site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2870 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 2, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

A rather broad question rather than a small one: do you enjoy being embodied, feeling and doing stuff with your physical body in the real world?

For me, the answer is obvious – I would leave my body behind and not interact with the physical environment at all if I could. I just don’t feel any positive emotions moving around, being present, interacting with objects that aren’t a screen of some form. I never did for some reason, even as a kid.

It is strange because I’m a fairly healthy male in my late 20s without any disabilities, nor am I terribly out of shape (although I am slightly overweight due to working a sedentary job nowadays, but I had the same feeling even when I was at a normal weight), so I should theoretically be the prime demographic for enjoying bodily sensations. Some people have described intense physical activity to me as being inherently pleasurable – I’ve played my fair share of sports at the insistence of my parents as a teenager, and never felt anything other than irritation during and after training, so hearing others say it feels like listening to an alien describing the awesome parties of Alpha Centaura.

This sincere distaste for being embodied extends to a lot of aspects of life that most people tend to find enjoyable – I don’t care much for travel, tinkering with things or the physical side of sex either. I constantly find myself actively not wanting to go places or do things with my hands, and would probably be among the first to start living in some VRMMO full-time, Ready Player One style, once (okay, okay, “if”, let a man cope) it becomes an option.

Is this some fairly unique side-effect of the ‘tism that makes me miss out on universal human experiences, or do some of you feel that way as well?

I hate VR, but I used to, maybe 15 years ago, play WoW, and I enjoyed running and flying and interacting in that world--sometimes I'd think "If this were the real world, there is no way in hell I'd still be running right now" after crossing the entirety of Eversong Woods. I spent hours playing, then one day my wife took a photo of me in my headphones staring seriously at the screen and I had a moment. I quit not long after.

But to answer your question "do I enjoy being embodied and doing stuff with my physical body" the answer is what I suspect it would be for most: Sometimes. Most of the time probably. Even after having my ass kicked and thrown all over the floor in Aikido, when I come home and shower and then get into the furo I feel sore as hell--but I feel alive. I was having this conversation with my oldest son recently: I feel most alive when I am walking in the freezing cold at 4:30 am going to the train station. If it's pissing down rain or snowing, all the more.

I am not a masochist. But you don't get to my age without having experienced a lot of physical discomfort (and I am relatively whole and healthy with all my limbs, unlike many.) You learn to enjoy the relaxing moments in the warm bed, or in the pool, or on the couch, or having a glass of wine at the kitchen table with your wife where the room is heated, while at the same time holding in the back of your head that this is only a brief respite from the freezing cold or burning heat, from hunger and fear and extreme exhaustion and a walking journey with a big pack where the end will not be for hours and hours and you have to make sure of not only your own safety but that of others, and you're scared shitless but that's your lot. That's an earthquake away. Or fill in your disaster. To say nothing of the eventual hospital or hospice bed where you may someday be in constant freakish pain without IV analgesics.

Yes I enjoy being embodied. Or more to the point, until your post, I've never questioned that "being embodied" is anything but reality, or that anything that is not that is unreality, or a Baudrillard hyperreality. Maybe when I was a kid and I watched that Star Trek OS episode Spock's Brain where his mind is literally disembodied (Brain and brain! What is brain?)

I'm intrigued at your feelings of what you're calling "severe distaste," particularly in that you say you've felt them since childhood. It makes me wonder if gaming has knocked loose something in the human brain that shouldn't be knocked loose.

Nota bene: I am old. You will get different perspectives on this.

Nota bene: I am old. You will get different perspectives on this.

That is by far the biggest downside of a baseline human body, and why I don't want to be stuck in one even if I like mine.

It will, despite our best medicines, decay and fail you. Maybe our drugs and treatments will get better, and we can keep people healthy indefinitely. But even then, I want things that no human body constrained by biology will be able to provide.

I'm not physically decrepit. Well, not yet. When I say old I mean mainly my perspective is different from that of the generation that grew up online.

