said (10mo ago #1187 ), referenced by >>1198:
The Biosingularity
(https://www.nooceleration.com/p/the-biosingularity-is-near)
Interesting new essay by Anatoly Karlin. Why wouldn't the principle of the singularity apply to organic life?
said (10mo ago #1189 ), referenced by >>1199:
I'm both a hereditarian and an IQ-respecter.
I'm pretty skeptical of this brand of biotech eugenics, on both descriptive and normative grounds.
Descriptively, intelligence is highly polygenic, and we don't know what else the relevant genes do. It's highly likely they also do other things, with associated tradeoffs. Many genetic variants that seem at first blush very good or very bad have flip side effects that make them less or more adaptive, respectively. So it's highly unlikely that the genetic modifications envisioned will simply "turn up the IQ dial" with no other effects. The whole point of the trait being highly polygenic is that there is no simple "IQ dial." And we could discover, late in the day, that some of the tradeoffs are very bad indeed.
Normatively, all of the techniques mentioned are downstream of IVF. I think there is actually something psychologically different in children being conceived through natural intercourse. Knowing that conception took place in a test tube, with multiple siblings discarded, creates a different relationship with a child.
When surrogacy is involved, that difference is magnified. A great deal of bonding for mother and child takes place during pregnancy, to include hormonal changes. People bring up adoption in this context. I'm not against adoption, but I also don't think it's "the same" as natural procreation.
If we zoom out and think about the cultural and psychological factors driving the fertility crises, I think these technologies may purport to alleviate them, but could actually exacerbate them. It's like if someone is out of shape physically, and a physician say, "You need to move much more," and the person say, "I know, I'll get car so I can move around more." No, that's not addressing the problem. "Moving" won't help your physical condition if you don't do it yourself.
We must change our lives.
I'm pretty skeptical of this brand of biotech eugenics, on both descriptive and normative grounds.
Descriptively, intelligence is highly polygenic, and we don't know what else the relevant genes do. It's highly likely they also do other things, with associated tradeoffs. Many genetic variants that seem at first blush very good or very bad have flip side effects that make them less or more adaptive, respectively. So it's highly unlikely that the genetic modifications envisioned will simply "turn up the IQ dial" with no other effects. The whole point of the trait being highly polygenic is that there is no simple "IQ dial." And we could discover, late in the day, that some of the tradeoffs are very bad indeed.
Normatively, all of the techniques mentioned are downstream of IVF. I think there is actually something psychologically different in children being conceived through natural intercourse. Knowing that conception took place in a test tube, with multiple siblings discarded, creates a different relationship with a child.
When surrogacy is involved, that difference is magnified. A great deal of bonding for mother and child takes place during pregnancy, to include hormonal changes. People bring up adoption in this context. I'm not against adoption, but I also don't think it's "the same" as natural procreation.
If we zoom out and think about the cultural and psychological factors driving the fertility crises, I think these technologies may purport to alleviate them, but could actually exacerbate them. It's like if someone is out of shape physically, and a physician say, "You need to move much more," and the person say, "I know, I'll get car so I can move around more." No, that's not addressing the problem. "Moving" won't help your physical condition if you don't do it yourself.
We must change our lives.
said (10mo ago #1190 ), referenced by >>1199 >>1205:
>Normatively, all of the techniques mentioned are downstream of IVF. I think there is actually something psychologically different in children being conceived through natural intercourse. Knowing that conception took place in a test tube, with multiple siblings discarded, creates a different relationship with a child.
So for comparison, siblings leave a powerful psychological mark which persists into adulthood. If I've known someone for half an hour, I can tell whether they have siblings, and if so whether or not they're the oldest. My accuracy isn't perfect but it's much, much better than chance.
I can't tell the psychological difference people born of IVF and people born "naturally" when I meet them. Can you?
So for comparison, siblings leave a powerful psychological mark which persists into adulthood. If I've known someone for half an hour, I can tell whether they have siblings, and if so whether or not they're the oldest. My accuracy isn't perfect but it's much, much better than chance.
I can't tell the psychological difference people born of IVF and people born "naturally" when I meet them. Can you?
said (10mo ago #1191 ):
>I can't tell the psychological difference people born of IVF and people born "naturally" when I meet them. Can you?
Speaking for myself, I think I simply have not met enough IVF-born people in my life (0) to learn the distinction. If its true that the parents of IVF babies simply don't love them as much, then it may be possible to discern through behavioral patterns upon meeting such people as adults.
Speaking for myself, I think I simply have not met enough IVF-born people in my life (0) to learn the distinction. If its true that the parents of IVF babies simply don't love them as much, then it may be possible to discern through behavioral patterns upon meeting such people as adults.
said (10mo ago #1192 ):
>We must change our lives.
How? I agree that more intelligent systems of social organization can augment intelligence significantly, but is that really all that can be done? Should genetic engineering not also be pursued to some extent?
What else can increase our intelligence?
How? I agree that more intelligent systems of social organization can augment intelligence significantly, but is that really all that can be done? Should genetic engineering not also be pursued to some extent?
What else can increase our intelligence?
said (10mo ago #1194 ), referenced by >>1199:
>Should genetic engineering not also be pursued to some extent?
I would argue that we were doing far more of this in the pre-industrial era, when families were a foundational economic unit. For example, a family/clan might be responsible for the production of a particular pottery export, or several generations may have served in a particular cavalry unit. Economic interests and genetic interests are then aligned towards breeding the best possible specimen for a particular economic niche. We still see such multi-generational businesses in certain traditions that could not be fully industrialized.
I would argue that we were doing far more of this in the pre-industrial era, when families were a foundational economic unit. For example, a family/clan might be responsible for the production of a particular pottery export, or several generations may have served in a particular cavalry unit. Economic interests and genetic interests are then aligned towards breeding the best possible specimen for a particular economic niche. We still see such multi-generational businesses in certain traditions that could not be fully industrialized.
said (10mo ago #1195 ), referenced by >>1199:
>Economic interests and genetic interests are then aligned towards breeding the best possible specimen for a particular economic niche.
This reminds me of the caste system of ant colonies. Perhaps bio-economic caste niches are actually inevitable in establishing the most efficient form of social organization.
