidence waiting on the horizon to upset the paradigm. :)

I try to tell myself that too. One thing I worry about is that unlike the OA universe, I don't think giant assed superintelligences are gonna need independant biological organisms, and there's no reason for them not to keep eating eachother untill only the biggest is left. I wonder sometimes if that didn't already happen, and we're all just the schizoid alternate personalities of a single universe spanning entity. But that's one of those 'It doesn't really matter' problems.

Though it would be kind of crazy if it was an endless matryoshka of cosmic superintelligences, with each one filling up with life that merges into a single one and has another universe inside it. ^.^;;




Actually, due to some rather clever design, involving a 'pilot beam' that adjusts the phase of the microwaves beamed down from space to ensure they stay on target, the solar power satellites themselves aren't really useful as a weapon... and once you're up /in/ space in enough force to build the things, it's a lot easier to just drop a rock on any Earthly target you find offensive than to worry about rayguns. ;)

I heard that the British are dropping cement 'training bombs' on tanks in the middle east. They're precise enough that they don't need to explode anymore, the cement block scraps the tank with a direct hit, without hurting people who might be standing next to the tank. Pretty crazy.

One of the problems I've had figuring out how space colonization will work out involves power relays. If you've got near-sun solar collectors you can get ridiculous amounts of energy and focus it into lasers, and transmit the energy like that to deeper space. But space terrorists or whatever could hijack the beam and point it at whoever they like, and burninate them. So, it makes sense to hide your colonies in the shadow of a massive object, and beam the sun around the edge where it's easier to control. What do you think? I'm pretty sure if you've got a space colony, a meteorite or asteroid is much easier to avoid or deflect than a giant laser beam.

On the other hand I sometimes wonder if a beam like that would be sustainable. It would take a huge amount of heat, wouldn't it? And it's hard to lose heat in space.



Here's a couple of links to add to your reading-list in-pile:
http://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/75Su.....Contents1.html
http://www.nss.org/settlement/Colon.....ace/index.html
. I've owned the hardcover versions of these for years - and figuring out how to deal with launch-costs, artificial biospheres, and such are part and parcel of what was studied therein. :)

I'll hang onto those links. They look interesting. ^.^

Well, that's definately a way to do it. I suppose my concern is mostly about people who disagree. I might not consider this or that a person, but if another person does they might take exception to my actions. But it's not really about fear of retribution, it's more of an ethical concern. That old 'right vs. wrong' thing. It's frustrating that there IS no right and wrong apart from what we define, and we have different definitions, so people will hate me for eating meat but society as a whole will still keep the meat industry going. Though, given the option I'd rather have tank grown meat, if it was economical. ^.^

I'm not sure that I entirely agree with your statement, that there 'is' no objective right and wrong. For example, "Desire Utilitarianism" posits that different people have different desires which they seek to fulfill. A great many of these desires are compatible with each other - eg, I have a desire to commission a piece of artwork, and an artist has a desire to get paid, and we can help each other fulfill our desires. At least to a rough approximation, fulfilling such desires could be called 'good'. There are also a certain number of desires which can only be fulfilled by thwarting other peoples' desires: eg, someone has a desire for other peoples' money, and I have a desire to avoid being mugged. Trying to fulfill these desires could be called 'evil'.

(Mind you, I'm not /entirely/ sure I agree with Desire Utilitarianism, but it's one of the few ethical systems that I haven't ruled out as being based on flawed assumptions.)


On the other hand it might help with a different ethical problem I sometimes think about. In game development, I am a big fan of a-life and simulating ecologies. My biggest goal is to create AI NPCs that the player can have an emotional relationship with. It's a worry of mine that I'll create a living being and kill it. It seems a foregone conclusion that one day, the bad guys in games will be effectively people, instantiated and killed off like nothing. But even now, is a virtual pet a living creature? If you kill it, is that a tragedy?

Given your system, it's unlikely that any AI I create will be able to interact with the real world in a meaningful way, so I don't need to worry about it ever having power over me or anyone else.

If you haven't already, you might want to look up the 'Friendly AI' problem. Given the nature of computers, if and when we ever come up with an AI which is anywhere within shouting distance of being called a person, it's very likely that that AI will rapidly become more intelligent than any human could be - at which time it could most likely arrange for any fate it desired for humanity. Which means that, in order to avoid AI being the last invention any human makes, we should at least try to figure out how an AI might be designed so that it won't have any desires to wipe us out when it has the ability to.

(On the other paw, given that the possible range of patterns an AI's mind might be designed in is much larger than the range of patterns human minds can inhabit, the 'Friendly AI' problem is, in a way, a much harder extension of the 'Friendly Human' problem, which is also unsolved - how to convince other /people/ not to have any desires to kill other people.)


"A quickie explanation: The question Bayesianism tries to answer is "Given this bunch of evidence related to proposition X, how confident should I be that X is actually true?"."

Why in the heck didn't they just say that? With that one sentence, the whole thing coalesced and made sense. That article you link on your profile, and linked before, it seems like it assumes you already know that. It should be the first thing it says.

If it helps, in addition to Yudkowsky's essay "An Intuitive Explanation to Bayes' Theorem" I linked to, there's another essay, "An Intuitive Explanation of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Intuitive Explanation of Bayes’ Theorem" at http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=13156 . ;)

Anyways that's a good idea; I don't know how good the bayesian method is but I definately understand the need for something like that in the information age, when it becomes exceedingly important to individuals what's true or not, and how trustworthy a source is.

It can be mathematically demonstrated that, if you have unlimited computing power, the best possible reasoning process is 'Solomonoff induction' (aka 'Kolmogorov complexity' or 'Minimum Description Length'). But since we do have limited computing power, especially inside our own skulls, Bayesian reasoning is just about the closest we can approach to SI/KC/MDL.

Quickie explanation of Bayesianism: For a proposition, assume that you already have some level of confidence that it's true (what Bayesians call your 'prior probability' or 'prior'). You then encounter a new piece of evidence, such as a scientific study or a die-roll, which supports the proposition at a certain level; the Bayesian Theorem then tells you how you should 'update' your belief, resulting in a 'posterior probability' of how strongly you should believe that proposition.

One of the trickiest part of applying this in real life is establishing what your 'priors' actually /are/. I've found at least one shortcut in doing so, which may not be the best, but is at least usable: Laplace's Sunrise Formula. This bit of math answers the question, "Knowing only the total number of trials, and the number of successful trials, what is the likelihood that the next trial will be successful?". (The formula is ( ( Successes + 1) / ( TotalTrials + 2 ) ).)


Ahh that's better, I was starting to worry you weren't any kind of a gamer! XD

Lemme put it this way - I cut my teeth, possibly even literally, on a VIC=20 and Commodore 64. :)


"One way to look at this issue, is that wireheading technology (or whatever other form of being able to push the 'Win' button applies) simply places a new form of evolutionary selection pressure on that group. Those individuals, and those societies, which are able to adapt in ways that allow them to continue doing stuff even with such a temptation available, will continue to exist, thrive, and multiply, while those which can't resist the temptation will fade away into extinction. (It's almost the mirror image of developing immortality (or close approximation thereof) technology: those people who take advantage of it will continue to live, while those who don't, won't. Unless there turns out to be some truly great selective advantage a group of reproducing non-immortals has over immortals, it's likely that at some point, everyone still alive will be an immortal.)"

That's one way to think about it. Sad though. Watching people die of happiness overload.

Spider Robinson's novel "Mindkiller" (and the sequels, though less so) is probably the canonical take on the idea.


I'm not sure I agree with the everyone will be immortal thing. I think there's enough room for luddites and people who embrace that sort of thing as a culture. I mean, even now we have suicide cults, so survival isn't an issue for everyone. I like to imagine them as "Space Amish", what that OA setting called Baseline humans who just live on in generational ships. Though, it's tough to say. Someone like you might force immortality on them. But then, you can't stop someone from destroying themself without changing their mind.

Which gets into a whole range of icky, difficult issues about freedom of will, acting in someone else's best interests, the difference between mental illness and making rational choices, and so on. And that's not even bringing in the whole idea that many-to-most people /do/ want to live forever, they just expect to do so in a dualistic universe where they can survive without their physical bodies.

If some non-magical genie-type being (who's usually called 'Omega' in this sort of thought experiment) offered to let me push a button which would make death effectively obsolete - say, by giving everyone healthy, unaging bodies, at least one opportunity to escape any torturous circumstances they were caught in, and requiring my personal approval before they could die - then I'd recall that about 100 people die every minute, and I'd push that button as fast as I could reach it. I'm fully aware that there would be all /sorts/ of problems, even if of an entirely different sort than shown in Torchwood's latest season, but at least to me, such problems seem to be of much smaller magnitude than 150,000 preventable deaths per day.



"The simple fact is that non-violent means do not work against Evil. Gandhi's non-violent resistance against the British occupiers had some effect because Britain was wrong, but not Evil. The same is true of the success of non-violent civil rights resistance against de jure racism. Most people, including those in power, knew that what was being done was wrong. But Evil is an entirely different beast. Gandhi would have gone to the ovens had he attempted non-violent resistance against the Nazis. When one encounters Evil, the only solution is violence, actual or threatened. That's all Evil understands."
-- Robert Bruce Thompson


For all my talk about violent insurrection, I don't think I could kill someone even in self defense. I might beat the everliving crap out of someone in self defense, but I don't think I could shoot them or use a blade. It's just not in my nature. Of course, I make the world a better place, so other people whose nature it is get to do the killing on my behalf, because they don't want me going anywhere.