Edit: As for the remainder of your comment, I'm at a loss. The human condition is its frailty and finitude. The Gift of Men, as Tolkien wrote.

The human condition is its frailty and finitude. The Gift of Men, as Tolkien wrote.

"Aging and death are good, actually" is the biggest fucking cope I have seen in my life.

I'm not as much of a transhumanist as some of the other rationalists, but I really don't think wanting to live until the heat death of the universe in an 18-year-old body is too much to ask.

I can't tell if you're calling George's words or Tolkien's "cope", but if it's the latter then I think you're mistaken. Tolkien was Catholic, and his setting reflected his beliefs. Death is absolutely a good thing in that framework, because you get to be with God, and that is such a profound joy that all else pales in comparison (even being in an 18-year-old body until the heat death of the universe).

Also, I think you're underrating how weary the world can become after even just our short stay here. Some of those problems would be obsolete in your hypothetical scenario, but not all. At some point, when you've seen a pointless genocide for the hundred thousandth time, is the fact that your body works great really that much of a solace? One thing I've noticed in spending time with old people (proper old, not @George_E_Hale lol) is that they are often quite ready to lay down their cares and rest. And the young never quite understand it because they just haven't been through enough of life to get to the point where death seems like a welcome end to things (with some exceptions, like very depressed people). But it's a very real thing, and to be honest I can understand it a lot more now at (almost) 40 than I could at 25.

I can't tell if you're calling George's words or Tolkien's "cope", but if it's the latter then I think you're mistaken. Tolkien was Catholic, and his setting reflected his beliefs. Death is absolutely a good thing in that framework, because you get to be with God, and that is such a profound joy that all else pales in comparison (even being in an 18-year-old body until the heat death of the universe).

Only because Christians rarely bother to spell out what day-to-day existence in heaven actually means. When they do, it ranges from the boring (eternal rest and praising God) to the pedestrian ("Heaven is a city 15,000 miles square...") to the horrifying (profound joy at being in the glorious presence of God is just religiously flavored wireheading).

Transhumanists sometimes write about what heaven on Earth might look like (Star Trek, The Culture, Friendship is Optimal, etc.) and if we fall short, I don't see the Christians doing any better.

One thing I've noticed in spending time with old people (proper old, not @George_E_Hale lol) is that they are often quite ready to lay down their cares and rest. And the young never quite understand it because they just haven't been through enough of life to get to the point where death seems like a welcome end to things (with some exceptions, like very depressed people). But it's a very real thing, and to be honest I can understand it a lot more now at (almost) 40 than I could at 25.

Well, I'm 35, and I still don't see it; my reasons for being weary of life are all fixable. I'm tired of getting old, but that can be fixed by being eternally 18. I'm tired of watching my friends and family die, but that can be fixed by making them all eternally 18. I'm tired working a job I hate, but that can be fixed by making AIs do all the jobs. I'm tired of having lost the love of my life, but that can be fixed by forking her and modifying the copy just enough that she will want to be with me until the last star grows cold and the universe comes to an end.

You know, simple solutions to simple problems.

I don't think anyone particularly describes the metaphysical well, at least as regards the concept of "eternal life." I also would suggest that there would be no "day-to-day," as you put it, no longer a time at all in the sense that we comprehend; thus to wonder what someone might be eating for breakfast in heaven, or whether there will be Playstation, etc. is a misapprehension of the concepts. This may ultimately cover all of your earlier listed adjectives (boring, pedestrian, and horrifying), I don't know.