This reminds me of the caste system of ant colonies. Perhaps bio-economic caste niches are actually inevitable in establishing the most efficient form of social organization.
said (10mo ago #1198 ), referenced by >>1215:
>>1187
How will we get a bio-singularity if enhanced people derive no biological benefit from being superior? Under the current system superior people are gaining a lot less biological benefit than they ought to be. In the pre-historic evolution of man, cognitive superiority was decisive (as evidenced by our large and expensive brains), but it is not so right now. This is the flaw in all this kind of transhumanist cope.
Whether the particular techniques work is another whole question. My own view of "bio-singularity" is the physically humanoid platform is too limited and we won't really be able to engineer superior platforms until we have a different moral system around the deliberate engineering of spiritual humanoids, which may mean both the advent of AI and the end of the current moral hegemony of liberal humanism.
Once we do have those, think about what that means: the human as a form and moral reference point dissolved into a soup of industrially engineered intelligent bio-slop and organ-factories. It might be the eventual will of God, but it won't be nice for us under almost any definition of us. Still, maybe that's the game to play? I don't know.
I do note that many of the people playing this game seem to have an ethno-psychological tendency to want to suicide-bomb western civilization by exploiting its taboos (like those we would need to overcome to turn ourselves into bio-engineered soy-"people"). Karlin has clowned himself repeatedly by being psyopped by this kind of stuff, both in the transhumanism, and in his recent political meltdowns.
I like the idea of breeding ourselves into a better class of humans as a grand gesture of artistic statesmanship, a last hurrah before we become obsolete, but the foundation of that is a society where there is actual advantage to the naturally superior. And once you have that, the human-dissolving tech just feels like a distraction.
How will we get a bio-singularity if enhanced people derive no biological benefit from being superior? Under the current system superior people are gaining a lot less biological benefit than they ought to be. In the pre-historic evolution of man, cognitive superiority was decisive (as evidenced by our large and expensive brains), but it is not so right now. This is the flaw in all this kind of transhumanist cope.
Whether the particular techniques work is another whole question. My own view of "bio-singularity" is the physically humanoid platform is too limited and we won't really be able to engineer superior platforms until we have a different moral system around the deliberate engineering of spiritual humanoids, which may mean both the advent of AI and the end of the current moral hegemony of liberal humanism.
Once we do have those, think about what that means: the human as a form and moral reference point dissolved into a soup of industrially engineered intelligent bio-slop and organ-factories. It might be the eventual will of God, but it won't be nice for us under almost any definition of us. Still, maybe that's the game to play? I don't know.
I do note that many of the people playing this game seem to have an ethno-psychological tendency to want to suicide-bomb western civilization by exploiting its taboos (like those we would need to overcome to turn ourselves into bio-engineered soy-"people"). Karlin has clowned himself repeatedly by being psyopped by this kind of stuff, both in the transhumanism, and in his recent political meltdowns.
I like the idea of breeding ourselves into a better class of humans as a grand gesture of artistic statesmanship, a last hurrah before we become obsolete, but the foundation of that is a society where there is actual advantage to the naturally superior. And once you have that, the human-dissolving tech just feels like a distraction.
said (10mo ago #1199 ):
>>1195
>>1194
hereditary trade and caste seems obviously correct. Industrialization is associated with smashing all previous social distinctions, but industrial society has now settled into a pattern of stability in which you could imagine someone being an excellent multi-generational skilled factory worker, mittelstand operator, engineer, politician, capitalist, etc. I think as usual our anti-eugenic ideological pretenses are still holding us back from this. It's dangerous to make the revolution permanent, instead of being a temporary correction to a more sustainable position. But this depends on background stability, and is hardly a bio-singularity.
>>1189
>these technologies may purport to alleviate [the fertility crisis], but could actually exacerbate them. It's like if someone is out of shape physically, and a physician say, "You need to move much more," and the person say, "I know, I'll get car...
This anon speaks truth. Transhumanist technologies are very often band-aid treatments of much deeper wounds.
>>1190
>I can't tell the psychological difference people born of IVF and people born "naturally" when I meet them. Can you?
Good question. It's common to imply that there is some important spiritual downside to some newfangled behavior that mysteriously can never be measured. For me, I'm just operating on a non-measurable bet that the old and natural way is proven and non-risky, and that IQ selection isn't the sort of thing that you have to get in on early. But let's not pretend to know what will go wrong if something does.
>>1194
hereditary trade and caste seems obviously correct. Industrialization is associated with smashing all previous social distinctions, but industrial society has now settled into a pattern of stability in which you could imagine someone being an excellent multi-generational skilled factory worker, mittelstand operator, engineer, politician, capitalist, etc. I think as usual our anti-eugenic ideological pretenses are still holding us back from this. It's dangerous to make the revolution permanent, instead of being a temporary correction to a more sustainable position. But this depends on background stability, and is hardly a bio-singularity.
>>1189
>these technologies may purport to alleviate [the fertility crisis], but could actually exacerbate them. It's like if someone is out of shape physically, and a physician say, "You need to move much more," and the person say, "I know, I'll get car...
This anon speaks truth. Transhumanist technologies are very often band-aid treatments of much deeper wounds.
>>1190
>I can't tell the psychological difference people born of IVF and people born "naturally" when I meet them. Can you?
Good question. It's common to imply that there is some important spiritual downside to some newfangled behavior that mysteriously can never be measured. For me, I'm just operating on a non-measurable bet that the old and natural way is proven and non-risky, and that IQ selection isn't the sort of thing that you have to get in on early. But let's not pretend to know what will go wrong if something does.
said (10mo ago #1205 ):
>>1190
> I can't tell the psychological difference people born of IVF and people born "naturally" when I meet them. Can you?
The comparison I would make is with Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) of drugs. Even an effect with good statistical significance and effect size, more than enough for FDA approval, can be hard to discern in smaller, low-N studies, much less with N = 1. So I don't take your question to be the correct test.
Another comparison: hormonal contraceptives. I think there is ample reason to believe that hormonal contraceptives are significantly psychoactive, affecting both sexual preferences and mood regulation, as well as health more generally. There have been many studies of this, but they are greatly underreported for political reasons.