It's not an easy issue - I've spent some time on either side of the fence myself. I eventually came to the decision that since I'm a generally innocent sort of guy, then if someone were willing to try to kill me, they'd also be willing to try to kill other innocent people - and so in order to protect not only myself, but also my loved ones, my friends, and my neighbours, then I need to be willing to use whatever force will be required to stop their aggression. I fully intend to use the minimal amount of force that's required to do so ("Avoid rather than check, check rather than hurt, hurt rather than maim, maim rather than kill"), but if the minimal amount of force required is lethal... then that's what's needed. Which I hope won't be needed, but if it is, I'll be better prepared if I've made my decision well ahead of time.



"(checks FChan's /ah/ board to see if anyone's come up with a fetish I've neither heard of nor invented myself yet)
(re-reads a 'snuffie' tale about cute little critters in a virtual environment who experience no real pain or permanent harm cheerfully dismembering and happily blowing up each other)
(whistles innocently)
( :) )"

Yeah, Alex Reynard is one of my best buds. He's the one who invented snuffie. ^.^

Given that you like that, maybe you'd like this pseudo-RP thing we did together years back. http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1651290/

It was all in replies to a picture he had on FA. ^.^

Heh - a little different. Kind of reminds me of "The Unending Addventure", which is fun to Google interesting words in (eg, umbilical, armless, skunkette, skinsuit) to see what comes up. :)


I'm kind of surprised we haven't run into each other before, but I'm also surprised I've never heard of that Orion's Arm thing before either. Most of the postfurries I know are tied up in that Transliminal Station commune in Seattle, and I worry that if you're not friends then maybe you're the opposite. ^.^;;

Odd; this is the first I ever recall hearing of 'Transliminal Station', at least by that name. Checking Google - it may be because I don't frequent either the Furry Writers' Guild forum or FA's forums.


I'm still trying to find regular work though. Doing amateur web development for minimum wage right now... That's my job, though I still prefer to call myself an Independant Game Developer. One day I'll make money at it, surely.

If there's something that you can tolerate doing (or even enjoy it), and get paid for, I wish you the best of luck in getting hooked up with it.


"I figure that I'm not really going to worry about any physical limitations on life in the universe more than a billion years out, at least until our knowledge of physics has been stable for, oh, a thousand years or so with no significant evidence waiting on the horizon to upset the paradigm. :)"


I try to tell myself that too. One thing I worry about is that unlike the OA universe, I don't think giant assed superintelligences are gonna need independant biological organisms, and there's no reason for them not to keep eating eachother untill only the biggest is left. I wonder sometimes if that didn't already happen, and we're all just the schizoid alternate personalities of a single universe spanning entity. But that's one of those 'It doesn't really matter' problems.

Though it would be kind of crazy if it was an endless matryoshka of cosmic superintelligences, with each one filling up with life that merges into a single one and has another universe inside it. ^.^;;

It seems rather more likely to me that at least a few of our post-human descendents have enough of an interest in their own pasts to create models of the past in sufficient detail to include self-aware persons within those simulations. Amusingly, if sapience does survive long enough, then the number of such simulated universes is likely to be a much higher number than the number of real histories being simulated (that is, '1'), implying that the odds are much higher that we're all actually simulations of the originals rather than being the originals ourselves.

Which brings up some rather interesting questions about what the nature of our particular 'God the Programmer' might be... ;)



One of the problems I've had figuring out how space colonization will work out involves power relays. If you've got near-sun solar collectors you can get ridiculous amounts of energy and focus it into lasers, and transmit the energy like that to deeper space. But space terrorists or whatever could hijack the beam and point it at whoever they like, and burninate them. So, it makes sense to hide your colonies in the shadow of a massive object, and beam the sun around the edge where it's easier to control. What do you think? I'm pretty sure if you've got a space colony, a meteorite or asteroid is much easier to avoid or deflect than a giant laser beam.

On the other hand I sometimes wonder if a beam like that would be sustainable. It would take a huge amount of heat, wouldn't it? And it's hard to lose heat in space.

Well, another problem with Mercury-based solar-powered lasers is keeping the power-transfer beams collimated over millions of miles; if we do set up shop there, it's more likely that we'll put the power-intensive infrastructure near Mercury itself.

For comparison, the 1970's designs are for satellites that have solar panels about 5km x 10km, and beam down 6 gigawatts each. (With more modern photovoltaics, that could easily double.) That's a pretty good chunk of power to deliver from any single Earth-based rectenna receiving station - and without having to go all the way to Mercury to get it.

Still, it just might be feasible to set up enough solar-power sats with their transmitter beams aimed /away/ from Earth to add some oomph to lightsails immense distances away - and once /that/ tech gets militarized, well, about the only defense would be to be somewhere nobody knows where you are, but since there's no such thing as stealth in space, the only /real/ defense is to make sure the people with the big burninators don't /want/ to target you in the first place. (This is actually very close to the central question I based the 'New Attica' setting on: "Technology is advancing, so that it's becoming possible for smaller numbers of people to kill ever-greater numbers of other people. Soon, it may be possible for any given individual to kill everyone. What would be required to allow sapience/society/people to survive in such conditions?".)

I'm not sure that I entirely agree with your statement, that there 'is' no objective right and wrong. For example, "Desire Utilitarianism" posits that different people have different desires which they seek to fulfill. A great many of these desires are compatible with each other - eg, I have a desire to commission a piece of artwork, and an artist has a desire to get paid, and we can help each other fulfill our desires. At least to a rough approximation, fulfilling such desires could be called 'good'. There are also a certain number of desires which can only be fulfilled by thwarting other peoples' desires: eg, someone has a desire for other peoples' money, and I have a desire to avoid being mugged. Trying to fulfill these desires could be called 'evil'.

(Mind you, I'm not /entirely/ sure I agree with Desire Utilitarianism, but it's one of the few ethical systems that I haven't ruled out as being based on flawed assumptions.)

Well, that's an interesting way of looking at it. I'm not so sure though. To me, it seems that the universe contains no natural ethical system, it's something we generate as thinking beings. Something can only be considered good or bad from a perspective. But, that is an interesting method you suggest. I hope I remember that, it might make a good fudge for an ownership simulation. They say ownership is 9/10ths of the law but when it comes to virtual worlds and simulation, well, ownership takes a whole other dimension. Sometimes literally.


If you haven't already, you might want to look up the 'Friendly AI' problem. Given the nature of computers, if and when we ever come up with an AI which is anywhere within shouting distance of being called a person, it's very likely that that AI will rapidly become more intelligent than any human could be - at which time it could most likely arrange for any fate it desired for humanity. Which means that, in order to avoid AI being the last invention any human makes, we should at least try to figure out how an AI might be designed so that it won't have any desires to wipe us out when it has the ability to.

(On the other paw, given that the possible range of patterns an AI's mind might be designed in is much larger than the range of patterns human minds can inhabit, the 'Friendly AI' problem is, in a way, a much harder extension of the 'Friendly Human' problem, which is also unsolved - how to convince other /people/ not to have any desires to kill other people.)


I don't think that the first AI capable of advancing itself singularity style will have the means to do so. Probably won't have a body useful enough, and will probably be in captivity in a lab somewhere. Maybe not, and even if it is, there'll eventually be one that gets out, but probably not the first, I think.

Of course I could be wrong. Maybe we'll end up like the Quarians from Mass Effect, making worker robots then freaking out when they start asking existential questions. Ahh the Geth; I'm glad they turned around in Mass Effect 2 and made them friendly.

But yeah, when machines can think like humans can think, then they just need more hardware to think more and faster than us. Though, you can't think things into existance. So, even if you can think up newer and better ways of doing things, you still have to build everything.


If it helps, in addition to Yudkowsky's essay "An Intuitive Explanation to Bayes' Theorem" I linked to, there's another essay, "An Intuitive Explanation of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Intuitive Explanation of Bayes’ Theorem" at http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=13156 . ;)

I've gotta say, "Common Sense Atheism" is one of the most offensive urls I've read. ^.^;;

That's the sort of attitude that we don't need. Insulting someone constantly is probably not a good way to get them to listen to your point of view.


One of the trickiest part of applying this in real life is establishing what your 'priors' actually /are/. I've found at least one shortcut in doing so, which may not be the best, but is at least usable: Laplace's Sunrise Formula. This bit of math answers the question, "Knowing only the total number of trials, and the number of successful trials, what is the likelihood that the next trial will be successful?". (The formula is ( ( Successes + 1) / ( TotalTrials + 2 ) ).)

It seems to me the biggest concern is if the trials are actually even happening, or if they're being performed properly. You can science yourself but if you're going to trust someone else to science on your behalf, you can't know for sure if they're just making shit up or what.


"Ahh that's better, I was starting to worry you weren't any kind of a gamer! XD"


Lemme put it this way - I cut my teeth, possibly even literally, on a VIC=20 and Commodore 64. :)

I don't think you'd literally cut your teeth on 'em, the plastic isn't THAT hard. Myself, I always loved pressing the caps lock key. Click-a-click, click-a-click, nothing else makes that sound. Whenever I find an old C=64 it's so nostalgic!

My family had one when I was a kid, and a ton of pirate games. I didn't know what pirate games were back then of course, I just knew we had a lot of games. Not all of them worked. Some were pretty awesome. The one I liked the most was 7 Cities of Gold, which is still pretty awesome in retrospect.

I saw the intro from MULE on your YouTube. I don't think I've ever played it, though I've heard about it more than a little from friends. I suppose I really missed out! That and Elite. I didn't get my first awesome space sim untill Wing Commander: Privateer.

They just don't make 'em like they used to. Well, I will, as soon as I finish my current project. Of course, they didn't used to make them like Dwarf Fortress, either, so I've gotta love the future too! XD


Spider Robinson's novel "Mindkiller" (and the sequels, though less so) is probably the canonical take on the idea. And here I thought Spider Robinson was a character; I didn't realize he was the author.



"I'm not sure I agree with the everyone will be immortal thing. I think there's enough room for luddites and people who embrace that sort of thing as a culture. I mean, even now we have suicide cults, so survival isn't an issue for everyone. I like to imagine them as "Space Amish", what that OA setting called Baseline humans who just live on in generational ships. Though, it's tough to say. Someone like you might force immortality on them. But then, you can't stop someone from destroying themself without changing their mind."


Which gets into a whole range of icky, difficult issues about freedom of will, acting in someone else's best interests, the difference between mental illness and making rational choices, and so on. And that's not even bringing in the whole idea that many-to-most people /do/ want to live forever, they just expect to do so in a dualistic universe where they can survive without their physical bodies.


Exploring that was a big part of the original Adorabillians. They were aliens who came to earth with the goal of making anyone immortal no matter if they wanted it or not; to save as many lives as possible. The invasion started by spreading a mind-altering plague that inhibits aggression, making it so that people and animals can't intentionally kill. They also seed the planet with special 'plants' which generate food, particularly for the carnivores that can nolonger hunt. The bodily invasion begins at the hospitals and gradually they make everyone immortal.

To the Adorabillians, anyone who wants to self-destruct is dangerously insane and needs to be treated; the desire for death is a disease to them, rather than an acceptable life choice.

The newer Adorabillians I've worked on since then are more passive, and not alien but human decended. They're a thing I haven't let go of, but they've changed a lot.

But yeah, the nature of choice and free will is another thing that bugs me quite a lot. As we already discussed, I consider a person's choices to be more important than their life, but what defines those choices? Certainly we can all be influenced by different things psychologically. What's the difference between peer pressure and mind control? Or for that matter salesmanship. That's one of the main reasons I can't do sales, it feels like mind control to me. Convincing someone to do something they wouldn't normally do. It's not as bad if you have faith in your product, but selling for the purpose of selling is messed up.


If some non-magical genie-type being (who's usually called 'Omega' in this sort of thought experiment) offered to let me push a button which would make death effectively obsolete - say, by giving everyone healthy, unaging bodies, at least one opportunity to escape any torturous circumstances they were caught in, and requiring my personal approval before they could die - then I'd recall that about 100 people die every minute, and I'd push that button as fast as I could reach it. I'm fully aware that there would be all /sorts/ of problems, even if of an entirely different sort than shown in Torchwood's latest season, but at least to me, such problems seem to be of much smaller magnitude than 150,000 preventable deaths per day.

Non-magical genie-type being. XD You know, if a genie existed, it would be non-magical by definition. I often think of that as Randi's Great Trick. He offered a huge cash reward for anybody who could prove the existance of the supernatural, however if anybody ever proved the existance of the supernatural it would immediately cease to be supernatural, and thus he would never have to give away the prize.

If something like magic was real it would certainly be constrained by some physical laws. I'm still not sure there isn't something like that out there, but if there is we ought to find out eventually. Unfortunately it's practically impossible to analyze any of those claims scientifically. ^.^;;

Anyways, yeah, that Torchwood thing was pretty nuts. They did do it in an interesting way at least. They made it abundantly clear that if they did what they did, that they were effectively killing everyone, starting with her own father. On the other hand, they were worried about the families taking over the world, and it's not like people weren't still dying in the ovens. They hadn't really gotten rid of death so much as brought it under control.

I hope we do a better job in the real world. Though, the whole "Evil Pharmaceutical Company" thing was pretty spot-on. I wish we could do something about them irl. It's messed up that we have federal health care but medicine is still controlled by private, profit-driven corporations who are well aware that there's more money in treatments than cures.


It's not an easy issue - I've spent some time on either side of the fence myself. I eventually came to the decision that since I'm a generally innocent sort of guy, then if someone were willing to try to kill me, they'd also be willing to try to kill other innocent people - and so in order to protect not only myself, but also my loved ones, my friends, and my neighbours, then I need to be willing to use whatever force will be required to stop their aggression. I fully intend to use the minimal amount of force that's required to do so ("Avoid rather than check, check rather than hurt, hurt rather than maim, maim rather than kill"), but if the minimal amount of force required is lethal... then that's what's needed. Which I hope won't be needed, but if it is, I'll be better prepared if I've made my decision well ahead of time.

Well, that's an interesting way of thinking about it. I would probably fight, maybe even kill, to protect someone else. And it could be argued that someone who would hurt me would hurt someone else, so by protecting myself I'm saving them. But that same sort of idea reminds me of the thought that if everybody is dead then they can't hurt eachother anymore. Also, someone who attacks me has a reason for attacking me in particular, and might not attack anyone else. It depends on the situation.

There's also the emotion-based problems, like I'm afraid if I kill someone in self defense I'll be punished. Or if I get into a fight, even if I didn't start it, I'll be punished for that. Those old problems tend to stem from grade school though, I think.


Heh - a little different. Kind of reminds me of "The Unending Addventure", which is fun to Google interesting words in (eg, umbilical, armless, skunkette, skinsuit) to see what comes up. :)

I've heard of that one before, and the BEAddventure. It stands for Breast Expansion, but it goes into all sorts of weird tf stuff. I don't read it much though. Another one is Choose Your Own Change. www.cyoc.net They have a bunch of stories that people can add to. Though, it's not a good idea if you're afraid of clowns. They've been having a sort of clown-transformation rennisance for the last year or two. There's also this perculiar guy who writes really long drawn out story stuff. He gives me the wibblies in live conversation and is really insistant about colaborations, so I had to break off contact with him, but he writes some good stuff. Adam Worlorn I think his name was?


Odd; this is the first I ever recall hearing of 'Transliminal Station', at least by that name. Checking Google - it may be because I don't frequent either the Furry Writers' Guild forum or FA's forums.

That's what they call it when they mention it. I don't know much about it personally. For some reason I'm afraid to ask them about it. I know Postvixen, Postrodent and Cube Otter (Formerly Cerine the Rubber Skunk) are all there, and a lot of other interesting people. Those three used to live pretty close to where you do before they moved to Seattle, so I'm surprised if you don't know them. I'm assuming the location I read for you is correct and you're still in the Niagra Falls region. I'm over on the other side of Canada's dick myself, in Sarnia.

I don't frequent any forums anymore, so I don't know what happens on them. I'm not sure about the furry writers guild either. Don't know about them, I mean. Have you ever heard of PuzzleBox MUCK or 12Fold MUCK? They're a pair of post-furry MUCKs that they set up. I don't know if you're into mucking or not, I almost never do anymore. Incidentally, I noticed you're on Second Life. I almost never go on there anymore either, but I'm Relee Baysklef on there. I say that because I like to show off my sign-up date. <3


If there's something that you can tolerate doing (or even enjoy it), and get paid for, I wish you the best of luck in getting hooked up with it.

I'm not sure if it's something I can get paid for, but I might be able to make money. I think the two are different things, getting paid and making money. One implies someone is your boss. The other implies you're the boss. I doubt someone would want to hire me for the sort of stuff I do, unless I get famous like Notch, but I could still make money from my stuff by selling it, or using crowdfunding or shareware options. Hopefully.



It seems rather more likely to me that at least a few of our post-human descendents have enough of an interest in their own pasts to create models of the past in sufficient detail to include self-aware persons within those simulations. Amusingly, if sapience does survive long enough, then the number of such simulated universes is likely to be a much higher number than the number of real histories being simulated (that is, '1'), implying that the odds are much higher that we're all actually simulations of the originals rather than being the originals ourselves.

Which brings up some rather interesting questions about what the nature of our particular 'God the Programmer' might be... ;)

Well, it depends on the reach. After all, you can't exactly simulate the entire universe using less material than the entire universe. The less accurate the simulation, the more obvious it would be. Of course, we could also be a completely unique creative simulation. We already have simulations where things like magic and dragons are real, and others full of aliens. It's possible we're a simulation running in a much bigger universe, too. I think that it's likely that if we're in a simulation, we'll be able to prove it in the next hundred years. And that's generous.

I still find it interesting that the laws of physics seem to be both consistent and constant throughout the universe. That's an assumption folks make at any rate, myself included, but given that we don't know why the laws of physics are how they are, it's difficult to know for certain if they're constant or consistent. Of course, thinking too much about stuff like that tends towards madness, like wondering if the universe was just created this very moment with us already existing, memories already intact.

I sometimes like to imagine I'm a purple octopus playing a video game. XD

One thought I've had from time to time is that if the past and future are pre-written, why are we experiencing a particular moment in time? It seems like it would be possible that our actual existance is outside the universe, observing the perspective of an individual across time, sort of like a record needle tracking the bumps along the path. Well, that's an idea anyways. I use that in my less hard-sci fi and fantasy settings to explain the soul.

Of course the problem with the soul, or my problem at any rate, is that if it can be defined it can be changed, and the whole idea is to have an invincible immortal immutable thing. If you die it remains, but what if it is destroyed? So even in that, there's no solace. The only eternal life I've found is the idea that if past and future are constant, then your whole existance remains recorded in the fourth dimension forever, though that seems poor comfort to those still living.

Hah, here's an idea, maybe we're a database being searched, looking for a particular person in time to recreate them in the real universe. XD



Well, another problem with Mercury-based solar-powered lasers is keeping the power-transfer beams collimated over millions of miles; if we do set up shop there, it's more likely that we'll put the power-intensive infrastructure near Mercury itself.

For comparison, the 1970's designs are for satellites that have solar panels about 5km x 10km, and beam down 6 gigawatts each. (With more modern photovoltaics, that could easily double.) That's a pretty good chunk of power to deliver from any single Earth-based rectenna receiving station - and without having to go all the way to Mercury to get it.

Still, it just might be feasible to set up enough solar-power sats with their transmitter beams aimed /away/ from Earth to add some oomph to lightsails immense distances away - and once /that/ tech gets militarized, well, about the only defense would be to be somewhere nobody knows where you are, but since there's no such thing as stealth in space, the only /real/ defense is to make sure the people with the big burninators don't /want/ to target you in the first place. (This is actually very close to the central question I based the 'New Attica' setting on: "Technology is advancing, so that it's becoming possible for smaller numbers of people to kill ever-greater numbers of other people. Soon, it may be possible for any given individual to kill everyone. What would be required to allow sapience/society/people to survive in such conditions?".)