I appreciate the humor in your last sentence, though its preceding paragraph lists several woes for which I have sympathy. I have also added the word "forking" to my vocabulary.

and if we fall short, I don't see the Christians doing any better

you can think of it as being a permanent version of basically the hottest boy-anxiously-but-purely-asks, woman-gives-freely-and-usually-a-bit-more-than-he-can-handle-type /ss/ doujin you've ever seen, except instead of just sex the exploration space is infinite

[reference pictures #7 and #8 here, SFW...ish]

that is how the relationship God [the woman] wants to have with you [the shota] is supposed to work; infinite desirability and infinite depth in infinite ways comes to you, for free, in the same ways

sex might not be the best way to illustrate it because of the implications (and Christians have a rather famously bad relationship with it) but Song of Songs does it anyway so IDK lol; it's supposed to feel like losing every single virginity at once to a beautiful woman who takes you to bed simply because you asked her to

Can anyone explain the Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid reference? I just don't get it even though I've seen S1.

More comments

at last i truly see

More comments

Why did the Christians ever bother with the obviously-pederastic-implications "Father" image when this gem existed in information-space?

Of all the metaphors I ever expected to see used to describe the transcendental nature of heaven, doujin wasn't anywhere near that list. But man, I'm here for it.

Obligatory: fucking weeb. ;)

I didn't know those books were about free hats. Normally they tempt him with a gpu

More comments

https://i.redd.it/40qhbp5fzpv61.png

Only because Christians rarely bother to spell out what day-to-day existence in heaven actually means.

I don't think it's fair to say "don't bother", because the situation is more "can't". You're asking finite beings to describe something which is not just infinite, but completely alien to our experience. Of course people can't adequately describe that.

But that also doesn't detract from my original point: it isn't "cope" to say that death is a good thing if your framework of existence says "after we die we get something even better than the best things here". That's just straightforwardly true in that case! Note that I'm not trying to convince you the framework is true, just pointing out that if you accept that framework for the sake of argument then death is obviously a good thing.

Well, I'm 35, and I still don't see it; my reasons for being weary of life are all fixable. I'm tired of getting old, but that can be fixed by being eternally 18. I'm tired of watching my friends and family die, but that can be fixed by making them all eternally 18. I'm tired working a job I hate, but that can be fixed by making AIs do all the jobs. I'm tired of having lost the love of my life, but that can be fixed by forking her and modifying the copy just enough that she will still want to be with me until the last star grows cold and the universe comes to an end.

You're cheating here by including things that are not really related to your original scenario of "living in an 18-year-old body until the heat death of the universe". Yes, your body breaking down over time would be fixed. If we assume that you're also preventing any form of death, then losing your loved ones would be mostly fixed. But that doesn't bring back the loved ones you have already lost, it doesn't prevent your loved ones from deciding they want to gracefully exit life (at which point you lose them), it doesn't magic AI into existence to do your crappy job, it doesn't change human nature such that people will actually be nice to each other for the first time in recorded history.

Like yeah, if you wave a magic wand that says "every bad thing about life is gone now" then living forever is great. But that isn't what you said, you simply talked about living forever by itself being good enough. But it isn't, you would need to fix all the other problems too.

It gets even worse for your case when you think through what fixing all the problems in the world actually would require. Not just tech, though the tech barrier is so high that it should give us pause as to whether it can ever happen. The sheer fact of individuality means that sooner or later, two people are going to have desires which conflict with each other. Now what? Unless you mind control one or both of them, at least one of those people is going to be unhappy with the outcome. Even with a magic wand, this is unfixable. I guess you could use mind control, but that seems like the utopia now has a dark dystopian underbelly that is needed to make it work (yes Persona 5 Royal, we see you over there). Not a very satisfying utopia any more. Perhaps the sort of thing one might write a short story about walking away from. ;)

Only because Christians rarely bother to spell out what day-to-day existence in heaven actually means. When they do, it ranges from the boring (eternal rest and praising God) to the pedestrian ("Heaven is a city 15,000 miles square...") to the horrifying (profound joy at being in the glorious presence of God is just religiously flavored wireheading). Transhumanists sometimes write about what heaven on Earth might look like (Star Trek, The Culture, Friendship is Optimal, etc.) and if we fall short, I don't see the Christians doing any better.