It seems highly plausible to me that IVF and, even more, surrogacy may have analogous negative effects, not for magical spiritual reasons, but for reasons that ultimately boil down to biology (which includes psychology).
Am I asking you to simply trust my intuition? No. Am I advocating some strong form of precautionary principle based on my intuition? No.
But I do think, judging by our fertility rates, that we've already fucked ourselves up in ways that we didn't anticipate and don't fully understand, and I'm not interested in investing energy in a direction that seems to me like more of the same.
> I can't tell the psychological difference people born of IVF and people born "naturally" when I meet them. Can you?
The comparison I would make is with Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) of drugs. Even an effect with good statistical significance and effect size, more than enough for FDA approval, can be hard to discern in smaller, low-N studies, much less with N = 1. So I don't take your question to be the correct test.
Another comparison: hormonal contraceptives. I think there is ample reason to believe that hormonal contraceptives are significantly psychoactive, affecting both sexual preferences and mood regulation, as well as health more generally. There have been many studies of this, but they are greatly underreported for political reasons.
It seems highly plausible to me that IVF and, even more, surrogacy may have analogous negative effects, not for magical spiritual reasons, but for reasons that ultimately boil down to biology (which includes psychology).
Am I asking you to simply trust my intuition? No. Am I advocating some strong form of precautionary principle based on my intuition? No.
But I do think, judging by our fertility rates, that we've already fucked ourselves up in ways that we didn't anticipate and don't fully understand, and I'm not interested in investing energy in a direction that seems to me like more of the same.
said (10mo ago #1214 ), referenced by >>1218:
>Karlin has clowned himself repeatedly by being psyopped by this kind of stuff, both in the transhumanism, and in his recent political meltdowns.
I think what happened with Karlin is that he had a mass blackpill psychological meltdown after Russia failed to win in Ukraine quickly, and promptly ceased being a Russian nationalist. His rationale for being a Russian nationalist was linked with the emergence of White Nationalism in the West around 2015, before which he was also a transhumanist. I think his current posting is mostly trolling and mockery of the absurd situation the West finds itself in (assuming nationalism failed and "woke" is the going to win). I think he is overreacting and also doing it to disassociate himself from his past, but I don't think he is necessarily doing it with malicious intent or that he even really believes in it beyond being a stepping stone to transhumanism. More likely he is just entirely jaded with politics all together and has moved toward trying to evade total blackpill through the physical world (which he identifies as transhumanism/biosingularity).
I think what happened with Karlin is that he had a mass blackpill psychological meltdown after Russia failed to win in Ukraine quickly, and promptly ceased being a Russian nationalist. His rationale for being a Russian nationalist was linked with the emergence of White Nationalism in the West around 2015, before which he was also a transhumanist. I think his current posting is mostly trolling and mockery of the absurd situation the West finds itself in (assuming nationalism failed and "woke" is the going to win). I think he is overreacting and also doing it to disassociate himself from his past, but I don't think he is necessarily doing it with malicious intent or that he even really believes in it beyond being a stepping stone to transhumanism. More likely he is just entirely jaded with politics all together and has moved toward trying to evade total blackpill through the physical world (which he identifies as transhumanism/biosingularity).
said (10mo ago #1215 ), referenced by >>1218:
>>1198
> ... the human as a form and moral reference point dissolved into a soup of industrially engineered intelligent bio-slop and organ-factories.
This is key. Aristotle might add, the human as specific form, i.e., form of a species.
I am species respecter, and a human respecter in particular.
The term "eugenics" elides a crucial difference, that between aiming for human excellence through breeding, a la Alamariu, and dissolving the human in pursuit of something better. The latter always begs the question: Better by what measure? And why should we care about that measure, if it's not human?
In so far as "transhumanism" is the latter, my position is: eugenics of the human, yes; transhumanism, no.
> ... the human as a form and moral reference point dissolved into a soup of industrially engineered intelligent bio-slop and organ-factories.
This is key. Aristotle might add, the human as specific form, i.e., form of a species.
I am species respecter, and a human respecter in particular.
The term "eugenics" elides a crucial difference, that between aiming for human excellence through breeding, a la Alamariu, and dissolving the human in pursuit of something better. The latter always begs the question: Better by what measure? And why should we care about that measure, if it's not human?
In so far as "transhumanism" is the latter, my position is: eugenics of the human, yes; transhumanism, no.
said (10mo ago #1218 ):
>>1214
>Karlin is that he had a mass blackpill psychological meltdown after Russia failed to win in Ukraine quickly, and promptly ceased being a Russian nationalist.
good explanation. I think the poor guy is just taking things more seriously at a lower level of prophetic discernment than one can get away with these days. There but for cynicism and cowardice go I, you might say. Or maybe then it's prudence.
>moved toward trying to evade total blackpill through the physical world (which he identifies as transhumanism/biosingularity).
Not gonna work. An important topic for our further study will have to be the generalized failure of all internet idealisms (transhumanism, nationalism, red pill, free speech, wagmi, rationality, even sincere leftism, etc) in the face of the grinding "progress" of normal end-of-history international liberalism and the kali yuga. Everything feels clown-world and terminally full of lies, and yet it grinds on with no avenues of escape. Despite enormous effort going into trying to find alternatives, nothing has worked except selling out.
The system is out over its skis but there's apparently no better strategy right now than to keep riding. The bubble on the system continues to inflate. Everyone who tries to cash out and leave is left behind in irrelevance, and everyone still riding the tiger is getting deeper and deeper into a doomed insanity. But excuse the blackpilling.
>>1215
>Better by what measure? And why should we care about that measure, if it's not human?
as discussed in the other thread (especially >>1213, >>1216, and >>1217), what the "human" is and is for is not well defined without some superhuman aspiration by which we judge which parts of ourselves to keep. So yeah I agree as a matter of general conservatism that one should continue to bet on the human form as we know it, but this is conservatism, not any kind of guiding principle.
>Karlin is that he had a mass blackpill psychological meltdown after Russia failed to win in Ukraine quickly, and promptly ceased being a Russian nationalist.
good explanation. I think the poor guy is just taking things more seriously at a lower level of prophetic discernment than one can get away with these days. There but for cynicism and cowardice go I, you might say. Or maybe then it's prudence.
>moved toward trying to evade total blackpill through the physical world (which he identifies as transhumanism/biosingularity).
Not gonna work. An important topic for our further study will have to be the generalized failure of all internet idealisms (transhumanism, nationalism, red pill, free speech, wagmi, rationality, even sincere leftism, etc) in the face of the grinding "progress" of normal end-of-history international liberalism and the kali yuga. Everything feels clown-world and terminally full of lies, and yet it grinds on with no avenues of escape. Despite enormous effort going into trying to find alternatives, nothing has worked except selling out.
The system is out over its skis but there's apparently no better strategy right now than to keep riding. The bubble on the system continues to inflate. Everyone who tries to cash out and leave is left behind in irrelevance, and everyone still riding the tiger is getting deeper and deeper into a doomed insanity. But excuse the blackpilling.
>>1215
>Better by what measure? And why should we care about that measure, if it's not human?
as discussed in the other thread (especially >>1213, >>1216, and >>1217), what the "human" is and is for is not well defined without some superhuman aspiration by which we judge which parts of ourselves to keep. So yeah I agree as a matter of general conservatism that one should continue to bet on the human form as we know it, but this is conservatism, not any kind of guiding principle.
said (10mo ago #1230 ), referenced by >>1234 >>1236 >>1238:
I am also a hereditarian that is not interested in technologically mediated eugenics. Anons above have noted polygenic traits, the multivariate nature of intelligence etc. but this is probably a solvable problem and cope. I'm willing to state that I and probably many others are simply uncomfortable with the can of worms that will accompany mass genetic engineering, vat babies replacing sexual reproduction, and so on. The world that widespread implementation of that technology would create would be alien and disturbing and would proliferate unaesthetic forms of life and probably uncanny lifeforms as well.
The connection between genius and IQ is something I think a lot of hereditarians get backwards. One common reported experience among people who've attended Mensa meetings is that they find themselves surrounded by people with persecution complexes and of little accomplishment. A high enough IQ is a prerequisite or "entry price" to the possibility of genius, but the prerequisites that go into ensuring that genius actually bears fruit seems to be a more pertinent problem to our times. Which is why education is probably the "higher IQ" discussion to have because it is much more complex than spamming the function for IQ optimization, which is what Karlin and his ilk do.
That's also why technology that modifies an existing human to speedrun task-mastery and perform ultra-human feats seems appealing to me, and I'm keeping a close eye on Neuralink. Imagine how easily we could outmode the need for machines if we were capable of using our capabilities to the fullest.
For example, my father is from a country where it was once common to memorize poetry and recite a few lines at an appropriate moment in a conversation. He remarked that his father had an amazing memory, and was able to recite the entirety of a song he heard on the radio after it was already over. If we go back further in history we hear about Aquinas having memorized the Bible by heart.
What if we could produce human technology that would make the memorization of written material instantaneous? It would supercharge the education of children, make song and poetry commonplace, and make polymathy viable. It would push the intellectual limits of a 105 IQ beyond that of the 120 IQ today. It would destroy search engines because you could just memorize Wikipedia.
Now, I'm just throwing this idea out there to point out how particular transhumanist visions usually just launder the actual ideology of the speaker through the narrative of scientific inevitability. Ultrahuman memory is human-oriented transhumanism because it enhances inherent human abilities normally acquired through rote drudgery, just like how a dishwasher enhances dinner parties by speeding up the cleaning process.
However, anyone who is promoting the kind of transhumanism that seeks to produce endless 140 IQ Glenn Gould-tier autists is betraying their desire to eliminate the broad variety of human types who, despite their faults, provide some color to life.
The connection between genius and IQ is something I think a lot of hereditarians get backwards. One common reported experience among people who've attended Mensa meetings is that they find themselves surrounded by people with persecution complexes and of little accomplishment. A high enough IQ is a prerequisite or "entry price" to the possibility of genius, but the prerequisites that go into ensuring that genius actually bears fruit seems to be a more pertinent problem to our times. Which is why education is probably the "higher IQ" discussion to have because it is much more complex than spamming the function for IQ optimization, which is what Karlin and his ilk do.
That's also why technology that modifies an existing human to speedrun task-mastery and perform ultra-human feats seems appealing to me, and I'm keeping a close eye on Neuralink. Imagine how easily we could outmode the need for machines if we were capable of using our capabilities to the fullest.
For example, my father is from a country where it was once common to memorize poetry and recite a few lines at an appropriate moment in a conversation. He remarked that his father had an amazing memory, and was able to recite the entirety of a song he heard on the radio after it was already over. If we go back further in history we hear about Aquinas having memorized the Bible by heart.
What if we could produce human technology that would make the memorization of written material instantaneous? It would supercharge the education of children, make song and poetry commonplace, and make polymathy viable. It would push the intellectual limits of a 105 IQ beyond that of the 120 IQ today. It would destroy search engines because you could just memorize Wikipedia.
Now, I'm just throwing this idea out there to point out how particular transhumanist visions usually just launder the actual ideology of the speaker through the narrative of scientific inevitability. Ultrahuman memory is human-oriented transhumanism because it enhances inherent human abilities normally acquired through rote drudgery, just like how a dishwasher enhances dinner parties by speeding up the cleaning process.
However, anyone who is promoting the kind of transhumanism that seeks to produce endless 140 IQ Glenn Gould-tier autists is betraying their desire to eliminate the broad variety of human types who, despite their faults, provide some color to life.
said (10mo ago #1234 ):
>>1230
> A high enough IQ is a prerequisite or "entry price" to the possibility of genius, but the prerequisites that go into ensuring that genius actually bears fruit seems to be a more pertinent problem to our times. Which is why education is probably the "higher IQ" discussion to have because it is much more complex than spamming the function for IQ optimization ...
Absolutely key. As I've noted in another thread, no one, no matter their genes or how high their IQ, learns advanced mathematics, or great poetry, on their own. They need to be taught (at a bare minimum by exposure to books).
> ... my father is from a country where it was once common to memorize poetry and recite a few lines at an appropriate moment in a conversation. He remarked that his father had an amazing memory ...
What if memorization of large amounts of poetry and narrative, beginning at an early age, turned out to be a key method of cognitive enhancement, not merely for recitation, but for subsequent composition and thought?
> A high enough IQ is a prerequisite or "entry price" to the possibility of genius, but the prerequisites that go into ensuring that genius actually bears fruit seems to be a more pertinent problem to our times. Which is why education is probably the "higher IQ" discussion to have because it is much more complex than spamming the function for IQ optimization ...
Absolutely key. As I've noted in another thread, no one, no matter their genes or how high their IQ, learns advanced mathematics, or great poetry, on their own. They need to be taught (at a bare minimum by exposure to books).
> ... my father is from a country where it was once common to memorize poetry and recite a few lines at an appropriate moment in a conversation. He remarked that his father had an amazing memory ...
What if memorization of large amounts of poetry and narrative, beginning at an early age, turned out to be a key method of cognitive enhancement, not merely for recitation, but for subsequent composition and thought?
said (10mo ago #1236 ), referenced by >>1237:
>What if memorization of large amounts of poetry and narrative, beginning at an early age, turned out to be a key method of cognitive enhancement, not merely for recitation, but for subsequent composition and thought?
Well that's the thesis on GPT, isn't it? Even something as dumbass as a glorified markov chain can appear near-superhumanly intelligent because it has actually done the reading homework. What if humans read and memorized more as a more intensive core of their education?
>>1230
Very solid observations, anon. However there is one very important thing we need to learn from the jews who, according to Yuri Slezkine's "Jewish Century", both subverted the comfy moral order of western civilization and form the vanguard of modernity by being more willing to embrace the aesthetically repulsive but materially advantageous: aesthetic revulsion (ie fear) is not an argument. It is not the will of God. *You* may not like the "soup of industrially engineered intelligent bio-slop and organ-factories", as it was put above, but God might.
What is "unaesthetic forms of life"? Does that perception have a materialist basis, or is it just your own petty interests and comfort talking? Remember that God doesn't give two shits about your comfort or petty interests or "inherent" dignity. God wants you to become the kind of being who can know him by ruthlessly taking advantage of the material affordances He as so wisely provided to teach you His will and mind. It may be that that being grows out of an industrialized post-human soup of organs and computronium. Or it may be that there is something deeply flawed about that whole approach. Whichever it is, to become those ordained god-like super-beings properly, we must have an open-ended, empirical, and darwinistic approach to value. What actually works to create higher (stronger, wiser, more far-seeing, more conscious, more sustainable, fitter) forms of life? And if we have hunches against some false path, we must phrase those as predictive theses on the materially possible and advantageous, not the self-declared "aesthetic".
Our aesthetic perception is either revealed Truth that we have been blessed with to guide us through the strategic uncertainty to a relationship with God, or a failed experiment destined to be replaced by something more to the point. It is impossible in general to know which it is. However, one component of our aesthetic being that we are quite sure is in the former category is our rationality. Specifically, the ability to rationally reflect on our own being and aesthetics, phrase them in the common materialist language of science, and check those against other sources of knowledge to see if they make fundamental sense or are just prideful whims.
There are limits of materialist rationality beyond which only an irrational or revelatory leap of faith can take you, but man's gift of higher reason has raised that bar much much higher than it was in the days of animalistic superstition, and we are nowhere near that limit on some of these points. One of the major projects of philosophy as I see it is to catch up to that bar and continue to raise it.
Ultimately, I agree with you that this brand of transhumanists are on the wrong track. They are coping and making up bullshit to justify their own limited aesthetic superstitions (eg the IQ stuff as you capably refute). I believe that there is something much truer to the christian-nietzschean-humanist view of man, which is ultimately something like the aryan view of man, than the transhumanist reductionist view of man. But if there is such a truth, we should be able to phrase it as such, as a materialist thesis about what kind of format is going to produce the highest forms of life, which we can check against our scientific, historical, and technological knowledge. Slezkine's implication is that we have been insufficiently ambitious in developing our aesthetics beyond mere superstition and into rigorous materialist theses about what will work.
Well that's the thesis on GPT, isn't it? Even something as dumbass as a glorified markov chain can appear near-superhumanly intelligent because it has actually done the reading homework. What if humans read and memorized more as a more intensive core of their education?
>>1230
Very solid observations, anon. However there is one very important thing we need to learn from the jews who, according to Yuri Slezkine's "Jewish Century", both subverted the comfy moral order of western civilization and form the vanguard of modernity by being more willing to embrace the aesthetically repulsive but materially advantageous: aesthetic revulsion (ie fear) is not an argument. It is not the will of God. *You* may not like the "soup of industrially engineered intelligent bio-slop and organ-factories", as it was put above, but God might.
What is "unaesthetic forms of life"? Does that perception have a materialist basis, or is it just your own petty interests and comfort talking? Remember that God doesn't give two shits about your comfort or petty interests or "inherent" dignity. God wants you to become the kind of being who can know him by ruthlessly taking advantage of the material affordances He as so wisely provided to teach you His will and mind. It may be that that being grows out of an industrialized post-human soup of organs and computronium. Or it may be that there is something deeply flawed about that whole approach. Whichever it is, to become those ordained god-like super-beings properly, we must have an open-ended, empirical, and darwinistic approach to value. What actually works to create higher (stronger, wiser, more far-seeing, more conscious, more sustainable, fitter) forms of life? And if we have hunches against some false path, we must phrase those as predictive theses on the materially possible and advantageous, not the self-declared "aesthetic".
Our aesthetic perception is either revealed Truth that we have been blessed with to guide us through the strategic uncertainty to a relationship with God, or a failed experiment destined to be replaced by something more to the point. It is impossible in general to know which it is. However, one component of our aesthetic being that we are quite sure is in the former category is our rationality. Specifically, the ability to rationally reflect on our own being and aesthetics, phrase them in the common materialist language of science, and check those against other sources of knowledge to see if they make fundamental sense or are just prideful whims.
There are limits of materialist rationality beyond which only an irrational or revelatory leap of faith can take you, but man's gift of higher reason has raised that bar much much higher than it was in the days of animalistic superstition, and we are nowhere near that limit on some of these points. One of the major projects of philosophy as I see it is to catch up to that bar and continue to raise it.
Ultimately, I agree with you that this brand of transhumanists are on the wrong track. They are coping and making up bullshit to justify their own limited aesthetic superstitions (eg the IQ stuff as you capably refute). I believe that there is something much truer to the christian-nietzschean-humanist view of man, which is ultimately something like the aryan view of man, than the transhumanist reductionist view of man. But if there is such a truth, we should be able to phrase it as such, as a materialist thesis about what kind of format is going to produce the highest forms of life, which we can check against our scientific, historical, and technological knowledge. Slezkine's implication is that we have been insufficiently ambitious in developing our aesthetics beyond mere superstition and into rigorous materialist theses about what will work.
said (10mo ago #1237 ), referenced by >>1238:
>>1236
I contest the weak and reductive view of aesthetics as merely subjective and superstitious. There is good evidence, for example, that common views of human beauty, valuing symmetry and particular forms, track genetic fitness and health, and did so long before anyone knew about genetics. Obviously that doesn't mean we should just accept whatever preference someone pulls out of their ass. But why should that be what we call aesthetics? Men of wisdom and taste (yes, you do have to discern who those are, sorry) can rapidly and reliably make good judgments based in part on aesthetics without first or fully justifying them on other grounds.
"Materialist" doesn't add anything correct or useful to rationality. Men have pursued the most deranged and destruction projects (cf. Bolshevism) thinking they were justified by "materialism." Do judgments need to be checked against scientific, historical, and technological knowledge? Absolutely! But that has nothing to do with "materialism."
I contest the weak and reductive view of aesthetics as merely subjective and superstitious. There is good evidence, for example, that common views of human beauty, valuing symmetry and particular forms, track genetic fitness and health, and did so long before anyone knew about genetics. Obviously that doesn't mean we should just accept whatever preference someone pulls out of their ass. But why should that be what we call aesthetics? Men of wisdom and taste (yes, you do have to discern who those are, sorry) can rapidly and reliably make good judgments based in part on aesthetics without first or fully justifying them on other grounds.
"Materialist" doesn't add anything correct or useful to rationality. Men have pursued the most deranged and destruction projects (cf. Bolshevism) thinking they were justified by "materialism." Do judgments need to be checked against scientific, historical, and technological knowledge? Absolutely! But that has nothing to do with "materialism."
said (10mo ago #1238 ), referenced by >>1241:
>>1237
Aesthetics isn't merely subjective and superstitious. It's a source of real learned (by less explicit methods) wisdom. But what I mean by materialism is just what you did there: justifying the aesthetic preferences as subtle knowledge of material value like genetic health. That is a correct appreciation of the value of aesthetics. The incorrect appreciation is when you defend it *as* a merely subjective preference ("simply uncomfortable") without material content, as >>1230 could be (mis-)interpreted as doing when expressing an aesthetic preference against vat babies etc. What I'm saying is we should try harder to both challenge and articulate those kinds of aesthetics in terms of what they say about reality. Are vat babies going to work as a more powerful form of life, or not? Retreat not to "aesthetics".
Materialism is one of these words that has far too many meanings. A great deal of stupidity has been done in its name and also against it. In this case, I meant judging aesthetic judgements as predictions about what mode of life will thrive in reality. Not as arbitrary "utility function" preferences, "thriving" in terms of otherworldly values (eg "kingdom of heaven"), or mere defense of self-comfort, but hard predictions. For example the predictive content of an aesthetic preference for man as X could be articulated like "the kind of beings God/the universe/Gnon 'wants' are shaped like X. If we become more like X, we will thrive. If we become less like X, we will not thrive. The people who are chasing not X are insane and will be defeated by reality and we should divest from their stupid risks." This is not quite a scientific claim, but its well into the universe of testable and investable claims about reality.
I think "materialism" does add something over mere "rationality" given that the "rationalist" community is decidedly not on this wavelength about values. They think values are arbitrary and have little or no relation to reality (see "orthogonality"). I am saying something very radical, which is that "values" have no value except as empirical claims about future reality.
I would rephrase what I said without "materialism", but you have already got my meaning:
>Do judgments need to be checked against scientific, historical, and technological knowledge? Absolutely!
I just think this statement is way truer, way more total, and way more radical than has been properly realized at this time.
Aesthetics isn't merely subjective and superstitious. It's a source of real learned (by less explicit methods) wisdom. But what I mean by materialism is just what you did there: justifying the aesthetic preferences as subtle knowledge of material value like genetic health. That is a correct appreciation of the value of aesthetics. The incorrect appreciation is when you defend it *as* a merely subjective preference ("simply uncomfortable") without material content, as >>1230 could be (mis-)interpreted as doing when expressing an aesthetic preference against vat babies etc. What I'm saying is we should try harder to both challenge and articulate those kinds of aesthetics in terms of what they say about reality. Are vat babies going to work as a more powerful form of life, or not? Retreat not to "aesthetics".
Materialism is one of these words that has far too many meanings. A great deal of stupidity has been done in its name and also against it. In this case, I meant judging aesthetic judgements as predictions about what mode of life will thrive in reality. Not as arbitrary "utility function" preferences, "thriving" in terms of otherworldly values (eg "kingdom of heaven"), or mere defense of self-comfort, but hard predictions. For example the predictive content of an aesthetic preference for man as X could be articulated like "the kind of beings God/the universe/Gnon 'wants' are shaped like X. If we become more like X, we will thrive. If we become less like X, we will not thrive. The people who are chasing not X are insane and will be defeated by reality and we should divest from their stupid risks." This is not quite a scientific claim, but its well into the universe of testable and investable claims about reality.
I think "materialism" does add something over mere "rationality" given that the "rationalist" community is decidedly not on this wavelength about values. They think values are arbitrary and have little or no relation to reality (see "orthogonality"). I am saying something very radical, which is that "values" have no value except as empirical claims about future reality.
I would rephrase what I said without "materialism", but you have already got my meaning:
>Do judgments need to be checked against scientific, historical, and technological knowledge? Absolutely!
I just think this statement is way truer, way more total, and way more radical than has been properly realized at this time.
said (10mo ago #1241 ), referenced by >>1243:
>>1238
I'm a realist. I believe that reality should be (and ultimately will be, whether we like it or not) the test of our thought and action. This is why I think that judgments need to be checked against scientific, historical, and technological knowledge. I simply don't think those forms of knowledge, or reality, are entirely material.
> But what I mean by materialism is just what you did there: justifying the aesthetic preferences as subtle knowledge of material value like genetic health.
Genes are most importantly informational, like software; they have a material implementation, but they are not most fundamentally material.
> I meant judging aesthetic judgements as predictions about what mode of life will thrive in reality. Not as arbitrary "utility function" preferences ...
I entirely agree with this. I just think "materialism" is a terrible term for it. I recommend "realism," since the core reference is to reality. (You might also believe that reality is fundamentally material. I would disagree. But the larger point is that this disagreement is orthogonal to countering arbitrary subjectivism, which we agree on.)
I'm a realist. I believe that reality should be (and ultimately will be, whether we like it or not) the test of our thought and action. This is why I think that judgments need to be checked against scientific, historical, and technological knowledge. I simply don't think those forms of knowledge, or reality, are entirely material.
> But what I mean by materialism is just what you did there: justifying the aesthetic preferences as subtle knowledge of material value like genetic health.
Genes are most importantly informational, like software; they have a material implementation, but they are not most fundamentally material.
> I meant judging aesthetic judgements as predictions about what mode of life will thrive in reality. Not as arbitrary "utility function" preferences ...
I entirely agree with this. I just think "materialism" is a terrible term for it. I recommend "realism," since the core reference is to reality. (You might also believe that reality is fundamentally material. I would disagree. But the larger point is that this disagreement is orthogonal to countering arbitrary subjectivism, which we agree on.)
said (10mo ago #1243 ):
>>1241
Fair enough. "Value realism" is a better term. As I admitted, "materialism" means too many different things.
Fair enough. "Value realism" is a better term. As I admitted, "materialism" means too many different things.
said (10mo ago #1244 ), referenced by >>1245 >>1246:
>The world that widespread implementation of that technology would create would be alien and disturbing and would proliferate unaesthetic forms of life and probably uncanny lifeforms as well.
>What is "unaesthetic forms of life"? Does that perception have a materialist basis, or is it just your own petty interests and comfort talking? Remember that God doesn't give two shits about your comfort or petty interests or "inherent" dignity. God wants you to become the kind of being who can know him by ruthlessly taking advantage of the material affordances He as so wisely provided to teach you His will and mind. It may be that that being grows out of an industrialized post-human soup of organs and computronium.
> I meant judging aesthetic judgements as predictions about what mode of life will thrive in reality.
Interesting points being made here, but I would like to point out that many people are disgusted by insects, snakes, rats, etc.; and yet one could argue that insects are more dominant over the Earth than humans are. It seems that human aesthetic preferences may be based on some material basis, but that might not necessarily transfer 100% over to the taste for true peak power. The latter may be, in fact, too alien for our instincts to recognize aesthetically.
>vat babies replacing sexual reproduction, and so on.
This quip caught my interest. I guess I still feel like vat eugenics could win out in the end. Even if a philosophical system that promoted eugenics and high birthrates naturally was devised, could it really compete with the mass production of human babies (especially if these children were selected using IVF for traits associated with intelligence)?
I could especially see a country like North Korea experimenting with something like this and ultimately outcompeting current South Korean society due to the sheer demographic advantage that vat babies could provide.
Moreover, maybe producing humans in vats is on the path toward cyborgism in its original intention: survivability in space. If a people were able to put human brains in robot bodies and survive more or less fine in open space, would they not outcompete regular humans?
Maybe this is too autistic and I am not considering some relevant emotional/socio-psychological factors. Bad governance can certainly ruin any resource advantage. I think its also absolutely possible that most people would just find all of this to simply be too aesthetically displeasing and therefore it will never be pursued.
>What is "unaesthetic forms of life"? Does that perception have a materialist basis, or is it just your own petty interests and comfort talking? Remember that God doesn't give two shits about your comfort or petty interests or "inherent" dignity. God wants you to become the kind of being who can know him by ruthlessly taking advantage of the material affordances He as so wisely provided to teach you His will and mind. It may be that that being grows out of an industrialized post-human soup of organs and computronium.
> I meant judging aesthetic judgements as predictions about what mode of life will thrive in reality.
Interesting points being made here, but I would like to point out that many people are disgusted by insects, snakes, rats, etc.; and yet one could argue that insects are more dominant over the Earth than humans are. It seems that human aesthetic preferences may be based on some material basis, but that might not necessarily transfer 100% over to the taste for true peak power. The latter may be, in fact, too alien for our instincts to recognize aesthetically.
>vat babies replacing sexual reproduction, and so on.
This quip caught my interest. I guess I still feel like vat eugenics could win out in the end. Even if a philosophical system that promoted eugenics and high birthrates naturally was devised, could it really compete with the mass production of human babies (especially if these children were selected using IVF for traits associated with intelligence)?
I could especially see a country like North Korea experimenting with something like this and ultimately outcompeting current South Korean society due to the sheer demographic advantage that vat babies could provide.
Moreover, maybe producing humans in vats is on the path toward cyborgism in its original intention: survivability in space. If a people were able to put human brains in robot bodies and survive more or less fine in open space, would they not outcompete regular humans?
Maybe this is too autistic and I am not considering some relevant emotional/socio-psychological factors. Bad governance can certainly ruin any resource advantage. I think its also absolutely possible that most people would just find all of this to simply be too aesthetically displeasing and therefore it will never be pursued.
said (10mo ago #1245 ):
>>1244
> Moreover, maybe producing humans in vats is on the path toward cyborgism in its original intention: survivability in space. If a people were able to put human brains in robot bodies and survive more or less fine in open space, would they not outcompete regular humans?
————————————
The path to cyborgism is not IVF babies or whatever. It will start with a company coding up parts of the cerebral cortex and putting it in an AI agent, the first application of this will be self driving cars.Its gonna happen sooner than you think, 2060-70s.
Also the part about n
> Moreover, maybe producing humans in vats is on the path toward cyborgism in its original intention: survivability in space. If a people were able to put human brains in robot bodies and survive more or less fine in open space, would they not outcompete regular humans?
————————————
The path to cyborgism is not IVF babies or whatever. It will start with a company coding up parts of the cerebral cortex and putting it in an AI agent, the first application of this will be self driving cars.Its gonna happen sooner than you think, 2060-70s.
Also the part about n
said (10mo ago #1246 ):
>>1244
>The latter may be, in fact, too alien for our instincts to recognize aesthetically.
I have found the instincts to be trainable by philosophy. No one can escape the value grounding problem (that values must be taken on faith), but you can reach reflective equilibrium where your values are self-consistent with everything you know and with themselves. If the true path to the things we value (agency, philosophy, love, expansion, posterity, ascension, knowledge of God and Nature, etc) is some path we have not yet had the foresight to value, and we can know this, then we can come to value that correct path.
(I object to claims of insect dominance. Insect populations are now threatened in many human areas and have to be actively protected as a valued part of our garden-ecosystems. When we make this realization, insects suddenly become beautiful to us. See discourse around "pollinators". In any case insects never had the kind of philosophical agency that drives the destiny of the universe. They are the bug-like service workers of the animal kingdom.)
>I guess I still feel like vat eugenics could win out in the end. Even if a philosophical system that promoted eugenics and high birthrates naturally was devised, could it really compete with the mass production of human babies (especially if these children were selected using IVF for traits associated with intelligence)?
Industrialized modes of production have proven to be extremely powerful, despite their downsides. The big weakness is how industry undermines its own social prerequisites. Despite attempts, industrialized education has not worked. You need to scrap pre-industrial families and societies for parts to get people willing and able to maintain an industrial society. The details are not yet understood, but Samo Burja makes a capable statement of the problem in "The End of Industrial Society":
https://www.palladiummag.com/2021/03/24/the-end-of-industrial-society/
If we suppose that the education problem could be fully solved, then vat babies could work. Huxley famously imagined this in "Brave New World". But he doesn't seem to think it will fully work. In particular, he raises the problem of the "Alphas":
Some people (beings, agents) need to be beyond and above the existing institutions, as they will rule over them. They need to have instincts for command, and cannot be beholden to bureaucratic oversight. This can't be everybody for obvious reasons, but it has to be somebody. It's possible that everybody needs at least some element of this and this is what's wrong with industrial education. But can such a person be industrially produced? Who could possibly have the standing to tune and breed and indoctrinate such people? The very act of shaping them rationally is an act of subjugation and instrumentalization which destroys their nature.
My hunch is that Alphas can only be reliably produced by a loving and faith based act of reproduction by other Alphas who are their parents. They can only be conceived within a sincere and living Myth, not technocratic instrumentalization. If some post-human race of superbeings succeeds us, they will also need to work this way.
Industrialization may work for producing whatever masses of infertile bug-men are needed to do the work, but those are not fully human. You might even get vat-born Alphas, but to do so is so dangerous and irrational from the perspective of industry there's going to be something religious, accidental, pre-industrial, or criminal about how it's done. There will be loving parents who advocate for them and make it happen.
> I think its also absolutely possible that most people would just find all of this to simply be too aesthetically displeasing and therefore it will never be pursued.
That has never stopped anything that wanted to happen.
>The latter may be, in fact, too alien for our instincts to recognize aesthetically.
I have found the instincts to be trainable by philosophy. No one can escape the value grounding problem (that values must be taken on faith), but you can reach reflective equilibrium where your values are self-consistent with everything you know and with themselves. If the true path to the things we value (agency, philosophy, love, expansion, posterity, ascension, knowledge of God and Nature, etc) is some path we have not yet had the foresight to value, and we can know this, then we can come to value that correct path.
(I object to claims of insect dominance. Insect populations are now threatened in many human areas and have to be actively protected as a valued part of our garden-ecosystems. When we make this realization, insects suddenly become beautiful to us. See discourse around "pollinators". In any case insects never had the kind of philosophical agency that drives the destiny of the universe. They are the bug-like service workers of the animal kingdom.)
>I guess I still feel like vat eugenics could win out in the end. Even if a philosophical system that promoted eugenics and high birthrates naturally was devised, could it really compete with the mass production of human babies (especially if these children were selected using IVF for traits associated with intelligence)?
Industrialized modes of production have proven to be extremely powerful, despite their downsides. The big weakness is how industry undermines its own social prerequisites. Despite attempts, industrialized education has not worked. You need to scrap pre-industrial families and societies for parts to get people willing and able to maintain an industrial society. The details are not yet understood, but Samo Burja makes a capable statement of the problem in "The End of Industrial Society":
https://www.palladiummag.com/2021/03/24/the-end-of-industrial-society/
If we suppose that the education problem could be fully solved, then vat babies could work. Huxley famously imagined this in "Brave New World". But he doesn't seem to think it will fully work. In particular, he raises the problem of the "Alphas":
Some people (beings, agents) need to be beyond and above the existing institutions, as they will rule over them. They need to have instincts for command, and cannot be beholden to bureaucratic oversight. This can't be everybody for obvious reasons, but it has to be somebody. It's possible that everybody needs at least some element of this and this is what's wrong with industrial education. But can such a person be industrially produced? Who could possibly have the standing to tune and breed and indoctrinate such people? The very act of shaping them rationally is an act of subjugation and instrumentalization which destroys their nature.
My hunch is that Alphas can only be reliably produced by a loving and faith based act of reproduction by other Alphas who are their parents. They can only be conceived within a sincere and living Myth, not technocratic instrumentalization. If some post-human race of superbeings succeeds us, they will also need to work this way.
Industrialization may work for producing whatever masses of infertile bug-men are needed to do the work, but those are not fully human. You might even get vat-born Alphas, but to do so is so dangerous and irrational from the perspective of industry there's going to be something religious, accidental, pre-industrial, or criminal about how it's done. There will be loving parents who advocate for them and make it happen.
> I think its also absolutely possible that most people would just find all of this to simply be too aesthetically displeasing and therefore it will never be pursued.
That has never stopped anything that wanted to happen.