I figure there would be a line of relay bouys in space that monitor the beam as it passes through them, checking to see how far off centre they are, maybe even redirecting them or splitting the beam.

I suppose though it ultimately depends on how much energy you really NEED. Beaming energy out to the back of beyond might be neccesary because they don't get enough solar power, like out in the oort cloud or all the way to the heliopause. You could also just ship fuel out there. Personally I'm a fan of water cracking, though some folks have insisted that it's inefficient.

I do have one big worry about beaming power to the earth from outer space though. It adds to the total amount of energy being absorbed by the earth, without reducing the heat leaving the earth. Global Warming is a problem already, and that's mostly 'cause we've been burning off our ancient stores of chemical energy.

A friend of mine said something interesting one day about wind power. It's the only technology we have that actually takes energy out of the atmosphere, rather than adding to it or having a balance.

I've gotta agree with that problem about individuals having the ability to kill many others though. What are we going to do about mad bombers on space colonies?

We do have a lot to worry about. Besides nukes we have to worry about engineered superdiseases that could kill people, or perhaps worse, there's a real fear that here in North America our crops are all basically brothers and sisters, so it would be easy to target them with a plague. That might even happen naturally, on its own, which is another scary thought. I sometimes worry that someone will figure out a way to fuck up the ionosphere and we'll all get irradiated to death. If it's physically possible, it shouldn't take more than one person to do it and ruin everything.


Well, it looks like I reached the end. Thank you for another wonderfully thought-provoking portion of discussion. ^.^

I hope it continues for some time. Perhaps we could discuss even more things? What are your views on MMOs, simulations, and virtual worlds? What are your current favorite video games? Do you have Steam? My account is ReleeSquirrel and my username is Starbreeze. Were you born in Canada or are you an immigrant? What is your quest? What is your favorite colour? Do you like giant robot anime?

To me, it seems that the universe contains no natural ethical system, it's something we generate as thinking beings.

Hm... perhaps you are mixing up two somewhat separate ideas - an ethical system which is based on the objective facts of reality, and the idea of an ethical system created by an outside 'objective' observer of reality. It's entirely possible for the foermer to exist even if the latter doesn't.


I've gotta say, "Common Sense Atheism" is one of the most offensive urls I've read. ^.^;;

That's the sort of attitude that we don't need. Insulting someone constantly is probably not a good way to get them to listen to your point of view.

... I think I'm a bit confuzzled about what you're referring to. What sort of 'insulting' do you mean?


It seems to me the biggest concern is if the trials are actually even happening, or if they're being performed properly. You can science yourself but if you're going to trust someone else to science on your behalf, you can't know for sure if they're just making shit up or what.

Fortunately, there are already many ways to deal with this issue built right into sciencing: blinding, p-values, journal referees, independent replication, and so on.


I saw the intro from MULE on your YouTube. I don't think I've ever played it, though I've heard about it more than a little from friends. I suppose I really missed out!

I've long been amused by a particular, entirely legal exploit in MULE. The players' final score is a combination of their cash, and the value of their assets; and in the end-game, the value assigned to those assets is set by the last trade made for them. So if at least two players cooperate, they can massively inflate their score by going through the game's auction process to exchange a single unit of asset at a ridiculous price.

A rather less friendly tactic in the mid-game is to deprive your opponents of MULEs, and to drive up the price of the few MULEs remaining, by deliberately buying and releasing (destroying) them.

I cheerfully recommend that you find yourself one of the modern C=64 emulators, and give the game a try, even in solo mode. (Though if you can convince some other people to sit around the keyboard with you, so much the better. :) )


That and Elite. I didn't get my first awesome space sim untill Wing Commander: Privateer.

I still break out the original LucasArts version of X-Wing every few years...


They just don't make 'em like they used to. Well, I will, as soon as I finish my current project. Of course, they didn't used to make them like Dwarf Fortress, either, so I've gotta love the future too! XD

Nethack. I once cheated massively, and went all the way through snagging the Amulet and ascending - but have never managed to do so in a real game.


Spider Robinson's novel "Mindkiller" (and the sequels, though less so) is probably the canonical take on the idea.

And here I thought Spider Robinson was a character; I didn't realize he was the author.

Well, he's an authour, but he's still quite a character... <ba-dmp-chng!>

He's actually a character, too, at least in one story: "The Finale of the Ultimate Meta Mega Crossover", at http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5389450.....Mega_Crossover , whose blurb reads "Vernor Vinge x Greg Egan crackfic. This was supposed to be a bit of utterly deranged fun, but got out of control and ended up as a deep philosophical exploration."


Exploring that was a big part of the original Adorabillians. They were aliens who came to earth with the goal of making anyone immortal no matter if they wanted it or not; to save as many lives as possible. The invasion started by spreading a mind-altering plague that inhibits aggression, making it so that people and animals can't intentionally kill. They also seed the planet with special 'plants' which generate food, particularly for the carnivores that can nolonger hunt. The bodily invasion begins at the hospitals and gradually they make everyone immortal.

To the Adorabillians, anyone who wants to self-destruct is dangerously insane and needs to be treated; the desire for death is a disease to them, rather than an acceptable life choice.

The newer Adorabillians I've worked on since then are more passive, and not alien but human decended. They're a thing I haven't let go of, but they've changed a lot.

Having read the story, the major thing I was curious about that wasn't directly written... was what it was like for the Adorabillian while he was merged into the protagonist's body. (I've had similar curious thoughts about one of the Bartleby's Hell stories - imagining teaching the toothpaste girl about ordinary anatomy by letting her absorb and take over the functions of the body's various systems, from bones to muscles to circulatory system to organs, until the teacher's body was entirely made up of, well, her.)


But yeah, the nature of choice and free will is another thing that bugs me quite a lot. As we already discussed, I consider a person's choices to be more important than their life, but what defines those choices? Certainly we can all be influenced by different things psychologically. What's the difference between peer pressure and mind control? Or for that matter salesmanship. That's one of the main reasons I can't do sales, it feels like mind control to me. Convincing someone to do something they wouldn't normally do. It's not as bad if you have faith in your product, but selling for the purpose of selling is messed up.

I've found that it can be astonishingly easy to figure out at least one set of reasonable answers to such conundrums by imagining the perspective of someone who can say, "I'm a selfish bastard, but I'm a /smart/ selfish bastard interested in my /long-term/ self-interest", and remembering the rule-of-thumb that in any given interaction one is at least 50% likely to end up on the worse side of things. From such a viewpoint can arise human rights, the rule of law, trading for mutual benefit, trial by jury, capitalism, repudation of oligarchies, a code of honor, a search for truth, the scientific method, and more... which is really quite astonishing, given how many religions state that only through faith (or even only through their particular system) can any ethical system arise.

For this particular case, imagining that I was the one whose free will was being considered being abrogated, and that the choices were me exercising free will on this issue and ending upd ead, or having my free will being curtailed on this issue and staying alive... well, if I end up alive, then I'll have at least a chance at trying to take down the system which limited my free will, while if I'm dead I won't be able to complain about matters even if my hypothetical dead self no longer wants to be dead... so I can at least be logically consistent if I argue for the continuation of life.


You know, if a genie existed, it would be non-magical by definition. I often think of that as Randi's Great Trick. He offered a huge cash reward for anybody who could prove the existance of the supernatural, however if anybody ever proved the existance of the supernatural it would immediately cease to be supernatural, and thus he would never have to give away the prize.

Er... no. I'm afraid you're under some misapprehensions about how the Million-Dollar Prize works. Anyone who claims they can do anything of the sort that's generally called 'supernatural' can apply for the prize; and all they have to do to win it is to demonstrate that they can actually do what they claim they can do, through means other than the usual sorts of fraudulent trickery used by charlatans. It's also generally a good idea to set up the testing procedure so that it doesn't require any subjective interpretation, but the results will be clear to any and all observers, such as "guess the correct card at least five times in seven draws". Once both sides agree on a testing protocol - and yes, this /does/ happen - the tests really do get done, and if the testee really does pass them, the prize really does exist and really will be awarded.

Sorry for being so emphatic on this, but my having looked deeply at James Randi's activities was one of the biggest reasons I developed from being a wooly-headed agnostic to a definitive atheist.


If something like magic was real it would certainly be constrained by some physical laws. I'm still not sure there isn't something like that out there, but if there is we ought to find out eventually. Unfortunately it's practically impossible to analyze any of those claims scientifically. ^.^;;

http://www.calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=547

:)

(If you've got the time, that comic's a decent one to archive-binge on, too.)


Though, the whole "Evil Pharmaceutical Company" thing was pretty spot-on. I wish we could do something about them irl. It's messed up that we have federal health care but medicine is still controlled by private, profit-driven corporations who are well aware that there's more money in treatments than cures.

I'm as anti-corporatist as the next member of the 99%, but I've seen far too many people use the boogieman of 'Big Pharma' to promote snake-oil and quacks (eg, http://www.whatstheharm.net/ ) to take allegations that cures are being suppressed to promote higher-profit treatments without a hefty grain of salt.

If you listen to podcasts, or have the occasional 5-10 minute walk/drive/wait in which you could listen to a short one, then one I'd recommend is Skeptoid, http://skeptoid.com/ . (Another dandy one to do an archive binge on.)


Also, someone who attacks me has a reason for attacking me in particular, and might not attack anyone else.

Just within the past few months, I realized that the opposite idea to this - that someone willing to use violence once has provided reasonable evidence that they're the sort of person who is likely to use such violence in the future - can be used as a sufficient rationale for adding a full-fledged criminal justice system on top of the usual just-repay-civil-damages tort system recommended by many libertarians. (This idea is more fully written-up at http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2011/tle.....111002-05.html .)


For some reason I'm afraid to ask them about it. I know Postvixen, Postrodent and Cube Otter (Formerly Cerine the Rubber Skunk) are all there, and a lot of other interesting people. Those three used to live pretty close to where you do before they moved to Seattle, so I'm surprised if you don't know them. I'm assuming the location I read for you is correct and you're still in the Niagra Falls region. I'm over on the other side of Canada's dick myself, in Sarnia.

I'm familiar with Cerine, at least as a member of the audience, but don't believe I've encountered any of the rest. And yes, I'm still living somewhere inside the Regional Municipality of Niagara. :)


I don't frequent any forums anymore, so I don't know what happens on them. I'm not sure about the furry writers guild either. Don't know about them, I mean. Have you ever heard of PuzzleBox MUCK or 12Fold MUCK? They're a pair of post-furry MUCKs that they set up. I don't know if you're into mucking or not, I almost never do anymore. Incidentally, I noticed you're on Second Life. I almost never go on there anymore either, but I'm Relee Baysklef on there. I say that because I like to show off my sign-up date. <3

It's been a few years since I've done any MUCKing, though FurryMUCK was where I first really joined up with furry culture. And yes, that's a very impressive sign-up date, even better than mine. :)



I do have one big worry about beaming power to the earth from outer space though. It adds to the total amount of energy being absorbed by the earth, without reducing the heat leaving the earth. Global Warming is a problem already, and that's mostly 'cause we've been burning off our ancient stores of chemical energy.

The math's been done, and the increase in warming from beaming down solar power is orders of magnitude smaller than the warming created by the emissions of greenhouse gases by creating the same amount of power with fossil fuels.


I've gotta agree with that problem about individuals having the ability to kill many others though. What are we going to do about mad bombers on space colonies?

One of the few answers I've managed to work out... is to try to arrange matters so that nobody has any particular desire /to/ become such a mad bomber.


We do have a lot to worry about. Besides nukes we have to worry about engineered superdiseases that could kill people, or perhaps worse, there's a real fear that here in North America our crops are all basically brothers and sisters, so it would be easy to target them with a plague. That might even happen naturally, on its own, which is another scary thought. I sometimes worry that someone will figure out a way to fuck up the ionosphere and we'll all get irradiated to death. If it's physically possible, it shouldn't take more than one person to do it and ruin everything.

You might find that http://www.mlo-online.com/features/.....aboratory.aspx might give you a few heebie-jeebies...


Well, it looks like I reached the end. Thank you for another wonderfully thought-provoking portion of discussion. ^.^

As the saying goes, no worries. :)

I hope it continues for some time. Perhaps we could discuss even more things? What are your views on MMOs, simulations, and virtual worlds?

At the moment fascinating toys, at least one of which lets me try to create some images that I wouldn't have another opportunity to. In the far future, it's conceivable that I might end up inhabiting one or more, in which case I want to try to make sure that I always have some independent way to interact with the real world, if for no other reason than to make sure I can change my batteries when I need to. :)


What are your current favorite video games?

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Core Wars, MULE, Nethack, and Master of Orion II are at the top of my list. I've finally gotten Portal working on my laptop, and have been giving that a try recently.


Do you have Steam? My account is ReleeSquirrel and my username is Starbreeze.

To answer a more general version of your question: I currently try to keep all my online accounts linked to from my Google profile, at https://plus.google.com/10241392874.....13873125/about ; I don't actually /use/ many of those accounts for much of anything, but I still have them. :)


Were you born in Canada or are you an immigrant?

I'm a natural-born Canadian, as were my parents, as were my grand-parents; past that, I can claim my ancestry is English, Irish, Scottish, Dutch, French, German, Prussian, Russian, and more.


What is your quest?

To keep sapience in existence, preferably by also keeping my own self in existence.

If I don't succeed at simple immortality, mind-state uploading, or using cryonics to wait until someone else does, I do have a longshot backup plan: trying to be an interesting enough person that our far-flung history-simulating descendants will want to recreate me as a fully-recreated individual instead of just a low-resolution background character. As one aspect of that, I spent some time trying to see if I could come up with a truly novel sexual kink - and, as far as I can tell, I'm the first person to identify, name, and describe "pouchal sex", the marsupial addition to the usual selection of oral, anal, and vaginal intercourse. (Yes, there were previous examples of pouch-kinks, but they involved either using the pouch to carry a person, or stimulating just the nipples within the pouch, rather than treating the pouch itself as an orifice.) I mean, how many people can /you/ think of who've invented a new sex-act? ;)


What is your favorite colour?

Blue, no pi- no, no, I was right, it's blue.


Do you like giant robot anime?

Less so than I expected to, a decade ago. These days, I seem to be focusing my attention on those pieces of media which present new ideas, or at least ideas I'm unfamiliar with, and most giant robot anime these days seems to tend to recycle the same tropes. I think the most recent giant-robot media I enjoyed was the plotline for the Alternity generation of Transformers.


And as much as I'd enjoy asking a similar set of questions in return, I'm about to conk out, so I'll just try suggesting that you try interviewing yourself similarly. :)

Hm... perhaps you are mixing up two somewhat separate ideas - an ethical system which is based on the objective facts of reality, and the idea of an ethical system created by an outside 'objective' observer of reality. It's entirely possible for the foermer to exist even if the latter doesn't.

Well, even if you're measuring facts, it all depends on a perspective. Like your perspective that having sentients is the best. An empty universe could also be the best, untill it's put into perspective.

I don't think there's a global perspective for all life/society. Cultures can be shockingly different with what they accept and reject.

"I've gotta say, "Common Sense Atheism" is one of the most offensive urls I've read. ^.^;;

That's the sort of attitude that we don't need. Insulting someone constantly is probably not a good way to get them to listen to your point of view."


... I think I'm a bit confuzzled about what you're referring to. What sort of 'insulting' do you mean?

Well, Common Sense is kind of an insult. Any time someone references common sense, it's because they're rebuffing someone for not knowing something they think they should, or rebuffing someone for saying something they already know, and think everyone knows. There's no common pool of knowledge, and common sense is a myth.

Pairing it up with Atheism, it comes off in two ways. To outsiders, it's like "You're stupid for not realizing these obvious truths.". For someone who has lived their life believing in some religion or another, suggesting they've been fooled or deluded when they haven't accepted that themself will only insult them. To people in the in-group, it comes off a different way. "You're smarter and better than normal people who are unable to grasp these concepts." it suggests. So it rejects people who aren't already into those ideas, and encourages those who are into those ideas into a sense of self-righteousness and undue pride.

Though, the blog itself gives an impression of smugness that might make the name not matter. ^.^;;

Anyways that's just how I felt.


"It seems to me the biggest concern is if the trials are actually even happening, or if they're being performed properly. You can science yourself but if you're going to trust someone else to science on your behalf, you can't know for sure if they're just making shit up or what."


Fortunately, there are already many ways to deal with this issue built right into sciencing: blinding, p-values, journal referees, independent replication, and so on.

Well, the folks who are in the real trouble aren't the sciencers but the average person who doesn't do any sciencing, and has all the sciencing done on their behalf. I hear crazy assed cultists refer to this or that scientific test proving this or that thing. When I learned how to drive my driving instructor was a member of a young-earth creationist cult and he kept going on about some biodome where they proved some ridiculous claims, and it's like, how do I argue with that?

Personally I don't even have access to scientific journals. Or if I do, I sure don't know how to do so. Everything is second or third hand on the internet, and I can see the purple monkey dishwasher shit happening in the different articles on the same subject I read on different news blogs.


I've long been amused by a particular, entirely legal exploit in MULE. The players' final score is a combination of their cash, and the value of their assets; and in the end-game, the value assigned to those assets is set by the last trade made for them. So if at least two players cooperate, they can massively inflate their score by going through the game's auction process to exchange a single unit of asset at a ridiculous price.

A rather less friendly tactic in the mid-game is to deprive your opponents of MULEs, and to drive up the price of the few MULEs remaining, by deliberately buying and releasing (destroying) them.

I cheerfully recommend that you find yourself one of the modern C=64 emulators, and give the game a try, even in solo mode. (Though if you can convince some other people to sit around the keyboard with you, so much the better. :) )

That's economics, right there. ^.^;;

I'm afraid none of my friends around here are into gaming with me. Which is frustrating because I spent hundreds on a Wii and games to play with my friends and we never get to play them. Well, mostly I bought it for that, but there were a few Wii games I REALLY wanted to play. And GameCube games.

I'm also afraid I've got WAY too many games to play already. I've grown into a bad habit of buying more games than I can play, and they're all over the place on my computer, on Steam, on disks, console games... It's crazy.


I still break out the original LucasArts version of X-Wing every few years...

Heh, well for me I actually never much liked the fighter plane mechanics of those sorts of games. I liked the space simulation! Though, none do it like I really like. X3 is pretty neat, though I haven't gotten that far into it. That one still has some fighter plane like gameplay. I want to fly a real ship, not a space fighter. To be captain, to be able to walk around or float around in my ship. I want to have a crew, NPCs or my friends. I want a living economy and ecology! All of this stuff I'm going to end up having to make myself, I'm pretty sure.


Nethack. I once cheated massively, and went all the way through snagging the Amulet and ascending - but have never managed to do so in a real game.

When I talk about Dwarf Fortress I'm talkin' about the simulation aspects, not the dungeon crawling. Though, it's hard to compare even that to Nethack. It's not even a real ASCII game, he uses a sprite sheet of 256 sprites and most of them are based on ASCII instead of actually using the characters. Though, it's a wonder nobody makes a roguelike using Unicode. You could even use letters from the regions that resemble their language's origin. Big assed kanji pagodas maybe. <3

Nethack was kind of cool but I never really got into it. It wasn't that fun on its own, for me, and the more I learned about it the more I realized it wasn't a game you could win by playing fair. You can win without cheaitng, yes, but not without learning the metagame, and that shouldn't be neccesary imo. I'm all about simulation; trying to game the system isn't my style. At least, not usually.


Having read the story, the major thing I was curious about that wasn't directly written... was what it was like for the Adorabillian while he was merged into the protagonist's body. (I've had similar curious thoughts about one of the Bartleby's Hell stories - imagining teaching the toothpaste girl about ordinary anatomy by letting her absorb and take over the functions of the body's various systems, from bones to muscles to circulatory system to organs, until the teacher's body was entirely made up of, well, her.)


Man, I have got to read the rest of the Bartleby stories. Alex may be one of my best buddies but I've actually only read like half of his stories. Though, the best was when he visited me and I was all curled up in his lap and he read one of his stories to me personally, doing the voices and everything. I don't think he's actually published that one yet, though I may be wrong. It's a sort of ultimate defiance against god, where they use the rescued angels to open portals to earth then gently kill all the abused children to 'rescue' them to hell. Very touching. Alex is all about saving the kids.

The Adorabillians are made up of artificial cells and can seperate and integrate themselves into physical objects and people. Mostly the time was taken up with the Adorabillian converting the host's cells en masse, so from the Adorabillian's perspective it's major sensory organs were gone, it was just a mind controlling its cells relatively directly, like an army general, making sure they weren't damaged by the immune system and making sure the host was intact. It was also learning him, learning about earth biology in order to prepare to modify all the creatures on earth.

I'm glad you read my story. I'm guessing you liked it?


Sorry for being so emphatic on this, but my having looked deeply at James Randi's activities was one of the biggest reasons I developed from being a wooly-headed agnostic to a definitive atheist.

It's alright, I was being unduly smug. I think perhaps I wanted to be shown I was wrong so I could stop thinking that. ^.^;;


"If something like magic was real it would certainly be constrained by some physical laws. I'm still not sure there isn't something like that out there, but if there is we ought to find out eventually. Unfortunately it's practically impossible to analyze any of those claims scientifically. ^.^;;"


http://www.calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=547

:)

(If you've got the time, that comic's a decent one to archive-binge on, too.)

Cute comic. I've got too many comics in my list of comics to archive-binge on already though. Most specifically Unity, which I'm part way through, and which I think you would enjoy as well. http://beesbuzz.biz/d/20070212.php


Anywho, it's yet possible that there are things that interact physically with the world in an irregular or inconsistent way. Additionally due to the fact that there's hordes of frauds and charlatans doing fake stuff, it's exceedingly hard to research or prove anything in those areas. Of course, sometimes even the non-supernatural explanations for seemingly supernatural events can be pretty cool. <3


I'm as anti-corporatist as the next member of the 99%, but I've seen far too many people use the boogieman of 'Big Pharma' to promote snake-oil and quacks (eg, http://www.whatstheharm.net/ ) to take allegations that cures are being suppressed to promote higher-profit treatments without a hefty grain of salt.

Well, I wouldn't think they'd suppress them if they had them. But it's not really something they have an incentive to produce. There's other problems as well, like using intellectual property to control the production of medicines.

One of my more controversial beliefs is that intellectual property laws are bad and we should abandon them. Copyrights, Patents, and Trademarks all.

As for Homeopathy, yeah it's pretty messed up. I've heard they've even started putting them on shelves next to real medicine, with no warning label. You could go to the pharmacy to pick up cough syrup or pain killers and not realize you're buying snake oil instead.


Also, someone who attacks me has a reason for attacking me in particular, and might not attack anyone else.


Just within the past few months, I realized that the opposite idea to this - that someone willing to use violence once has provided reasonable evidence that they're the sort of person who is likely to use such violence in the future - can be used as a sufficient rationale for adding a full-fledged criminal justice system on top of the usual just-repay-civil-damages tort system recommended by many libertarians. (This idea is more fully written-up at http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2011/tle.....111002-05.html .)

Personally I'm mostly in favor of a rehabilitation based system built around getting to the roots of criminal behavior and preventing the problems that cause people to turn to crime out of desperation rather than lifestyle choice.

I don't think we'll ever get a really good corrections system though. On one hand, you've got people who think these folks need to be punished, and the other rehabilitated. The prisons try to do both, and fail. The punishment keeps the rehabilitation from working, and the rehabilitation makes the punishment soft. It's a cultural problem more than anything else; people don't know what they want, or what is best.

Now though we have to worry about Harper's for-profit prisons. I'm sure he's eager to fill them up with small time drug war criminals to use as slave labour. :/


I'm familiar with Cerine, at least as a member of the audience, but don't believe I've encountered any of the rest. And yes, I'm still living somewhere inside the Regional Municipality of Niagara. :)

Cube hasn't been Cerine for a long time. The fame and infamy got too much for him, and he retreated into otterhood and maleness. Met them in person, nice guy. I'm surprised you haven't met the others. I wouldn't think there was a lot of postfurries to go around. Though, maybe YOU have friends that _I_ haven't heard of. Anybody neat you'd like to introduce to me, or reccomend?

As for the Niagra region, maybe someday you and I could meet up. I haven't been to Niagra Falls in forever. It'd be interesting to see it as an adult.


It's been a few years since I've done any MUCKing, though FurryMUCK was where I first really joined up with furry culture. And yes, that's a very impressive sign-up date, even better than mine. :)

Second Life has changed so much over the years! Unfortunately it's just not fun anymore, for me. Can't do what we did in the old days.


The math's been done, and the increase in warming from beaming down solar power is orders of magnitude smaller than the warming created by the emissions of greenhouse gases by creating the same amount of power with fossil fuels.

I certainly didn't mean to suggest it wouldn't be smaller. But, it's likely they'd happen in tandem, I think.


One of the few answers I've managed to work out... is to try to arrange matters so that nobody has any particular desire /to/ become such a mad bomber.


Certainly it's a desire for some, but not all. There are also folks who are sick in the head and become dangerous because of it. I had one particular anxiety episode where I was having constant flashes of intense paranoia and every time I looked at someone, my mind spun off into wild conspiracy theories explaining how they were out to get me. It was particularly terrifying, and ultimately I settled down and found myself at a fish and chips restaurant a few blocks from home. After an experience like that, I think people are capable of anything in the throes of madness.



At the moment fascinating toys, at least one of which lets me try to create some images that I wouldn't have another opportunity to. In the far future, it's conceivable that I might end up inhabiting one or more, in which case I want to try to make sure that I always have some independent way to interact with the real world, if for no other reason than to make sure I can change my batteries when I need to. :)

Are there any of those toys you personally like to play with, or do you just watch them from afar?


Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Core Wars, MULE, Nethack, and Master of Orion II are at the top of my list. I've finally gotten Portal working on my laptop, and have been giving that a try recently.

Some very classic stuff. SMAC and MOO2 are a couple of my favorites as well. I've got like half a dozen more modern 4X in space games on my computer and none of them satisfy like MOO2 or SMAC. Have you tried any of the more modern ones? Star Ruler in particular is notable for having realitsic physics. The ships even flip around before decelerating! Though it lacks in the peace-department. I'm more interested in settling space than conquering it.

Portal was fantastic. Portal 2 was pretty good too. What are your computer's specs? I'm curious if there's anything I should reccomend or avoid. Since you mentioned Nethack, do you play any other roguelikes?

I'm also curious if you've played any of the modern darlings like Dwarf Fortress, Minecraft or Terraria? Have you seen Anno 2070? I'm curious what you think of it. It's a sort of post global-warming colonization/settling/management game.


I'm a natural-born Canadian, as were my parents, as were my grand-parents; past that, I can claim my ancestry is English, Irish, Scottish, Dutch, French, German, Prussian, Russian, and more.

Oh neat! Old blood. XD

My Dad is a few generations in here in Canada. My Mom is an immigrant though; she came from the Netherlands when she was like three. So I'm half dutch.


To keep sapience in existence, preferably by also keeping my own self in existence.

If I don't succeed at simple immortality, mind-state uploading, or using cryonics to wait until someone else does, I do have a longshot backup plan: trying to be an interesting enough person that our far-flung history-simulating descendants will want to recreate me as a fully-recreated individual instead of just a low-resolution background character. As one aspect of that, I spent some time trying to see if I could come up with a truly novel sexual kink - and, as far as I can tell, I'm the first person to identify, name, and describe "pouchal sex", the marsupial addition to the usual selection of oral, anal, and vaginal intercourse. (Yes, there were previous examples of pouch-kinks, but they involved either using the pouch to carry a person, or stimulating just the nipples within the pouch, rather than treating the pouch itself as an orifice.) I mean, how many people can /you/ think of who've invented a new sex-act? ;)


Not many, surely. I like pouches. <3


Blue, no pi- no, no, I was right, it's blue.

Me too!


Less so than I expected to, a decade ago. These days, I seem to be focusing my attention on those pieces of media which present new ideas, or at least ideas I'm unfamiliar with, and most giant robot anime these days seems to tend to recycle the same tropes. I think the most recent giant-robot media I enjoyed was the plotline for the Alternity generation of Transformers.

Recycling tropes is a big part of Japanese culture, I find.

Have you seen Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagaan? It's not very realistic; the giant robots are primarily powered by self-confidence, but it's a really fun ride.

I watch a LOT of anime. Not just giant robot anime. I just mentioned that specifically because it came to mind when I was asking questions.

I like magical girl anime, I like giant robot anime, I like really highbrow thoughtful anime, and I like action anime where guys spend three episodes beating the crap out of eachother and talking about how impressed or not impressed they are at eachother's crap beating out of abilities.

And as much as I'd enjoy asking a similar set of questions in return, I'm about to conk out, so I'll just try suggesting that you try interviewing yourself similarly. :)

I think I gave my answers for most of the ones I asked you, so now you go ahead and ask me some questions! I love answering questions, it's one of my favorite things to do. You just do it when you feel up to it though. I for one ended up writing this just before bed, and it took longer than I anticipated, so I'm zonked too!

Good night, and I hope to be asked some questions tomorrow. <3

Short-form reply, since I have finite time to write a response right now:

"I've gotta say, "Common Sense Atheism" is one of the most offensive urls I've read. ^.^;;

That's the sort of attitude that we don't need. Insulting someone constantly is probably not a good way to get them to listen to your point of view."


"... I think I'm a bit confuzzled about what you're referring to. What sort of 'insulting' do you mean?"


Well, Common Sense is kind of an insult. Any time someone references common sense, it's because they're rebuffing someone for not knowing something they think they should, or rebuffing someone for saying something they already know, and think everyone knows. There's no common pool of knowledge, and common sense is a myth.

Pairing it up with Atheism, it comes off in two ways. To outsiders, it's like "You're stupid for not realizing these obvious truths.". For someone who has lived their life believing in some religion or another, suggesting they've been fooled or deluded when they haven't accepted that themself will only insult them. To people in the in-group, it comes off a different way. "You're smarter and better than normal people who are unable to grasp these concepts." it suggests. So it rejects people who aren't already into those ideas, and encourages those who are into those ideas into a sense of self-righteousness and undue pride.

Though, the blog itself gives an impression of smugness that might make the name not matter. ^.^;;

Anyways that's just how I felt.

I'd like to offer a thought experiment. Imagine, at least for a moment, that the viewpoint you ascribe to the Common Sense Atheism blog was not only accurate, but that it really is possible to derive atheism from the same simple reasoning processes which allow us to, say, figure out that the Earth is a sphere based on little more than observing lunar eclipses. That people who believe in religion really /are/ being fooled, deluded, or otherwise not applying even a minimal amount of thought to the matter. Assuming that this was the case, and the authour of the CSA blog had various reasons to want to write the posts he's written with other atheists as the core audience... then is there any way for him to write those posts /without/ seeming 'smug', 'self-righteous', prideful, and the other negative terms you've ascribed, at least to those people who still retain their religious beliefs?




Personally I don't even have access to scientific journals. Or if I do, I sure don't know how to do so.

http://arxiv.org/ . :)

(I also have a set of podcasts and blogs from the skeptical community which I pay attention to, and which generally bring such new ideas to my attention reasonably quickly, if you're interested in adding any to your own newsfeeds.)


I want to fly a real ship, not a space fighter. To be captain, to be able to walk around or float around in my ship. I want to have a crew, NPCs or my friends. I want a living economy and ecology! All of this stuff I'm going to end up having to make myself, I'm pretty sure.

Two board games might interest you: "High Frontier", which uses realistic rockets and orbital physics to describe the exploration and exploitation of the solar system; and "Attack Vector: Tactical", which focuses on real-physics space combat.



I'm glad you read my story. I'm guessing you liked it?

Yep. :)


Most specifically Unity, which I'm part way through, and which I think you would enjoy as well. http://beesbuzz.biz/d/20070212.php

One archive binge later - I've now added the artist's various RSS feeds to my newsfeeds, so I can keep track of new updates. :)


One of my more controversial beliefs is that intellectual property laws are bad and we should abandon them. Copyrights, Patents, and Trademarks all.

Heh. Hehehe. https://www.pirateparty.ca/ . Member #13.

I'm not /entirely/ convinced that entirely removing IP laws is the best possible result; but I /am/ convinced that given how much effort is being put into trying to extend and lengthen such laws, trying to push for anything short of full IP abolishment is going to be self-sabotaging. I do have a handy reference demonstrating that the maximum benefit comes from copyright durations of 14 years or less: http://www.rufuspollock.org/economi....._copyright.pdf , especially pages 26-29. I also disagree with you about abolishing trademarks entirely - we do need some laws against fraud, including one person or group fraudulently pretending to be another.


I wouldn't think there was a lot of postfurries to go around. Though, maybe YOU have friends that _I_ haven't heard of. Anybody neat you'd like to introduce to me, or reccomend?

Hm... oddly, I can't think of too many - and most that I can tend to come more from the transhumanist side rather than the furry side. I've already pointed you at Elf Sternberg's Journal Entries and Orion's Arm; Eclipse Phase is a trans/post-human RPG setting that's at least potentially furry-compatible, and has an active forum; SJGames' "Transhuman Space" RPG setting explicitly includes catgirls, and there are several SJG online communities... and Second Life has the Extropians group. That's all that comes to mind right now.



"One of the few answers I've managed to work out... is to try to arrange matters so that nobody has any particular desire /to/ become such a mad bomber."


Certainly it's a desire for some, but not all. There are also folks who are sick in the head and become dangerous because of it. I had one particular anxiety episode where I was having constant flashes of intense paranoia and every time I looked at someone, my mind spun off into wild conspiracy theories explaining how they were out to get me. It was particularly terrifying, and ultimately I settled down and found myself at a fish and chips restaurant a few blocks from home. After an experience like that, I think people are capable of anything in the throes of madness.

"Madness", as commonly defined, isn't even necessary. Perhaps you remember the "Draw Muhammad Day"s from the past couple of years? I contributed a riddling stick-figure drawing for each one so far ( http://wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws......0/05/Muh27.jpg , http://wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws......Muhammad21.jpg ), and during some online conversations, found out that my having done so means that there really are people who really would prefer that I be dead instead of alive.


"At the moment fascinating toys, at least one of which lets me try to create some images that I wouldn't have another opportunity to. In the far future, it's conceivable that I might end up inhabiting one or more, in which case I want to try to make sure that I always have some independent way to interact with the real world, if for no other reason than to make sure I can change my batteries when I need to. :)"

Are there any of those toys you personally like to play with, or do you just watch them from afar?

At the moment, just Second Life. (A rat-lady avatar I assembled there ended up being the basis of the appearance of DataPacRat-the-fursona as well as DataPacRat-the-fictional-character.)


"Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Core Wars, MULE, Nethack, and Master of Orion II are at the top of my list. I've finally gotten Portal working on my laptop, and have been giving that a try recently."


Some very classic stuff. SMAC and MOO2 are a couple of my favorites as well. I've got like half a dozen more modern 4X in space games on my computer and none of them satisfy like MOO2 or SMAC. Have you tried any of the more modern ones? Star Ruler in particular is notable for having realitsic physics. The ships even flip around before decelerating! Though it lacks in the peace-department. I'm more interested in settling space than conquering it.

Portal was fantastic. Portal 2 was pretty good too. What are your computer's specs? I'm curious if there's anything I should reccomend or avoid. Since you mentioned Nethack, do you play any other roguelikes?

I'm also curious if you've played any of the modern darlings like Dwarf Fortress, Minecraft or Terraria? Have you seen Anno 2070? I'm curious what you think of it. It's a sort of post global-warming colonization/settling/management game.

I've been spending most of my free time reading rather than gaming, and so have mostly just heard about such games second-hand. I'm probably more likely to re-install Civ3 than try purchasing a new game...


Have you seen Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagaan? It's not very realistic; the giant robots are primarily powered by self-confidence, but it's a really fun ride.

Nope; I've got a few other anime series on my inpile to finish up before I start a new one, including post-gap episodes of Naruto (subtitled), Detective Conan, DesertPunk, and more.

Have you tried Planetes, either manga or anime?



And I'm just about out of time, at least for the next bunch of hours.

Awwwe, short version. Well I can't blame you, most people I have these discussions with get burned out a lot faster! XD

Still, I'm sure we both have more important things to do than talk, though talking is important too. Socializing! I'm just able to talk so much because I'm procrastinating, and tonight specifically I'm feeling depressed so it's hard to do anything else.

Anyways go at your own pace and cut out anything you don't have time for. That's fine by me. ^.^


I'd like to offer a thought experiment. Imagine, at least for a moment, that the viewpoint you ascribe to the Common Sense Atheism blog was not only accurate, but that it really is possible to derive atheism from the same simple reasoning processes which allow us to, say, figure out that the Earth is a sphere based on little more than observing lunar eclipses. That people who believe in religion really /are/ being fooled, deluded, or otherwise not applying even a minimal amount of thought to the matter. Assuming that this was the case, and the authour of the CSA blog had various reasons to want to write the posts he's written with other atheists as the core audience... then is there any way for him to write those posts /without/ seeming 'smug', 'self-righteous', prideful, and the other negative terms you've ascribed, at least to those people who still retain their religious beliefs?

It's a lot easier than that to demonstrate that the earth is round. Apart from the horizon, you can just take two sticks and measure the shadows at different locations at the same time. You can also calculate the size of the earth that way. Very cool. Though, that method requires a pair of watches, and moon watching doesn't. More and more I hear people saying that very few people actually believed the world was flat through history, that was something made up more recently.

Anyways I digress. I don't think that it would be possible without seeming smug or prideful, but it's more like they went out of their way to be insulting rather than inviting. There are degrees to these things. You can be more or less insulting. Also I think people who are considering abandoning their religious beliefs would be offended. You can welcome someone who wants to learn or you can congratulate him for getting over being an idiot. One is less offensive than the other, and more likely to enlighten folks who are on the fence. Of course, I get the impression it's not for people who are on the fence. Ultimately, if it was intentonally offensive then it was still offensive, like I said. What are we even arguing about?


http://arxiv.org/ . :)

(I also have a set of podcasts and blogs from the skeptical community which I pay attention to, and which generally bring such new ideas to my attention reasonably quickly, if you're interested in adding any to your own newsfeeds.)

Well that was easy, perhaps I was just being lazy. ^.^;;

One thing I'm lazy about is RSS. I still haven't gotten around to managing newsfeeds. I've got a whole mess of bookmarks and I open them all up in tabs. I don't think there's any you'd be interested in and not already reading though. Unless you're not a Redditor. Well, www.reddit.com just in case. It's handy 'cause most of the things that end up on other news sites I read, I read about two or three days before on Reddit.

I'm pretty skeptical about everything, and hard to impress. I don't dismiss anything but I don't go around expecting unlikely things. I've seen enough supernatural stuff to be curious, but I know enough about my own psychology to guess I was probably hallucinating or just regular imagining things. I gotta say my "Psychic Powers" made a lot more sense when I realized that someone with an Anxiety disorder is naturally going to feel 'pressences' when there's nobody there. It's frustrating to realize you're crazy though. :/

Oh wait I derailed and digressed and missed my point. The point was, I don't identify myself as a skeptic. I'm not anti-skeptic I just don't enjoy disproving things. I'm more interested in testing things and making things. So, I don't go out of my way to join skeptic communities. Though I appreciate the invitation. ^.^


Two board games might interest you: "High Frontier", which uses realistic rockets and orbital physics to describe the exploration and exploitation of the solar system; and "Attack Vector: Tactical", which focuses on real-physics space combat.

Thanks for the suggestions! I don't really have the opportunity to play board games though. Not really what I was looking for either; I'm more into video game simulation type stuff than just game in general. A lot of my favorite games are hardly 'games' at all.

"I'm glad you read my story. I'm guessing you liked it?"


Yep. :)

Awesome. If you read any others please tell me what you think!


One archive binge later - I've now added the artist's various RSS feeds to my newsfeeds, so I can keep track of new updates. :)

I'm beginning to get the picture that you like comics and books a lot more than video games. XD

I haven't fully gone through the archive yet myself. I got pretty far before I had to tear myself away though. I have a problem when I read comic archives like that, I get way too attached to the story. The author too, with their plaid form, reading their story and their personal bits I couldn't help but develop a crush on them, and that's not healthy imo. I'll continue reading it eventually though.


Heh. Hehehe. https://www.pirateparty.ca/ . Member #13.

I'm not /entirely/ convinced that entirely removing IP laws is the best possible result; but I /am/ convinced that given how much effort is being put into trying to extend and lengthen such laws, trying to push for anything short of full IP abolishment is going to be self-sabotaging. I do have a handy reference demonstrating that the maximum benefit comes from copyright durations of 14 years or less: http://www.rufuspollock.org/economi....._copyright.pdf , especially pages 26-29. I also disagree with you about abolishing trademarks entirely - we do need some laws against fraud, including one person or group fraudulently pretending to be another.


I didn't know we had a Pirate Party in Canada already, though it doesn't surprise me. They're doing pretty well over in Europe I understand, despite being harassed about their name.

As for IP laws...

They've been abused a lot, but even besides the abuse I'm against the concept of them. They were originally set down to encourage people to be creative by allowing them the ability to control how their creations were used, for a set period of time. Copyrights let people write books and music and sell them, Patents let companies invent things and not have to worry about their competition building the same thing without the investment of research. Trademarks had their own different reasons and they're a relatively minor concern.

The biggest part of the problem is that this creates artificial scarcity. You take something that can be copied cheaply and criminalize copying it, which commodifies it. Media wouldn't be worth much if we got rid of IP laws. Money is power and this gives an immense amount of power to media, who are abusing it. For me, if you can make something you should be allowed to do it. If you can make a product as good or better than your competitor, even if they were the ones who invented or improved it, you should be allowed to do that. Copying isn't theft. It's much easier to make a copy of a media item, especially today, than to make the original. But "Them's the breaks"; the government shouldn't be making an industry for them through artificial scarcity. If you can't monetize your work then you shouldn't be in business. Certainly, law enforcement and courts have better things to do than to deal with laws like that.

Fraud is already criminal, with or without trademarks. Independant media creators should be able to freely use other people's characters and settings freely.

One thing in particular that's been on my mind lately is corporate espionage. If a company had to worry about their secrets being spilled, because other companies would be able to use them, then they would be more inclined to keep a tight ship. They'd also want to make sure none of their employees want to sell secrets. Though, I'm hoping Wikileaks is already helping with that.


Hm... oddly, I can't think of too many - and most that I can tend to come more from the transhumanist side rather than the furry side. I've already pointed you at Elf Sternberg's Journal Entries and Orion's Arm; Eclipse Phase is a trans/post-human RPG setting that's at least potentially furry-compatible, and has an active forum; SJGames' "Transhuman Space" RPG setting explicitly includes catgirls, and there are several SJG online communities... and Second Life has the Extropians group. That's all that comes to mind right now.

Well apart from Orion's Arm I'd heard of all the rest. Thanks though. ^.^

Do you have a lot of friends in those groups? I was wondering if you had other friends, but you listed stories and settings.


"Madness", as commonly defined, isn't even necessary. Perhaps you remember the "Draw Muhammad Day"s from the past couple of years? I contributed a riddling stick-figure drawing for each one so far ( http://wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws......0/05/Muh27.jpg , http://wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws......Muhammad21.jpg ), and during some online conversations, found out that my having done so means that there really are people who really would prefer that I be dead instead of alive.

Well, the idea was that we'd be trying to get people to stop wanting to kill eachother. I was saying that, even if someone didn't want to kill everyone, they might go crazy and do it anyways.

I'm familiar with the Draw Muhammad Day stuff. Very controversial. Most people don't get the point, and that frustrates the heck out of me. It's supposed to be about free speech, not hate. It's especially poignant for us here in Canada, given the crazy shit happening in B.C.

My favorite one of those things though, there was this thing about "Burn a Koran Day" and this guy decided to demonstrate how foolish the whole concept was. He downloaded a digital copy of the koran, filled a hard drive with copies of it, and deleted them all, destroying countless Korans all at once.


At the moment, just Second Life. (A rat-lady avatar I assembled there ended up being the basis of the appearance of DataPacRat-the-fursona as well as DataPacRat-the-fictional-character.)

I'm not really on any myself at present. I'm thinking of going back to Glitch since they un-launched it, though. I don't know if you've heard of it, or the un-launching, but it's quite the scene I think. You should check out their website and their trailer at least, it's pretty cool. http://www.glitch.com/

How cool is it? Keita Takahashi, who made the Katamari Damacy games and Noby Noby Boy, was so impressed that he moved here to Canada to join the Glitch team. ^.^;;

It was already pretty weird before he joined though.

They released the game a while back and I stopped playing, 'cause it wasn't very fun to me, though I liked the ideas. Then just last week they 'Un-launched' it, deciding they weren't ready after all, and that they couldn't make the neccesary modifications while the game was out. They offered to pay back the subscriptions of anyone who had put money into the game, and put it back into Beta. Only time I've ever heard of a company doing anything like that. Personally I hope they improve the artificial life elements, they were really disappointing. Oddly enough, I'd been considering making something similar to Glitch myself beforehand. It's weird to see it in action, and disappointing when it doesn't live up to your internal ideas. ^.^;;

How often do you use Second Life? What do you do on there?

I've been spending most of my free time reading rather than gaming, and so have mostly just heard about such games second-hand. I'm probably more likely to re-install Civ3 than try purchasing a new game...

Now that I think of it, I'm kind of surprised you can run Second Life and had trouble with Portal. What sort of system do you use?

I understand if you're not that into games anymore. Personally, I'd like to read more, but books are expensive and I've been having trouble getting into the ones I've had recently. I'm not sure if R.A. Salvatore is over-rated or if I've just been reading his worst books. I liked David Drake a lot more. I spent a long time not reading much, though; mostly reading short stories on the internet if anything. Of course, a lot of my favorite video games are basically interactive books anyways. ^.^;;

Too bad you're not interested in new games. Dwarf Fortress is free, though. I'd highly reccomend it. It's full of "FUN". I haven't actually played in a long time, I hear they added stone pots as an alternative to wooden barrels and I've been meaning to get the latest version, but so far I've been too busy with all these games I stupidly bought when I should be saving money. Here's the URL for dwarf fortress. http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ I hope I'm not twisting your arm too much. I have a bad habit of that.

[/quote]Nope; I've got a few other anime series on my inpile to finish up before I start a new one, including post-gap episodes of Naruto (subtitled), Detective Conan, DesertPunk, and more.

Have you tried Planetes, either manga or anime?



And I'm just about out of time, at least for the next bunch of hours.[/quote]


Oh almost missed this one.

I've gotta say I'm glad to read you're into Naruto, I was afraid you'd be like most folks and hate it for reasons they can never explain to me. ^.^

Love the show. One of my favorites. Even the filler, though the proper episodes are so much better. How far are you in the series?

I'd reccomend Full Metal Alchemist too, if you haven't seen it yet.


I saw a bit of the Planetes anime at the library during an anime screening last year. I'm not really into manga; my favorite things about Anime are the colours and the animation. That and the story. Planetes was pretty neat in some ways, but while the setting and concept were pretty good I didn't really enjoy the story or characters very much. They only showed four episodes during the screening. I'd never heard of it before that.

As for what I'm watching lately, well, Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach are my 'Guys beating eachother up for three episodes' shows, and for my Magical Girl fix I've got Anyamal Tantei Kiruminzoo and Onegai My Melody Sukkiri. Oh and I almost forgot, I've been watching the new Hunter X Hunter on Crunchyroll, and a CCG anime called Vanguard. The only excuse I can come up for that last one is their intro music is by JAM Project.

Okay, semi-unrelated question, but how do you quote people in the comments here like you've been doing? ^^;

Use the word 'quote' in square brackets instead of apostrophes at the start of what you're quoting, and '/quote' in square brackets at the end. With a few extra spaces, it looks like:

[ quote ] Yadda yadda yadda [ /quote ]

... which results in:

Yadda yadda yadda

Cool. Thanks DataPacRat.