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

I would say that the more thoughtful transhumanists either converge quite closely to the above, or else diverge in ways that seem to me strictly inferior (The Good Place, Lena). This is because the above, as your own comments indicate, is the best we can concretely imagine; as you say, "simple solutions to simple problems".

Those Christian writers both capable and willing to engage in speculation are forced to appeal to abstractions (The Great Divorce being my favorite), but I for one find those abstractions intriguing, and clearly preferable to the Transhumanist offers; if I accept the most plausible of the Transhumanist assumptions, they indicate to me that Transhumanism's capacity for creating Hell vastly exceeds their capacity for creating Heaven, much less God.

Were you under the impression that Lena was envisioned as a transhumanist example of Heaven???

More comments

I would think somewhere around 22 is more advantageous for a man.

Well I'm happy to have contributed to the biggest something in your life. I really dislike the neologism "cope" used in this way--rationalization/delusion is what you mean?

Whether aging and death are good or not is beside the point, or beside my own point. They've always been part of the human condition. Knowing your time is limited--and it will always be limited, regardless of how much progress longevity science makes--is a large contributor to what gives that time meaning.

If someone is that greatly attached to their frailty and finitude, then who am I to object? I won't, as long as they don't get in the way of me escaping mine.

There are plenty of aspects of the "human condition" that were ubiquitous and seemingly unavoidable for all of human history till they were not. I don't think most people miss 50% infant mortality rates, or heart attacks being inevitable death. They're not going to miss old age either, and if they really want that experience for themselves, that's their prerogative.

For what it's worth, the human condition seems to be a consistent trend of overcoming how awful said condition could be at times.

Imagine that tomorrow we perfect mind-upload. Your entire brain, and with it your identity and memories get cloned into an AI. You get to meet the AI, it’s really you. But the physical you, the meat you, still exists. The AI is a clone. I presume there would be no need to kill yourself, but would you no really longer have fear of death in your physical body? I doubt it. The thing about us living forever is that even if it happens in your lifetime, it probably won’t be ‘you’ living forever.

That is a strict improvement over the status-quo.

I'm not a biological chauvinist, and I think that the upload has equal claim to my name and assets. I also expect that unless things go really awry, the human version would probably end up acquiring biological immortality eventually. Destructive scans seem much easier than ones that preserve the original, but the latter isn't a bad thing as far as I'm concerned. It always leaves the option of another upload, one when the original is closer to death.

Even if that wasn't the case, I'd rest easier. Growing old and dying of old age sucks, but it is a great comfort to have seen your grandkids be born, follow in your footsteps and flourish. You can die with fewer regrets. In the same manner, if I had a backup, even one that would outlive me, I'd wish it well, and know that it would share most of my goals and desires, and would mourn my passing.

would mourn my passing.

Or feel relief about not having some progenitor who's seen as more-real-than-you hanging aroung anymore.

I suspect there will be all kinds of dysfunctions with the uploads themselves and revolving around them. The psychologists of the future will have their quackery cut out for them.

The best person to speculate about a copy of myself would be me. And I don't think that would happen.

More comments

False premise, this isn't perfect mind upload.

The state of the art in sci-fi, last time I checked, was that you stay conscious as they disconnect your brain cells one by one (or some small enough increment) and replace them with the artificial ones, slowly so that you can fill the gaps in your memories back in Ship of Theseus style and have no doubt you're staying yourself.

Imagine if it was perfect mind upload, and you find yourself back in your meat body after the mind upload is complete. You can kill yourself, but you have to do it yourself. Now answer the question.

Refer to the edit. In the process I described, the meat body is wiped by the process, if it failed the only way I could end up is "dead".

If it was the mind upload you described, I would not undergo it as it's pointless. Or rather, I would see it as some self-fetishistic form of procreation and would do it only as soon as I wanted to bear a digital child who was a copy of me. Naturally, I wouldn't like to share my bank account with them.

You been playing soma recently?

More comments

I am certainly not suggesting that medical science and longevity are net negatives. Looked at from your materialist perspective, again, your viewpoint makes perfect sense.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats