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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2891 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?

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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.

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???

No, but it seems to me that most descriptions of Transhumanist Heaven suffer from suicidally-naïve faith in progress, and Lena demonstrates succinctly why it is suicidal. It seems to me that a lot of Transhumanists have been dreaming of and actively working toward Lena without comprehending the reality of the scenario, and that this constitutes a disqualifying failure of imagination and reasoning. I readily slot myself into this category; I used to be a transhumanist, and I did not write Lena, for reasons that I have spent some time contemplating. Uploading your mind means boxing yourself. It is not immortality or transcendence, it is a level of imprisonment and vulnerability so utterly profound that no human has ever experienced the like.

Those that dodge this pitfall usually do so by appealing to a God analogue; CelestAI or Coherent Extrapolated Volition-aligned superintelligence, and thus converge on the Christian model.

The Good Place tries to thread the needle, and collapses into number-go-up banality.

Friendship is Optimal is just as much a warning as Lena is: the message is that in Heaven, you will be subjected to the unyielding alien whims of a being who will mindrape you into accepting it. If it is a convergence to the Christian model then it shows me how naive the Christian faith is, and it only dodges being suicidal by introducing layers upon layers of mental gymnastics of why it's wrong to murder babies before they sin. What is "a disqualifying failure of both imagination and reasoning" if not to utter "Heaven is beyond imagination" and "Heaven will undoubtedly be good" from the same mouth?

I would say that the concept of uploading is vulnerable to the "man-made horrors" scenario in ways that are obvious to us, but it is not doomed to it, and the very fact that Lena exists as a caution tale instead of blindsiding us in reality is proof of that. In fact, the ability of transhumanists to notice skulls seems to rapidly outpace the ability to create skull-producing nanofactories. How many Christians ponder on whether Heaven might actually be horrible (and remain Christians) as much as Transhumanists ponder on all the ways the man-made Heaven might be horrible?

(In my own chronicle of noticing skulls, I have concluded that a) non-destructive uploading is a way of procreation and I shouldn't subject my upload to anything I wouldn't do to my child; b) destructive uploading without an ego bridge is a way of suicidal procreation and I shouldn't do it unless I'm about to die anyway; c) don't upload myself, with continuity or without, to a system that is trivially root-accessed from the outside.)

The Christian looks at the myth of Icarus and Daedalus and concludes: "man was not meant to fly". The Transhumanist looks at it and concludes: "do not operate experimental technology outside constraints that have been proven to be within the safe margin".

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